A breakthrough by Australian scientists has brought the introduction of an unlikely hero in the global fight against antibiotic resistance a step closer; the humble platypus.
Source: Saving lives with platypus milk
Journals
Toxic Chemicals Database — Chemical Free Life
Free, searchable, online database of information about the dangers of toxic substances in products and the environment A necessary tool for consumers, researchers, attorneys, clinicians, nonprofit organizations, journalists, policymakers and others working to minimize the adverse effects of toxic chemicals in our world. http://www.ToxicDocs.org Free online access to millions of documents on chemical toxicity made […]
Flu Vaccines and the Math of Herd Immunity | Quanta Magazine
Simple math shows how widespread vaccination can disrupt the exponential spread of disease and prevent epidemics.
Source: Flu Vaccines and the Math of Herd Immunity | Quanta Magazine
This is the secret to long lasting happiness – WEF
There’s enough advice on happiness floating around out there to make your head spin. Yet, this is understandable, as everyone is different. What makes one person happy might make another miserable.
In the face of so much contradictory, and often subjective, advice, what are you supposed to do if you want to live a happier life? Just forget about all that subjective advice and focus your energy and attention on science-proven facts.
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama
UCLA neuroscience researcher Alex Korb has spent a great deal of time studying the effects of different happiness strategies on the brain. His findings have a lot to teach us about what actually works when it comes to boosting happiness.
Korb’s research demonstrated that your thoughts—and the emotions you feel in response to those thoughts—have a profound impact on surprising areas of your brain.
Guilt and shame, for example, activate the brain’s reward center, which explains why we have such a strong tendency to heap guilt and shame upon ourselves. Likewise, worrying increases activity in the prefrontal cortex (the rational brain), which is why worrying can make you feel more in control than doing nothing at all.
Gratitude creates happiness. I’m not advocating worry, guilt, and shame as the path to happiness. The illustration shows why we tend to succumb to thoughts that fuel these emotions. The real neural antidepressant is gratitude. Gratitude boosts levels of serotonin and dopamine—the brain’s happy chemicals and the same chemicals targeted by antidepressant medications. The striking thing about gratitude is that it can work even when things aren’t going well for you. That’s because you don’t actually have to feel spontaneous gratitude in order to produce chemical changes in your brain; you just have to force yourself to think about something in your life that you appreciate. This train of thought activates your brain to make you feel happier.
Labeling negative feelings dilutes their power. There is an amazing amount of power in simply labeling your negative emotions. In one study, participants underwent fMRI scans of their brains while they labeled negative emotions. When they named these emotions, the brain’s prefrontal cortex took over and the amygdala (where emotions are generated) calmed down. This effect doesn’t just work with your own emotions; labeling the emotions of other people calms them down too, which is why FBI hostage negotiators frequently rely on this technique.
Making decisions feels good. Similar to naming emotions, making decisions engages the prefrontal cortex, which calms the amygdala and the rest of the limbic system. The key is to make a “good enough” decision. Trying to make the perfect decision causes stress. We’ve always known that, but now there’s scientific research that explains why. Making a “good enough” decision activates the dorsolateral prefrontal areas of the brain, calming emotions down and helping you feel more in control. Trying to make a perfect decision, on the other hand, ramps up ventromedial frontal activity—which basically means your emotions get overly involved in the decision-making process.
It helps you to lend a hand. Taking the time to help your colleagues not only makes them happy but also makes you happy. Helping other people gives you a surge of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine, all of which create good feelings. In a Harvard study, employees who helped others were 10 times more likely to be focused at work and 40% more likely to get a promotion. The same study showed that people who consistently provided social support to others were the most likely to be happy during times of high stress. As long as you make certain that you aren’t overcommitting yourself, helping others is sure to have a positive influence on your happiness.
Our brains are wired for touch. Humans are social animals, to the point that our brains react to social exclusion in the same way that they react to physical pain, with activity in the anterior cingulate and insula. Similarly, our brains are hardwired to interpret touch as social acceptance. Touch is one of the primary stimuli for releasing oxytocin, which calms the amygdala and, in turn, calms emotions. There are even studies that show that holding hands with a loved one actually reduces the brain’s response to pain. You might think that’s bad news for people who are socially isolated, but studies show that a massage increases serotonin by as much as 30%. Touch reduces stress hormones, decreases the perception of pain, improves sleep, and reduces fatigue.
Bringing It All Together
Kolb’s research highlights just how amazing the brain is, and he summarized his findings succinctly when he said, “Everything is interconnected. Gratitude improves sleep. Sleep reduces pain. Reduced pain improves your mood. Improved mood reduces anxiety, which improves focus and planning. Focus and planning help with decision-making. Decision-making further reduces anxiety and improves enjoyment. Enjoyment gives you more to be grateful for, which keeps that loop of the upward spiral going. Enjoyment makes it more likely you’ll exercise and be social, which, in turn, makes you happier.”
Author : Travis Bradberry President, TalentSmart
A Mathematical Solution to String Matching for Big Data Linking
Authors : Kevin McCormack, Mary Smyth Central Statistics Office, Cork, Ireland
This paper describes how data records can be matched across large datasets using a technique called the Identity Correlation Approach (ICA). The ICA technique is then compared with a string matching exercise. Both the string matching exercise and the ICA We live in the era of Big Data. We are witnessing radical expansion and integration of digital devices, networking, data storage, and computation systems. Data generation and consumption is becoming a main part of people’s daily life especially with the pervasive
Introduction
This paper presents work from the CSO’s big data project called the SESADP (Structure of Earnings Survey Administrative Data Project [1] [2]. Most big data matching projects attempt to match dataset records on the basis of string variable matching. String matching is successful if the string variable records are unique and spellings of string variables are correct. However if the string variable used for matching contains data records which are similar to other data records, or are non-unique, this leads to false positives (matched records that are incorrect). Datasets which are string matched require a lot of manual checking, which is not practical with big data projects. Also false positives can be hard to quantify in the matched data
records.
This paper compares the results of a mathematical solution to string matching called the Identity Correlation Approach (ICA) [3], with an exercise that involved string matching. In the ICA approach, the Matching Rate of Unique Identifier (MRUI) equation is used to calculate the matching rate for records and false positives can be eliminated. This approach provides an exact mathematical method for matching big data without string matching. Outcomes of matches are calculated mathematically before the matching process begins, as the MRUI formula quantifies the rate of exact matches beforehand and false positives can therefore be eliminated by adjusting the formula. The ICA technique is developed based on the population size and the number of variables in the datasets to be matched with each other. There is no manual checking required for false positives. The Identity Correlation Approach (ICA) was developed in the SESADP project undertaken by the CSO to match the 2011 Irish Census dataset to a large Public Sector dataset in a hugely successful big data project to provide statistics for the Structure of Earnings Survey [4]. The SESADP replaced the CSO’s annual National Employment Survey [5] [6]. Firstly, this paper will present the Identity Correlation Approach (ICA) and its application and the results from the data matching exercise. Secondly, it will detail the process and outcome of string matching in the SESADP big data project.
Source : http://www.davidpublisher.org/Public/uploads/Contribute/59374a1e848f8.pdf
Monetary Policy and Global Banking
Foreign (“global”) banks play an important role in many countries and use their global balance sheets to respond to local monetary policy. According to the Bank for International Settlements, European and Japanese banks’ claims on U.S. nonbank firms as of June 2015 were USD 1.61 and 0.72 trillion, respectively. Foreign banks help originate close to a quarter of all syndicated corporate loans in the United States (DealScan data). Similarly, U.S. banks are important lenders abroad. However, sources and uses of funds are often denominated in different currencies, leading to a foreign exchange (FX) exposure that banks need to hedge. If cross-currency flows are large, the hedging cost increases, diminishing the return on lending in foreign currency.
Given the economic significance of global banks, questions have been raised about their role in the propagation of economic shocks across countries. This paper studies the effect of monetary policy actions in one country on the lending decisions of global banks abroad, in the context of changes in the interest on excess reserves (IOER) rate in six major currency areas between 2000:Q1 and 2015:Q2.
Nanoparticles loaded with component of common spice kill cancer cells: Curcumin formula shows promise against treatment-resistant childhood cancer
Attaching curcumin, a component of the common spice turmeric, to nanoparticles can be used to target and destroy treatment-resistant neuroblastoma tumor cells, according to a new study. The study demonstrates a potentially novel treatment for neuroblastoma, the most common cancer in infants.
On the effects of inequality on economic growth
Two month ago there was an interesting debate on the effects of inequality on economic growth in the otherwise boring Spanish blogosphere. Here is my contribution to the debate, translated from Spanish.
View original post 3,951 more words
Artificial Intelligence Problem Solved with Relational Database
Abstract: –
In this paper we present an implementation method for eight-puzzle game. In the artificial intelligence
literature, different algorithms are proposed for implementing this game. These methods concern different heuristic
functions.There are being used expert systems, as well as different programming languages or environments (e.g. C,
Pascal, Java, Delphi etc.) for implementation, mentioning that users have to exploit a tree data structure. In our work we use databases for model a tree.
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Author :
MIRELA-CATRINEL VOICU
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration
West University of Timisoara, Romania
ROMANIA
source : WSEAS
Kalanjiam 