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April 30, 2020


Whether you want to top up your knowledge on a subject or learn a completely new skill, there is no shortage of online courses to help you on your way. In fact, there are so many choices, it can be difficult to figure out which platform suits you best!
If you want to help upgrade the skills of one of your freelancers or employees, it can be even more difficult to choose the best match for their learning style.
To help you navigate the rapidly expanding world of online education, here are 10 of the most popular options for upgrading your skills. Ready, set…learn!

Coursera

Coursera has partnered with leading universities in the U.S. and around the world to provide online courses covering dozens of different subjects. Recently, they’ve introduced “specializations”—10 different course pathways that will lead to an official certification from an associated university.
Coursera has a wide diversity of subjects available to choose from; everything from data science to musical theory. As Coursera prides itself on being accessible to everyone, many of the courses are either free or very cheap to to take, with only the official certification at the end having a higher cost involved.

Lynda.com

A veteran in the online education space, Lynda.com offers a subscription-based video tutorial library. Think of it as an education-based Netflix. A great option for people who are visual learners, and at a reasonable cost of $25 per month, a Lynda.com membership provides unlimited access to more than 80,000 videos on a broad range of different subjects.

Udemy

With an average of 800 new courses added to their repertoire every month, Udemy is a bit more expensive than its competitors. Costs vary broadly, ranging from $10 to $500 for different courses; the most popular Udemy courses in business and technology tend to be upwards of $100. However, you can read the reviews of former students before signing up to any of the courses, so you can make a more informed decision.

Udacity

Udacity is a platform with a strong focus on technology, with a small but well-crafted selection of courses. If you’re looking to break into data science (called the “sexiest job of the 21st century“), Udacity’s data science program has an impressive roster of teachers from companies like Salesforce and Facebook.
Udacity’s pricing structure allows you to pay monthly for your courses; if you decide to drop a program before completing it, you pay for the course up to that point, rather than the whole thing.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a non-profit online platform providing a completely free library of educational “micro-lectures.” Focusing on more traditional academic subjects, Khan Academy provides a mix of video and text-based materials in math, science, economics, humanities, and a bit of computer programming. Since Khan Academy is free for anyone to use, it’s a great to way to get a taste for a subject before moving onto a more advanced course elsewhere.

Codecademy

Previously backed by the White House, Codecademy is dedicated to teaching people how to code—and it’s available for free. While other online coding courses are a “learn at your own pace” environment, Codecademy motivates learners to keep a fast pace using supportive groups and a gamified points system.
The school offers courses on a number of languages—including PHP, Phython and Ruby—and students are often already building and deploying projects by the time they finish their course.

Bloc

Focused on web development, Bloc is a more intensive option for those who want to learn quickly. Instead of short courses or lectures, this highly structured program runs for 25 hours per week over several months. With tuition starting at $4,250, bloc.io doesn’t come cheap—but it does offer a great option for those who are ready to commit to a career change.

iversity

Hailed as the “Coursera of Europe,” Berlin-based iversity has partnered with European and international universities to offer academic courses for free. Unlike Coursera, however, it doesn’t look like iversity is currently providing any official certification.

Skillshare

Skillshare is a community marketplace for new skills. With a broad range of different subjects to choose from, Skillshare offers an online catalog of video-based courses, as well as in-person workshops in cities like San Francisco and New York.
Many classes are available to take without a membership at a cost of around $20-$30 each, but top classes—taught by industry leaders—are only available with a Skillshare membership. Membership costs $9.95 per month and, while it doesn’t get you any free content, it does provide 20 percent off of all classes. Like other platforms, Skillshare provides student reviews for your reference.

General Assembly

Focusing on education in design, business and technology, New York City-based General Assembly has campuses in nearly a dozen different cities around the world. Although the majority of General Assembly classes are in-person, they also offer a compact selection of online-only or mixed courses.
General Assembly even livestreams popular lectures, providing real-time interaction with the lecturer and other students. Their online courses range in price, from one-off lectures to multi-part workshops.


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April 30, 2020


More than sixty years ago, a very unique discovery was accidentally made in the Valley of Struma River, the greatest river in western Bulgaria, during road construction works.

A small book was found in an old tomb covered with frescoes. It is the world’s oldest book in the history of mankind, made of gold and dated to 600 BC.

The illustrated six golden pages are made of 23.82-karat gold (measuring 5 centimeters in length and 4.5 centimeters in width) and fastened together with gold rings. The pages are covered with text and decorated with images of warriors, a horseman, a Siren, and a lyre.

The authenticity of the book was confirmed by two independent experts from Bulgaria and England.


According to researchers from the National Museum of History in Sofia, Bulgaria, the six sheets are believed to be the oldest comprehensive work involving multiple pages. As the expert said, “there are about 30 similar pages known in the world, but they are not linked together in a book”.

This precious work was written in Etruscan language that belonged to the Etruscans, one of Europe’s most mysterious ancient peoples, who are believed to have migrated from Lydia, in modern western Turkey, settling in northern and central Italy nearly 3,000 years ago.

They were wiped out by the conquering Romans in the fourth century BC, leaving few written records.

The real problem with deciphering Etruscan language lies in understanding the exact meanings of the words and grammatical forms. The Etruscan language itself has been already deciphered, but most Etruscan texts remain totally obscure.

Apparently, the mysterious language cannot be related to any other known language, living or dead.

Etruscan language had regrettably lapsed into oblivion, and today no one can read this over 2,5 thousand years old book. However, the unique artifact can be seen at the National Museum of History in Sofia, Bulgaria where it was placed on public display.
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April 29, 2020

Advantages of Starting Your Own Business:

1. Your rule, your kingdom (Boss):


Working under someone else has always felt like a restriction. However, when you are out there, setting up your own business, you are the incharge. This point itself is a boon in disguise. It gives you the freedom to choose and make a decision of your choice. It also lifts off the barriers of restriction from you.

Moreover, being your own boss means that you can run the business with your own strategies without much ado about it. This also gives the elasticity to choose your own working hours. In addition, you also have the freedom to enjoy family matters whenever it is required.

2. Your hard work pays you (and not your boss):


The biggest complaint for defending starting own business is that the hard work that they do does not feel rewarding in the corporate sector. I agree that hard work must not be feeling rewarding as the salary is fixed in the corporate sector. Everyone enjoys the benefits of their hard work.

The phrase ‘hard work pays off‘ seems relevant in the own business category too. On a longer run, owning a business have high scopes to be very successful in the future.

Fact:

One of the most successful companies of its time i.e. Microsoft started its journey from someone’s garage. Therefore, there is always a scope for betterment. All you have to do is just try it.

3. Secured job (No one to fire):


Temporary or not, corporate sectors’ workers have no such guarantee of their jobs. They can be fired at any time due to any reasons. The reasons may be working performance or recession’s demand.

In your own business, you have the advantage of hiring yourself. Thus, the idea of firing yourself can never arise. As a result, you enjoy the freedom of working the way you want regardless of the fear of losing the source of your bread.

4. Secure and satisfied on mental grounds:


The driving force that pushes you to achieve better is satisfaction. You feel satisfied when you are able to do what you always want to.

For example, your passion is your own beauty parlour. Every day you do not have to wake yourself up unwillingly. Instead, your passion for your parlour will drive you.

As a result, you would always make sure to be enthusiastic about your work. Your main motive would be to impress your client. This in itself would give you peace and can be considered as a reward for you.

5. The exposure to experience all aspects:


As a corporate worker, you do not get much exposure. You simply experience one part of the job. For example, if your job is to manage the marketing of the company’s product then you solely work under the marketing team. However, if you have your own business you are able to understand and experience all the angles and diameters of your work.

For example, if you have your own beauty parlour you would have to look out for the salary, accounting, trainee fees, income, profit, etc. These things do not matter to someone who works as an assistant in the parlour.

6. No payment problems:


As an employee, you are aware of your annual income along with a little increment on your successful tries. Unless you get a promotion, your salary is stagnant. However, when owning a business you have the potential to earn more depending upon how you work and run the business. You might handle your own pricing and marketing strategies and set your own profit bar. This promises a lucrative income as long as the business is running.

Disadvantages of Owning Your Own Business:


The following mentioned are few disadvantages of business management.

1. It is a risky task:


Setting up your own business comes up with several challenges. Those tough challenges are one of the reasons for those who defend corporate jobs.

Starting your own business comes with the risk of losing everything you invested just because of an unsuccessful business.

If the business fails to flourish it falls flat on the shoulder of the entrepreneur. As a result, people think various times before opting for their own business.

2. Financial investments:


Before starting any business first, you have to set up a capital that can take the load of all the planning that you have done.

Starting with the area of work to the employees, you have to manage everything. Thus, you have to build capital.

Taking a loan for these capitals may also come off as risky, because the start of your business may not always begin with profit. It is a risky task to manage financial burdens without any backup plans.

3. You may not receive a lucrative income:


There is no such guarantee of your business to flourish instantly or continuously. You might face the vicissitudes. However, the problem arises when the inconsistent loss continuous for months.

At times like these, bigger problems like bankruptcy can appear. Moreover, if you have the burden of loan on you, the problems might accelerate out of your hands. Further, you might land in bigger trouble.

4. Freedom to work- turns into overtime work:


Your own business gives you the freedom to take a holiday when needed. You have no one above you to ask for leave. However, at times of need, you would need to work for extra hours with no extra pay. Thus, you will have to work extra and manage everything accordingly.

5. Financial obligations:


Businesses can never work out without a bit of law in it. If you start your own business, you need to set up your own assets. However, when you collaborate up with some other institute you have to share your assets by default.

When they believe that, you have done an error at a certain point they might file a lawsuit. These business obligations may also affect the capital and profit of the company.

These are the benefits and pitfalls of having your own business. However, the choice is subjective depending upon how well you can find the solution to the disadvantages.

If the advantages work well for your company and the disadvantages are hardly applicable, then setting up your own business will be a wise step. Now let us check out the advantages and disadvantages of corporate jobs i.e. corporate employment or working for a corporate.

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April 29, 2020

1. Overdrive




Overdrive is the cleanest, fastest, and most legal way to access millions of ebooks—not just ones in the public domain, but even recently released mainstream titles.
There is one hitch though: you’ll need a valid and active public library card or to be a student to have access to these free ebooks. Overdrive works with over 30,000 public libraries in over 40 different countries worldwide. In addition to free ebook checkouts, you can also listen to audiobooks for free.
If you can access the service, you will have instant access to the latest The New York Times Bestsellers. The list is updated weekly, so you will never miss out on a hot read.

2. Library Genesis



Library Genesis is a search engine for free reading material, including ebooks, articles, magazines, and more. As of this writing, Library Genesis indexes close to 3 million ebooks and 60 million articles. It would take several lifetimes to consume everything on offer here.
Both fiction and non-fiction are covered, spanning different genres and types.
Since it’s a search engine. browsing for books is almost impossible. The closest thing you can do is use the Authors dropdown in the navigation bar to browse by authors, and even then, you’ll have to get used to the terrible user interface of the site overall.
It’s better to search instead for a particular book title, author, or synopsis. The Advanced Search lets you narrow the results by language and file extension.
The legality of Library Genesis has been in question since 2015 because it allegedly grants access to pirated copies of books and paywalled articles, but the site remains up and open to the public.

3. Centsless Books




Unlike the other sites on this list, Centsless Books is a curator-aggregator of free Kindle books available on Amazon. Its mission is to make it easy for you to stay on top of all the free ebooks available from the online retailer.
Note that some of the “free” ebooks listed on Centsless Books are only free if you’re part of Kindle Unlimited. Unfortunately, Kindle Unlimited might not be worth the money.
NB: Since Centsless Books tracks free ebooks available on Amazon, there may be times when there is nothing listed. If that happens, try again a few days later.

4. Project Gutenberg




Another of the best free ebook download sites is Project Gutenberg. It’s a charity endeavor, sustained through volunteers and fundraisers, that aims to collect and provide as many high-quality ebooks as possible. Most of its library consists of public domain titles, but it has other stuff too if you’re willing to look around.
As of this writing, Gutenberg has more than 60,000 free ebooks on offer. They are available for download in EPUB and MOBI formats (some are only available in one of the two), and they can be read online in HTML format.
You can browse the library by category (of which there are hundreds), by most popular (which means total download count), by latest (which means date of upload), or by random (which is a great way to find new material to read).

5. ManyBooks




ManyBooks is a nifty little site that’s been around for over a decade. Its purpose is to curate and provide a library of free and discounted fiction ebooks for people to download and enjoy.
Much of its collection was seeded by Project Gutenberg back in the mid-2000s, but it has since taken on an identity of its own with the addition of thousands of self-published works that have been made available at no charge.
Downloads are available in dozens of formats, including EPUB, MOBI, and PDF, and each story has a rating out of five stars.

6. Feedbooks




Feedbooks is a massive collection of downloadable ebooks: fiction and non-fiction, public domain and copyrighted, free and paid. While over 1 million titles are available, only about half of them are free.
The split between “free public domain ebooks” and “free original ebooks” is surprisingly even. A big chunk of the public domain titles are short stories and a lot of the original titles are fanfiction. Still, if you do a bit of digging around, you’ll find some interesting stories.
Most of the ebooks are available in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats. They even come with word counts and reading time estimates, if you take that into consideration when choosing what to read.

7. PDFBooksWorld




Between the three major ebook formats—EPUB, MOBI, and PDF—what if you prefer to read in the latter format? While EPUBs and MOBIs have basically taken over, reading PDF ebooks hasn’t quite gone out of style yet, and for good reason: PDFs offer universal support across platforms and devices.
If you want to stick to PDFs only, then you’ll want to check out PDFBooksWorld. While the collection is small at only a few thousand titles, they’re all free and guaranteed to be PDF-optimized. Most of them are literary classics, like The Great Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, Crime and Punishment, and so on.
For other formatting issues, we’ve covered everything you need to convert ebooks between different file types.

8. Open Library




Open Library offers an easily searchable directory of all the free ebooks that are available on The internet Archive. You might be surprised at the number of books available. The total library is pushing towards 1.5 million items.
On the Open Library’s homepage, you can readily find the books in which you might be interested thanks to the scrollable categories. Some of the most popular categories include Romance, Kids, and History. You can even find some textbooks lurking in the catalog.
The site is open source and anyone can edit the information available for each book.

9. Free-Ebooks.net




Free-Ebooks.net offers thousands of free ebooks. The content is broadly split into six categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Romance, Sci-Fi, Self Help, and Business.
To be able to download free ebooks from Free-Ebooks.net, you will need to sign up for an account. An account is free to create. Once you have an account, you can download up to five free titles every month.
In addition to English, books are available in dozens of other languages.

10. International Children’s Digital Library




If your child is a bookworm, you could find yourself spending masses of cash on new titles. Unless, that is, you find a reliable source of free ebooks for kids. As such, the International Children’s Digital Library is a godsend for anyone who has young readers in the house.
Books are available in a variety of lengths and reading difficulty levels. You can even search by criteria that might stimulate kids, such as the color of the cover. Each book is listed in a specific category for easy searching.
Titles are available in four languages—English, Persian, German, and Yiddish.


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April 28, 2020

Tucked deep within Chestnut Ridge Park, New York, is a small waterfall called the Eternal Flame Falls. The waterfall is so called because of a simple phenomenon—a natural gas leak just underneath the falls that just happens to be burning. The flame is not really ‘eternal’ in the sense that it goes out occasionally. Often it is re-lit by the next hiker that finds it extinguished. Chestnut Ridge Park is situated on 1213 acres of the northern face of a series of hills sandwiched between the Eighteenmile Creek and West Branch Cazenovia Creek valleys in Erie County. The park itself is a superb summer family destination containing miles of hiking trails, cycling paths, several playing fields, tennis courts, and a wealth of picnic facilities and shelters. Eternal Flame Falls, despite being located within the park boundaries, is off on the fringe, away from the crowds, and most directly accessible from a trail that begins on the southern edge of the park. 



As you approach the falls, the smell of rotten-egg hits your nose. What you smell is the natural gas that leaks from between the shale layers. The gasses produced during the decomposition of the organics within the rock deposits are under pressure and push out through cracks and loose layers within the rock. One large fissure is located right within Eternal Flame Falls, in a small grotto that protects the gas seepage from the falling water and any wind, enabling it to sustain a flame when lit. Two other, smaller seepages within the grotto can be lit, although they can't hold a flame as large or as long as the primary flame. There are several other gas seepages, or springs, around the falls, but locating them can be tricky and lighting them often impossible. Some are located underneath the pool below the falls, and can be seen as bubbles rising up from the bedrock below.

Eternal Flame Falls is highly dependent on rainfall and melt water. It is usually only flowing in early spring, or after long bouts of heavy rain. It reaches 30 ft high, cascading over sloping shale in two segments. A small grotto, 5 ft up from the creek bed, to the right houses the natural gas spring that can be ignited to create a flame of 4-8 inches in height. When flow is high, the water pours over the grotto, covering the flame and diffusing the light like a lampshade. Eternal Flame Falls is truly one of the most unique waterfalls in the country and one of the few remaining natural areas that we find on our planet. It is said that the falls may be the only one of its kind on the planet.

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April 28, 2020


With the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on everyone’s mind these days, scientists are working to understand its characteristics. Tung Phan from the University of Pittburgh, for example, found many mutations in the genome of the virus, underlining its genetic diversity and the rapid evolution this pathogen is capable of.
This begs bigger questions, though—like what makes viruses so adaptable, and are they really “alive?”
First, their total number is staggering. It is estimated that there are 10 viruses for every bacterium on Earth. Curtis Suttle from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver compared the number of viruses in the oceans alone to the number of stars in the Universe, which is estimated to be 1023. Viruses outnumber stars by a factor of 10 million. If you lined them all up, that line would be 10 million light years long! To put it on a more conceivable scale, it’s been estimated that each day, more than 700 million viruses, mainly of marine origin, are deposited from Earth’s atmosphere onto every square meter of our planet’s surface.
The diversity of viruses is just as impressive. Some use DNA to pass on genetic information, some use RNA, and some use both during their life cycle. The information carrier can be single-stranded, double-stranded, or double-stranded with some regions being single-stranded. Viruses are like a natural lab seemingly playing around with genetic permutations and combinations. While most viruses are so small that they can only be observed directly with an electron microscope, others, like the giant Mimiviruses, reach the size of bacteria. When I worked in my lab with viruses that kill bacteria—called bacteriophages—we did not count the actual viruses, but the number of bacteria they killed.
Viruses also have benefits. Most of the genetic information on Earth probably resides within them, and viruses are important for transferring genes between different species, increasing genetic diversity and ultimately enhancing evolution and the adaptation of various organisms to new environmental challenges. When life was first arising on Earth, they may have been critical to the evolution of the first cells. I imagine some kind of early Darwinian pond in which viruses and the first cells swapped genes with each other, nearly unimpeded, to come up with critical new adaptations, enhancing the survival of both under challenging early-Earth conditions.
So, are viruses alive?
It depends where we draw the border between non-life and life, which is likely a continuum toward increasing complexity. Does life require cells? Personally, I think that’s a bit—how should I say it?–cell-centric rather than Earth-centric. In my view, viruses have to be counted as alive. We should recognize them as a fourth domain of life and not dismiss them, if only because they do in fact reproduce outside their own “bodies.” The parasitic bacteria that cause chlamydia are considered to be living. One hypothesis for the origin of viruses says that they, or at least some of them, could have evolved from bacteria that lost any genes not needed for parasitism. If so, could we say they “evolved” from living back to non-living?
Another thing I find intriguing: The more common RNA viruses—like the coronavirus behind the current pandemic—have typically smaller genome sizes than DNA viruses, apparently because of a higher error-rate when replicating. Too many errors have the effect that natural selection disfavors them. It also limits the maximum size of these viruses.
This seems to support the hypothesis that life originated with an RNA world, and that for very primitive life RNA worked perfectly fine to pass on genetic information. As organisms grew in size, they required larger genomes and needed to transfer more information. At that point DNA outcompeted RNA as a type of informational code. But RNA survives as an essential part of terrestrial biology, as we’re seeing with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
By Dirk Schulze-Makuch

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April 27, 2020

When asked what is the most popular food in the world, you may think random things such as chips or fish. While both are eaten a great deal, they’re actually not the most popular among people worldwide. Since we’re nice guys around here, we have done the research and found the most consumed food in the world.
In this list, we compiled a delicious list of foods around the globe that are eaten the most. Remember, all foods here may be consumed more in certain nations other overs. However, they are totaled from worldwide numbers. With that said, here are the eight most consumed food in the world today.

Pasta


You can ask most Americans, and there is guarantee that most of them eat pasta in their lives; even those who have a strict diet were once a pasta eater for sure. Pasta is an Italian staple food that has reached worldwide popularity and has invaded other continents like Asia and America.  Pasta is a most consumed food in the world.
Although it may not be a staple food in other continents, pasta seems to be liked for a great lunch or dinner. Pasta refers to anything made from flour, wheat flour, grass flour and more. The types of pasta cooking also come in diversified methods and ingredients in the mixture. This means that you may have assumed that noodle-meal you ate was just a random soup but it very well could have been a type of pasta.

Rice


Yes, rice comes in the second position of the most consumed food in the world.. This is not a surprise since most Asian countries have rice as their staple food. With billions living in the area, naturally things would get eaten a great deal. We’re talking about regions such as China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. All of which are widely known for their wide range of rice cooking, from plain rice to steamed rice and more. It is in fact, a historical food.
Agricultural countries own some of the largest rice fields in the world that obtaining a good quality rice is definitely easy in these regions. What’s more, any flavor you boil with your rice will create a great aroma as the result of infusion. Today, brown rice and black rice are marketed in Western society due to its many benefits for health. The Japanese use sticky rice to make their authentic sushi and for some Asians, there is nothing quite like rice to become an alternative choice of their staple food.

Pizza

Regardless of how you top your pizza, this food is one of the most eaten dishes in the world. Coming all the way from Italy, pizza can actually be eaten for any meal. Yes, breakfast pizzas are a thing! The toppings are varied in terms of ingredients and it is one of the most modified foods in the world.
13% of Americans eat pizza daily, not to mention other countries outside the States that have made pizza as their snacks. From Calzone to Neapolitan, pizza is just as famous as ice cream in the dessert row. It is a fact that Americans alone consume 300 slices per day on average. Pizza was once a royal dish that would only be served during formal occasions.
Today, it is the people’s food. You can top it with berries or just mushrooms and bacon and cheese. Really, you can eat it with anything. Even without tomato sauce. The easiness and the quick delivery may be the reason why pizza gained popularity like a rocket ship into space.

Chicken

Oh yes, from chicken noodle soup to things like chicken sandwiches people consume chicken over all available poultry. The basic ingredient is chicken meat, and that is it. Meaning you can do whatever with it, making it a universal food that can be consumed at any time.
As people began to be more concerned about their health, chicken really began to take over the dining table. Over the fifteen years alone, chicken consumption rose. Funny enough, it had all years prior too. Now as surprising as it may seem, chicken is in first place on the list of favorite meats, even before beef.
It is not certain whether chicken has more delicious taste, or is it just that chicken is less expensive than beef more often than not. As a popular product, chicken is so it is used with anything. You can cook it for any meal as well. Moreover, chicken is healthier than red meat. As a better option from a health and finance perspective, people turn to chicken for various meals and buy a lot of it at local stores. Lest we forget, the fast food chains offer chicken too!

Eggs

As a product of chicken of which we will never know came first or second, the egg is the most popular food that comes in a shell originally. It is by far one of the most eaten foods in the world. The idea to make a simple scrambled egg or eggs Benedict for breakfast is what makes it very popular to people.
From east to west, people use eggs as their food ingredients for multiple dishes. Not to mention, it is a popular baking ingredient for things like cake and brownies. Due to the wide use of eggs, plus the benefits it provides, the egg ranks as one of the most useful foods to have in your home. It seems that any meal could use some form of it in some way. With it being a good source of protein, there is always a use for it for any diet.
There are people with egg allergies, but despite this, the egg has managed to retain its popularity among humans. Animals hunt eggs from various animals as a source of nutrients too. This means that in the end times, we will kill the next door neighbor’s cat if we have to. Mr. McFluffins had it coming!


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April 27, 2020


You probably think you know how to study.

After all, you've made it to graduate school. You've successfully turned in homework assignments and passed exams for at least 16 years. And there's a good chance that you have your study routine set, whether it's a cup of tea and your textbooks in bed, or a quiet library carrel you've claimed as your own.

But it may be that the study habits you've honed for a decade or two aren't serving you as well as you think they are.

Research has shown that some "common sense" study techniques — such as always reading in the same quiet location, or spending hours at a time concentrating on one subject — don't promote long-term learning. And some habits that you might suspect aren't so great, like last-minute cramming for exams, may be even worse than you thought.

We've rounded up three principles, drawn from decades of cognitive psychology research, to help you get the most out of your studying hours.


Space Your Study Sessions


As course reading piles up, it can be tempting to let yourself fall behind, all the while reassuring yourself that you'll spend two days cramming right before an exam. But while last-minute cramming may allow you to pass a test, you won't remember the material for long, according to Williams College psychologist Nate Kornell, PhD.

Decades of research have demonstrated that spacing out study sessions over a longer period of time improves long-term memory. In other words, if you have 12 hours to spend on a subject, it's better to study it for three hours each week for four weeks than to cram all 12 hours into week four.

And for the most part, the more time you take between study sessions, the better off you are — at least within the time limits of an academic semester.

"At some point, waiting too long [between sessions] could have a negative effect [on learning]," Kornell says. "However, most of us space far too little. Practically speaking, too much spacing is not really a danger anyone should worry about."

Researchers aren't exactly sure why spacing is so effective. However, one possible cause is that, over time, people forget what they learned in their initial study session. Then, when they come back to the material later, the new study session jogs their memory and they recall what they learned the first time around. That process — forgetting and retrieval — helps cement the new knowledge in place.

In one study, published in 2009 in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Kornell showed that the spacing effect works on a smaller time scale as well. He asked college students to study a "stack" of 20 digital vocabulary flashcards. The students all studied each word four times. But half of the students studied the words in one big stack — they went through all 20 words, then started over. The other half of the students studied the words in four smaller stacks of five cards each. So, the students who used the one big stack had a longer spacing time between each of the four times they saw a word.

On a test the next day, the students in the "big stack" group remembered significantly more of the words than the students in the "four small stacks" group — 49 percent as compared with 36 percent.

When it comes to spacing, students are often led astray by their own experiences, says Kent State University psychology professor Katherine Rawson, PhD, who also studies learning. "They cram right before an exam, and to be honest that's probably OK for doing fine on your exam," she says. "But the problem is that it's horrible for long-term retention. Students don't realize that they're really undercutting their own learning."


Interweave Your Subjects


You might think that if you want to learn one thing well, the best thing to do would be to sit down and concentrate on it for as long as you can stand. But research shows that mixing tasks and topics is a better bet.

In one study, published in Psychological Science in 2008, Kornell and University of California, Los Angeles psychologist Robert Bjork, PhD, asked 120 participants to learn the painting styles of 12 artists by looking at six examples of each artist's work. For half of the artists, the participants saw all six paintings in a row. For the other half of the artists, they saw the paintings in a mixed-up order. At the end of the experiment, the participants did a distracting task (counting backward by threes from 547), and then had to identify which artist had painted a new painting. The participants were significantly better at identifying the artists' whose paintings they had studied in an "interwoven" style than the artists whose paintings they'd studied in blocks.

Why does mixing up subject matter help students learn? Again, as in spacing, the key may be in the learning, forgetting and relearning that helps the brain cement the new information for the long-term.

Another factor, Bjork says, could be that the mixing — he calls it "interleaving" — forces students to notice and process the similarities and differences among the things they're trying to learn, giving them a better, deeper understanding of the material.

Despite strong evidence that interleaving works, it can be tough for teachers to work the mixed-up style of teaching into their lectures, he says.

"People expect to be taught the way they're used to being taught," he says. "Most courses involve blocking by topic. If you start interleaving you're going to seem disorganized."

But, he adds, students can bring the method into their own study sessions.


Test Yourself


Testing gets a bad rap: Students don't enjoy taking quizzes, teachers don't like to grade them, and some people bemoan that too many exams can force teachers to "teach to the test" and squeeze creativity out of the classroom.

But done right, testing can be a useful tool to help students learn, researchers say. Decades of research has shown that making yourself recall information helps strengthen your long-term learning, says Henry Roediger, PhD, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis who has done some of the key research in the area. In other words, students might not enjoy taking a quiz at the end of every class or testing themselves every time they finish reading a chapter, but doing so would probably help them remember the material on the final exam — and even after the class ended.

University of Louisville psychologist Keith Lyle, PhD, used a captive audience — students in his undergraduate statistics classes — to prove the point. In one 75-person class, at the end of each class session he asked students to complete a four- to six-question short-answer quiz about material that had been presented during the lecture. Cumulatively, the quizzes counted for just 8 percent of the students' final grade.

Lyle taught a second class using the same syllabus, but didn't do the daily quizzes. At the end of the semester, he found that students in the quiz class significantly outscored students in the nonquiz class on all four midterm exams.

Roediger says that even though most professors won't use daily quizzes in their courses, students can — and should — test themselves by asking themselves questions during study sessions.

"The problem with repeated rereading, which is what most students do to study, is that it gives you a false sense of familiarity. You feel like you know the material, but you've never tried retrieving it," he says.


Taking the Hard Route


If decades of research have demonstrated that spacing, interweaving and testing help people to learn more effectively, then why don't more students and teachers use these strategies? Perhaps because they're difficult, say Kornell, Bjork and the other researchers.

It's hard to study a topic, then switch to a different subject and wait a week to come back to the first one. When you do, you might feel like you're relearning the material — and, in a sense, you are.

Learning researchers recognize that these strategies aren't easy or fun to put into practice. Bjork, in fact, has labeled the strategies "desirable difficulties." The strategies work because they are difficult — it's the process of learning, forgetting, retrieving and relearning that eventually registers the knowledge in our long-term memory.

"In the short term it's easier not to [use these strategies], but in the long term it pays off a thousand times over," says Kornell.

Putting in the extra work to learn material for the long haul is particularly important for graduate students, he says, because by the time you reach graduate school you're not just trying to pass a test — you're learning things you'll need to have a handle on for the rest of your working life.

"One of the most important transitions you make [at the beginning of graduate school] is realizing that you are really there to learn, not just get good grades," he says.

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April 26, 2020


Everyone has moments of forgetfulness from time to time, especially when life gets busy.
While this can be a completely normal occurrence, having a poor memory can be frustrating.
Genetics plays a role in memory loss, especially in serious neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. However, research has shown that diet and lifestyle have a major impact on memory too.

Here are evidence-based ways to improve your memory naturally.

1. Eat Less Added Sugar

Eating too much added sugar has been linked to many health issues and chronic diseases, including cognitive decline.
Research has shown that a sugar-laden diet can lead to poor memory and reduced brain volume, particularly in the area of the brain that stores short-term memory.
For example, one study of more than 4,000 people found that those with a higher intake of sugary beverages like soda had lower total brain volumes and poorer memories on average compared to people who consumed less sugar.
Cutting back on sugar not only helps your memory but also improves your overall health.

2. Try a Fish Oil Supplement

Fish oil is rich in the omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).
These fats are important for overall health and have been shown to lower the risk of heart disease, reduce inflammation, relieve stress and anxiety, and slow mental decline.
Many studies have shown that consuming fish and fish oil supplements may improve memory, especially in older people.
One study of 36 older adults with mild cognitive impairment found that short-term and working memory scores improved significantly after they took concentrated fish oil supplements for 12 months.
Another recent review of 28 studies showed that when adults with mild symptoms of memory loss took supplements rich in DHA and EPA, like fish oil, they experienced improved episodic memory.
Both DHA and EPA are vital to the health and functioning of the brain and also help reduce inflammation in the body, which has been linked to cognitive decline.

3. Make Time for Meditation

The practice of meditation may positively affect your health in many ways.
It is relaxing and soothing, and has been found to reduce stress and pain, lower blood pressure and even improve memory.
In fact, meditation has been shown to increase gray matter in the brain. Gray matter contains neuron cell bodies.
As you age, gray matter declines, which negatively impacts memory and cognition.
Meditation and relaxation techniques have been shown to improve short-term memory in people of all ages, from people in their 20s to the elderly.
For example, one study demonstrated that Taiwanese college students who engaged in meditation practices like mindfulness had significantly better spatial working memory than students who did not practice meditation.
Spatial working memory is the ability to hold and process information in your mind about the positions of objects in space.

4. Maintain a Healthy Weight

Maintaining a healthy body weight is essential for well-being and is one of the best ways to keep your body and mind in top condition.
Several studies have established obesity as a risk factor for cognitive decline.
Interestingly, being obese can actually cause changes to memory-associated genes in the brain, negatively affecting memory.
Obesity can also lead to insulin resistance and inflammation, both of which can negatively impact the brain.
A study of 50 people between the ages of 18 and 35 found that a higher body mass index was associated with significantly worse performance on memory tests.
Obesity is also associated with a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive disease that destroys memory and cognitive function.

5. Get Enough Sleep

Lack of proper sleep has been associated with poor memory for quite some time.
Sleep plays an important role in memory consolidation, a process in which short-term memories are strengthened and transformed into long-lasting memories.
Research shows that if you are sleep deprived, you could be negatively impacting your memory.
For example, one study looked at the effects of sleep in 40 children between the ages of 10 and 14.
One group of children was trained for memory tests in the evening, then tested the following morning after a night’s sleep. The other group was trained and tested on the same day, with no sleep between training and testing.
The group that slept between training and testing performed 20% better on the memory tests.
Another study found that nurses working the night shift made more mathematical errors and that 68% of them scored lower on memory tests compared to nurses working the day shift.
Health experts recommend adults get between seven and nine hours of sleep each night for optimal health.



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April 26, 2020


A vaccine works by training the immune system to recognize and combat pathogens, either viruses or bacteria. To do this, certain molecules from the pathogen must be introduced into the body to trigger an immune response.
These molecules are called antigens, and they are present on all viruses and bacteria. By injecting these antigens into the body, the immune system can safely learn to recognize them as hostile invaders, produce antibodies, and remember them for the future. If the bacteria or virus reappears, the immune system will recognize the antigens immediately and attack aggressively well before the pathogen can spread and cause sickness.

The Herd Immunity Imperative

Vaccines don't just work on an individual level, they protect entire populations. Once enough people are immunized, opportunities for an outbreak of disease become so low even people who aren't immunized benefit. Essentially, a bacteria or virus simply won't have enough eligible hosts to establish a foothold and will eventually die out entirely. This phenomenon is called "herd immunity" or "community immunity," and it has allowed once-devastating diseases to be eliminated entirely, without needing to vaccinate every individual.
This is critical because there will always be a percentage of the population that cannot be vaccinated, including infants, young children, the elderly, people with severe allergies, pregnant women, or people with compromised immune systems. Thanks to herd immunity, these people are kept safe because diseases are never given a chance to spread through a population.
Public health officials and scientists continue to study herd immunity and identify key thresholds, but one telling example is the country of Gambia, where a vaccination rate of just 70% of the population was enough to eliminate Hib disease entirely.
However, if too many people forgo vaccinations, herd immunity can break down, opening up the population to the risk of outbreaks. That is why many officials and doctors consider widespread immunization a public health imperative and blame recent disease outbreaks on a lack of vaccination.
For example, in 1997, prominent medical journal The Lancet published research claiming to have found a link between the measles vaccine and autism. As a result, in following years the parents of over a million British children decided not to vaccinate their kids. The research has since been thoroughly debunked, but the number of measles cases has skyrocketed, from just several dozen a year in 1997 to over 2,000 cases in 2011. Similar outbreaks have occurred throughout the United States, involving both measles and whooping cough, with doctors and officials blaming low rates of vaccination.

Types of Vaccines

The key to vaccines is injecting the antigens into the body without causing the person to get sick at the same time. Scientists have developed several ways of doing this, and each approach makes for a different type of vaccine.

Live Attenuated Vaccines: 

For these types of vaccines, a weaker, asymptomatic form of the virus or bacteria is introduced into the body. Because it is weakened, the pathogen will not spread and cause sickness, but the immune system will still learn to recognize its antigens and know to fight in the future.

Advantages: Because these vaccines introduce actual live pathogens into the body, it is an excellent simulation for the immune system. So live attenuated vaccines can result in lifelong immunity with just one or two doses.

Disadvantages: Because they contain living pathogens, live attenuated vaccines are not given to people with weakened immune systems, such as people undergoing chemotherapy or HIV treatment, as there is a risk the pathogen could get stronger and cause sickness. Additionally, these vaccines must be refrigerated at all times so the weakened pathogen doesn't die.

Specific Vaccines:
  • ·         Measles
  • ·         Mumps
  • ·         Rubella (MMR combined vaccine)
  • ·         Varicella (chickenpox)
  • ·         Influenza (nasal spray)
  • ·         Rotavirus


Inactivated Vaccines: 

For these vaccines, the specific virus or bacteria is killed with heat or chemicals, and its dead cells are introduced into the body. Even though the pathogen is dead, the immune system can still learn from its antigens how to fight live versions of it in the future.

Advantages: These vaccines can be freeze dried and easily stored because there is no risk of killing the pathogen as there is with live attenuated vaccines. They are also safer, without the risk of the virus or bacteria mutating back into its disease-causing form.

Disadvantages: Because the virus or bacteria is dead, it's not as accurate a simulation of the real thing as a live attenuated virus. Therefore, it often takes several doses and "booster shots" to train the body to defend itself.

Specific Vaccines:
  • ·         Polio (IPV)
  • ·         Hepatitis A
  • ·         Rabies


Subunit/conjugate Vaccines: 

For some diseases, scientists are able to isolate a specific protein or carbohydrate from the pathogen that, when injected into the body, can train the immune system to react without provoking sickness.

Advantages: With these vaccines, the chance of an adverse reaction in the patient is much lower, because only a part or the original pathogen is injected into the body instead of the whole thing.

Disadvantages: Identifying the best antigens in the pathogen for training the immune system and then separating them is not always possible. Only certain vaccines can be produced in this way.

Specific Vaccines:
  • ·         Hepatitis B
  • ·         Influenza
  • ·         Haemophilus Influenzae Type B (Hib)
  • ·         Pertussis (part of DTaP combined immunization)
  • ·         Pneumococcal
  • ·         Human Papillomavirus (HPV)
  • ·         Meningococcal


Toxoid Vaccines: 

Some bacterial diseases damage the body by secreting harmful chemicals or toxins. For these bacteria, scientists are able to "deactivate" some of the toxins using a mixture of formaldehyde and water. These dead toxins are then safely injected into the body. The immune system learns well enough from the dead toxins to fight off living toxins, should they ever make an appearance.

Specific Vaccines:
  • ·         Diphtheria
  • ·         Tetanus


Conjugate Vaccines: 

Some bacteria, like those of Hib disease, possess an outer coating of sugar molecules that camouflage their antigens and fool young immune systems. To get around this problem, scientists can link an antigen from another recognizable pathogen to the sugary coating of the camouflaged bacteria. As a result, the body's immune system learns to recognize the sugary camouflage itself as harmful and immediately attacks it and its carrier if it enters the body.

Specific Vaccines:
  • ·         Haemophilus Influenzae Type B (Hib)


DNA Vaccines: 

Still in experimental stages, DNA vaccines would dispense with all unnecessary parts of a bacterium or virus and instead contain just an injection of a few parts of the pathogen's DNA. These DNA strands would instruct the immune system to produce antigens for combating the pathogen all by itself. As a result, these vaccines would be very efficient immune system trainers. They are also cheap and easy to produce.

Specific Vaccines: DNA vaccines for influenza and herpes are currently in human testing phases.

Recombinant Vector Vaccines: 

These experimental vaccines are similar to DNA vaccines in that they introduce DNA from a harmful pathogen into the body, triggering the immune system to produce antigens and train itself to identify and combat the disease. The difference is that these vaccines use an attenuated, or weakened, virus or bacterium as a ride, or vector, for the DNA. In essence, scientists are able to take a harmless pathogen, dress it in the DNA of a more dangerous disease, and train the body to recognize and fight both effectively.

Specific Vaccines: Recombinant vector vaccines for HIV, rabies, and measles are currently being developed.


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