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Category Archives: Mind Building
Coronavirus could cause 35,000 extra UK cancer deaths, experts warn
The research is based on the number of missed screenings, urgent referrals and delayed treatments.
Reassessing Career and Business Opportunities
In light of the virus situation, is it time to consider a career or business change? For many people this is a good time to rationally re-evaluate your opportunities – instead of merely hoping that things will magically turn around. Hope is not a good career or business strategy.
Many restaurant and retail workers, for instance, now have to field questions like these as part of their jobs:
- Why should I wear a mask?
- Why are you even open right now? Do you only care about the money?
- Can you take a pay cut and do the same work as before?
If this (or something similar) has become part of your job or business, do you really want to continue on these terms for months or years? Is the offer you’re getting from that situation still a good one? Are you still happy with the opportunities? Or are you just spinning your wheels there due to the difficulty of shifting?
Think of your current career circumstances as an offer from reality. See it as a test. When the offer shifts to something unpalatable, will you grudgingly accept it? Or will you pass the test by declining the weak offer and requesting something better? You don’t have to say yes to an offer that’s full of stress and uncertainty.
The virus is suppressing some previous opportunities, not just financially but emotionally as well. For some people the work that was once reasonably pleasant is now a lot less pleasant and more polarized. This is a good time to reconsider whether it’s still worthwhile to invest your life in the same path going forward. You could invest elsewhere instead. Sure it’s challenging to do that, but staying could be a lot worse.
You are not your career or your business. When a line of work is on the way out, you needn’t link your own survival to it. Businesses aren’t born and don’t die. They’re created and retired, and the people live on to create more. It’s not a failure to retire from a business or line of work. It’s simply a choice to reinvest your time and energy elsewhere.
Bet on choice opportunities instead of chasing after bad ones. Many opportunities that looked good a year ago have turned into bad ones these days, and that’s unlikely to change in many fields for at least the rest of the year. Even if everything clears up by 2021, which is unlikely, you still have six months left in this year. Don’t throw that away on non-opportunities and virus denial. Reinvest your time and energy where there are some truly good opportunities, which are still abundant.
Coronavirus: NHS England launches tool to aid long-term recovery
An online portal will launch in England later this month to help people with ongoing symptoms.
NHS anniversary: PM to join nationwide clap to celebrate health service
People across the UK will applaud later to celebrate 72 years since the founding of the health service.
How Long to Install a New Habit?
Some sources used to say that it takes 21 days to form a new habit, which most people are likely to find overly optimistic. Even 30 days is on the optimistic side.
The truth is that the time to install a new habit depends on the person, the habit, the environment, and the motivation.
How much experience do you already have with habit formation? How much have you trained those discipline muscles?
What temptations are present that could draw you away from the habit? How tempting are they?
What’s your purpose for installing the habit? Is it really compelling, or does it barely register?
As a general rule of thumb, I’d say 60 days is a decent average ballpark estimate for getting a new habit reasonably well installed, but some habits could take twice as long to put on autopilot. Furthermore, some habits will never be properly installed no matter how much time passes – they’ll always require a nontrivial amount of conscious willpower to keep executing day by day.
Moreover, even a habit that gets installed for months or years can still be broken eventually.
I’m often surprised at the range of times it takes to install a new habit. There’s a lot of variability.
When I first went from vegetarian to vegan, I started with a 30-day trial. I’d been vegetarian for 3.5 years at that point. The last item I dropped was cheese. I’d say it only took me about a week to feel like I was permanently vegan. I lost seven pounds in that first week as my body finally had a chance to purge years of built-up dairy clog. Seeing what was coming out of me made it easy to decide to never put it back again. That was 23.5 years ago, and it’s been a no-brainer to maintain that habit ever since. I doesn’t require any willpower to stay vegan. I’m never tempted to go back to the old world I left. That would feel like undoing a graduation.
I had figured that going fully vegan would take more practice and adjustment, but it was actually one of the breeziest habit changes ever. The purpose aspect made this habit way easier than most.
Becoming an early riser was more challenging. I struggled with this one for years till I stumbled upon the counter-intuitive technique I shared in How to Become an Early Riser. That led to success. I do occasionally fall out of this habit now and then, usually by choice to experience something different for a while, like having more nighttime hours. But I still love those early morning hours and keep returning to the long-term stability of this habit. I think that in the past 90 days, I’ve stayed in bed past 5am perhaps two or three times to cuddle with Rachelle for an extra hour or two. So this one is very stable.
Whenever I want to reboot this habit, I’d say it takes me less than a week to feel like I’m back in the flow with it. Remembering the benefits surely helps.
Oddly a very simple habit like doing proper hygiene for my teeth took 1-2 months of consistent practice to feel like I’d really installed to the point where I do it automatically without thinking much about it.
For my daily blogging habit this year, it took about 45-60 days before I felt like I’d woven it into the fabric of my days, and it didn’t feel like some external task that I was wedging in. If I had an unusual schedule that disrupted the timing for the habit, then it might feel a little misaligned, but that’s been relatively rare.
Zeroing out my email inbox was another easy habit to install, taking virtually no time at all. I was never the kind of person who’d allow hundreds of emails to pile up in my inbox though. I feel like it’s a lot to have more than 5-10 messages in there at once. I prefer to bring my email inbox back to empty whenever I check it, and leaving even one message in there doesn’t feel right. If I’m not going to reply to a message right away, I move it to a different folder to be processed later. I never use my email inbox as a to-do list.
Frankly I don’t understand people who allow thousands of emails to pile up in their inboxes. They must use very different framings because I could never imagine allowing that to happen. I’d feel like I was priming myself to feel stressed and undisciplined whenever I had to look at such a mess. I wonder how people are able to frame a cluttered inbox without having it lower their confidence and self-image. Do you really feel like you’re on top of your projects when you look at that giant list of messages? Wouldn’t it feel so much nicer to leave it empty each time if you could do that on autopilot without having to think about it?
What made the email habit easy to install was actually a different habit that took way longer to install properly – at least several months to get it going and perhaps a few years to get it down consistently. That habit was to maintain a structured personal management system for my projects and tasks. I use Nozbe for that, and I’m still happy with it.
Another related habit is that I question whether certain emails should even be sent to me in the first place. If I had an inbox piling up with emails that I wasn’t even opening, I’d unsubscribe from them, tell the senders to stop sending those kinds of messages, or add an automated filter to block them. That’s the main reason there’s no pile-up – such emails are nuked before I even see them. That means fewer distractions and no negative priming for clutter. Think of how much time and focus is wasted by looking at the same messages repeatedly.
The habit of daily exercise also took a while to install – about six months to really get it ingrained. I may still fall out of this habit now and then, but it’s easy to reboot. For a proper reboot, at least a six-week commitment is warranted. Exercising for 30 days won’t necessarily make it stick.
Some habits are so worthwhile that even if they take a long time to install, and even if they remain vulnerable afterwards, they’re still worth the investment. Getting my personal organizing systems in order was one of those. I struggled with that for a long time, but it pays off with so much delightful flow and long-term confidence. It’s so great to be able to trust such habits to follow through on bigger commitments. This makes life more rewarding and fun, and it grants more freedom for spontaneity. If you like freedom, fall in love with order.
In my 20s I was way too impatient with many habits. If I couldn’t get something working in a few weeks, I’d often drop it and try something else. Now that I’m in my late 40s, I’ve learned to think more long-term, knowing that even if it takes many months or years to tame a new habit, that habit could be paying dividends for decades. So it doesn’t phase me to think about investing in a new habit for several months, just to get started with it. When you think about a habit enduring for decades, who cares if it took a few weeks or six months to acquire it?
Don’t worry so much about how long it takes to install a habit. Instead, consider which habits could so enrich your life that they’re worth a six-month commitment to get them installed and running on autopilot. When a habit is on autopilot, it feels uncomfortable not to do it, and your day doesn’t feel complete without it.
Remember that the months ahead are going to pass anyway. Depending on the investments you initiate today, you could find yourself with a really awesome long-term habit on autopilot by the end of the year – or your autopilot could be about the same as it is now. If you expect that there will be some challenges, and you conquer those hills anyway, you’ll get to enjoy some nice results. Think of this as a gift for your future self.
NHS anniversary: Landmarks to be lit up in weekend of celebration
Landmarks will be lit up blue ahead of a nationwide applause celebrating 72 years of the health service.
Coronavirus: Why disabled people are calling for a Covid-19 inquiry
Wheelchair-user Ginny Butcher says disabled people in the UK have been abandoned during the pandemic.
First evidence of snake-like venom glands found in amphibians
Caecilians are limbless amphibians that, to the untrained eye, can be easily mistaken for snakes. Though caecilians are only distantly related to their reptilian cousins, researchers in a study appearing July 3 in the journal iScience describe specialized glands found along the teeth of the ringed caecilian (Siphonops annulatus), which have the same biological origin and possibly similar function to the venom glands of snakes. If further research can confirm that the glands contain venom, caecilians may represent the oldest land-dwelling vertebrate animal with oral venom glands.
Caecilians are peculiar creatures, being nearly blind and using a combination of facial tentacles and slime to navigate their underground tunnels. “These animals produce two types of secretions — one is found mostly in the tail that is poisonous, while the head produces a mucus to help with crawling through the earth,” says senior author Carlos Jared, a biologist and Director of the Structural Biology Lab at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo. “Because caecilians are one of the least-studied vertebrates, their biology is a black box full of surprises.”
“It is while examining the mucous glands of the ringed caecilian that I stumbled upon a never before described set of glands closer to the teeth,” says first author Pedro Luiz Mailho-Fontana, a post-doctoral student in the Structural Biology Lab at the Butantan Institute.
What Mailho-Fontana found were a series of small fluid-filled glands in the upper and lower jaw, with long ducts that opened at the base of each tooth. Using embryonic analysis, he found that these oral glands originated from a different tissue than the slime and poison glands found in the caecilian’s skin. “The poisonous skin glands of the ringed caecilian form from the epidermis, but these oral glands develop from the dental tissue, and this is the same developmental origin we find in the venom glands of reptiles,” says Mailho-Fontana. This marks the first time glands of this kind have been found in an amphibian.
Researchers suspect that the ringed caecilian may use the secretions from these snake-like oral glands to incapacitate its prey. “Since caecilians have no arms or legs, the mouth is the only tool they have to hunt,” says co-author Marta Maria Antoniazzi, an evolutionary biologist at the Butantan Institute. “We believe they activate their oral glands the moment they bite down, and specialized biomolecules are incorporated into their secretions.
A preliminary chemical analysis of the oral gland secretions of the ringed caecilian found high activity of phospholipase A2, a common protein found in the toxins of venomous animals. “The phospholipase A2 protein is uncommon in non-venomous species, but we do find it in the venom of bees, wasps, and many kinds of reptiles,” says Mailho-Fontana. In fact, the biological activity of phospholipase A2 found in the ringed caecilian was higher than what is found in some rattlesnakes. Still, more biochemical analysis is needed to confirm whether the glandular secretions are toxic.
If future work can verify the secretions are toxic, caecilian oral glands could indicate an early evolutionary design of oral venom organs. “Unlike snakes which have few glands with a large bank of venom, the ringed caecilian has many small glands with minor amounts of fluid. Perhaps caecilians represent a more primitive form of venom gland evolution. Snakes appeared in the Cretaceous probably 100 million years ago, but caecilians are far older, being roughly 250 million years old,” Jared says.
Very few groups of land-dwelling vertebrates have serpent-like bodies, and this research suggests there might be a connection between a limbless body plan and the evolution of a venomous bite. “For snakes and caecilians, the head is the sole unit to explore the environment, to fight, to eat, and to kill,” says Antoniazzi. “One theory is that perhaps these necessities encourage the evolution of venom in limbless animals.”
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Scientific ‘red flag’ reveals new clues about our galaxy
Figuring out how much energy permeates the center of the Milky Way — a discovery reported in the July 3 edition of the journal Science Advances — could yield new clues to the fundamental source of our galaxy’s power, said L. Matthew Haffner of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
The Milky Way’s nucleus thrums with hydrogen that has been ionized, or stripped of its electrons so that it is highly energized, said Haffner, assistant professor of physics & astronomy at Embry-Riddle and co-author of the Science Advances paper. “Without an ongoing source of energy, free electrons usually find each other and recombine to return to a neutral state in a relatively short amount of time,” he explained. “Being able to see ionized gas in new ways should help us discover the kinds of sources that could be responsible for keeping all that gas energized.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student Dhanesh Krishnarao (“DK”), lead author of the Science Advances paper, collaborated with Haffner and UW-Whitewater Professor Bob Benjamin — a leading expert on the structure of stars and gas in the Milky Way. Before joining Embry-Riddle in 2018, Haffner worked as a research scientist for 20 years at UW, and he continues to serve as principal investigator for the Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper, or WHAM, a telescope based in Chile that was used for the team’s latest study.
To determine the amount of energy or radiation at the center of the Milky Way, the researchers had to peer through a kind of tattered dust cover. Packed with more than 200 billion stars, the Milky Way also harbors dark patches of interstellar dust and gas. Benjamin was taking a look at two decades’ worth of WHAM data when he spotted a scientific red flag — a peculiar shape poking out of the Milky Way’s dark, dusty center. The oddity was ionized hydrogen gas, which appears red when captured through the sensitive WHAM telescope, and it was moving in the direction of Earth.
The position of the feature — known to scientists as the “Tilted Disk” because it looks tilted compared with the rest of the Milky Way — couldn’t be explained by known physical phenomena such as galactic rotation. The team had a rare opportunity to study the protruding Tilted Disk, liberated from its usual patchy dust cover, by using optical light. Usually, the Tilted Disk must be studied with infrared or radio light techniques, which allow researchers to make observations through the dust, but limit their ability to learn more about ionized gas.
“Being able to make these measurements in optical light allowed us to compare the nucleus of the Milky Way to other galaxies much more easily,” Haffner said. “Many past studies have measured the quantity and quality of ionized gas from the centers of thousands of spiral galaxies throughout the universe. For the first time, we were able to directly compare measurements from our Galaxy to that large population.”
Krishnarao leveraged an existing model to try and predict how much ionized gas should be in the emitting region that had caught Benjamin’s eye. Raw data from the WHAM telescope allowed him to refine his predictions until the team had an accurate 3-D picture of the structure. Comparing other colors of visible light from hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen within the structure gave researchers further clues to its composition and properties.
At least 48 percent of the hydrogen gas in the Tilted Disk at the center of the Milky Way has been ionized by an unknown source, the team reported. “The Milky Way can now be used to better understand its nature,” Krishnarao said.
The gaseous, ionized structure changes as it moves away from the Milky Way’s center, researchers reported. Previously, scientists only knew about the neutral (non-ionized) gas located in that region.
“Close to the nucleus of the Milky Way,” Krishnarao explained, “gas is ionized by newly forming stars, but as you move further away from the center, things get more extreme, and the gas becomes similar to a class of galaxies called LINERs, or low ionization (nuclear) emission regions.”
The structure appeared to be moving toward Earth because it was on an elliptical orbit interior to the Milky Way’s spiral arms, researchers found.
LINER-type galaxies such as the Milky Way make up roughly a third of all galaxies. They have centers with more radiation than galaxies that are only forming new stars, yet less radiation than those whose supermassive black holes are actively consuming a tremendous amount of material.
“Before this discovery by WHAM, the Andromeda Galaxy was the closest LINER spiral to us,” said Haffner. “But it’s still millions of light-years away. With the nucleus of the Milky Way only tens of thousands of light-years away, we can now study a LINER region in more detail. Studying this extended ionized gas should help us learn more about the current and past environment in the center of our Galaxy.”
Next up, researchers will need to figure out the source of the energy at the center of the Milky Way. Being able to categorize the galaxy based on its level of radiation was an important first step toward that goal.
Now that Haffner has joined Embry-Riddle’s growing Astronomy & Astrophysics program, he and his colleague Edwin Mierkiewicz, associate professor of physics, have big plans. “In the next few years, we hope to build WHAM’s successor, which would give us a sharper view of the gas we study,” Haffner said. “Right now our map `pixels’ are twice the size of the full moon. WHAM has been a great tool for producing the first all-sky survey of this gas, but we’re hungry for more details now.”
In separate research, Haffner and his colleagues earlier this month reported the first-ever visible-light measurements of “Fermi Bubbles” — mysterious plumes of light that bulge from the center of the Milky Way. That work was presented at the American Astronomical Society.
