5 Ways to Improve Your Attention

 

Things You Can Do to Minimize Distraction and Increase Concentration It happens to the best of us. You're sitting in class or in a meeting and you suddenly find yourself daydreaming, losing focus, and not paying attention. In one study of over 2,000 adults, people reported that their minds weren't really on the task at hand almost 50 percent of the time. Perhaps even more importantly, people report feeling less happy when they are distracted. So what can you do to improve your attention, increase your focus, and prevent your mind from wandering? Researchers have discovered a few different things that might help: suedhang/Image Source/Getty Images 1. Stop Multitasking Trying to do many different things at once makes it more difficult to concentrate on any one thing. While it might seem like multitasking can help you accomplish more, research has shown that juggling multiple tasks actually reduces both productivity and accuracy. If you want to make the most out of your attentional resources, try focusing on just one task at a time. Thomas Barwick / Getty Images 2. Practice Mindfulness Mindfulness involves purposely paying attention to things in a particular way, and new research suggests that practicing mindfulness might actually help improve your ability to concentrate. According to research presented at an annual conference held by the British Psychological Society (BPS), children who took a short training course in mindfulness were better able to concentrate and ignore distractions. Juzant / Getty Images 3. Meditate Researchers have found that those experienced in meditation are better at focusing their attention on a single item and ignoring irrelevant items. What about people new to meditation? Can practicing this skill help you better focus your attentional spotlight? The research indicates that the answer is yes. Participants in one study who learned to meditate and practiced for approximately 30 minutes per day were quicker to notice new stimuli, indicating that they had improved their attention. So why exactly does meditation help? One suggestion is that it decreases the attentional blink that we all experience. Attentional blink is a brief period of time after we focus on one item, about half a second, where we are unreceptive to secondary stimuli. Essentially, focusing on one thing makes us briefly blind to other things. One study found that participants who received meditation training demonstrated a marked reduction in attentional blink. Tetra Images / Getty Images 4. Turn Off the Technology From smart phones to video games to online video, it seems like we spend a huge chunk of our day absorbed by various forms of technology. Unfortunately, research has demonstrated that the constant distraction presented by such technology can actually make it more difficult for young children to focus on activities such as reading for an extended period of time. If you want to focus your attention and fully devote yourself to a task, turn off the technology - at least for long enough to let you finish the job. Zakaria Wakrim / Getty Images 5. Practice Makes Perfect Meditation can help you learn to improve your focus, but it takes practice to learn how to bring your bring your attention back to the task at hand. Researcher Wendy Hasenkamp suggests that becoming aware of when your mind has wandered, actively disengaging from the distraction, and bringing your focus back to the task at hand can help make people more mindful of how they utilize their attention. The more you notice that your mind has wandered, and thus the more you actively bring yourself back to a state of attention, the better you will become at maintaining your focus on a single task. "Understanding the way the brain alternates between focused and distracted states has implications for a wide variety of everyday tasks," Hasenkamp explains. "For example, when your mind wandered off in that meeting, it might help to know you’re slipping into default mode—and you can deliberately bring yourself back to the moment. That’s an ability that can improve with training." Final Thoughts If you've ever felt like you have a "short attention span" or if you often catch your mind wandering when you should be focusing on a task, you might be able to benefit from some of these "attention boosting" activities. Eliminating distractions, putting an end to multitasking, meditating, and actively practicing these skills are just a few of the things that researchers believe can have a beneficial influence on attention. Think of attention as a muscle – the more you work with it, the stronger it will be.

Azura wave energy system deployed in Hawaii

 

The Azura device in Kaneohe Bay (Credit: Northwest Energy Innovations) Although wave energy-harvesting systems are often just presented as concepts that may someday see actual use, one was recently deployed in Hawaii to provide power to the municipal grid. Built by Northwest Energy Innovations, the Azura device will remain in operation for a 12-month assessment period, with an eye toward eventual commercialization. Located at the US Navy’s Wave Energy Test Site near Kaneohe Bay on the north shore of Oahu, the 45-ton (41-tonne) device is unique in that its 360-degree rotating float mechanism is able to extract power from both vertical and horizontal wave motions. By contrast, some other systems can only utilize up-and-down or back-and-forth movements. The pilot project is being conducted with the support of the US Department of Energy, the US Navy, and the University of Hawaii. The university will be in charge of data collection and analysis, while the other two groups will use that data in their "ongoing efforts to validate wave energy technology and advance the marine renewable energy industry." Hawaii may also end up being home to a commercial-scale Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plant, which generates electricity by exploiting the temperature difference between warm surface water and colder deep water. Source: Northwest Energy Innovations via Popular Science

Drone photography contest shows the world from stunning new angles

 

An amazing photo of this tropical island in French Polynesia won third prize in the Nature category (Credit: Marama Photo Video/Dronestagram)

Image Gallery (9 images)

From the pure fun to the potentially world-changing, we continue to find exciting new reasons to put drones in the sky. But one of the most compelling is the blossoming world of drone photography, where vehicles hover with ever-improving camera gear open up new perspectives on the world around us. Dronestagram has just held its second annual drone photography competition and it's no surprise the judges had no shortage of stunning images to choose from.

Dronestagram is an online hub for photographers to view, like and comment on photos and videos captured by drones and uploaded by other users. This year's competition attracted more than 5,000 entries from all over the world, snapped by both professional photographers and those just coming to grips with their joysticks. Two National Geographic photographers teamed up with the folks over at Dronestagram to form the judging panel, which sorted the best from the rest across four different categories.

Taking out the Places category was a cityscape with a difference taken by Ricardo Matiello's custom-built drone of his hometown Maringá, Brazil. Taken with a GoPro Hero 3 Black, the image captures the tips of the town's tallest buildings poking through dense cloud. Unsurprisingly, Matiello says he lost sight of the drone as it flew up through the blanket of white fog, so he landed it soon after and discovered this awesome photo waiting on its memory card. Matiello's effort also won first place in the Popular Prizes category for the most liked photo.

Winning out in the Nature category is a mildly unsettling photo of snorkellers taking a dip amongst a school of sharks in French Polynesia, taken by user tahitiflyshoot with a custom machine. Claiming first prize for Dronies (think selfies, but with drones), is a Where's Wally-esque image shot by user FlyMediaCy, portraying a crowd of similarly dressed party-goers at Cyprus' Limassol Carnival this year.

 

Source: Dronestagram

Super-resolved fluorescence microscopy

 

The prize-winning techniques have removed the theoretical limits of optical microscopes (Photo: Shutterstock) Ever since Antonie van Leeuwenhoek turned his simple microscope on a bit of pond water in the 17th century, optical microscopes have been a key tool for biologists. Unfortunately, they’re rather limited as to the smallness of what they can see – or at least, they were. This year's winners of the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner, changed all that. Their discovery of two methods to bypass the physical limits of optical microscopes led to the creation of the field of nanomicroscopy. In 1873, Ernst Abbe discovered that there was a seemingly insurmountable limit to how powerful an optical microscope can be. To put it very simply, he found that light can’t get around the bends on tiny objects. According to his calculations, the wavelengths of visible light meant that the maximum limit of the resolution of an optical microscope is 0.2 micrometers, which is about half a wavelength. For over a century, this blocked the lower limit for optical studies, which prevented the direct observation of structures on a nanoscale, such as individual molecules. What the new Laureates did wasn’t a violation of Abbe’s limit, but more of a workaround. The basic idea was that if light couldn’t be made to bend around nano-sized objects, then the nano-objects could be made to radiate their own light. It’s like the difference between trying to spot a tiny object by shining a giant searchlight on a field, and leaving the field dark but decorating the object with tiny Christmas lights. This insight led to the development of two new methods of what is now called nanomicroscopy. STED Microscopy The first method is called STimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy, which was discovered by Stefan Hell in 2000, though he’d been working on the problem since his student days in the 1990s. The key to the method was to avoid the diffraction limit by not just using molecules that fluoresce, but to stimulate them to do so using a laser. Hell’s technique used fluorescent molecules, such as antibodies that link to specific structures; for example, DNA strands. When these are hit with a pulse of light, they glow in return. Normally, this produces an image like a cluster of glowing wool, but the STED microscope solves this problem by using a pair of lasers. One sets the molecules glowing, and the other eliminates all but the desired molecules from the picture. As the first laser scans over a specimen and sets the molecules aglow, a second laser follows close behind. This is tuned so that larger molecules absorb the laser light, causing them to discharge their energy and cease glowing. The nano-sized molecules are too small to be affected and keep giving off light. The result is an image of extremely fine detail. Single Molecule Microscopy The second method is called Single-Molecule Microscopy. It was developed Eric Betzig and William Moerner while working independent of one another, and was used by Betzig for the first time in 2006. It's based on the ability to see a single fluorescent molecule and using this to build up an image of extremely fine detail. In 1989, W. E. Moerner was the first to measure the light absorption of a single molecule. This was followed in 1997, when Moerner and Roger Tsien at the University of California in San Diego were studying green fluorescent proteins (GFP). Moerner discovered that it was possible to turn this fluorescence of GFPs on and off by using different wavelengths of light. By shining light with a wavelength of 488 nanometers, he could get it to glow, and this would die and not return when shone on again. However, by hitting the molecule with light at 405 nanometers, the molecule would revive and glow again. This basic idea was expanded upon by Moerner and Betzig independently, to create a new microscopy technique that exploited the on/off system. In this, a specimen would be treated with a number of different fluorescent molecules that bonded to different molecular structures, but always at least 0.2 micrometers apart. Each of these would glow at different times as stimulated. By activating each fluorescent molecule type in turn, then switching them off, a series of different images were produced. Aside from removing the need for a lot of squinting, these methods have removed the theoretical lower limit to optical microscopy. According to the Nobel Foundation, they are already finding applications, such as the ability to look at individual molecules instead of studying "average" molecules in bulks numbering millions. They are currently being used to study synapses in Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, and to gain a better understanding of protein development in embryos. Source: The Nobel Foundation

From Satellite Swarms to Interstellar Submarines, NASA Selects Leading-Edge Technology Concepts for Continued Study

 

Montage of several newly awarded NIAC Phase II concepts from fellows Bruce Wiegmann, Adrian Stoica, Steven Oleson, and Justin Atchison. Credits: L to R, B. Wiegmann/MSFC, A. Stoica/JPL, S. Oleson, J. Atchison NASA has selected seven technology proposals for continued study under Phase II of the agency's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program. The selections are based on the potential to transform future aerospace missions, introduce new capabilities or significantly improve current approaches to building and operating aerospace systems. The selected proposals address a range of visionary concepts, including metallic lithium combustion for long-term robotics operations, submarines that explore the oceans of icy moons of the outer planets, and a swarm of tiny satellites that map gravity fields and characterize the properties of small moons and asteroids. "NASA's investments in early-stage research are important for advancing new systems concepts and developing requirements for technologies to enable future space exploration missions," said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This round of Phase II selections demonstrates the agency's continued commitment to innovations that may transform our nation's space, technology and science capabilities." NIAC Phase II awards can be worth as much as $500,000 for a two-year study, and the awards allow proposers to further develop their concepts from previously-selected Phase I studies. Phase I studies must demonstrate the initial feasibility and benefit of a concept. Phase II studies allow awardees to refine their designs and explore aspects of implementing the new technology. NASA selected these projects through a peer-review process that evaluated innovativeness and technical viability. All projects are still in the early stages of development, most requiring 10 or more years of concept maturation and technology development before use on a NASA mission. "This is an excellent group of NIAC studies," said Jason Derleth, NIAC Program executive at NASA Headquarters. "From seeing into cave formations on the moon to a radically new kind of solar sail that uses solar wind instead of light, NIAC continues to push the bounds of current technology." NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate innovates, develops, tests and flies hardware for use in future missions. Through programs such as NIAC, the directorate is demonstrating that early investment and partnership with scientists, engineers and citizen inventors from across the nation can provide technological dividends and help maintain America's leadership in the new global technology economy. For a complete list of the selected proposals and more information about NIAC, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/niac

Strong Feminity by Mary Jane Ansel

 

Posted: 08 Jul 2015 02:30 PM PDT

À travers ses peintures, portraits de femmes modernes issues d’une époque antérieure, Mary Jane Ansel dresse un étonnant parallèle entre force et délicatesse. Les femmes indépendantes qu’elle peint, portent l’uniforme de soldat et les armes aussi bien qu’elle s’amusent à chasser les papillons.

 

Samsung boosts storage of high-capacity SSDs to a hefty 2 TB

 

Samsung has announced 2 TB versions of its high-capacity SSDs Samsung looked to usher in the consumer adoption of solid state drives (SSDs) back in 2013 with the launch of its speedy EVO series. It continues to forge ahead with its high-capacity vision for consumer-oriented, flash memory storage solutions with the addition of a pair of 2TB SSDs to its lineup. The newest members of Samsung's SSD family are powered by the company's proprietary 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology, which it first unveiled in 2013. This brings the total range of products in its SSD lineup to 20, ranging in capacity from 120 GB up to the whopping new 2 TB options. The drives are housed in the same 7 mm, 2.5-in aluminum casing as previous models and comprise 32 layers of 128 GB 3D V-NAND flash chips and an improved MHX controller to better support the 2 TB format. Also inside are four 20 nanometer-class 4Gb LPDDR3 DRAM chips. Samsung has launched two versions, the 2 TB 850 EVO and 2 TB 850 PRO. The PRO variants have traditionally promised slightly better read/write speeds and reliability. Though Samsung is yet to release technical details on the new drives, it is guaranteeing the PRO model for 10 years or 300 TB written, and the EVO model for five years or 150 TB written. The 2 TB 850 EVO is expected to cost US$800 and the 2 TB 850 PRO $1,000. There's no official release date yet, but they will be available to buy in 50 countries. Samsung also says that it has plans to extend the 3D V-NAND SSD lineups to include mSATA and M.2 form factors. Source: Samsung

NIST Seeks Comments on Plan to Simplify Access to Its Research Data and Publications

 

From NIST Tech Beat: July 8, 2015 Contact: Jennifer Huergo 301-975-6343 Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) generate data and author publications that lead to advances in diverse fields such as materials science, medicine, forensic science, cybersecurity and firefighting. Results of NIST research also help U.S. industries improve their products, comply with regulations and compete internationally.  Because NIST research data and publications represent a valuable national resource, the agency always has emphasized broad dissemination of this information, but the options for public access have changed with time and technology. Recent direction from the White House has led NIST to develop a formal plan to manage public access to its data resources. The new data access plan was developed with input from other federal agencies and from two public meetings at the National Academy of Sciences on public access to federally supported research data and publications. The document outlines new responsibilities and procedures to ensure NIST materials are made available to the public. A notice published in the Federal Register asks for feedback from potential users of NIST’s research data and publications and to answer specific questions about best practices, challenges and prioritizing public access to data, as well as specific input on how to improve the plan.  The plan applies to research data generated beginning Oct. 1, 2014, and publications published after Oct. 1, 2015. Research funded by NIST through grants, contracts and other agreements will have public access requirements incorporated into the award terms and conditions. Datasets will be made discoverable through Data.gov, home of the U.S. government’s open data. Journal articles and other publications that currently are available through the publishers’ websites or the NIST website will now also be available at the National Institutes of Health PubMed Central and the Government Publishing Office’s Federal Digital Systems.  To view the NIST Plan for Providing Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research and learn more about open data at NIST, visit www.nist.gov/data. Comments will be accepted through August 21, 2015, and will help to inform NIST’s policies and procedures.

Our Global Voices

 

Bridging the Mind and Heart: Lessons from Guinea on the International Health Regulations Posted on July 6, 2015 by Dana Pitts, MPH, Health Communicator, Division of Global Health Protection Emergency room nurse and Ebola survivor Marie Claire Tchecola with blog author Dana Pitts and a Guinea contact tracing team in Matoto In the field, especially during outbreaks, people are the bridge between policy and action. But in global public health, we often use policy-heavy language that lacks personal connection. We talk about “building capacity.” We talk about “implementing the International Health Regulations.” But what does it all really mean?  Sometimes we overlook the association between public health policies and the people who work every day, sometimes in nearly impossible circumstances, to make them a reality. One of the core requirements under the International Health Regulations (IHR) is that countries have the human resources – the people – they need to respond to public health threats when they occur.  I can think of no better example to illustrate the importance of this than what I saw happen in Guinea last fall, at the height of the Ebola outbreak. The personal side of global health policy First Lady Michelle Obama greets recipients of the State Department 2015 International Women of Courage Award During the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, countless healthcare workers have put themselves in harm’s way to help control the disease and provide care and comfort for those sick with Ebola. One of these public health heroes, Ebola survivor and Guinean emergency room nurse Marie Claire Tchecola, was recognized by the U.S. Department of State in March as a 2015 International Women of Courage awardee, along with nine other women from around the world. The award honors women who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for human rights, women’s equality, and social progress—often at personal risk. I had the privilege of working with Marie Claire during my November deployment to Guinea. As a health communication specialist working in global health at CDC, the work I do in Atlanta supports our agency’s global health security goal of helping the nearly 70% of the world’s countries that are unprepared to effectively detect, assess, report and respond to potential public health threats.[1] Although our programs have a clear and compelling link to the IHR, it’s often difficult to communicate that goal with heart. Marie Claire’s story is one among many from the Ebola epidemic that shows us how we can take the ideas behind a framework like the IHR and put them into practice. A passion for people Marie Claire grew up in a small Guinean village. She is the first woman in her family to receive an education. She told me she could have been a doctor but chose nursing, “because you can affect more people.” Because only the doctors at Donka Hospital—Conakry, Guinea’s largest hospital—were supplied with gloves, Marie Claire was exposed to the Ebola virus while treating a patient in July 2014. Once she identified her own symptoms, she quickly checked herself into an Ebola treatment unit to avoid spreading the disease to other patients and to protect her colleagues. In addition to fighting the disease itself, Marie Claire also fought the stigma she experienced during and after her illness. She and her two daughters—one who is deaf from a childhood seizure—were evicted by her landlord and thrown out on the street. She has since returned to Donka Hospital to continue her work as an emergency room nurse, which includes triaging and testing patients who may have Ebola. Working from the inside out U.S. Ambassador to Guinea, Alexander Mark Laskaris, speaking at Ebola event in Susu, a local dialect When responding to an emergency, the people who can make the largest impact are those who live in the community. And these people want and need to be trained to meet their own emergencies. To accelerate this kind of training, we used a small US Embassy grant with International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), an NGO specializing in fair elections, to develop a series of Ebola “conversations” (question and answer sessions) within communities throughout Guinea. The goal of the meetings was to build community trust of healthcare workers and contact tracers in all of Conakry’s Communes. IFES had held massive voter education just before the Ebola outbreak and offered CDC its ready-made network of influencers and trainers to conduct joint trainings alongside local educators. The uniqueness of this partnership lay in its ability to spread information through people who were already trusted by the community. CDC and its partners created a dynamic, flexible social mobilization campaign, which began within Conakry’s five Communes and later was duplicated throughout Guinea. Marie Claire, along with the U.S. ambassador and other local leaders – including Dr. Mamadou Diallo, a respected imam and physician – worked with CDC to share critical Ebola messages with audiences. These conversations also gave us a sense of the issues Guineans needed addressed and allowed us to test our messages. Practice makes perfect Marie Claire commands attention at the Matoto Ebola event During her first meeting, in Matam, in a room filled with dignitaries and residents, a reserved and shy Marie Claire barely spoke above a whisper. However, Marie Claire had a compelling story to tell and, as a healthcare worker and survivor, she was the perfect person to help reach communities with critical messages about Ebola. We just had to help her learn how to say them with greater impact. We began working with Marie Claire on how to better reach her audience. Sometimes, training one great trainer can have a ripple effect that reaches far and wide. It was clear Marie Claire had these capabilities. Soon, Marie Claire’s fear of stigma was replaced with confidence and clear messages as her public speaking skills took off. The next six town hall meetings reached over 1,000 people in crowded rooms and were broadcast throughout Guinea. They showed a different side of Marie Claire (photo). In Matoto, the U.S. Ambassador opened the meeting by speaking in one of Guinea’s local languages. A member of the Guinean Parliament and members of the area’s contact tracing team joined him. Questions lasted for several hours and ended with Marie Claire boldly encouraging people to not hide those who are ill and to be honest when coming to a healthcare clinic. The audience literally sat on the edges of their seats listening to Marie Claire’s testimony (photo). We want to be trained In March, when Marie Claire came to the United States to receive the International Women of Courage Award, she visited CDC and I had the opportunity to see her again. While at CDC, she met with a small group of infection control experts who looked to Marie Claire’s unique experience to help them find ways to improve training and outreach. One asked her, “What can we do better in a public health setting?” Marie Claire appeared eager to give her answer. Through her experience with the meetings and her work in the emergency room, she possessed a unique understanding of the value education can bring. “Training,” she said. “Without it, we’re going out to battle without weapons; we are powerless. Policy saves lives Audience captured by Marie Claire’s testimony When we talk about the important goals of the IHR, such as building capacity in countries or growing the public health workforce, it can be hard to show what this really means for a country. What we are really talking about is not just saving the lives of people like Marie Claire, but also empowering future disease detectives, healthcare workers and educators to save the lives of their fellow countrymen. The IHR tell us very clearly that a trained and prepared workforce is key to strengthening public health. Identifying and working with people who can help improve conditions in countries like Guinea is one of the main missions of the IHR and global health security. This is exactly what Marie Claire asked for. Let’s continue our battle to give it to her and her colleagues. Investing in people is an important part of policy and a crucial step toward avoiding the next outbreak. [1] Katz R, Dowell S. Time for an International Health Regulations Review Conference. Lancet Global Health 2015. Published Online May 8, 2015. July 2015. Vol 3(7), e352-353 Posted on July 6, 2015 by Dana Pitts, MPH, Health Communicator, Division of Global Health Protection Categories global health security IHR, International Health Regulations

NuSTAR Stares at the Sun

 

Flaring, active regions of our sun are highlighted in this new image combining observations from several telescopes. High-energy X-rays from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) are shown in blue; low-energy X-rays from Japan's Hinode spacecraft are green; and extreme ultraviolet light from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is yellow and red.

All three telescopes captured their solar images around the same time on April 29, 2015. The NuSTAR image is a mosaic made from combining smaller images.

The active regions across the sun’s surface contain material heated to several millions of degrees. The blue-white areas showing the NuSTAR data pinpoint the most energetic spots. During the observations, microflares went off, which are smaller versions of the larger flares that also erupt from the sun's surface. The microflares rapidly release energy and heat the material in the active regions.

NuSTAR typically stares deeper into the cosmos to observe X-rays from supernovas, black holes and other extreme objects. But it can also look safely at the sun and capture images of its high-energy X-rays with more sensitivity than before. Scientists plan to continue to study the sun with NuSTAR to learn more about microflares, as well as hypothesized nanoflares, which are even smaller.

In this image, the NuSTAR data shows X-rays with energies between 2 and 6 kiloelectron volts; the Hinode data, which is from the X-ray Telescope instrument, has energies of 0.2 to 2.4 kiloelectron volts; and the Solar Dynamics Observatory data, taken using the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument, shows extreme ultraviolet light with wavelengths of 171 and 193 Angstroms.

Note the green Hinode image frame edge does not extend as far as the SDO ultraviolet image, resulting in the green portion of the image being truncated on the right and left sides.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/JAXA

Last Updated: July 8, 2015

Editor: Tony Greicius