The Perks of Working from Home in the Winter

The Perks of Working from Home in the WinterThe Perks of Working from Home in the WinterBrrr It is seriously cold around much of the country right now. And so we cant help but to point out that while working from home has many year-round perks, some benefits are extra appreciated in the winter. The most obvious is being able to forgo that cold, icy, snowy, stressful commute, but what aboutstaying clear of your sick co-workers sneezing all over the place?Here are the perks of working from home in the winterYou dont have to commute in bad weather.Commuting might be the bane of your existence, but it can be even worse during the winter. After all, imagine having to put on a parka and de-ice your car, or be smushed up against other people in the train as you slip and slide your way into work.Instead, working remotely allows you to enjoy a nice hot cup of cocoa (with extra marshmallows), put on your fuzzy slippers, and work while the snow swirls outside.You can stay home if youre feeling a little sick.You wake up one morning feeling a little icky. Its not enough to call in sick per se, but just enough to make going into the office (and being stuck there for 8+ hours) a little unbearable.If you have a work-from-home job, you dont have to call your boss to let him know youre not coming in. You can simply shift your schedule so that you begin working a little later- and when youre feeling better- without having to ask for a sick day.You dont have to worry about the office temperature.Even if the weather outside is frightful, it can always be delightful in your home office The same cant always be said for the office, where theres bound to be someone who wants the AC on- even in the dead of winter. In your home office, though, you are the master of your domain- and the thermostat.So if the weather is arctic-esque, it can leise be a balmy 78 degrees inside your home while you finish working on those reports.You dont have to catch your coworkers cooties.Theres nothing wors e than trekking into work and hearing a cacophony of coughs echoing throughout the office. If you think that its only a matter of time before youll start sniffling, toowell, youre probably right. Thankfully, you can stay pretty much germ-free if you only share your home office with your sweet pooch or kitty.You can stay at home with your sick kid. Lets say that your child wakes up feeling ill- but you still have a presentation to work on at the office. Being able to work from home means that you can care for your kiddo (if hes old enough to not need daycare or a sitter, that is), without having to worry about missing your deadline.You dont have to worry about school closures. Some school districts close at the first snowflake, which can wreak havoc on your workflow. Depending on your childrens ages, school closures dont have to leave you in a lurch. You can just continue to work during the day while your kids get to make snow angels out in the front yard.You can start working sooner . One of the biggest benefits about working from home is that you can start your workday earlier. And when you calculate that a commute into the office when theres snow on the ground can potentially take twice as long, it seems like being able to walk down the hallway and turn on your computer is a big work-from-home perk indeed.Know someone looking for a job? Refer a friend to with this link- youll get a month free service and theyll get 30% off

Nanotechnology for the Brain

Nanotechnology for the Brain Nanotechnology for the Brain Go on the Internet today and it issimple to find video of a paraplegic using a brain implant to manipulate a robotic arm, or a chimp using a similar device to control a robot running on a treadmill. There are scans of different regions of the brain lighting up when we see food, a snake, and an attractive person. All this progress makes it easy to believe researchers are close to unlocking the brains secrets, and perhaps finding cures to such crippling neurological diseases as Parkinsons, epilepsy, or schizophrenia.That would be an incredibly gross oversimplification.The brain is an astonishingly complex electrochemical machine. Its composed of tens of billions of neurons, which have thousands of different shapes, sizes, and functions. Of the millions of proteins our bodies manufacture, about 30 percent are found exclusively in the neural system. No one knows what fruchtwein of them do.Yet leading scientists and engineers world wide are convinced that they are on the verge of finding a path through this intricate machinery. In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health is leading the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, a public-private program that will spend millions on research. The European Union has also proposed a similar effort that will focus on simulating the entire brain on supercomputers. In both cases, the goal is to understand how individual neurons form networks that give rise to sensing, thinking, and acting.The BRAIN research will build on two different types of technology. The first is imaging. It includes such techniques as functional magnetic resonance imaging, computer-aided tomography, and electroencephalography. The images formed by these technologies represent the actions of millions of neurons. But their resolution is too low to understand what individual neurons are doing, said Sotiris Masmanidis, a physicist by training and an assistan t professor of neurobiology at University of California, Los Angeles.

Study says feeling stressed out about the day can hurt your memory

Study says feeling stressed out about the day can hurt your memoryStudy says feeling stressed out about the day can hurt your memoryIt turns out it really is possible to wake up on the wrong side of the bed.A recent study in The Journals of Gerontology Psychological Sciences revealed that thinking that youre going to have a stressful day when you first peel your eyes open in the morning can wreak havoc on your working memory.Clueless about what this really means? Never fear this specific thought process is a function which helps people learn and retain information even when theyre distracted, according to the studys press release.Heres how things played outAs for how the research welches carried out, 240 adults, ages 25 to 65, took a bunch of surveys on smartphones for two weeks at different moments of the day (at the beginning, during, and at the end). They also did working memory exercises multiple times daily.The National Institutes of Health aided the research, as well as other s ources.So whats the big takeaway? The researchers discovered that predicting a stressful day when waking up was linked to poorer working memory later on, as the day unfolded.The conclusions suggest that anticipatory processes can produce harmful effects on cognitive functioning that are independent of everyday stress experiences,according to the study.But theres a catch, of course oddly enough, these findings only rang true when taking into account the stress that people were expecting at the beginning of the day, not when they were thinking about how difficult the next day could potentially be the night before.Martin Sliwinski, director of Penn States Center for Healthy Aging, commented on the research in a statement.In other words, if you think you are going to have a bad day, youve already set yourself up for failure. When you wake up in the morning with a certain outlook for the day, in some sense the die is already castIf you think your day is going to be stressful, youre going to feel those effects even if nothing stressful ends up happening. That hadnt really been shown in the research until now, and it shows the impact of how we think about the world. He later added that theyre coming up with further research on how stress impacts peoples physiological states.