churchyard purposeful: May 2013

Perform Better Under Stress Using Self-Affirmation | Our Better Health

Can thinking about what?s important to you improve your problem-solving powers?

Have a look at the following list of values and personal characteristics. If you had to pick just one, which most defines who you are and what matters to you?

??? Your family
??? Being good at sports
??? Belief in a higher power
??? Your friends
??? Your creativity
??? Aesthetics
??? Your job

Perhaps what matters most to you isn?t there (this isn?t a comprehensive list!), in that case think about what does matter to you most.

In the burgeoning series of experiments which use this type of self-affirmation exercise, participants are then asked to write a paragraph or two on why this characteristic or value is so important to them. Sometimes they also think about a specific time or story that is illustrative.

The effects can be quite useful across a surprisingly large number of domains. It can help boost self-control in the moment and even increase social confidence for two or more months after it?s carried out.

Problem-solving

In a new study, Cresswell et al. (2013) tested whether a simple self-affirmation exercise would have a beneficial effect on problem-solving under stress, particularly for individuals who have been stressed recently.

In their experiment, half the participants did the self-affirmation exercise while the rest performed a similar, but ineffectual exercise.

The results showed that those who had been stressed recently and were self-affirmed before they began the exercise performed better at the problem-solving task. This suggests the self-affirmation exercise could be useful for people under stress who are, for example, taking exams, going to job interviews or under pressure at work.

What?s fascinating about the self-affirmation task is that it doesn?t have to be related to the area in which you?re looking to improve. So thinking about the importance of your family can increase your problem-solving performance, even though the two have little in common.

We don?t know exactly why the self-affirmation exercise works; indeed the researchers tested a couple of options in their study?that perhaps it improves people?s mood or that they engaged more with the task?but they don?t find evidence for either.

Instead they think it more likely that the self-affirmation exercise helps you move your attention more flexibly, which improves memory function.

Whatever the mechanism, this growing body of evidence on the benefits of self-affirmation is encouraging.

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Source: http://ourbetterhealth.org/2013/05/13/perform-better-under-stress-using-self-affirmation/

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Hyperactive Sun Fires Off 3 Major Solar Flares in 1 Day

The sun, it seems, is in overdrive. Late Monday night, the sun unleashed its third major solar flare in 24 hours ? the biggest and most powerful solar storm of the year, so far.

This latest sun storm erupted Monday (May 13) at 9:11 p.m. EDT (0111 GMT) and registered as an X3.2 solar flare, one of the strongest types of flares the sun can release, space weather officials said. It came on the heels of two other recent X-class solar flares on Sunday night and Monday, all of which were sparked by a highly active sunspot on the sun's far left side.

Officials at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., appeared amazed at the intense activity from the crackling sunspot. [Sun Unleashes Biggest Flares of 2013 (Photos)]

"Clearly an extraordinary active region is making its way fully onto the visible disk," SWPC officials wrote in a morning update today (May 14). "Can it keep up this hectic pace?"

Two of the three recent solar flares have been associated with massive explosions, called coronal mass ejections, which flung super-hot solar material into space at millions of miles per hour. Because the sunspot firing off the flares is not yet facing Earth, the solar eruptions pose no threat to satellites and astronauts in orbit, NASA has said.

"This marks the 3rd X-class flare in 24 hours," officials with NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory wrote in a statement. "Just like the two before this one also happened over the eastern limb of the sun and is not Earth-directed."

The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured amazing videos of the major solar flares and eruptions.

According to astronomer Tony Phillips of Spaceweather.com, scientists have just given the active sunspot a name: AR1748. It is one of nine active numbered sunspots currently visible on the surface of the sun.

While AR1784 has been spouting off many solar flares in recent days, most of them more moderate, M-class solar flares, the events on Sunday and Monday are taking solar activity to another level.

"These are the strongest flares of the year so far, and they signal a significant increase in solar activity," Phillips wrote in a Spaceweather.com update this morning.

Scientists use a tiered space weather scale to classify solar flare events, with each level representing a tenfold increase in power over the one before. At the bottom of the scale are A and B type solar flares, which have no effect on Earth. Next are C-class solar flares and the stronger, yet still medium-strength, M-class solar flares, which can supercharge Earth's auroras and cause radio blackouts when aimed at Earth.

X-class solar flares are the most powerful types of solar storms. When aimed directly at Earth, these major solar events can pose a danger to astronauts and satellites in space, as well as interfere with radio and GPS navigation signals.

The X3.2 solar flare is the most powerful yet seen this year and the third-strongest sun storm of the current 11-year solar cycle, called Solar Cycle 24. The second strongest was an X5.4 solar flare in 2012, while the largest event was an X6.9 flare in 2011. So far, there have been 18 X-class solar flares in Solar Cycle 24.

The first X-class solar flare of 2013 (the Sunday event) registered as an X1.7 on the flare scale, with the mid-day Monday flare rating as an X2.8, NASA officials said.

Solar activity on the sun rises and falls over the course of its 11-year cycle. The sun is active phase of Solar Cycle 24 as it approaches its peak activity period, called solar maximum, which is expected to occur later this year.

Scientists have been monitoring solar flares and other space weather events since their discovery in 1843. Today, NASA and other space agencies continuously monitor the sun with spacecraft like the Solar Dynamics Observatory to track potentially dangerous space weather events.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalikand Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hyperactive-sun-fires-off-3-major-solar-flares-123138691.html

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Aereo has announced that its streaming TV service will land in Atlanta on June 17th?and it still hop

Aereo has announced that its streaming TV service will land in Atlanta on June 17th?and it still hopes to be in 22 new cities by the end of the year, too.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/aereo-has-announced-that-its-streaming-tv-service-will-505473161

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