Top 5 educated stars

1. James Franco. He graduated from a Columbia’s University’s MFA writing program, is enrolled in Brooklyn College for Creative writing, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for Directing and Yale for a doctoral program.

2. Mayim Bialik. This actress is a real-life scientist with a PhD in neuroscience. Her doctoral dissertation focused on obsessive compulsive disorders among people with Prader-Willi syndrome.

3. Ashley Judd. She studied at the University of Kentucky, where she majored in French and pursued four minors. In 2010 she graduated from Harvard with a master’s degree in Public Administration.

4. Ken Jeong. One of the few actors in Hollywood who is a real-life medical doctor. Jeong graduated early at the age of 16 and completed his medical degree at the University of North Carolina.

5. Dolph Lundgren. This Swedish-born actor has a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney, and he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to MIT.

D-Wave: the coolest black box

Google owns a lot of computers –perhaps a million servers stitched together into the fastest, most powerful artificial intelligence on the planet. But last August, Google teamed up with NASA to acquire what may be the search giant’s most powerful piece of hardware yet. It’s certainly the strangest.

Located at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, a couple of miles from the Googleplex, the machine is literally a black box, 10 feet high. It’s mostly a freezer, and it contains a single, remarkable computer chip –based not on the usual silicon but on tiny loops of niobium wire, cooled to a temperature 150 times colder than deep space.

The name of the box, and also the company that built it, is written in big, science-fiction-y letters on one side: D-WAVE. Executives from the company that built it say that the black box is the world’s first practical quantum computer, a device that uses radical new physics to crunch numbers faster than any comparable machine on earth.

If they’re right, it’s a profound breakthrough. The question is: Are they? (To find out you’ll have to read the full article at www. wired.com/2014/05/quantum-computing/?mbid=social_fb)

FIVE daily brain excercises

2: Attention.

Good attention enables you to maintain concentration despite noise and distractions and to focus on several activities at once. We can improve our attention by simply changing our routines. Change your route to work or reorganize your desk —both will force your brain to wake up from habits and pay attention again. As we age, our attention span can decrease, making us more susceptible to distraction and less efficient at multitasking. By combining activities like listening to an audio book with jogging or doing math in your head while you drive forces your brain to work at doing more in the same amount of time.

3: Language.

Language activities will challenge our ability to recognize, remember and understand words. They also exercise our fluency, grammatical skills and vocabulary. With regular practice, you can expand your knowledge of new words and much more easily retrieve words that are familiar. If you usually only thoroughly read the sports section, try reading a few in-depth business articles. You’ll be exposed to new words, which are easier to understand when read in context. Take time to understand the word in its context, which will help you build your language skills and retrieve the word more readily in front of your boss in the future.

4: Visual-Spatial.

Analyzing visual information is necessary to be able to act within your environment. Try walking into a room and picking out five items and their locations. When you exit the room, try to recall all five items and where they were located. Too easy? Wait two hours and try to remember those items and their locations. The next time you’re waiting on your coworker or friend to arrive, try this mental exercise. Look straight ahead and note everything you can see both in front of you and in your peripheral vision. Challenge yourself to recall everything and write it down. This will force you to use your memory and train your brain to focus on your surroundings.

5: Executive Function.

Without even realizing it, you use your logic and reasoning skills on a daily basis to make decisions, build up hypotheses and consider the possible consequences of your actions. Activities in which you must define a strategy to reach a desired outcome and calculate the right moves to reach the solution in the shortest possible time are actually fun activities you do daily —like social interaction and video games. Engaging in a brief visit with a friend boosts your intellectual performance by requiring you to consider possible responses and desired outcomes. Video games require strategy and problem-solving to reach a desired outcome.

Fasting is good for the immune system

Refraining from food for as little as two days can regenerate the immune system, helping the body to fight infection, according to a new study. Scientists at the University of Southern California said the findings could have major implications for the elderly and people suffering from damaged immune systems, such as cancer patients. Researchers tested the effects of fasting for two to four day periods over the course of six months on both mice and humans. In both cases, long periods of not eating significantly lowered white blood cell counts. And in mice, each cycle of fasting then “flipped a regenerative switch” that triggered stem cell-based regeneration of new white blood cells, thereby renewing the body’s defence system. Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the USC, said: “It gives the OK for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system. And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting.” He added: “Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or aging, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system.” More clinical studies are needed, and any such dietary intervention should be undertaken only under the guidance of a physician.

Beyond fast food

Between the 1960s & the 2000s, Americans grew, on the average, an inch taller and 24 pounds heavier. The average American man today weights 194 pounds and the average woman 165 pounds. The growing girth has led to the creation of special-sized ambulances, operating tables and coffins as well as bigger seats on planes and trains. Still there are scientific reasons & they aren’t limited to eating too much & exercising too little. Here are a few areas under suspicion.

1. Antibiotics in food and as medicine. A recent article in the New York Times confirms suspicions that the antibiotics routinely given to livestock to make them fat do the same thing to people. Studies show there are antibiotic residues especially in meat and milk.

2. Other livestock fatteners. Ractopamine is widely used in the US and banned in many other countries. It is given to 60 to 80 percent of US pigs, 30 percent of ration-fed cattle and an undisclosed number of turkeys. Also banned in European countries are the hormones US cattle growers rely upon. One of them may be linked to US breast cancer rates, too.

3. Pesticides and other endocrine disrupters. Some antibiotics and artificial sweeteners are similar molecules to endocrine disrupters. Endocrine disrupters, like BPA (Bisphenol A), are linked to a host of shocking symptoms including early puberty, diabetes in humans and obesity.

4. Sugar substitutes. Artificial sweeteners have always been billed as a way to cut calories and lose weight, but recent research shows they may do just the opposite. Some of them may slow metabolism, or “train” people to crave sweets. Splenda has similarities to endocrine disrupting pesticides.

5. Industry and government marketing. One example: the USDA, even though it cautions food consumers about high-fat, obesity-linked foods, plays the other side of the street as well and is linked to a group that seeks to get people to double their cheese intake to help milk sales.

One reason to practice YOGA

Joint Account. Each time you practice yoga, you take your joints through their full range of motion. This can help prevent degenerative arthritis or mitigate disability by “squeezing and soaking” areas of cartilage that normally aren’t used. Joint cartilage is like a sponge; it receives fresh nutrients only when its fluid is squeezed out and a new supply can be soaked up. Without proper sustenance, neglected areas of cartilage can eventually wear out, exposing the underlying bone like worn-out brake pads.

Windmill for urban settings

Rotterdam company Archimedes has created a small windmill that can be installed on just about any roof, anywhere. Meet LIAM: a quiet, affordable wind energy source that’s ideal for urban settings; it’s compact and quiet, and its yearly output averages between 300 and 2500 kilowatts, depending on wind speed and roof height. You can also place more than one of these windmills on your roof for added power, or combine them with solar panels so you have a backup source of energy on still days. The price in holland will be € 3,999 (approximately $5,452 usd), and a mini-LIAM will soon be available as well. These turbines will be available for consumers to order as of June 1st, 2014. Visit dearchimedes.com

Are you ready to make a change?

There are more than 70 million Change.org users in 196 countries, and every day people use their tools to transform communities –locally, nationally and globally. Whether it’s a mother fighting bullying in her daughter’s school, customers pressing banks to drop unfair fees, or citizens holding corrupt officials to account, thousands of campaigns started by people like you have won on Change.org –and more are winning every week.

We live in an amazing time, when the opportunity to make a difference is greater than ever before. Gathering people behind a cause used to be difficult, requiring lots of time, money, and a complex infrastructure. But technology has made us more connected than ever. It’s now possible for anyone to start a campaign and immediately mobilize hundreds of others locally or hundreds of thousands around the world, making governments and companies more responsive and accountable.

Change.org wants to accelerate this dramatic shift –by making it easier to make a difference, and by inspiring everyone to discover what’s possible when they stand up and speak out. They’re working for a world where no one is powerless, and where creating change is a part of everyday life. They’re just getting started, and they hope you’ll join them.

Start a petition or support one: Environment, human rights, education, sports, health, criminal justice, technology, women, gay rights, animals, disabled rights, food, immigration, economic justice.

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Earth bag home

In addition to their easy-to-build and other sustainability- related benefits, homes constructed of bags filled with local dirt, mud, sand and/or rock are also potentially extremely expressive as works of design. The final appearance is generally curved, organic and assymetrical –anything but boring. All in all, they have a great deal of expressive potential for something so cheap, easy and fast to build. Source: dornob.com

10 ways AIU is helping you

2. Most of our students are selffinanced or take advantage of payment plans available at AIU. Financial Department which don’t accrue interest. This reflects in over 90% of our students graduate without student debt.

3. Flexible payment programs.
4. Possibility to advance payments without any kind of penalty. 5. No hidden fees.

6. Limited scholarship funds for students in need.

7. Invitation to settle the program upon completion of the academic process.
8. Direct solutions to eventualities.

9. Andragogic methodology, that sets students in a position of leadership in career development, in addition to reducing their reliance on experts for learning during their program and their lifetime.

10. With MyAIU students can break any cycle of economic, academic, social, geographical, cultural, family or political dependency

College debt crisis

Two-thirds, that’s right, two-thirds of students from American colleges and universities are graduating with some level of debt. How much? According to The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) Project on Student Debt, the average borrower will graduate $26,600 in the red. While we’ve all heard the screaming headlines of graduates with crippling debt of $100,000 or more, this is the case for only about 1% of graduates. That said, one in 10 graduates accumulate more than $40,000. It is a negative sum game for both student-borrowers and the economy. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, student loan debt has reached a new milestone, crossing the $1.2 trillion mark –$1 trillion of that in federal student loan debt. This pushes student loan debts to dizzying new heights, as they now account for the second highest form of consumer debt behind mortgages. With the federal debt at $16.7 trillion, student loan debts measure at 6% of the overall national debt. This is no small figure, and national debt carries many consequences including slowing economic growth (translating into fewer jobs being created) and rising interest rates. Capital will not be as easy to access. The majority of student loans are backed by the U.S. government through banks like Sallie Mae, or since 2010, by the Department of Education. Translation: the creditor in this scenario is the U.S. tax payer, who if students default on these loans will be subject to carry the burden of these loans. If you are under the impression that only four-year schools are subject to debt, think again. Of those students completing an associate’s degree from a community college in 2008, 38% graduated with debt. In the for-profit sector of two-year degrees, over 90% have debt. The average debt load at a public two-year institution is $7,000.

The Cost of Debt
Of this $1.2 trillion in student debt, about $1 trillion is in federal student loans. This figure does not tell the full story, however, as the $1.2 trillion does not include funds students must divert away from retirement savings, parent borrowing, or credit card debt. President Obama signed the bipartisan Senate bill to tie federal student loan interest rates to the market on June 9. On one side, this will reverse the interest rate hike that went into effect on July 1 (2013), lowering the current rates for undergraduate students from 6.8 to 3.8%. As the market climbs, however, these rates will climb until they reach a cap of 8.25%. By TICAS calculation, this may cost families $715 million more over the next 10 years. What does 3.8% interest translate to for students? If we go back to that average figure of $26,600, compounding for interest year over year using the 10-year-payback plan that is the standard, the total cost of your $26,600 loan is about $38,600. Break that down by monthly payments and you are looking at about $320 per month going toward student loan payments. “Debt costs you time in savings, pushes back when and whether you can buy a home, start a family, open a small business or access capital,” says Asher. Not to mention the opportunity cost of the education itself at almost $40,000.

Bright idea USB powered lightbulb.

Antique Looks, Modern Tech. This writing desk merges modern technology and conveniences with antique aesthetics. When it’s all closed up, the Tempel desk by Swedish designer Love Hultén has a rather mysterious look, with a glowing planetarium locking indicator. Open it up and you’ll find a range of electronic tools. Constructed of ash, walnut and brass, the table was custom-made for the designer’s own use crafting small electronic projects. The lid of the traditional writing desk conceals a pop-up monitor, computer, speaker system, built-in soldering station and other tools. The amber-toned lighting, brass accents and old-fashioned dials contrast with USB ports and electrical cords. Twenty-six drawers offer plenty of storage for additional electronics and other small items. Reproductions of the retrofuturistic desk are available upon request. If it appears to be too expensive, design your own! dornob.com

–Tim Leary

The brain is designed to design realities.

If you operate your own brain skillfully, you can learn to design your own realities, learn how to communicate in the language of the brain: electrons and photons.

–Tim Leary

Antique Looks, Modern Tech.

This writing desk merges modern technology and conveniences with antique aesthetics. When it’s all closed up, the Tempel desk by Swedish designer Love Hultén has a rather mysterious look, with a glowing planetarium locking indicator. Open it up and you’ll find a range of electronic tools. Constructed of ash, walnut and brass, the table was custom-made for the designer’s own use crafting small electronic projects. The lid of the traditional writing desk conceals a pop-up monitor, computer, speaker system, built-in soldering station and other tools. The amber-toned lighting, brass accents and old-fashioned dials contrast with USB ports and electrical cords. Twenty-six drawers offer plenty of storage for additional electronics and other small items. Reproductions of the retrofuturistic desk are available upon request. If it appears to be too expensive, design your own! dornob.com

Bachelor of Economics

School of business and Economics

The Bachelor of Economics (BS) program objective is help professionals develop an understanding of business, markets, trade, government policies and international issues, globalization, health, development, and the environment; so that they can become economists and analysts in the public and private sectors leading to careers in business, finance, international development, health, human resource management, marketing, management and research. The Bachelor of Economics (BS) program is offered online via distance learning. After evaluating both academic record and life experience, AIU staff working in conjunction with Faculty and Academic Advisors will assist students in setting up a custom-made program, designed on an individual basis.

This flexibility to meet student needs is seldom found in other distance learning programs. Our online program does not require all students to take the same subjects/courses, use the same books, or learning materials. Instead, the online Bachelor of Economics (BS) curriculum is designed individually by the student and academic advisor. It specifically addresses strengths and weaknesses with respect to market opportunities in the student’s major and intended field of work. Understanding that industry and geographic factors should influence the content of the curriculum instead of a standardized one-fits-all design is the hallmark of AIU’s unique approach to adult education. This philosophy addresses the dynamic and constantly changing environment of working professionals by helping adult students in reaching their professional and personal goals within the scope of the degree program.

Important:
Below is an example of the topics or areas you may develop and work on during your studies. By no means is it a complete or required list as AIU programs do not follow a standardized curriculum. It is meant solely as a reference point and example. Want to learn more about the curriculum design at AIU? Go ahead and visit our website, especially the Course and Curriculum section: www.aiu.edu/course-curriculum.html