Is the Purpose of Sleep to Let Our Brains “Defragment,” Like a Hard Drive?
What is the Purpose of Sleep ?
We spend a third of our lives doing so, and all known animals with a nervous system either sleep, or show some kind of related behaviour. But scientists still don’t know what the point of it is.
There are plenty of theories. Some researchers argue that sleep has no specific function, but rather serves as evolution’s way of keeping us inactive, to save energy and keep us safely tucked away at those times of day when there’s not much point being awake. On this view, sleep is like hibernation in bears, or even autumn leaf fall in trees.
But others argue that sleep has a restorative function—something about animal biology means that we need sleep to survive. This seems like common sense. Going without sleep feels bad, after all, and prolonged sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. We also know that in severe cases it can lead to mental disturbances, hallucinations and, in some laboratory animals, eventually death.
Waking up after a good night’s sleep, you feel restored, and many studies have shown the benefits of sleep for learning, memory, and cognition. Yet if sleep is beneficial, what is the mechanism?
Recently, some neuroscientists have proposed that the function of sleep is to reorganize connections and “prune” synapses—the connections between brain cells.{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_synapse}
Last year, one group of researchers, led by Gordon Wang of Stanford University reviewed the evidence for this idea in a paper called Synaptic plasticity in sleep: learning, homeostasis and disease.
This illustration, taken from their paper, shows the basic idea:
When You Divorce Having No Regrets Is Difficult
Talking with and connecting to other divorcing women has become my mission. I’m in the process of my second divorce and I see that the same isolation, loneliness, and judgment exists for divorced and single moms as it did 15 years ago, during my first divorce. Nothing has progressed. There still seems to be a great deal of stigma surrounding divorce and the subject remains taboo in most social circles. I found this tip in a divorce book: “What happens in a marriage is private — what happens in a divorce should remain private as well.”
I disagree.
www.baratsandbereta.com A digital Mother’s Day card. Tucker and Brad show their love for mom by taking a Mother’s Day photo… Special thanks to Andrew Weed. We command you to like us on Facebook! www.facebook.com And Twitter Too: www.youtube.com
To Mommy on Our First Mother’s Day – Picture Frame Gift
Why Didn't I Think About It ? :{
We all know that vegetable oil is an incredibly useful tool in the
kitchen. Did you know that there are countless household uses for
vegetable oil? Here are some of our favorite uses for the neutral oil
that don’t involve cooking. As always, please share your favorite uses
in our comments section.
KEY LOCK HELPER
Does the lock on your front door never want to give up your house key?
Try wiping your key down with some vegetable oil. It acts as a
lubricant, helping the key to get into the lock more freely.
HAIR MOISTURIZER
You can use vegetable oil as a deep conditioning treatment. Just take
about half a cup of oil and warm it at 50% power in the microwave until
it’s just above room temperature. Massage the vegetable oil into your
hair, shampoo and then rinse
CAR CLEANER
Whether you are trying to get rid of the brake dust that accumulates on
your tires and hub caps, or the bugs, dirt or pollen that always stick
to your car’s grill and wind shield, skip the special auto cleaners and
use vegetable oil instead. Pour a tiny bit onto a paper towel or a rag,
and wipe down these surfaces. The vegetable oil helps wipe the gunk away
while creating a car-safe coating that future debris won’t stick to.
NON-STICK SHOVELS
With all the spring/summer gardening and yard work, you can use
vegetable oil to coat your shovels and trowels. This helps prevent dirt
from clumping on your tools. You can also do this trick to your
lawnmower blades so grass doesn’t stick to them. If you are in a pinch,
you can also coat the “working parts” of your hand tools with vegetable
cooking spray.
SEASON YOUR POTS AND PANS
This might not be the most groundbreaking of tips, but you can use
vegetable oil to season a new skillet. A light coating of vegetable oil
helps protect the pan. Although there are very many different ways to
season it, this is my preferred: After washing the pan for the first
time, rub a little bit of vegetable oil over the surface of the pan and
the sides. You don’t have to worry about the bottom.
By Chris Barnes For AOL
This ought to get your blood boiling! But it is true!!
A massive tax loophole that provides billions “yes billions” of our tax dollars in tax credits to “undocumented workers” {illegal aliens sorry for the word but that is what they are} …..And in many cases our tax dollars are given to people who never set foot in the UNITED STATES!!!
Watch the newscast video and try to stay calm!
A Note From NRM
When I saw this video all I could think of was “all the cks I made out to the IRS” ! This really is one hell of a
SLAP in my face! I felt like a fool!
The IRS would come down on us hard working citizens with the biggest hammer they can hit us with if they even expected we cheated!
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer
Explanation: Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. A compilation of such visual spectacles was captured recently from the International Space Station (ISS) and set to rousing music. Passing below are white clouds, orange city lights, lightning flashes in thunderstorms, and dark blue seas. On the horizon is the golden haze of Earth’s thin atmosphere, frequently decorated by dancing auroras as the video progresses. The green parts of auroras typically remain below the space station, but the station flies right through the red and purple auroral peaks. Solar panels of the ISS are seen around the frame edges. The ominous wave of approaching brightness at the end of each sequence is just the dawn of the sunlit half of Earth, a dawn that occurs every 90 minutes.
Online Shoppers Not Happy !
What really aggravates people about shopping online? Believe it or not, it’s that it isn’t easy enough to pay.
Yes, a majority of U.S. shoppers surveyed recently cited having to enter payment, billing and shipping information as a major nuisance of buying on the web.
Instead, 58% of online shoppers said they’d rather safely store their account information once, in a single place that can be easily accessed no matter where they’re shopping online, according to the recent MasterCard survey conducted by Harris Interactive, reflecting responses from 2,229 shoppers.
By Barbara Thau
For you geetar pickers, thought it would be good for you to know
United Airline breaks his guitar; he pays them back
Thought you would like this:
A musician named Dave Carroll recently had difficulty with United Airlines.
United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a
flight. Dave spent over 9 months trying to get United to pay for damages
caused by baggage handlers to his custom Taylor guitar. During his final
exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was
left with no choice other than to create a music video for youtube exposing
their lack of cooperation. The Manager responded: “Good luck with that
one, pal.”
So he posted a retaliatory video on youtube. The video has since received
over 6 million hits. United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted
settlement in exchange for pulling the video. Naturally his response was:
“Good luck with that one, pal.”
Taylor Guitars sent the musician 2 new custom guitars in appreciation for
the product recognition from the video that has led to a sharp increase in
orders…..Nice! I am sure United Lost customers!!!
Not The Money Machine You Thought It Was For Amazon !
If you’re thinking about becoming an Amazon Associate (aka affiliate) you better start doing some major research before you take the plunge. i say this because I became an Amazon Associate thinking that all I have to do is put up some product links on my website and “bingo” I’ll make some sales. You will soon learn that posting product links and widgets will not drive sales even if you have a following or a mailing list.
Have you visited some blog sites that claim that they make 100k/year hawking Amazon products? It’s hard to know the truth when it comes to blogger’s Amazon earning claims. That’s why you need to do some research to find a profitable niche. It’s not hard, just take your keyword and do a Google search. Lets say you are considering selling baby strollers as a niche Amazon product. You will find about 50,500,000 results. On the first page you will see all your competitors from both Amazon websites and manufactures. You will also see a ton of Google ads on the right side bar.
This should tell you that this niche is saturated and will not yield good results as you will not rank and no one searching for baby strollers will ever visit your site. The experts will tell you that you need to write quality product reviews in order to rank in any of the major search engines. Okay, let assume that you now want to try cookware. You enter you keyword and find about 61,100,000 result and again you see a ton of Google ads on the right side bar. You could continue this process until you find an Amazon product will little competition. But, from my searches – all I see is a saturated market dominated by Google ads, Amazon website listings and manufactures.
Which brings me to the next part of this article and that is writing product reviews and niche sites that specialize in writing helpful tips related to Amazon products. Product review sites try to choose a product that has little completion for off beat keywords with at least 1000 or so monthly searches. So for example a blogger might write an article on “How to Win at Ping Pong” then push related products. The issue with this is to appeal to searchers who are seeking information on how to win at ping pong and relate or sell a product that helps solve this problem like a ebook or paddle. The competition for this keyword phrase is low and so is the number of searches. This means that you may get a good page ranking.
A word about WordPress themes and website scripts. No matter what these vendors tell you, you will not earn very much income from these. The reason is that it does not mean that because you have an attractive site that people will buy from you. You’ll still have the problem of getting Google to “award” you with a high page ranking and facing major competitors. Most every one selling these themes claim that they’re SEO ready.
From my point of view and from my experience selling Amazon products I’ve concluded that unless you’ve got a website or blog with lots of visitors it may not be worth the extra effort to hawk Amazon product. I think that this market is totally saturated and dominated by the big guys. Competition is overwhelming. I am not telling that you can’t sell Amazon product, just that it will take major research to overcome the competition.
Comments welcomed at Tom’s blog “nothing to buy but the truth behind all this hype-up big money making claims”
Please leave a comment if you have some sad story about money spent and zero money back :{…help others!
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