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Howdy !
It's me Scarlett !
This week we have 4 topics.
◈ Life : 10 Signs You’re Not Ready To Get Married, According To Experts
◈ Employment and Skills : This test predicts how quickly you can learn a second language
◈ Psychology : What are the psychological origins of procrastination?
◈ Environment : Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone
Hope you enjoy the topics.
With luv
Scarlett
10 Signs You’re Not Ready To Get Married, According To Experts
It’s important to listen to your gut on this one.
05/02/2016 07:09 pm ET/ Carolin Lehmann/ Editorial Fellow, The Huffington Post
Marriage is one of the biggest commitments made in a lifetime.
It’s natural to feel nervous — even a bit apprehensive — about spending the rest of your life with one person, but at what point are those feelings indicative of something more? Here are the signs you’re not quite ready to tie the knot, according to experts.
1. You’re dreading the wedding.
“If the thought of spending the rest of your life, or at least the next 10 to 20 years, with the same person fills you with a sense of dread, you’re not ready to get married.” — Marcia Sirota, a psychiatrist and founder of the Ruthless Compassion Institute
2. You love your partner, but you’re not in love with him or her.
“If you are marrying someone because you think they will be a good mate to you and a good parent, but you are not in love with them, you should seriously consider whether you are ready to be married, or married to this person specifically.” — Nikki Martinez, a counselor and adjunct professor
3. You’re keeping secrets from each other.
“One sign that you may not be ready to get married is if you are keeping significant secrets from your partner. These can include the way and with whom you spend your time, information about your finances or your frequent use of a substance.” — Elisabeth LaMotte, a clinical social worker, psychotherapist and founder of the DC Counseling and Psychotherapy Center
4. You think of divorce as no big deal.
“If you are entering the marriage with the attitude of, ‘If things don’t work out, we’ll just get divorced,’ this is probably a good indicator that you aren’t ready for the commitment.” — Leslie Petruk, the director of The Stone Center for Counseling & Leadership in Charlotte, North Carolina
5. Your morals and beliefs just don’t line up.
“If you have fundamental differences in your morals, beliefs, and ideas, that will cause continued issues in the relationship that may not be able to be overcome. An example of this is not being able to agree what faith your children will be raised in.” — Nikki Martinez
6. You’ve only been with your partner for a short amount of time.
“If you’ve been dating for less than two years, you’re not ready to get married. I don’t care how old you are: this applies. I’ve done a high percentage of divorces for people of all ages who married before the two-year mark. It takes a full year to get beyond the infatuation stage and then another year to clearly see each other’s warts and know if you can live with them.” — Alison Patton, licensed attorney and mediator
7. You keep having the same argument over and over again.
“If you are unable to work through conflict such that both parties feel heard, understood and resolved, you likely aren’t ready to make the leap yet. Particularly if the same argument or issue resurfaces over and over without resolution. This is an opportunity to seek outside help to learn how to work through conflict and determine if you are able to. This is an essential skill in a marital relationship.” — Leslie Petruk
8. You’re getting married out of guilt, fear or because you’re trying to please someone else.
“You may choose to marry someone out of guilt because you don’t want to hurt their feelings, upset them or go back on a promise you previously made. Sometimes men and women get married because they mistakenly think that this is their one and only chance at love, or the love they have at the moment is as good as it gets. Getting married to try to please anyone except yourself happens because of the ‘shoulds.’ For example, your parents or family say you should marry someone who went to a certain school, is in a certain income bracket or has certain religious or spiritual beliefs, and you take what they say to be more important than following your own inner guidance.” — Otto Collins, life and relationship coach and co-creator of Passionate Heart
9. You love the potential of who your partner could become, not who they are are right now.
“If you are hoping that being married will change something about your significant other, you may not be ready to marry this person. Are you hoping that marriage will help your fiancé decide that he does want children, even though he insists he does not? Do you imagine that she will drink less once you marry, or that he will become more ambitious once there’s a ring on his finger? People rarely change, and fantasies that marriage will transform your beloved are usually a sign that you are not ready to marry.” — Elisabeth LaMotte
10. You’re interested in an open marriage, but haven’t told your partner yet.
“Wait, you haven’t even gotten married yet. If you want a marriage with no rules, then why are you getting married? If you are truly interested in an open marriage, you should have been practicing polyamory or swinging long before you headed up the aisle. Don’t start the open marriage dialogue after the conversation about the seating arrangements for the reception. If you are nervous about monogamy, then maybe you need to slow the whole things down and forego the walk down the aisle until you have visited your monogamy conversation in more detail. Learn to open your communication before you open your marriage and then when you do decide to commit to your partner, your marriage will be better for it.” — Tammy Nelson, Board Certified Sexologist, Certified Sex Therapist and the author of The New Monogamy
<Questions>
Q1. Why do you want to get married? If you already got married, why did you decide to marry him/ her?
Q2. Who is your ideal type? What is the most attractive traits of him/ her?
Q3. Do you think you are ready to get married? Do you find any sings from yourself which shows that you are not ready to get married?
1. You’re dreading the wedding.
2. You love your partner, but you’re not in love with him or her.
3. You’re keeping secrets from each other.
4. You think of divorce as no big deal.
5. Your morals and beliefs just don’t line up.
6. You’ve only been with your partner for a short amount of time.
7. You keep having the same argument over and over again.
8. You’re getting married out of guilt, fear or because you’re trying to please someone else.
9. You love the potential of who your partner could become, not who they are are right now.
10. You’re interested in an open marriage, but haven’t told your partner yet.
Q4. How do you think about 'Open marriage' or 'polygamy'? What are the merits and demerits of these system?
Q5. Could you tell us the best couple and the worst couple around you?
Q6. If you are immortal or have longer lifespan, which marriage system is better for you between monogamy, polygamy or being single?
This test predicts how quickly you can learn
a second language
Written by Molly McElroy/ Communications & Marketing Manager, University of Washington
Published Tuesday 17 May 2016
Some adults learn a second language better than others, and their secret may involve the rhythms of activity in their brains.
New findings demonstrate that a five-minute measurement of resting-state brain activity predicted how quickly adults learned a second language.
The study, published in the journal Brain and Language, is the first to use patterns of resting-state brain rhythms to predict subsequent language learning rate.
“We’ve found that a characteristic of a person’s brain at rest predicted 60 percent of the variability in their ability to learn a second language in adulthood,” says lead author Chantel Prat, a faculty researcher at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and an associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington.
French lessons
At the beginning of the experiment, volunteers—19 adults aged 18 to 31 years with no previous experience learning French—sat with their eyes closed for five minutes while wearing a commercially available EEG (electroencephalogram) headset. The headset measured naturally occurring patterns of brain activity.
The participants came to the lab twice a week for eight weeks for 30-minute French lessons delivered through an immersive, virtual reality computer program. The US Office of Naval Research—who funded the current study—also funded the development of the language-training program.
The program, called Operational Language and Cultural Training System (OLCTS), aims to get military personnel functionally proficient in a foreign language with 20 hours of training. The self-paced program guides users through a series of scenes and stories. A voice-recognition component lets users check their pronunciation.
To ensure participants were paying attention, the researchers used periodic quizzes that required a minimum score before proceeding to the next lesson. The quizzes also served as a measure for how quickly each participant moved through the curriculum.
At the end of the eight-week language program, participants completed a proficiency test covering however many lessons they had finished. The fastest person learned twice as quickly but just as well as the slower learners.
The recordings from the EEG headsets revealed that patterns of brain activity related to language processes were linked the most strongly to the participants’ rate of learning.
But don't give up
So, should people who don’t have this biological predisposition not even try to learn a new language? Prat says no, for two reasons.
“First, our results show that 60 percent of the variability in second language learning was related to this brain pattern—that leaves plenty of opportunity for important variables like motivation to influence learning,” Prat says.
Second, Prat says it’s possible to change resting-state brain activity using neurofeedback training—something that she’s studying now in her lab. Neurofeedback is a sort of brain training regimen, through which individuals can strengthen the brain activity patterns linked to better cognitive abilities.
“We’re looking at properties of brain function that are related to being ready to learn well. Our goal is to use this research in combination with technologies such as neurofeedback training to help everyone perform at their best,” she says.
Ultimately, neurofeedback training could help people who want to learn a second language but lack the desirable brain patterns. They’d do brain training exercises first, and then do the language program.
“By studying individual differences in the brain, we’re figuring out key constraints on learning and information processing, in hopes of developing ways to improve language learning, and eventually, learning more generally,” Prat says.
Article source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/this-test-predicts-how-quickly-you-can-learn-a-second-language?utm_content=buffere30a0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
<Questions>
Q1. Do you think you are a person who have a good sense of learning foreign language?
Q2. How many languages do you speak? Do you have any plans to learn more foreign languages?
Q3. Why do you learn other languages? What are the good advantages of speaking many languages?
Q4. According to an article, you can improve your language acquiring ability by changing resting-state brain activity using neurofeedback training. If it is possible, would you go through with neurofeedback training?
Q5. If you can buy neurofeedback training kit using virtual reality gear, would you buy it?
What are the psychological origins of procrastination?
Written by Elliot Berkman/ Published Friday 9 October 2015
“I love deadlines,” English author Douglas Adams once wrote. “I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
We’ve all had the experience of wanting to get a project done but putting it off for later. Sometimes we wait because we just don’t care enough about the project, but other times we care a lot – and still end up doing something else. I, for one, end up cleaning my house when I have a lot of papers to grade, even though I know I need to grade them.
So why do we procrastinate? Are we built to operate this way at some times? Or is there something wrong with the way we’re approaching work?
These questions are central to my research on goal pursuit, which could offer some clues from neuroscience about why we procrastinate – and how to overcome this tendency.
To do, or not to do
It all starts with a simple choice between working now on a given project and doing anything else: working on a different project, doing something fun or doing nothing at all.
The decision to work on something is driven by how much we value accomplishing the project in that moment – what psychologists call its subjective value. And procrastination, in psychological terms, is what happens when the value of doing something else outweighs the value of working now.
This way of thinking suggests a simple trick to defeat procrastination: find a way to boost the subjective value of working now, relative to the value of other things. You could increase the value of the project, decrease the value of the distraction, or some combination of the two.
For example, instead of cleaning my house, I might try to focus on why grading is personally important to me. Or I could think about how unpleasant cleaning can actually be – especially when sharing a house with a toddler.
It’s simple advice, but adhering to this strategy can be quite difficult, mainly because there are so many forces that diminish the value of working in the present.
The distant deadline
People are not entirely rational in the way they value things. For example, a dollar bill is worth exactly the same today as it is a week from now, but its subjective value – roughly how good it would feel to own a dollar – depends on other factors besides its face value, such as when we receive it.
The tendency for people to devalue money and other goods based on time is called delay discounting. For example, one study showed that, on average, receiving $100 three months from now is worth the same to people as receiving $83 right now. People would rather lose $17 than wait a few months to get a larger reward.
Other factors also influence subjective value, such as how much money someone has recently gained or lost. The key point is that there is not a perfect match between objective value and subjective value.
Delay discounting is a factor in procrastination because the completion of the project happens in the future. Getting something done is a delayed reward, so its value in the present is reduced: the further away the deadline is, the less attractive it seems to work on the project right now.
Studies have repeatedly shown that the tendency to procrastinate closely follows economic models of delay discounting. Furthermore, people who characterize themselves as procrastinators show an exaggerated effect. They discount the value of getting something done ahead of time even more than other people.
One way to increase the value of completing a task is to make the finish line seem closer. For example, vividly imagining a future reward reduces delay discounting.
No work is ‘effortless’
Not only can completing a project be devalued because it happens in the future, but working on a project can also be unattractive due to the simple fact that work takes effort.
New research supports the idea that mental effort is intrinsically costly; for this reason, people generally choose to work on an easier task rather than a harder task. Furthermore, there are greater subjective costs for work that feels harder (though these costs can be offset by experience with the task at hand).
This leads to the interesting prediction that people would procrastinate more the harder they expect the work to be. That’s because the more effort a task requires, the more someone stands to gain by putting the same amount of effort into something else (a phenomenon economists call opportunity costs). Opportunity costs make working on something that seems hard feels like a loss.
Sure enough, a group of studies shows that people procrastinate more on unpleasant tasks. These results suggest that reducing the pain of working on a project, for example by breaking it down into more familiar and manageable pieces, would be an effective way to reduce procrastination.
Your work, your identity
When we write that procrastination is a side effect of the way we value things, it frames task completion as a product of motivation, rather than ability.
In other words, you can be really good at something, whether it’s cooking a gourmet meal or writing a story, but if you don’t possess the motivation, or sense of importance, to complete the task, it’ll likely be put off.
It was for this reason that the writer Robert Hanks, in a recent essay for the London Review of Books, described procrastination as “a failure of appetites.”
The source of this “appetite” can be a bit tricky. But one could argue that, like our (real) appetite for food, it’s something that’s closely intertwined with our daily lives, our culture and our sense of who we are.
So how does one increase the subjective value of a project? A powerful way – one that my graduate students and I have written about in detail – is to connect the project to your self-concept. Our hypothesis is that projects seen as important to a person’s self-concept will hold more subjective value for that person.
It’s for this reason that Hanks also wrote that procrastination seems to stem from a failure to “identify sufficiently with your future self” – in other words, the self for whom the goal is most relevant.
Because people are motivated to maintain a positive self-concept, goals connected closely to one’s sense of self or identity take on much more value.
Author: Elliot Berkman is a assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. Jordan Miller-Ziegler is a PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Oregon.
Image: A man reads a newspaper while resting on a wall. REUTERS/Parth Sanyal.
Article source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/what-are-the-psychological-origins-of-procrastination/
<Questions>
Q1. What is the procrastination?
Q2. Have you ever put things off in your work? What was the reason for that?
Q3. Do you procrastinate things often? Why do you put it off for later?
Q4. How do you make priorities when you are working?
Q5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of procrastination?
Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone
Zero emission milestone reached as country is powered by just wind, solar and hydro-generated electricity for 107 hours
Arthur Neslen/ Wednesday 18 May 2016 14.59 BST
Portugal kept its lights on with renewable energy alone for four consecutive days last week in a clean energy milestone revealed by data analysis of national energy network figures.
Electricity consumption in the country was fully covered by solar, wind and hydro power in an extraordinary 107-hour run that lasted from 6.45am on Saturday 7 May until 5.45pm the following Wednesday, the analysis says.
News of the zero emissions landmark comes just days after Germany announced that clean energy had powered almost all its electricity needs on Sunday 15 May, with power prices turning negative at several times in the day – effectively paying consumers to use it.
Oliver Joy, a spokesman for the Wind Europe trade association said: “We are seeing trends like this spread across Europe - last year with Denmark and now in Portugal. The Iberian peninsula is a great resource for renewables and wind energy, not just for the region but for the whole of Europe.”
James Watson, the CEO of SolarPower Europe said: “This is a significant achievement for a European country, but what seems extraordinary today will be commonplace in Europe in just a few years. The energy transition process is gathering momentum and records such as this will continue to be set and broken across Europe.”
Last year, wind provided 22% of electricity and all renewable sources together provided 48%, according to the Portuguese renewable energy association.
While Portugal’s clean energy surge has been spurred by the EU’s renewable targets for 2020, support schemes for new wind capacity were reduced in 2012.
Despite this, Portugal added 550MW of wind capacity between 2013 and 2016, and industry groups now have their sights firmly set on the green energy’s export potential, within Europe and without.
“An increased build-out of interconnectors, a reformed electricity market and political will are all essential,” Joy said. “But with the right policies in place, wind could meet a quarter of Europe’s power needs in the next 15 years.”
In 2015, wind power alone met 42% of electricity demand in Denmark, 20% in Spain, 13% in Germany and 11% in the UK.
In a move hailed as a “historic turning point” by clean energy supporters, UK citizens last week enjoyed their first ever week of coal-free electricity generation.
Watson said: “The age of inflexible and polluting technologies is drawing to an end and power will increasingly be provided from clean, renewable sources.”
Article source : http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/18/portugal-runs-for-four-days-straight-on-renewable-energy-alone
<Questions>
Q1. When you read the headline, what ideas come into your mind?
Q2. Have you ever heard about the renewable energy sources? Could you name them?
Q3. If 100 % of energy consumption in Korea can be covered by clean energy source, what would happen?
Q4. Do we have zero emission conceptual city in Korea? Have you ever been to that city? Did you find any difference in zero emission conceptual city from other general conceptual city?
Q5. Fossil fuel industry would be substituted by renewable energy industry very soon. Do you think what would be the most promising field in the near future?
Q6. What would come after optimization in this society?
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