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While brain games can't avert dementia in those genetically inclined toward the condition, one can ensure better brain fitness and long-term health. The brain thrives on continuous stimulation. Here are takeaway tips from the article: 1. Brain exercises should rely on novelty and complexity, including board games that are played with others. 2. All kinds of concentrated activities, like learning a foreign language or how to play a musical instrument, can be fulfilling. 3. Along with exercising and good nutrition, a brain that is fully engaged socially, mentally and spiritually is more resilient. 4. New, interactive learning is helpful. 5. Cognitive training that uses thinking, such as problem solving and learning, like reading a newspaper article and discussing it with a friend, has staying power in the brain - even 10 years after the training ends.

Is it better to fit in or stand out? That question has vexed all of us at one time or another, from teenagers to aspiring executives to sociologists. The answer, says Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Amir Goldberg: It depends.

"A new study of word frequencies in political blogs finds that equations describing earthquake evolution fit the eruption of topics onto political blogs."

Thanks, Ryan! We're going to read this for homework, since it relates to what we've been doing with computational tools and language.

by Bruce Schoonmaker As we learn more about the value of physical fitness in quality of life, the question naturally arises, how does fitness affect singing? How important to singing is one's physical condition?

This Scientific American blog article provides a handy run-down of research findings re: music's effect on the brain, including 1. Musicians are better able to process foreign languages because of their ability to hear differences in pitch, and have incredible abilities to detect speech in noise. Even those w/ a few years of music training showed more robust neural processing of sounds. Music "tones auditory fitness", critical for perceiving speech and distinguishing, recognizing and processing conversation in noisy environments. 2. Musical training and education may confer linguistic, mathematical, and spatial benefits, and promote social development/"team player" capacities.

The Waverly Pilot is claimed to be the first "smart earpiece" capable of translating between two languages, similar to the BabelFish in Douglas Adams' sci-fi novel, _The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy_, providing instantaneous translation to its wearer. While this first generation device works only when speaking to someone also wearing an earpiece, future generations could listen to everything happening nearby, so pairs of devices won't be needed. It is designed to work offline so it won't incur data charges when used overseas.

This tiny device fits inside the ear and promises to translate for two people in real time. "The Pilot" is a wearable device for two people that translates in real time as they speak, right into each person's ear.

A CEO of a company that runs about 32 charter schools around New York is cutting foreign language from the curriculum because "Americans don't learn foreign languages well".

Eva Moskowitz is the CEO and founder of Success Academy Charter Schools, responsible for about 9,000 students in 32 charter schools around New York City. Moskowitz sat down for an interview with the American Enterprise Institute this week, and talked about how to fit everything she deems important for students-coding, recess, science five days a week-into...

Learning to play a musical instrument leads to changes in the brain's auditory system. The resulting auditory fitness may aid in other forms of communication, such as speech, reading, learning a foreign language, and understanding speech in a noisy environment.

The more parents talk to their children, the faster those children's vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. The problem seems to be cumulative. By the time children are two, there is a six-month disparity in the language-processing skills and vocabulary of toddlers from low-income families. Toddlers learn new words from their context, so the faster a child understands the words he already knows, the easier it is for him to attend to those he does not. Dr Anne Fernald, of Stanford, found that words spoken directly to a child, rather than those simply heard in the home, are what builds vocabulary. Plonking children in front of the television does not have the same effect. Neither does letting them sit at the feet of academic parents while the grown-ups converse about Plato. The effects can be seen directly in the brain. Kimberly Noble of Columbia University studies how linguistic disparities are reflected in the structure of the parts of the brain involved in processing language. Although she cannot yet prove that hearing speech causes the brain to grow, it would fit with existing theories of how experience shapes the brain. Babies are born with about 100 billion neurons, and connections between these form at an exponentially rising rate in the first years of life. It is the pattern of these connections which determines how well the brain works, and what it learns. By the time a child is three, there will be about 1,000 trillion connections in his brain, and that child's experiences continuously determine which are strengthened and which pruned. This process, gradual and more-or-less irreversible, shapes the trajectory of the child's life.And it is this gap, more than a year's pre-schooling at the age of four, which seems to determine a child's chances for the rest of his life.

"According to Rosemary Feal, executive director of the MLA, [the American style] was instituted in the early days of the Republic in order 'to improve the appearance of the text. A comma or period that follows a closing quotation mark appears to hang off by itself and creates a gap in the line (since the space over the mark combines with the following word space).'" Ironically, though, this article only uses the "logical punctuation" style once - in the title.

I love it when punctuation marks fit neatly within the quotation. The opposite makes me feel strangely queasy...

I think the starting off small (like the questions and fill in the blanks during class) is the best way to find a deep and meaningful topic because it opens your mind to think freely and as you narrow your topic, you'll find a topic that really means something to you. Also, the "Going Beyond Cliché", I think that's going to be hard for me because I'm so used to trying to write the typical 5 paragraph papers that are set up as guidelines during school with topic sentence and 3 supporting details. So, trying to find my own outline might make things a little more difficult for me.

While reading this article, I realized i had already looked past one of the most important factors while choosing my own topic to write about. Before reading the article, I was simply searching for a memory of a time that shaped me into the person I am today, or an instance that would impress a college admissions officer, showing them im the type of student that would fit in perfectly at their school. Then in reading the article, i came across: "What do you think college admissions officers are looking for when they read student essays." Even though this may seem like an obvious task, sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in making yourself look good, and completely forget that you're writing must be interesting enough to stand out to an admissions officer more than others. I don't know if my thought process is easy to understand from an outsider's point of view, but this article showed me that it is important to remember that you're writing to not just impress an audience, but also to show them the real 'you'!

This article is especially helpful because it gives easy to read bullet points to make sure people don't fall into the cliché trap. It's easy to write about something that would be commonly seen in college essays, such as a time someone volunteered at some homeless shelter and they say they're grateful for not being homeless. This article says you should go into more depth other than concluding with a cliché concept.

How do humans construct their mental representations of the passage of time? The universalist account claims that abstract concepts like time are universal across humans. In contrast, the linguistic relativity hypothesis holds that speakers of different languages represent duration differently. A 2017 study conducted by Panos Athanasopoulos, Professor of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, and felllow linguist Emanuel Bylund, shows that bilinguals do indeed think about time differently, depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events. Learning a new way to talk about time really does rewire the brain. Our findings are the first psycho-physical evidence of cognitive flexibility in bilinguals. It seems that by learning a new language, you suddenly become attuned to perceptual dimensions that you weren't aware of before. The fact that bilinguals go between these different ways of estimating time effortlessly and unconsciously fits in with a growing body of evidence demonstrating the ease with which language can creep into our most basic senses, including our emotions, our visual perception and now it turns out, our sense of time. But it also shows that bilinguals are more flexible thinkers and there is evidence to suggest that mentally going back and forth between different languages on a daily basis confers advantages on the ability to learn and multi-task, and even long term benefits for mental well-being.

This article challenges the belief that music stemmed as an unimportant byproduct of language used merely to entertain us. Music and instruments was recently discovered to have a deeper history, and meaning, than many of us thought, and it forgoes the old belief that music did not affect (or negatively affected) the survival and fitness of individuals in the past.

There are many ways that what you do with your body can translate into a language to show what you are feeling. Words are not neccesary for others to know the type of person you are. By reading actions, people can know if you are fit for a job or your characteristics.

Body language is extremely important when in a leadership position. You may not think what you're doing with your head or hands is important, but studies show that everything from a head tilt, to walking on stage gives people a certain impression. For people to see you as a good leader, you need to be confident and aware of your actions. If you are on stage talking to a bunch of people, and you are playing with your hair or touching your neck, people pick up on this and make the assumption that you are nervous. It may not be intentional but subconsciously they think you are intimated even though a leader should be calm and controlled. This article explores other ways leaders and speakers can use body language to more powerfully convey their point.

While noted psychologist Gottman's 3 Skills and 1 Rule were originally intended for couples, they apply equally to any close relationship and could create better, more effective communication. In a nutshell, here they are: Here are Dr. Gottman's three skills and one rule for crucial conversation: The rule: Understanding must precede advice. The goal of an intimate conversation is only to understand, not to problem-solve. Premature problem solving tends to shut people down. Problem solving and advice should only begin when both people feel totally understood. Skill #1: Putting Your Feelings into Words The first skill is being able to put one's feelings into words. This skill was called "focusing" by master clinician Eugene Gendlin. Gendlin said that when we are able to find the right images, phrases, metaphors, and words to fit our feelings, there is a kind of "resolution" one feels on one's body, an easing of tension. Focusing makes our conversations about feelings much deeper and more intimate, because the words reveal who we are. Skill #2: Asking Open-Ended Questions The second skill of intimate conversations is helping one's conversational partner explore his or her feelings by asking open-ended questions. This is done by either asking targeted questions, like, "What is your disaster scenario here?" or making specific statements that explore feelings like, "Tell me the story of that! Skill #3: Expressing Empathy The third skill is empathy, or validation. Empathy isn't easy. In an intimate conversation, the first two skills help us sense and explore another person's thoughts, feelings, and needs. Empathy is shown by communication that these thoughts, feelings, and needs make sense to you. That you understand why the other person's experience. That does not mean that you necessarily agree with this person. You might, for example, have an entirely different memory or interpretation of events. Empathy means communicating that, given

This article talks about the benefits learning a second language can have on the brain. The article states that learning a second language early in life can lead to more dense grey matter, better blood flow, larger hippocampus and language centers in the brain, and more neural pathways. Along with physical benefits, learning a second language also benefits memory, efficiency, and success in school, especially math and reading.

Curse words, obscenities, and other taboo utterances-much like the individuals who resort to them in fits of rage-tend to not be known for their stability. They change, fluctuate, shape-shift. Sometimes they disappear on us altogether, never to be heard from again. Or almost never.