5 Simple Steps to Follow To Achieve All Your Goals in 2014

Happy new year! Today, as we think about the year ahead, we have a suggestion: do not set New Year’s resolutions. So many of us resolve to change our habits as the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, but so many of us fail. So, skip that step altogether and instead set achievable goals. Here’s how to set yourself up for success in 2014:

1. Don’t rush.

Although January always signals a fresh start, as Lara Casey of Southern Weddings always points out, there’s nothing special about the first of the year. Instead, take time to sit down and decide what it is you truly want to accomplish. If you’re ready to start working towards your goals on New Year’s Day, great! But if you’re not set until March, that’s fine too.

2. Focus on tangibility.

Setting a goal to spend more time with your sweetheart is great, but it’s not clear enough. Instead, decide on a weekly date night that works with both of your schedules. Then, choose a time and activity. Also, in order to achieve a goal you will likely need to set boundaries in order to accomplish it. Saying no to one thing means making more progress toward your goal, which will likely leave you feeling better in the end.

3. Take action.

Taking the first steps toward accomplishing your goal is always the most daunting. But just as you would break down the elements of your wedding into more manageable steps, you should create steps for your other goals too. If you’re not a runner, you likely won’t be able to run a half marathon tomorrow. However, you can research and find a program to use to help you train, set aside days each week to run, and sign up for a 5K that’s a few months away. Taking small steps will reward you with bigger progress in the end.

4. Partner up!

Accountability is always needed! Encourage your beloved, sister, or best friend to set goals too. Then check in with and encourage each other. If you’ve set some of the same goals, work together to accomplish them. Also, talk to others who have already accomplished what you’re hoping to do. They’ll likely have tips and tricks they’re happy to share.

5. Keep going.

As the old saying goes: your goals don’t work unless you do. You will likely face bumps in the road and moments when you feel as though you’re not making progress. When this happens, remind yourself of all that you have done, refocus, and keep going.

Read More

Is cracking your knuckles a bad idea?

Cracking sounds on your joints can definitely sound—if not feel—alarming. It's probably happened to all of us, though, whether from cracking knuckles on purpose or just hearing popping sounds when stretching. I talked to a few medical experts to find out what's going on and whether or not all this noise is a sign of a medical issue. Here's what they said.

It's Usually Harmless The common misconception that cracking your joints will cause arthritis is just that—a misconception. Dr. Levi Harrison, an orthopedic surgeon and the author of The Art of Fitness, says he's often asked this question. He explains:

Commonly, joints make an audible cracking sound when the joint is stretched or manipulated due to gas inside the joint fluid or synovial fluid. Common gases in the joint are O2 (Oxygen) and N (Nitrogen). When you flex and stretch your fingers in order to "crack your knuckles", the capsule around the joint which contains this gas filled fluid causes the bubbles to burst which causes that sound. The sound may be loud or dull. Often, you have to wait a period of time before the sound can be heard again, if you manipulate the joint. It takes time for the gas bubbles to reform in the joint.

Dr. Michael Haley, owner of Agape Chiropractic, offers a few more insights —and strange medical terms (joint mice? crepitus?!) that describe the issue:

Sometimes the sounds are coming from muscle bellies. Other times they are coming from the deeper joint structures - tendons, ligaments, and discs. Sometimes the sounds aren't "cracking sounds" at all, but rather, inflammation in the joints that is "squishing around" with movement. These are the noises someone might hear continuously when they turn their heads side to side. Ideally, turning your head does not make any noise. Joint mice may contribute to the sounds. These sounds are collectively usually referred to as "crepitus".

Based on clinical experience, it seems that tension builds up and allows for the joints to "crack" or release. Inactivity seems to increase the need... whereas frequent movement and stretching seems to not only decrease the need, but also even the possibility of of cracking the joints.

An interesting observation is that humans learn to disobey their need for movement. Cats and dogs seem to stretch out their bodies, with an emphasis on their spines, after every period of inactivity. Kids seem to stretch after inactivity too. But adults tend to get up and go about their sedentary days. No wonder their joints crack... or need cracking…

In other words, it's a good idea to fit more movement into your day, if you're not already doing so.

When You Might Want to Consult a Doctor Those assurances aside, there are times cracking joints is more ominous. If you experience any pain with the cracking, it could be a sign of a medical problem. Dr. Harrison says:

Individuals who have painful grinding and creaking joints that started after an injury or trauma to their joints may have arthritis. This is not a good thing. Arthritis occurs when the protective cartilage lining of a joint has been damaged or eroded. This can occur from an injury, age, or an even inflammatory condition like rheumatoid arthritis.

If you have had an injury, for example to your hips or knee and experience significant hip and or knee pain, as well as popping of your joints, you may have arthritis in these areas. I recommend an evaluation by your healthcare practitioner. After an appropriate history and physical exam, they may order the necessary radiographic tests to evaluate the joint. Arthritis is common and pain with creaking and popping in any joint warrants proper evaluation by your doctor.

In the absence of pain, though, you probably don't have to worry (but can check with your doctor if you're still anxious about this). Dr. Harrison doesn't recommend cracking your knuckles, neck, or anything else, but it's still probably harmless. Consider this research noted by Dr. Amy Baxter, CEO of MMJ Labs (which makes a really cool pain blocker, Buzzy):

One really fun paper was what we call an "n of 1" study - some guy (Dr. DL Unger) decided to only crack one hand his whole life, and see what happened. He then published the result. Bottom line: the cracked knuckle was bigger, but none the worse for wear.

I also asked my sister, a family physician in Arizona, about this, and she said she gets this question a lot—strangely from young teenage patients. Her advice? It's probably nothing...but if it bothers you, stop cracking your knuckles or neck. So there you go.

Read More

Study suggests we're all susceptible to false memories

Researchers from UC Irvine have found that people with extraordinarily accurate memory are as vulnerable to the inception of fake memories as others, indicating that perhaps nobody is protected from memory distortion. The study, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on people with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), who are able to recall highly specific facts about their lives, like what they ate for lunch, going all the way back to their childhood.

In one test, subjects were falsely told that news footage captured the plane crash of United 93 in Pennsylvania on September 11th, 2001. The researches found that when asked if they had seen the footage before, 20 percent of subjects with HSAM said they had, compared to 29 percent of people with normal memory. In other tests including false narratives, people with HSAM said they remembered the false facts about as much as people with normal memory.

The results echo earlier scientific studies about the implantation of false memories. The consequences are far reaching and impact our ability to trust things like eyewitness reports, which are vital for historical, journalistic, and legal matters. The Innocence Project claims that the leading cause of wrongful conviction in the United States is improper identification in eyewitness testimony; the Project says that of the 311 convicts who've been exonerated by DNA since 1989, 72 percent of those cases involved false eyewitness testimony.

"Even though this study is about people with superior memory, this study should really make people stop and think about their own memory," researcher Lawrence Pathis told The Atlantic . "Gone are the days when people thought that [only] maybe 20, 30, or 40 percent of people are vulnerable to memory distortions."

Read More

SD Cards Aren’t As Secure As We Think

The hardware hacker Bunnie Huang gave a talk at the Chaos Compute Club Congress where he offered some good news and some bad news. The good news? SD cards contain powerful, handy micro controllers that are useful to hackers and hobbyists.The bad news? SD cards are woefully insecure.

In a detailed and readable post , Huang describes the exact problems with Flash memory. In order to reduce the price and increase the storage space, engineers have to fight a never-ending form of internal entropy that slowly but surely scrambles the data on every Flash drive.

Huang writes:

"Flash memory is really cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it’s too good to be true. In reality, all flash memory is riddled with defects — without exception. The illusion of a contiguous, reliable storage media is crafted through sophisticated error correction and bad block management functions. This is the result of a constant arms race between the engineers and mother nature; with every fabrication process shrink, memory becomes cheaper but more unreliable. Likewise, with every generation, the engineers come up with more sophisticated and complicated algorithms to compensate for mother nature’s propensity for entropy and randomness at the atomic scale."

To take up arms against these errors, SD cards are essentially over-engineered to ensure an acceptable level of data retention. They also contain firmware that can, for example, change the visible available space on the card without changing the actual available space. This means you could sell a 2GB card as a 4GB card – your computer wouldn’t notice a difference until it started filling up that fake space. You can, incidentally, check your cards with this tool.

Here’s the worse news: because these cards contain firmware, this firmware can be updated. Huang reports that most manufacturers leave this update feature unsecured. In other words, don’t ever assume a Flash device is empty after you wipe its contents. For example, the card could make a copy of the contents in a hidden memory area or it could run malicious software while idle.

And the good news: Huang also notes that these cards could be reprogrammed to become Arduino-esque open source microcontroller and memory systems. “An Arduino, with its 8-bit 16 MHz microcontroller, will set you back around $20. A microSD card with several gigabytes of memory and a microcontroller with several times the performance could be purchased for a fraction of the price,” he writes.

So, in short, destroy your SD cards if you have any dirty info on them and keep your eyes peeled for ultra-small, ultra-fast Arduino hacks.

Read More

This is how Android phones get updated (infographic)

Want to know why it’s taking so long for KitKat to come to your phone? HTC has made an infographic that sheds light on the update process, and it isn’t as simple as you think.

Ever wonder why it seems to take most phones forever to receive a new version of Android? It turns out the update process is a lot more complicated than you’d imagine. HTC has created a fantastic infographic, detailing the anatomy of an Android update, tracing the steps from a pre-announcement PDK all the way to your phone.

According to HTC, there are no fewer than 12 steps necessary to bring an Android update to a carrier-based device. And though it isn’t mentioned in the graphic, a number of those steps involve waiting for approval from the carrier, which makes a lengthy process even longer. You can get your software faster with a Google Play edition device, or an unlocked or developer phone, but even those updates require seven or eight steps respectively.

Seeing this doesn’t take any of the frustration of waiting months for an update, but it does help to put things into perspective. And kudos to HTC for being relatively transparent about the update process, at least as far as its HTC One Series of phones are concerned. The OEM shows which phone are currently running Android 4.4 KitKat, and where other phones are in the update process. It won’t make those updates come any faster, but at least you’ll know you’re not waiting in vain.

Read More

BREAST CANCER SPREADS WHEN TUMORS CAN’T ‘BREATHE’

Lack of oxygen inside a breast cancer tumor can trigger the chain of events that spreads the disease throughout the body, biologists say.

The discovery explains how tumors produce two proteins that transform breast cancer cells from rigid and stationery to mobile and invasive—and may lead to new strategies for interrupting the spread of tumors, the process called metastasis.

“High levels of RhoA and ROCK1 were known to worsen outcomes for breast cancer patients by endowing cancer cells with the ability to move, but the trigger for their production was a mystery,” says Gregg Semenza, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“We now know that the production of these proteins increases dramatically when breast cancer cells are exposed to low-oxygen conditions.”

To move, cancer cells must make many changes to their internal structures, says Semenza. Thin parallel filaments form throughout the cells, allowing them to contract. Cellular “hands” rise up allowing cells to “grab” external surfaces to pull themselves along. The proteins RhoA and ROCK1 are known to be central to the formation of these structures.

The genes that produce RhoA and ROCK1 are known to be turned on at high levels in metastatic breast cancers. In a few cases, those increased levels can be traced back to a genetic error in a protein that controls them, but not in most. This led Semenza to search for another cause for the high levels.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that low-oxygen conditions, common in breast cancers, serve as the trigger for increased production of RhoA and ROCK1.

MASTER CONTROL PROTEINS

“As tumor cells multiply, the interior of the tumor begins to run out of oxygen because it isn’t being fed by blood vessels,” Semenza explains. “The lack of oxygen activates the hypoxia-inducible factors, which are master control proteins that switch on many genes that help cells adapt to the scarcity of oxygen.”

While that response is essential for life in normal cells, hypoxia-inducible factors also turn on genes that help cancer cells escape from the oxygen-starved tumor by invading blood vessels, through which they spread to other parts of the body.

Daniele Gilkes, a postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the report, analyzed human metastatic breast cancer cells grown in low oxygen conditions in the laboratory. She found that the cells were much more mobile in the presence of low levels of oxygen than at physiologically normal levels. They had three times as many filaments and many more “hands” per cell.

When the hypoxia-inducible factor protein levels were knocked down, though, the tumor cells hardly moved at all. The numbers of filaments and “hands” in the cells and their ability to contract were also decreased.

PREVENTING METASTASES

When Gilkes measured the levels of the RhoA and ROCK1 proteins, she saw a big increase in the levels of both proteins in cells grown in low oxygen.

When the breast cancer cells were modified to knock down the amount of hypoxia-inducible factors, however, the levels of RhoA and ROCK1 decreased, indicating a direct relationship between the two sets of proteins. Further experiments confirmed that hypoxia-inducible factors actually bind to the RhoA and ROCK1 genes to turn them on.

The team then took advantage of a database that allowed them to check whether having RhoA and ROCK1 genes turned on in breast cancer cells affected patient survival. They found that breast cancer patients with high levels of RhoA or ROCK1, and especially those with high levels of both, were much more likely to die of breast cancer than those with low levels.

“We have successfully decreased the mobility of breast cancer cells in the lab by using genetic tricks to knock the hypoxia-inducible factors down,” Gilkes says.

“Now that we understand the mechanism at play, we hope that clinical trials will be performed to test whether drugs that inhibit hypoxia-inducible factors will have the double effect of blocking production of RhoA and ROCK1 and preventing metastases in women with breast cancer.”

The National Cancer Institute, Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering, the American Cancer Society, and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation supported the research.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Read More

Why 'Cyber Security' Is Becoming A Huge Deal

In the early ages of the Internet, the major problems related to its security were related to viruses that spread across the Web. About 50 years after the initial stages of the Internet development, Cyber Security has become a huge deal. We often get news about privacy breaches and, if there are ways to protect ourselves , it is also important to understand why Cyber Security is so much in vogue.

1) Our privacy level is dropping

With the recent NSA and Edward Snowden scandal , the US Government is under a lot of pressure from foreign countries due to all privacy invasions. One of such countries is Brazil, where the Government is being specially interventive with this subject and is even thinking about building some sort of "intranet", while developing its own (and supposedly safer) services.

This scandal also brought a new discussion worldwide: how safe are our contents online, regardless of the services we use or the pages we see? Consequentially, the demand for "privacy-friendly" services has also grew exponentially.

2) Hackers are becoming more active

You would think that, with all the breakthroughs and developments in computing and Internet, the big companies should secure their costumer's data in a more secure way. They are probably doing it but, at the same time, hackers are also improving their "stealth" skills. In fact, 2013 has been a year with several famous hackings , such as the recent cases involving Target and Adobe .

Such examples raised awareness on how safe the passwords we use really are (not). For example, in the 20 most popular passwords stolen from the Adobe database we found "123456", "123456789", "password", "adobe123" and "12345678" in the top 5 - which is plain ridiculous. Not only we need to improve our personal security, but companies also have to improve the way they store our information.

3) It is an ever-growing business

With all these privacy scandals and personal data thefts, a boom in the cyber security business is to be expected. More and more security companies and services are being developed, with an ever-growing demand. More and more professionals are turning to it, developing skills and new ways to improve our security online.

Now you ask: where the cyber security jobs are ? Other than the big protection companies such as Norton, Panda or Kaspersky, big computer companies such as Microsoft and Google are also wanting to learn new and better ways to protect their services. So, in case you are searching for an area to invest in, both in a personal/professional level or in terms of innovation, this is without a doubt one of the best to bet on.

What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments.

Read More

Why do so many galaxies in space look Flat, Thin and Stretched Out.

Flat. Like a streak across space. Thin. Stretched out. How come whenever we see galaxies, they always look like this?

NASA has the answer. And it has something to do with how a ball of dough becomes pizza.

This image of spiral galaxy ESO 373-8 was captured by NASA with the Hubble telescope. It shows a galaxy that's 25 million light years away but its shape already seems so familiar. Why is that? NASA explains:

Try spinning around in your chair with your legs and arms out. Slowly pull your legs and arms inwards, and tuck them in against your body. Notice anything? You should have started spinning faster. This effect is due to conservation of angular momentum, and it's true for galaxies, too.

This galaxy began life as a humungous ball of slowly rotating gas. Collapsing in upon itself, it spun faster and faster until, like pizza dough spinning and stretching in the air, a disc started to form. Anything that bobbed up and down through this disk was pulled back in line with this motion, creating a streamlined shape.

Angular momentum is always conserved — from a spinning galactic disk 25 million light-years away from us, to any astronomer, or astronomer-wannabe, spinning in an office chair.

Source: NASA

Read More

The Science Behind Fonts And How They Make You Feel

Mikael Cho is the co-founder of ooomf , a network that connects short-term software projects with handpicked developers and designers. Mikael writes about psychology, startups, and product marketing over on the ooomf blog.

I’ve noticed how seemingly small things like font and the spacing between letters can impact how I feel when reading online. The right font choice along with the absence of sidebars and popups makes everything feel easier and better to read. Websites like Medium , Signal vs. Noise, and Zen Habits are like yoga studios for content. Their presentation of content puts me at peace while reading, allowing me to fully focus on the stories without distraction.

The Cracked layout is painful to look at. Your eyes squint and dart, constantly second-guessing what you’re reading now with what you should be reading next. After experimenting with how we display content on the ooomf blog , I discovered there’s an element of science behind why we feel this way toward certain typefaces and layouts.

How we read:

When we read, our eyes follow a natural pattern called a Scan Path.

We break sentences up into scans (saccades) and pauses (fixations). Here’s the Scan Path for a typical reader : Your eyes typically move across a page for between 7 to 9 letters before needing to pause to process what you’re reading. As you scan a sentence, no useful visual processing is happening in your brain. Visual processing is completely dependent upon the information taken in when you pause.

So why does this matter? Understanding the way we read is important for designing how words look because you can directly impact someone’s connection to your writing with the right font and layout.

Why the right font layout makes you feel good:

When I set out to write this post, I wasn’t sure I’d find scientific backing for why we feel a certain way toward certain fonts. I thought choosing font was mostly art, with a sprinkle of science.

That was until I came across a study by psychologist Kevin Larson. Larson has spent his career researching typefaces and recently conducted a landmark study at MIT about how font and layout affect our emotions.

In the study, 20 volunteers – half men and half women – were separated into two groups. Each group was shown a separate version of The New Yorker – one where the image placement, font, and layout were designed well and one where the layout was designed poorly:

The researchers found that readers felt bad while reading the poorly designed layout. Sometimes, this feeling would be expressed physically with a frown.

The corrugator supercilii facial muscles that help produce a frown have been linked to the amygdala , an area of your brain responsible for emotion.

Meanwhile, the participants who read content from the good reading layout, felt like it took less time to read and felt better.

People exposed to the well-designed layout were found to have higher cognitive focus, more efficient mental processes, and a stronger sense of clarity.

The researchers concluded that well- designed reading environments don’t necessarily help you understand what you’re reading better, but they do make you feel good, causing you to feel inspired and more likely to take action.

Culture impacts your preference for fonts

One explanation for why some fonts make you feel a certain way is because of deep links in culture.

For instance, Courier fonts were designed to resemble old memos written on type writers: Many people relate Helvetica with the US Government because it’s used in tax forms.

These associations are difficult to remove and should be considered when deciding on a font choice. Here’s how Bank of America’s website would look with the Impact font associated with News headlines:

Original Bank of America website: Bank of America website with Impact font (associated with newspaper headlines): When the fonts are changed to Impact, Bank of America doesn’t exactly seem trustworthy.

Because fonts are designed by humans, there is usually some meaning attached to them. You don’t want to choose a font that is easily associated with something in our culture that’s markedly different than the vibe you’re trying to give off.

How to design better content

The quality of your content is the most important thing but how you present that content by choosing the right font and layout still has it’s place.

As French poet Paul Claudel put it, “The secret of type is that it speaks.”

So how can you design your words to help elicit positive feelings in people? Here’s a few techniques from typography experts that you might find useful:

1. Choose an anchor font

Type designer Jessica Hische recommends first selecting a typeface for the content that is most prevalent in your project (most likely your body copy).

This will be the typeface that you base your other font decisions on like headlines and subheads.

There’s four main categories of fonts to choose from:

Serif Fonts – Letters with short lines coming off the edges. Viewed as more formal and traditional. Best suited for print.

Sans-serif Fonts – Letters without serifs. Viewed as informal and playful. Best suited for digital.

Script Fonts – Resembles handwriting and often used in formal invitations. Not ideal for body copy.

Decorative Fonts – Informal fonts viewed as original. Best suited for headlines but not body copy.

For reading on the Web, it’s best to stay away from script or decorative typefaces. Most Script and Decorative fonts have low legibility which slows down your reading because you are busy trying to figure out what letters are.

You don’t want your readers asking, “was that an ‘a’ or an ‘e’” every word.

If you’re scrunching your eyes trying to figure out a word that’s a signal that your brain is dedicating unnecessary energy to identifying words.

Decorative typefaces should be used for content that is meant to be seen at a glance, like in a logo, rather than read as multiple paragraphs in body text.

When choosing a font for body text, it’s usually best to stick with a Serif font or Sans-serif font.

Some typography

experts recommend sans-serif fonts for reading online because the quality of screen resolutions is less than in print. But, as screen resolutions dramatically improve, Serif fonts are becoming easier to read on the Web. Content-heavy websites like Medium use a Serif font (probably to give off the vibe of a print editorial).

The most important thing with choosing a font is to make sure the letters are easily decipherable from one another so your readers don’t have to spend precious mental energy identifying letters.

2. Pick a font size bigger than 12pt

In 1929, a study was conducted called the “Hygiene of reading.” One thing researchers were trying to determine was which font size would be best for reading. The study looked at 6pt, 8pt, 10pt, 12pt, and 14pt type sizes.

The researchers concluded that a font size of 10pt font is the most efficient for reading but a lot has changed in how we consume content today compared to the 1920s.

However, as more reading shifts to digital and screen resolutions improve, the way we read content is changing. Many designers mention that 16pt font is the new 12pt font. A recent study has also shown that larger font sizes can elicit a stronger emotional connection.

Medium has one of my favorite reading environments online and they use a 22pt font size. Several of my other favorite websites have adopted a font size over 20pt for their content:

Medium – 22pt
37Signals: Signal vs. Noise – 22pt
Zen Habits – 21pt

While having a huge font over 30pt most likely wouldn’t make sense, many blogs have font in the 10pt-12pt range. Try increasing your font size. If you’re using 12pt font, try increasing to 16pt font. If you’re using 18pt font increase to 22pt.

You can feel the difference.

3. Watch your line length

The line length is how far your sentences stretch across the page. The ideal line length should be between about 50 to 75 characters.

If the line length is too short, your reader’s rhythm will break because their eyes must travel back to the left of the page too often.

A line length that is too long makes it hard to find where lines of text start and end. It can make it difficult for your reader to get to the next line without accidentally jumping to the wrong place.

Research shows that your subconscious mind gets a boost of energy when jumping to a new line (as long as it doesn’t happen too often) but this energy dwindles as you read over the duration of the line.

Here’s the line lengths from the sites mentioned above:

Medium – 75 characters
37Signals: Signal vs. Noise – 76 characters
Zen Habits – 78 characters

4. Mind your spacing

Adequate spacing between letters is important for your readers to be able to move through sentences fluidly. The tighter your letters are together, the harder it is for people to identify the shapes that make up different letterforms.

Take a look at another example from Jessica Hische of the readability of Helvetica versus Avenir. Hische recommends Avenir because of its more open spacing:

Proper spacing makes your readers feel good. Here’s 5 recommended font combinations from Google Web Fonts that have good spacing for reading long blocks of content.

I decided to put these tips into practice with our ooomf email newsletter campaign. Here’s a comparison between our original campaign and our new design:

By changing the font and increasing it’s size, our email content felt much better.

Packaging content the right way is important and knowing why we feel the way we do about the look of content will hopefully help next time you design content for a project. As Aarron Walter, author of Designing for Emotion , writes,

“People will forgive shortcomings, follow your lead, and sing your praises if you reward them with positive emotion.”

It’s important to remember that while there is a science connected to how your words are designed, no amount of good design can save bad content. Write well first. Design well second.

Read More