Source: http://www.popularmechanics.compop-promo-player-html-123112?src=rss
rett syndrome where the wild things are josh smith birdsong teresa giudice atlanta hawks flyers
Monday, December 31, 2012
wise self improvement | self improvement made easy: In Your Role ...
In your area of leadership how do cope with vital issue of forgiveness? How do you forgive people who have messed up your programme or let you down or hurt you in some specific way?
The best way to learn something well is to learn from an expert. Jesus Christ is best and finest and highest expert there is on any topic of leadership and especially forgiveness. After all, this was the main reason for His coming into the world at Bethlehem.
In my recent reading and study of Matthew Chapters 5 and 6 in the Sermon on the Mount, we learn how this 'expert' trained and prepared men for leadership
Jesus assumed His disciples would give and fast and pray. The Jewish people prayed regularly but in many instances it had degenerated into what was nothing more than words. There was no depth.
Jesus teaches His disciples to pray with sincerity, not like the hypocrites, who were doing it to be seen and for show.
Jesus is not criticising public worship or corporate prayer, but He is warning against praying for the wrong motives, when men might be hoping that others will be impressed by our spirituality.
There is also the sense of privacy, or even secrecy, where there will no distractions, and no admirers, and where in our private praying we will not be disturbed. Jesus mentions going into your room and closing the door. It is the word for the store room where treasures are kept. That is where we have that privilege of encountering and meeting with our Creator God.
And be simple. Hypocrites prayed with wrong motives and pagans prayed in a wrong manner. It is all there in verses 7 and 8.
Jesus was not against repetition, but He was against mindless repetition. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus repeated the same prayer three times.
Father - Pater - we are to remember we are speaking to Almighty God.
We honour His Name, and we pray for His Kingdom to come, and for His reign and rule to transform our world, in the political arena, and in the economic, banking, financial, and family world. If leaders prayed more think of how some of the social injustices might be corrected, and how the atmosphere in our schools, and even in international situations, might be transformed. This is the task of leaders no matter where they are leading.
We pray for His will, and that will is Good, Pleasing, and Perfect. We read of this in the opening words of Romans Chapter 12. Most people do not realise that the Will of God is good, pleasing and perfect.
There is almost a realising of brokenness when we pray for forgiveness.
There is no hardness, nor harshness towards others, if we come in need for forgiveness.
We come in need in repentance and in humility. There is a seriousness.
Just give me the bread for today - no - we need the forgiveness too. Sin can keep a man away from asking God for forgiveness.
Leaders need Provision and Forgiveness and now Protection. We need to be protected from the evil one, throughout our every path of life.
Do not let us be so tempted that we will be overwhelmed.
Deliver us from the one who would infect us with his evil and rip Your Truth from our minds.
Deliver us from the one who is out to destroy us.
The best thing to do with the Lord's Prayer is to pray it.
If you are a leader pray for your people. Pray for you business. Watch your language and attitude. Be authoritative but kind and gracious and aware of the needs of those around you and watch productivity increase as the workplace atmosphere is changed and transformed, for the better.
Source: http://wiseselfimprovement.blogspot.com/2012/12/in-your-role-as-leader-watch-your.html
jimmy fallon nick collins dave matthews ambien wwdc heart attack grill madden 13 cover
Sunday, December 30, 2012
On fatal Clay helicopter crash anniversary, families still grieving ... - Florida Times-Union
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
alabama lsu bcs national championship bcs championship bcs national championship 2012 university of alabama national championship game bcs game
Psychopathy's Bright Side: Kevin Dutton on the Benefits of Being a Bit Psychopathic (Part 2)
Kevin Dutton is a psychologist at the University of Oxford. He talks about his latest book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.
More Science Talk
Subscribe via iTunes
Kevin Dutton is a psychologist at the University of Oxford. He talks about his latest book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.??????
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=c9cdec592c88fb74028077689f07c1e6
boardwalk empire iOS 6 Release Date Canelo Alvarez Chavez vs Martinez Yunel Escobar Irish Daily Star seth macfarlane
New NHL offer leads to scheduled talks with union
FILE - This Aug. 14, 2012, file photo shows NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, left, and Bill Daly, deputy commissioner and chief legal officer, following collective bargaining talks in Toronto. The NHL is set to get back to the bargaining table Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012, with the locked-out players? association after a new contract offer from the league broke the ice between the fighting sides. "We delivered to the union a new, comprehensive proposal for a successor CBA," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement Friday, Dec. 28. "We are not prepared to discuss the details of our proposal at this time." (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Chris Young, File)
FILE - This Aug. 14, 2012, file photo shows NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, left, and Bill Daly, deputy commissioner and chief legal officer, following collective bargaining talks in Toronto. The NHL is set to get back to the bargaining table Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012, with the locked-out players? association after a new contract offer from the league broke the ice between the fighting sides. "We delivered to the union a new, comprehensive proposal for a successor CBA," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement Friday, Dec. 28. "We are not prepared to discuss the details of our proposal at this time." (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Chris Young, File)
FILE -In this Sept. 25, 2012 file photo, an empty locker room is shown during the NHL labor lockout at the First Niagara Center, home of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team, in Buffalo, N.Y. The NHL lockout that's already wiped out the first three months of the season is taking its toll on Buffalo businesses. And it's no different in many of the NHL's 29 other markets. (AP Photo/David Duprey, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 25, 2012 file photo, a nearly empty hockey stick rack in the locker room of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team is shown during the NHL labor lockout in Buffalo, N.Y. The NHL lockout that's already wiped out the first three months of the season is taking its toll on Buffalo businesses. And it's no different in many of the NHL's 29 other markets. (AP Photo/David Duprey, File)
NEW YORK (AP) ? The NHL is set to get back to the bargaining table with the locked-out players' association after a new contract offer from the league broke the ice between the sides.
Those talks are scheduled to take place Sunday in New York, nearly one month after negotiations broke down and pushed the sides further apart.
Without fanfare, the NHL said Friday that it made a new proposal to the union on Thursday in an effort to end the lockout and save the delayed hockey season.
The players' association was still reviewing the document, which was several hundred pages in length, on Friday night and planned to speak to the NHL by telephone on Saturday, and then get together with the league on Sunday.
The sides haven't met since a second round of talks with a federal mediator ended on Dec. 13. They haven't had formal negotiations alone since the first week of the month.
Time is running out to come to an agreement and then play a season of at least 48 games ? a number the NHL set as a minimum. The league would like to reach a deal by Jan. 11, start training camp the following day, and open the season by Jan. 19.
"We delivered to the union a new, comprehensive proposal for a successor CBA," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement Friday. "We are not prepared to discuss the details of our proposal at this time. We are hopeful that once the union's staff and negotiating committee have had an opportunity to thoroughly review and consider our new proposal, they will share it with the players. We want to be back on the ice as soon as possible."
The players' association's executive board and negotiating committee went over the proposal during an internal conference call on Friday, the 104th day of the lockout.
A person familiar with key points of the offer told The Associated Press that the league proposed raising the limit of individual free-agent contracts to six years from five ? seven years if a team re-signs its own player; raising the salary variance from one year to another to 10 percent, up from 5 percent; and one compliance buyout for the 2013-14 season that wouldn't count toward a team's salary cap but would be included in the overall players' share of income.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the new offer were not being discussed publicly.
The NHL maintained the deferred payment amount of $300 million it offered in its previous proposal, an increase from an earlier offer of $211 million. The initial $300 million offer was pulled off the table after negotiations broke off earlier this month.
The latest proposal is for 10 years, running through the 2021-22 season, with both sides having the right to opt out after eight years.
The lockout has reached a critical stage, threatening to shut down a season for the second time in eight years. All games through Jan. 14, plus the Winter Classic and the All-Star game already have been called off. The next round of cuts could claim the entire schedule.
The NHL is the only North American professional sports league to cancel a season because of a labor dispute, losing the 2004-05 campaign to a lockout. A 48-game season was played in 1995 after a lockout stretched into January.
It is still possible this dispute could eventually be settled in the courts if the sides can't reach a deal on their own.
The NHL filed a class-action suit this month in U.S. District Court in New York in an effort to show its lockout is legal. In a separate move, the league filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, contending bad-faith bargaining by the union.
Those moves were made because the players' association took steps toward potentially filing a "disclaimer of interest," which would dissolve the union and make it a trade association. That would allow players to file antitrust lawsuits against the NHL.
Union members voted overwhelmingly to give their board the power to file the disclaimer by Jan. 2. If that deadline passes, another authorization vote could be held to approve a later filing.
Negotiations between the NHL and the union have been at a standstill since talks ended Dec. 6. One week later, the sides convened again with federal mediators in New Jersey, but still couldn't make progress.
The sides have been unable to reach agreement on the length of the new deal, the length of individual player contracts, and the variance in salary from year to year. The NHL is looking for an even split of revenues with players.
The NHL pulled all previous offers off the table after the union didn't agree to terms on its last proposal without negotiation.
Associated Pressbrandon jacobs brian dawkins emma roberts north korea news north korea news giuliana and bill giuliana and bill
How To Buy Or Sell Commercial Real Estate | Overseas Property
Although industrial and commercial properties are constantly appearing on the market, they don?t get preferential market listings the same way regular homes do. You need to know how to search to find commercial properties, and this article can provide you with the best way to do this.
To ensure that you receive quality service when searching for commercial property, find a company which cares for their customers. If you don?t, you might wind up suffering over the long haul for an otherwise preventable error.
Social media is an important tool for keeping brokers and investors appraised of your services. After completion of a transaction, you should work to cultivate an online presence.
Look for the biggest buildings within your price range when you?re considering commercial investments. Managing five units might seem far less complicated than fifty, but the work that you put into financing and setting up lease agreements will be the same no matter how many units you manage. Both require commercial financing, and a larger building will cost less to finance per unit.
Commercial loans require the borrower to order the appraisal. Banks do not allow the appraisal to be used at a later time. Therefore, to protect yourself and keep your commercial loan on track, order the appraisal yourself.
Before you purchase a property, talk to a tax advisor. Such an expert can inform you of what a building will cost you, and the tax impact of your income from a property. Utilize the advice given to you by your tax adviser in order to locate a property in an area where your investment will incur the least taxes.
Bear in mind that, with any newly written lease, rent considerations and strategies will be essential to the future of your investment. Have an exact rental amount in mind before you discuss your property with a potential tenant. This can help you keep targets and set a benchmark for your investment.
Look for the motivated sellers. Find sellers, particularly those that want to get rid of a property below the market?s value. Until you find a deal in real estate by a very motivated seller, nothing in real estate can happen.
Your new space may need improvements before you can occupy it. The changes don?t have to be extensive. You may just want to repaint or rearrange furniture. The renovation project can get larger and could consist of knocking down, moving or building walls to make the floor plan usable. Negotiate payment for these improvements ahead of time, and attempt to have the landlord pay at least part of the costs.
You should try to understand the NOI metric. To maximize your success, keep your numbers in the positive values.
Check out the state of the environment around your property. You are ultimately responsible for disposing of environmental waste from your building. Are you considering buying a property within a flood zone, which can effect your insurance, storm water drainage and possibly impede future growth potential? Think twice. Call some agencies that assess the enviornment and find out what is up with the area your property is in.
Know what your goals are when you are purchasing commercial property. One important thing to have clear up front is whether you are thinking of using it for your personal business or if you, instead, want to lease out the property. As you prepare to seek out a new commercial property, you should first set very specific goals and requirements.
When considering properties for your investment portfolio, abide by the principles of feng shui. A space that is open and not cluttered is one of the principles id feng shui that buyers like.
Before choosing a real estate broker, you need to know how they negotiate. Inquire into their specific credentials and training; do not be afraid to ask for references. You should also make sure that they use ethical methods and know how to get the best deals. It is also completely appropriate to seek examples of their past efforts to strike real estate deals for other clients.
Be sure you position yourself well when it comes to negotiating any lease for commercial real estate, you want to do things like decrease what could be considered as a default event. Decreasing these will prevent tenants from performing a default on the lease after your negotiations. A default is frustrating and costly.
Buying a larger property is great for a variety of reasons. Having more units in the same property gives you more profit potential without much more work. Properties with fewer than ten units are often harder to sell, since many investors believe that more units mean more money.
You should put an ad out for your commercial real estate when it is on sale, do it locally and out of town. Do not assume that only local investors will be interested. There are many private investors who buy property outside of their area if the price is affordable.
There are differences between brokers in the commercial real estate field. A full service broker works with both the tenants and the landlord. Some agents represent only the tenants. If you intend to rent rather than buy, retaining the services of the latter type of broker may benefit you, as tenant-only brokers know what works when representing tenants.
Visit the commercial real estate properties that you are interested in. It?s a good idea to hire a building contractor to come with you and do on-the-spot inspections of properties you are considering. Start the negotiations, and make the necessary preliminary proposals. Carefully look over any counteroffers you receive before you make your final choice, whatever that may be.
If there is more then one property you are considering, acquire the house survey checklist for each one during your site tour. Accept responses to the initial proposals, but don?t go further than that unless you inform the property owners. Don?t hesitate to let it be known that you are entertaining other options. This may ensure that you get a much more viable deal.
Know what your specific needs are prior to starting your commercial real estate hunt. You should write down the features you are looking for, such as size or settings.
Be sure to negotiate on the fact of what you are, the seller or buyer. Make it clear that you wish to be heard and refuse to accept an unfair price.
When buying rental properties, avoid the difficulties involved with smaller properties. Experienced investors advise buying complexes with over 10 units. No situation is the same as another, and proper reseal should help you reach a knowledgeable decision regarding any purchase.
When you are pursuing an investment in commercial real estate, finding the right type is only the start of the process. Dealing with commercial property takes knowledge and action; therefore, it is very important to learn all you can prior to seeking out your property.
Weigh all of the information available in regards to Property Overseas for Sale. Understand the many facets of Property Overseas for Sale by slowly building up your knowledge of the subject. After you have all the pertinent information, you will be able proceed with any plans you might have.
Source: http://www.davidstanleyredfern.com/general-news/how-to-buy-or-sell-commercial-real-estate-3
lottery ticket megga millions what is autism the giver march 30 rimm pauly d project
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Japan's new government sticks to three-year nuclear safety goal
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's new government said on Friday it hoped to stick to a three year deadline to decide whether to restart all nuclear reactors after safety checks, despite the country's newly formed nuclear regulator saying the deadline was impossible to meet.
Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, who is also responsible for energy policy, said reactors would be restarted as units received the all-clear from the atomic regulator.
"We will rely on the NRA (Nuclear Regulation Authority) to judge safety from an expert point of view and will not restart ones as long as safety is not confirmed," Motegi told a news conference.
NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka said in an interview in the Asahi newspaper on Friday that completing safety checks within the three-year timeframe set by new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be impossible to meet.
All but two of Japan's 50 reactors remain switched off after an earthquake and tsunami caused meltdowns and explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi station in northeastern Japan in March 2011.
Atomic energy supplied about 30 percent of Japan's needs before Fukushima, but since the disaster support for nuclear power has plummeted.
Abe's government, which was installed on Wednesday after a landslide election victory, has said it will take 10 years to decide on the best energy mix for Japan.
"We have not decided on the policy of going zero-nuclear by the 2030s," Motegi said, referring to the previous government's policy.
An order from former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to restart the two reactors now operating in western Japan prompted the biggest demonstrations in the country in decades and contributed to his election defeat this month.
The NRA, which still needs to draft new rules on safety, has signaled it will take a tougher stance on nuclear stations situated over possible seismic fault lines and prevent risky plants from restarting.
If a review of a faultline under the operating reactors at the Ohi station shows it is active, the NRA will request a halt for the units, operated by Kansai Electric Power Co, Tanaka said in the interview.
A panel of NRA experts this week confirmed its assessment that there are active faults under the Higashi Dori nuclear plant in northern Japan, which is owned by Tohoku Electric Power Co. The assessment means the NRA is unlikely allow the plant to restart.
(Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Aaron Sheldrick and Michael Perry)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japans-government-sticks-three-nuclear-safety-goal-033702883--business.html
words with friends words with friends phlebotomy dog show best in show bret michaels bret michaels
Senator McConnell says still time to avert "fiscal cliff"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican in the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, on Thursday said that there is still time to avert the "fiscal cliff" and a "wholly preventable economic crisis."
In a speech on the Senate floor McConnell warned, however, that Senate Republicans "aren't about to write a blank check for anything Senate Democrats put forward just because we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff."
Lawmakers and President Barack Obama are up against a December 31 deadline for finding a way to stop $600 billion in potentially harmful tax hikes and spending cuts from taking effect with an alternative deficit-reduction formula.
(Reporting By Richard Cowan and David Lawder; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senator-mcconnell-says-still-time-avert-fiscal-cliff-211035219--business.html
wisconsin recall wisconsin recall doris day buffalo sabres texas news kim mulkey sarah palin today show
Balancing Life and Art: Stephen King & Bret Lott Advise - Hieropraxis
With a world of New Year?s Resolutions waiting on the threshold of their public debuts, what is it that writers, or artists of any kind, resolve to do?
- Type no less than 10K words a day?
- Sit at the desk, laptop open, no internet, no phone, no moving, two hours a day, six days a week?
- Read at least ten great books a month?
- Publish/sell/produce X-number of brilliant pieces by the end of the year?
Fiction writer and professor Aimee Bender said she once tied her ankle to a chair leg with a scarf?more as a symbol than an actual restraint?and she left it there till her self mandated, two-hour writing slot was over.
For the practicing writer/artist, such resolutions can be great. At some point, all these self-imposed dictates are almost necessary (at least for us mere mortals). Just as it requires athletes hours of training certain muscles, respiratory systems and mental capacities for endurance, so too it takes artists a great deal of time and effort and focus and practice and reading and exercising and talking shop with other artists to get good at what they do.
But there?s another aspect to the writing life?with its formidable demands, its often zero outside support (sometimes even antagonism), and its infrequent tangible payback?that bears resolving to do something about.
A combination of factors brought me to this topic. One was a recent, time-sensitive push to revise a work of my own spanning multiple hundreds of pages. The effort looked something like this.
Photo by Garret Johnson
Other factors: First, a reading I assigned to my creative writing students at Houston Baptist University. And second, revisiting a book of reflections on the craft from one of the world?s bestselling novelists.
Bret Lott?s essay, ?Toward Humility,? from his book, Before We Get Started, won Pushcart Prize and Best Spiritual Writing 2001 awards. And Stephen King?s book, On Writing, is a raucous journey through the author?s own experience that?s been lauded as a timeless work on the craft and life of writing.
Both books end with powerful images about the place of art (and the work?of producing art) in an artist?s life. Both come to conclusions that ask us to consider what art is truly for, and how it can sometimes dominate an artist?s life to the detriment of family, etc. It?s an interesting similarity to find between these two very different authors, and it seems to be essentially a message about idolatry. But the message is very?maybe surprisingly?encouraging.
At the end of the first major section of On Writing, a section titled ?C.V.,? King describes a desk he bought:
For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room?no more child?s desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole . . . For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship?s captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere. A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put in a living-room suite where it had been, picking out the [furniture] and a nice Turkish rug with my wife?s help . . . My kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of crusts behind when they moved on, but I didn?t care. They came, they seemed to enjoy being with me, and I know I enjoyed being with them. I got another desk?it?s handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave. That eave is very like the one I slept under in Durham . . . I?m sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover . . . and now I?m going to tell you as much as I can about the job . . . It start?s with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn?t in the middle of the room. Life isn?t a support-system for art. It?s the other way around.
Lott?s discussion of what seems in the same ballpark with King?s idea is just as memorable. After reflecting on some of the most illustrious successes of his career?eight books, numerous awards, an appearance on Oprah?he tells of an afternoon in a lawn chair next to his wife, at one of his sons? soccer games.
He had recently been informed by his agent that the new book he?d spent years working on is not working. As he repeatedly?and much too loudly?yells out at his son for lagging on the field, causing more heads than just his son?s to turn, he wonders how it?s happened. He?d been so confident when he set out to write this one. Look at all he?d done?over decades by this point. His older son sits nearby and, embarrassed by his father?s yelling, shuffles off with a friend. And then, after more yelling across the field??Get in the GAME!??his wife stands, picks up her own lawn chair, and moves it fifty feet away from him.
As he sits there, steaming, it?s his wife?s getting up and moving her chair that prompts a realization about both himself and his art:
This is no signal to you of the embarrassment you are. It is nothing cryptic you are meant to decipher. It is her truth and yours both, big and dumb: you are a fool. And it is because of a book. A stupid book. There are more important things, she is shouting to you in settling her lawn chair that far from you. There are more important things than a book.
Lott?s discovery, much like King?s, is that when the writing, the art, itself takes center stage?true center stage, occupying the throne, so to speak?of his life, then life itself suffers. It suffers to the point of being decidedly worse for the attempts at artistic creation. And most significantly, not merely?his life. More than that, elsewhere in the essay Lott,?also like King,?notices that the art itself suffers. In fact, King and Lott both seem to be saying: Art always suffers when the artist thinks it?the art?is the whole idea. It?s not the whole idea. It?s meant to give people a glimpse, a taste, a beautiful or funny or poignant vista of the whole idea.
Both writers seem to be getting at?though not in so many words?the idea of idolatry: some good and worthy thing coming to occupy the place of ultimate things.
I had to keep asking myself, as I was working on my own project that was, on the one hand, exhilarating, exciting, energizing?despite being sleep-depriving?and other hand exhausting, extremely complicated, long: How much is too much? How do I take a break when I see, very clearly, X amount of things left to do, and I see, very clearly, exactly how I need to address them, all of which procedures take a certain amount of time? How often do I stop? For what? Just to eat? I took one evening off to pop a champagne cork and sit on the couch with my wife, listening to Christmas music with a fire and talking and laughing about friends, family, work. Did I do enough? I don?t know. These are tough questions to answer. They are, however, still very important ones to ask, even if no clear answer?s ever found.
It reminds me of a line from an old prayer called, ?Christlikeness??out of a wonderfully encouraging, reflection-inducing collection titled, The Valley of Vision: ?Teach the me the happy art of attending to things temporal with a mind intent on things eternal.?
Happy art indeed. It?s a difficult balance to strike.
By trying to reorient my thinking along these lines, I by no means want to imply that working hard?really hard?or spending long hours on whatever labor one has been called to is a bad thing. Quite the reverse. Rather, this?like all struggles with idolatry?is a matter of the heart, where its treasure is.
So as the New Year rings in, aside from resolving to work hard and accomplish much, I resolve to heed the wisdom of these two images: a massive oak slab being replaced by a beautiful, small desk in a corner, and a wife standing up to move her chair fifty feet away from a husband who?s forgotten what?s important. What life?and art?is all about.
Source: http://www.hieropraxis.com/2012/12/balancing-life-and-art-advice-from-two-novelists/
alabama lsu bcs national championship bcs championship bcs national championship 2012 university of alabama national championship game bcs game
Friday, December 28, 2012
Baby Boom! Meet Hollywood's Arrivals of 2012
Blue Ivy, Maxwell, Lorenzo, oh my! Check out the celebrity babies who stole the scene this year
kathy griffin road conditions newt gingrich wives at last al green gina carano burger king delivery
Westbrook rallies Thunder past Mavericks 111-105
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) ? Kevin Durant scored 40 points while Russell Westbrook added eight of his 16 points in overtime to help the Oklahoma City Thunder beat Dallas 111-105 on Thursday night for their 11th straight win at home.
Serge Ibaka added 19 points and matched his season high with 17 rebounds as Oklahoma City charged back from 10 points down in the final 7:17 of regulation and found a way to win after losing back-to-back games for the first time this season.
Darren Collison scored a season-best 32 points for Dallas. Dirk Nowitzki scored nine points in his second game back after offseason knee surgery, showing some rust down the stretch.
Westbrook turned the game around with six straight points after the Mavs had gone up 104-101 on Chris Kaman's bucket inside midway through overtime. Westbrook had a layup, hit a jumper over Nowitzki and then made a leaping steal of an O.J. Mayo pass that led to a fast-break layup. The sequence left Mavericks owner Mark Cuban shaking his head in his seat near the team's bench.
Mayo was fouled on Dallas' next possession while shooting a 3-pointer, but he missed the first two foul shots with 33 seconds left as the sold-out Chesapeake Energy Arena crowd roared louder with each miss.
Westbrook hit two free throws after that to put it away ? this time for good.
Collison came up with a desperation 3-pointer at the buzzer to send it to overtime after Dallas had given up the lead for the first time since the opening 4 minutes.
Shawn Marion inbounded from the sideline with 2.2 seconds left, collected a deflected pass and headed toward the lane before kicking the ball out to Collison, who caught the ball in mid-air and heaved it toward the basket for the tying 3 from the right wing.
Replays showed he released the shot with one-tenth of a second left on the clock.
Still working his way back into shape, Nowitzki proved to be a liability during Oklahoma City's 17-6 fourth-quarter comeback. He sagged off of Durant far enough that the three-time NBA scoring champion could drill a 3-pointer from the left wing, then was trailing a play when O.J. Mayo backed into him and lost the ball to set up Durant's fast-break dunk and three-point play.
Durant's right-handed hook shot from the right block gave Oklahoma City its first lead since the opening 4 minutes at 96-95 with 1:57 to play.
Oklahoma City came up empty on three chances to extend the lead ? after back-to-back offensive rebounds by Ibaka ? but Durant hit a pair of free throws with 3.7 seconds left after Westbrook stole the ball from Mayo and dove to cover it while calling timeout.
In overtime, Carlisle pulled Nowitzki in favor of Marion for defense at one point.
Kaman ended up with 17 poitns and Marion chipped in 14 points and nine rebounds for the Mavericks, who were swept on a treacherous three-game road trip that featured stops at West contenders Memphis, San Antonio and Oklahoma City despite getting Nowitzki back. Dallas has lost seven of eight.
Dallas had been 11-1 this season when leading at the beginning of the fourth quarter and 11-2 after holding a 10-point lead or larger. Mayo, who had been averaging 20.6 points, scored only four and has 29 total over the last four games.
Oklahoma City had won 12 in a row before losing back-to-back games at Minnesota and Miami.
The franchises have grown quite familiar over the past two seasons, with each team taking a turn knocking the other out of the playoffs ? in addition to their proximity along Interstate 35 and a handful of preseason matchups to go with the usual regular-season meetings. Dallas eliminated Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals before winning the NBA title in 2011 and the Thunder swept the Mavs in the first round last season.
Other than Nowitzki and coach Rick Carlisle, there aren't many remnants of those Dallas teams left. An offseason overhaul left Marion, Vince Carter, Brandan Wright and Rodrigue Beaubois as the only Mavericks remaining from those clashes.
Collison scored 14 points with a blend of 3-pointers, layups, a jumper and a pair of free throws as Dallas got out to a 29-19 first-quarter lead. Dominique Jones drove for right-handed power slam against 7-foot-3 center Hasheem Thabeet and Jae Crowder converted a four-point play as the Mavs fought of an Oklahoma City comeback to lead 43-32.
The Thunder wiped nearly all of the deficit away, limiting Dallas to just one bucket over the final 6 minutes of the first half to draw within 45-43 after Ibaka missed a pair of free throws, then came soaring in to dunk the rebound off of Durant's second-chance jumper.
The Mavericks responded right away after their 11-point advantage had been erased, getting a pair of layups from Collison during a string of 10 straight points early in the third quarter. Kaman's jumper from the right side made it 55-45 with 9:05 left in the period.
Notes: Beaubois, a reserve guard for the Mavericks, did not play because of an illness. Carlisle said he hoped to have Beaubois back for Friday's home game against Denver. ... Reggie Jackson took Eric Maynor's minutes as Westbrook's backup at point guard for the second straight game. ... Durant remained first among Western Conference frontcourt players in NBA All-Star balloting returns announced Thursday. Westbrook stayed in fifth among guards. Nowitzki, who has made 11 straight All-Star games, was 13th in the frontcourt. ... Ibaka had a double-double by halftime for the first time in his career.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/westbrook-rallies-thunder-past-mavericks-111-105-041241047--spt.html
elon musk fox mole manson bubba watson recent earthquakes fbi most wanted list stuttering
Blades and clades: Why some grasses got better photosynthesis
Dec. 24, 2012 ? Even on the evolutionary time scale of tens of millions of years there is such a thing as being in the right shape at the right time. An anatomical difference in the ability to seize the moment, according to a study led by Brown University biologists, explains why more species in one broad group, or clade, of grasses evolved a more efficient means of photosynthesis than species in another clade did.
Their findings appear this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Biologists refer to the grasses that have evolved this better means of making their food in warm, sunny and dry conditions with the designation "C4." Grasses without that trait are labeled "C3."
What scientists had already known is that while all of the grasses in the BEP and PACMAD clades have the basic metabolic infrastructure to become C4 grasses, the species that have actually done so are entirely in the PACMAD clade. A four-nation group of scientists wondered why that disparity exists.
To find out, Brown postdoctoral researcher and lead author Pascal-Antoine Christin spent two years closely examining the cellular anatomy of 157 living species of BEP and PACMAD grasses. Using genetic data the team also organized the species into their evolutionary tree, which they then used to infer the anatomical traits of ancestral grasses that no longer exist today, a common analytical technique known as ancestral state reconstruction. That allowed them to consider how anatomical differences likely evolved among species over time.
Paradoxically, to understand C4 evolution, the researchers focused on the anatomy of C3 grasses in each clade.
In general what they found was that in the leaves of many PACMAD C3 grasses the veins were closer together, and that the veins themselves were surrounded by larger cells ("bundle sheath" cells) than in BEP C3 grasses. Ultimately PACMAD grasses had a higher ratio of bundle sheath cells to mesophyll cells (cells that fill in the area between veins).
In C4 plants, such an anatomical arrangement facilitates a more efficient transfer and processing of CO2 in the bundle sheath cells when CO2 is in relatively short supply. When temperatures get hot or plants become stressed, they stop taking in as much CO2, creating just such a shortage within the leaf.
So PACMADs as a group had developed an anatomical predisposition to C4 photosynthesis that BEP grasses didn't, said senior author Erika Edwards, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown.
"We found that consistently these PACMAD C3s are very different anatomically than the C3 BEPs," she said. "We think that was the evolutionary stepping stone to C4-like physiology."
When the new leaves turned over
It didn't used to be this way. Back around 60 or so million years ago, BEP and PACMAD grasses were more similar and both headed in the same direction. The distance between the leaf veins in both clades had been growing closer together. But then they started to diverge in a key way. The bundle sheath cells surrounding the veins in BEP grasses started to shrink down while those in PACMAD grasses stayed larger.
For a long time the climate didn't particularly punish or reward either of those directions. But then climate changed, and opportunity knocked, Edwards said. Only PACMAD was near the proverbial door.
"When atmospheric CO2 decreased tens of millions of years after the split of the BEP and PACMAD clades, a combination of shorter [distances between veins] and large [sheath] cells existed only in members of the PACMAD clade, limiting C4 evolution to this lineage," Christin and co-authors wrote in the paper.
The researchers also found that evolution among C4 grasses was anatomically nuanced. Some C4 grasses evolved because of advantageous changes in outer sheath cells, while others saw the improvement in inner sheath cells.
Ultimately, Edwards said, studies like this one show that plant biologists have made important progress in understanding the big picture of when and where important plant traits evolved. That could lead to further advances in both basic science, and perhaps agriculture as well.
"Now that we have this increasingly detailed birds-eye view, we can start to become a more predictive science," she said. "Now we have the raw goods to ask interesting questions about why, for example, one trait evolves 10 times in this region of the tree but never over here. In terms of genetic engineering we're going to be able to provide some useful information to people who want to improve species, such as important crops."
In addition to Christin and Edwards, the paper's other authors at Brown were David Chatelet and Laura Garrison. Other authors were Colin Osborne of the University of Sheffield in the U.K.; J. Travis Columbus of Claremont Graduate University in California; Guillaume Besnard of the Universite Paul Sabatier-Ecole Nationale de Formation Agronomique in Tolouse, France; Trevor Hodkinson of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland; and Maria Vorontsova of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Surrey, U.K.
The National Science Foundation (grants 0920147 and 0843231), the Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship (252568) and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (10LABX-41) supported the research.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brown University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- P.-A. Christin, C. P. Osborne, D. S. Chatelet, J. T. Columbus, G. Besnard, T. R. Hodkinson, L. M. Garrison, M. S. Vorontsova, E. J. Edwards. Anatomical enablers and the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in grasses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216777110
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
indonesia quake stephen strasburg shabazz legion baby found alive in morgue rockies ashley judd
Thursday, December 27, 2012
US consumer confidence falls on fiscal cliff fears
WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. consumer confidence tumbled in December, driven lower by fears of sharp tax increases and government spending cuts set to take effect next week.
The Conference Board said Thursday that its consumer confidence index fell this month to 65.1, down from 71.5 in November. That's second straight decline and the lowest level since August.
The survey showed consumers are slightly more optimistic about current business conditions and hiring. But their outlook for the next six months deteriorated to its lowest level since 2011, the survey showed.
Lynn Franco, the board's director of economic indicators, said the decline in expectations for the next six months is a signal that consumers are worried about the "fiscal cliff." That's the name for the automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that take effect Jan. 1 if the White House and Congress can't reach a budget deal.
Expectations also plunged in August 2011 when a fight over the federal debt limit brought the government to the brink of insolvency, she said.
A separate consumer confidence survey released last week by the University of Michigan fell to a five-month low this month. And reports show the holiday shopping season was the weakest since 2008, when the country was in a deep recession.
Negotiations between President Barack Obama and House Republican leaders on a package to avert the sharp tax increases and spending cuts reached an impasse last week. Obama and congressional lawmakers return to Washington Thursday to resume talks with just days to go before economy goes over the fiscal cliff.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner added pressure to the talks Wednesday by alerting Congress that the government was on track to hit its borrowing limit on Dec. 31. He said Treasury would take "extraordinary measures as authorized by law" to keep the government operating for another couple of months.
Still, he added, uncertainty over the outcome of negotiations over taxes and spending made it difficult to determine how much time those measures would buy.
The Conference Board index has risen from an all-time of 25.3 touched in February 2009. It remains well below the level of 90 that is consistent with a healthy economy. It last reached that point in December 2007, the first month of the Great Recession.
There are signs the economy is improving. The job market is slowly improving and the average number of people filing for unemployment benefits over the past month fell to the lowest level since March 2008.
Home sales are up over the past year and prices are rising, signaling the housing recovery is sustainable. Companies ordered more long-lasting manufactured goods in November. And Americans spent more in November. Consumer spending drives nearly 70 percent of economic growth.
While a short fall over the cliff won't push the economy into recession, most economists expect some tax increases to take effect next year. That could slow growth.
Associated Pressaaron carter black history month did groundhog see his shadow soul train don cornelius rod parsley barry sanders jr nick carter sister
Speedy boson machine could bridge classic and quantum computing
14 hrs.
A new type of machine could rival quantum computers in exceeding the power of classical computers, researchers say.
Quantum computers?rely on the bizarre properties of atoms and the other construction blocks of the universe. The world is a fuzzy place at its very smallest levels ? in this realm where?quantum physics?dominates, things can seemingly exist in two places at once or spin in opposite directions at the same time.
The new computers rely on "boson" particles, and resemble quantum computers, which differ from traditional computers in important ways. Normal computers represent data as ones and zeroes, binary digits known as bits that are expressed by flicking switch-like transistors on or off. Quantum computers, however, use quantum bits, or qubits (pronouced "cue-bits"), that can be on and off at the same time, a state known as "superposition."
This allows the machines to carry out two calculations simultaneously. Quantum physics permits such behavior because it allows for particles that can exist in two places at once or spin in opposite directions at the same time.?[Experiment Demonstrates Possibility of Quantum Internet]
Flash interactive: How quantum computers work
In principle, quantum computers could solve certain problems much faster than can?classical computers, because the quantum machines could run through every possible combination at once. A quantum computer with 300 qubits could run more calculations in an instant than there are atoms in the universe.
However, keeping qubits in superposition is challenging, and the problem grows more difficult as more qubits are involved. As such, building quantum computers that are more powerful than classical computers has proven very difficult.
Now, though, two independent teams of scientists have built a novel kind of device known as a boson-sampling computer. Described as a bridge between classical and quantum computers, these machines also make use of the bizarre nature of quantum physics. Although boson-sampling computers theoretically offer less power than quantum computers are capable of producing, the machines should still, in principle, out-perform classical computers in certain problems.
In addition, a boson-sampling computer does not require qubits. As such, "it's technologically far simpler to create than building a full-scale quantum computer," said researcher Matthew Broome, a quantum physicist at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Boson-sampling computers are actually a specialized kind of quantum computer (which is known more formally as a universal quantum computer).
"The main difference between boson-sampling computers and universal quantum computers is that boson-sampling quantum computers can't solve a universal set of problems like universal quantum computers can," Broome said. "But they are still conjectured to be able to solve problems that would be massively intractable for classical computers. Boson sampling computers are an intermediate model of a quantum computer."
Boson-sampling computers are not based on qubits, but on particles called?bosons. "In our case, we use photons," said researcher Ian Walmsley, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford in England. Photons are the packets of energy that make up light, and are one type of boson.
Gallery: What the heck is a boson?
Broome and Walmsley were in separate groups that each devised a boson-sampling computer, based off concepts first described by theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson at MIT. The computers involve multiple devices that can each generate single photons. The photons are inserted into a network where they can interact with one another. They emerge from outputs equipped with sensors to analyze the particles.
The task of calculating which outputs these photons will emerge from, an operation known as boson sampling, grows well beyond the capabilities of classical computers the more photons are involved. The new computers accurately resolved what paths the photons would take ? three photons with Broome and his colleagues' machine and four in Walmsley and his collaborators' device.
Since boson-sampling computing is in its infancy, it remains uncertain whether these computers can solve problems beyond boson sampling. Still, this research suggests that computers based on quantum physics could indeed tackle problems beyond the reach of classical computers.
Year in Science: Higgs boson takes the prize
Previously, there was nothing to say "that anything you can do on a quantum computer you can't do on a normal computer, which leaves in question the necessity for quantum computers," Broome said. "Now, with boson sampling, we're coming up with machines based on quantum physics that can attack problems strongly believed to be intractable for classical computers."
In the future, "it would be great to push these computers toward more photons to tackle problems that would be challenging to simulate on normal computers," study coauthor Walmsley added. Using about 20 to 30 photons would?be a problem?beyond the capabilities of classical computers.
Both research teams detailed their findings online Dec. 20 in the journal Science.
Copyright 2012?InnovationNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
buffet rule carlos santana baa dodgers triple play samoyed kenny powers kenny powers
New Computer Bridges Classical and Quantum Computing
A new type of machine could rival quantum computers in exceeding the power of classical computers, researchers say.
Quantum computers rely on the bizarre properties of atoms and the other construction blocks of the universe. The world is a fuzzy place at its very smallest levels ? in this realm where quantum physics dominates, things can seemingly exist in two places at once or spin in opposite directions at the same time.
The new computers rely on "boson" particles, and resemble quantum computers, which differ from traditional computers in important ways. Normal computers represent data as ones and zeroes, binary digits known as bits that are expressed by flicking switch-like transistors on or off. Quantum computers, however, use quantum bits, or qubits (pronouced "cue-bits"), that can be on and off at the same time, a state known as "superposition."
This allows the machines to carry out two calculations simultaneously. Quantum physics permits such behavior because it allows for particles that can exist in two places at once or spin in opposite directions at the same time.
[Experiment Demonstrates Possibility of Quantum Internet]
In principle, quantum computers could solve certain problems much faster than can classical computers, because the quantum machines could run through every possible combination at once. A quantum computer with 300 qubits could run more calculations in an instant than there are atoms in the universe.
However, keeping qubits in superposition is challenging, and the problem grows more difficult as more qubits are involved. As such, building quantum computers that are more powerful than classical computers has proven very difficult.
Now, though, two independent teams of scientists have built a novel kind of device known as a boson-sampling computer. Described as a bridge between classical and quantum computers, these machines also make use of the bizarre nature of quantum physics. Although boson-sampling computers theoretically offer less power than quantum computers are capable of producing, the machines should still, in principle, out-perform classical computers in certain problems.
In addition, a boson-sampling computer does not require qubits. As such, "it's technologically far simpler to create than building a full-scale quantum computer," said researcher Matthew Broome, a quantum physicist at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Boson-sampling computers are actually a specialized kind of quantum computer (which is known more formally as a universal quantum computer).
"The main difference between boson-sampling computers and universal quantum computers is that boson-sampling quantum computers can't solve a universal set of problems like universal quantum computers can," Broome said. "But they are still conjectured to be able to solve problems that would be massively intractable for classical computers. Boson sampling computers are an intermediate model of a quantum computer."
Boson-sampling computers are not based on qubits, but on particles called bosons. "In our case, we use photons," said researcher Ian Walmsley, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford in England. Photons are the packets of energy that make up light, and are one type of boson.
Broome and Walmsley were in separate groups that each devised a boson-sampling computer, based off concepts first described by theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson at MIT. The computers involve multiple devices that can each generate single photons. The photons are inserted into a network where they can interact with one another. They emerge from outputs equipped with sensors to analyze the particles.
The task of calculating which outputs these photons will emerge from, an operation known as boson sampling, grows well beyond the capabilities of classical computers the more photons are involved. The new computers accurately resolved what paths the photons would take ? three photons with Broome and his colleagues' machine and four in Walmsley and his collaborators' device.
Since boson-sampling computing is in its infancy, it remains uncertain whether these computers can solve problems beyond boson sampling. Still, this research suggests that computers based on quantum physics could indeed tackle problems beyond the reach of classical computers.
Previously, there was nothing to say "that anything you can do on a quantum computer you can't do on a normal computer, which leaves in question the necessity for quantum computers," Broome said. "Now, with boson sampling, we're coming up with machines based on quantum physics that can attack problems strongly believed to be intractable for classical computers."
In the future, "it would be great to push these computers toward more photons to tackle problems that would be challenging to simulate on normal computers," study coauthor Walmsley added. Using about 20 to 30 photons would be a problem?beyond the capabilities of classical computers.
Both research teams detailed their findings online Dec. 20 in the journal Science.
This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, sister site to LiveScience.
Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/computer-bridges-classical-quantum-computing-175759146.html
awakenings phantom of the opera agoraphobia andrew lloyd webber obscura grok cirque du freak
Psychological Of Pain | Pain Management Clinic ? Jakarta Indonesia
Psychological Of Pain
Psychological pain is an unpleasant feeling or a suffering of a psychological, non-physical, origin. A pioneer in the field of suicidology, described it as ?how much you hurt as a human being. It is mental suffering; mental torment.? There is no shortage in the many ways psychological pain is referred to, and using a different word usually reflects an emphasis on a particular aspect of mind life. It may be called mental pain, emotional pain, psychic pain, social pain, spiritual or soul pain, or suffering. It is sometimes also called psychalgia. A systematic comparison of theories and models of psychological pain, psychic pain, emotional pain, and suffering concluded that each describe the same profoundly unpleasant feeling. Psychological pain is believed to be an inescapable aspect of human existence.
Most people think of pain as resulting from physical injury or disease, but psychological factors play a huge role in pain perception. Pain is intimately tied to brain functions that govern behavior and decision making, including expectation, attention and learning. Recent investigations are unraveling how factors such as expectation of reward or punishment, fear, stress and mood alter perceived pain intensity and affect our choices. Scientists are not only revealing just how far pain reaches into our psyches but are also using their findings to devise ways of better controlling pain and hastening recovery from painful injuries.
Other descriptions of psychological pain are ?a wide range of subjective experiences characterized as an awareness of negative changes in the self and in its functions accompanied by negative feelings?, ?a diffuse subjective experience ? differentiated from physical pain which is often localized and associated with noxious physical stimuli?, and ?a lasting, unsustainable, and unpleasant feeling resulting from negative appraisal of an inability or deficiency of the self.?
Etiology
The adjective ?psychological? is thought to encompass the functions of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which may be seen as an indication for the many sources of psychological pain. One way of grouping these different sources of pain was offered by Shneidman, who stated that psychological pain is caused by frustrated psychological needs. For example, the need for love, autonomy, affiliation, and achievement, or the need to avoid harm, shame, and embarrassment. Psychological needs were originally described by Henry Murray in 1938 as needs that motivate human behavior. Shneidman maintained that people rate the importance of each need differently, which explains why people?s level of psychological pain differs when confronted with the same frustrated need. This needs perspective coincides with Patrick David Wall?s description of physical pain that says that physical pain indicates a need state much more than a sensory experience.
In the fields of social psychology and personality psychology, the term social pain is used to denote psychological pain caused by harm or threat to social connection; bereavement, embarrassment, shame and hurt feelings are subtypes of social pain. Just like physical pain, social pain is thought to serve a function of adaptation and avoidance from what caused the pain.
From an evolutionary perspective, psychological pain forces the assessment of actual or potential social problems that might reduce the individual?s fitness for survival. The way we display our psychological pain socially (for example, crying, shouting, moaning) serves the purpose of indicating that we are in need.
Neural mechanisms
Recent research in neuroscience suggests that physical pain and psychological pain may share some underlying neurological mechanisms. Brain regions that were consistently found to be implicated in both types of pain are the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex (some subregions more than others), and may extend to other regions as well. Brain regions that were also found to be involved in psychological pain include the insular cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, thalamus, parahippocampal gyrus, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Some advocate that, because similar brain regions are involved in both physical pain and psychological pain, we should see pain as a continuum that ranges from purely physical to purely psychological. Moreover, many sources mention the fact that we use methaphors of physical pain to refer to psychological pain experiences
Psychological factors in pain perception
The importance of psychology in the expression, understanding and treatment of pain was recognized in early theories of nociception. These theories accepted the top?down influence of midbrain and cortical structures in pain expression.36 Similarly, with the advancement of the psychology of behaviour in the 1950s and 1960s, the role of environment in shaping treatment behaviour and complaining behaviour was also further developed.19 These theories were clinical in nature as they arose from the growing problem of patients suffering from chronic unremitting pain and disability. Psychology also found its place in pain treatments after the growing recognition that the extent of complaint and disability reported by many patients could not be explained by the extent of damage or disease.
Pain, tissue damage and disability
Pain is the most common reason for patients to enter health?care settings and the most common reason given for self?medication. Pain interrupts all other activity and arrests current behaviour. It functions to prime escape or protective behaviour.15 As it is an everyday and frequent experience, there is also a common understanding of pain, both lay and professional, that it is a useful signal of damage.1 Indeed, in the majority of cases pain is a relatively reliable signal of damage and one that refers well to its spatial location. Also, the intensity of pain often refers well to the extent of damage. For example, extracting two teeth hurts about twice as much as extracting one tooth.
There is, however, a number of cases where the extent of damage does not refer well to the experience of pain.65 For example, some people report pain that has no identifiable lesion, as in many cases of back pain, headache and angina. It is also possible to have tissue damage without any pain. For example, up to 40% of patients with established reversible myocardial ischaemia do not report pain. More recently, it has been recognized that it is possible to experience pain in a location distal to the damage or to experience pain in a missing or extra limb or location. Even under laboratory conditions, where we can control the intensity of the pain?inducing stimulus, there is a great deal of variability in patient response.
The fact that pain is not a reliable indicator of tissue damage and that tissue damage is not a reliable indicator of pain.
There is also a number of cases where the extent of damage and the extent of pain together do not refer well to the experience of disability. Some patients appear not to be disabled by extensive damage and pain, whereas other patients respond with extensive disability to seemingly minor damage and pain. This variability can be witnessed in everyday practice. Anyone who is in the business of hurting people as part of their routine work will understand that different people respond differently to the same procedure under the same circumstances, and that the same people respond to the same procedure differently at different times or under different circumstances. A brief and unscientific survey of colleagues or friends as to their choice of analgesia during dental procedures will quickly exemplify this variability.
Understanding differential responding
People are different and respond differently to pain?inducing stimuli and to attempts at pain management. This is perhaps not the most astounding and revelatory of claims ever made but it can be of crucial importance for the delivery of successful pain management. If we can understand what predicts these differences we may be able to improve treatment delivery and effectiveness.
Early theories of the psychology of pain assessed global factors such as personality, gender, age and culture. These global or broad?sweep explanations seem to have an intuitive appeal and one still hears them supported in everyday practice. The evidence in support of these explanations, however, is not always persuasive or conclusive.
Personality
A number of studies have attempted to describe or uncover what may be thought of as a pain?prone personality. It was thought that those who were less hardy or less robust to the hardships of the world would show less tolerance of pain stimuli and would be more complaining of pain. In addition, there was also the idea that the pain expressed by patients was a manifestation of guilt or of loss, or that pain revealed a self?destructive, sadomasochistic style of sexual development. There is no evidence, however, to support these ideas. I mean not to negate the importance of differences in individual personalities, but rather that the search for a unified pain personality was unsuccessful. The experience of pain does not prevent personality disorders but neither is it thought to be a mask or alternative manifestation of them.
Gender
In an excellent recent review of this field, Anita Unruh reported that ?In most studies, women report more severe levels of pain, more frequent pain and pain of longer duration than do men.?59 Women are more likely to experience recurrent pain, have moderate and severe pain from menstruation and childbirth and may be at increased risk of disability arising from pain. Unruh also reported that, despite the fact that women report more pain than men, women are at greater risk of being labelled as having a psychogenic disorder and are more vulnerable to pain being explained as a purely psychological (used pejoratively in this case to mean unreal) phenomenon.
Age
Very little is known about the specific effects of age and ageing and about the psychology of pain for specific age groups. For example, effective pain management in children has been hampered by the erroneous beliefs that neonates and infants could not feel pain and that children would respond addictively to opioid analgesia. We now know these ideas to be without support. An important but unresearched area is the effects of emotional and cognitive development upon the experience of pain for children and adolescents. At the other end of the lifespan, we are also only now beginning to learn about the effects of cognitive impairment on pain experience
Culture
Early studies of the effect of culture focused upon the reports of ethnic differences in pain expression. However, the study of culture extends further than the ethnic group membership of patients. For example, a recent interesting study showed that ethnic differences (in a US sample) did not affect the report of post?operative pain or patient?controlled analgesia for post?operative pain, but did, however, affect physician prescribing behaviour.40 More recently, the study of cultural influences has extended to the broader study of the cultural construction of pain and has started to embrace the use of anthropological and sociological methods.
Specific psychological factors
Although early theories focused on global factors, more recent areas of study have developed our understanding of specific psychological traits or specific states of experience that affect the report of pain and suffering.
Fear
Pain functions to threaten danger and invoke an escape or ameliorative response. This threat component of pain is not an addition to the sensory component, nor does it follow from the sensory aspects. Instead, it is a primary and central component as it urges analgesic behaviour. Fear and anxiety processes have been studied from a number of perspectives, although they cover essentially the same issue. The most relevant to clinical practice are reviewed here.
Attention and vigilance
Threatening pain is a stimulus that orients attention to both the source of pain and the potential for escape or analgesia. Some people have increased or heightened attention to pain sensation. In particular, where the threat of pain is constant or recurrent, a pattern of vigilance to pain can develop. McCracken developed a measure of vigilance to pain with a sample of chronic low back pain patients and found that patients who report high levels of attention to pain also report higher pain intensity, increased use of health?care resources and more emotional distress. Vigilance to pain was a significant predictor of disability, distress and use of health?care resources. Hypervigilance or excessive attention to threat has also been offered as a possible explanation for the dominant anxiety and poor concentration observed in patients with diffuse idiopathic or fibromyalgia pain. One test of this hypothesis found that fibromyalgia patients reported a lower threshold and higher tolerance to an experimentally induced pain than did a sample of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, who, in turn, reported lower threshold and higher tolerance than a non?pain control sample. Using a different measure of attention to pain, we have found in our laboratory that patients who attend frequently towards diffuse bodily sensation are much more vulnerable to repeated interruption by high?intensity pain. Heightened and habitual attention to pain and bodily sensation is associated with high levels of disability and distress for patients with chronic pain.
Catastrophizing and worry
The consequences of repeated attention to threat may be the development of a fixed pattern of responding to threatening stimuli and pain. One particular response to threatening pain, which is proving to be predictive of the severity of complaint of pain, has been termed ?catastrophic thinking? or ?catastrophizing?. Put simply, this is a habitual, almost immediate, appraisal of a situation as extremely and globally catastrophic. Sullivan and colleagues have developed a measure of catastrophic thinking about pain that assesses the extent to which we magnify the outcome and effects of pain, consider ourselves helpless to respond, and have little control over whether we think this way or not. They conducted two experiments, the first with pain?free students, who they subjected to a cold?pressor procedure, and the second with patients undergoing an aversive medical procedure. They found that catastrophizers reported significantly more negative pain?related thoughts, more distress and higher pain intensity compared with non?catastrophizers. Keefe and colleagues have used a different measure of pain control and catastrophizing in studying clinical populations. For example, they studied patients with rheumatoid arthritis who had undergone knee replacement surgery and found that those who rarely catastrophized had much lower levels of pain and disability than patients who catastrophized often. Recently, we have argued that catastrophic thinking can usefully be understood as an extreme form of a normal process of worrying about pain. Chronic worry about pain and how to solve the problem of pain may lead to a pattern of catastrophic thinking.
Avoidance
One consequence of the urgency effect of pain, the fact that pain demands a change of behaviour, is that patients with pain avoid pain?inducing activity. A number of studies now show that the pain alone is insufficient to explain disability and avoidance. McCracken and colleagues, for example, demonstrated that the fear of pain made a unique and significant contribution to the prediction of disability.32 Taking this further, some authors have argued that the fear of pain is more disabling than pain itself.
In a recent study of this idea, Crombez and colleagues replicated the finding that pain?related fear is a better predictor of disability than pain, but also extended the findings to a behavioural performance test. They showed that, when instructed to engage in a behavioural performance task that involves musculoskeletal loading, chronic low back pain patients performed poorly on the task. Poor behavioural performance was predicted by elevated levels of fear of (re)injury due to movement and the fear of the effect that physical activity would have on the pain.
Pain?related fear is thought to mediate the effects of pain upon performance. A recent authoritative review of this emerging field argues that the avoidance of pain or injury?inducing activity is a normal mechanism of survival. However, when pain becomes chronic, those with marked fear of pain chronically avoid activity that leads to disability. Counter?intuitively, in many cases of chronic non?malignant pain, it may be more healthy to confront or engage in physical activity that, in the short term, produces pain and the fear of pain and (re)injury.
Depression
The experience of pain and the threat of pain can lead to negative or low affect. Chronic low affect, including persistent feelings of frustration and anger and negative or destructive self?appraisal are common effects of persistent pain. Unsurprisingly, the majority of adult chronic pain patients who present for treatment at pain clinics are also depressed to some degree. However, this depression is not brought about directly by the pain severity but by the disabling consequences of how one reacts to the chronic pain. There are a number of facets of depression that are important in understanding the pain patient.
Anger
Anger is not always associated with depression. However, it is included here as the angry pain patient is often poorly understood. Anger is a relatively common experience for pain patients and so, in turn, for the pain professional. Where there is no clear immediate object of anger (e.g. an aggressive other person or an immediate agent of injustice), it is often associated with global frustration and hostility, feelings of aggression and a feeling of being blamed. Anger in chronic pain patients is often unrecognized as a means by which patients attempt to claim self?control or self?esteem. Anger and hostility can have significant deleterious effects upon both health and treatment effectiveness. Treatment of the very angry patient requires a high degree of trust and honesty in an environment of cynicism and hostility. Aggression and overt anger often increase the probability of treatment ineffectiveness as either patient or therapist will withdraw from therapeutic contact, thereby fuelling anger. Treatments designed for the chronic pain patient should directly address in some form the effects of anger and frustration.
Self?denigration
A key component of depression is the extent to which individuals appraise their self?worth and abilities negatively (e.g. ?I?m useless and pathetic?, ?I?ll never be able to control this pain?). Early research suggested that negative self?appraisal may promote a self?fulfilling prophecy in which patients learn to be helpless and hopeless. Research with rheumatological patients did not find any convincing evidence for this case.
Rather, recent evidence indirectly suggests that what may be important about depression in chronic pain is the extent to which the pain refers critical judgement onto the self. Recent experimental studies demonstrate that patients have specific, not global, memory biases for pain information that refers negatively to the self.
Although a focus on the specific self?denigrating effects of depression and pain is only now being developed and data are certainly needed, it could have far?reaching effects on current self?management approaches to chronic pain. Simply instructing patients that the route to successful management of pain lies with them may be an invitation to fail. Indeed, many pain patients, when presented with the idea of self?management, first understand this to mean a threat to their worthiness for treatment.
Coping
The term ?coping? is often used to denote two similar events. First, it is understood to mean anything that one does in response to a stressful event, regardless of its efficacy in removing the stressor or in relieving the stress response. Secondly, it is understood to mean a positive effect of either removing the stressor or relieving the stress response. Here I take it to have the first meaning. Whenever we are faced with a stressful event such as pain, or the fear of pain, we respond. This response can have both positive and negative effects. The personality variables discussed above will have a strong effect on the response people make to pain and/or the fear of pain. However, the search for patterns of responding or types of responding has also included other ideas worth mentioning.
Action and control
First, the idea that there are passive and/or active ways of responding is commonly held. Patients who are passive in response to threat show greater distress and disability than patients who attempt to solve problems. Similarly, those who believe that they have the personal ability to have control over pain also show improved function and fitness. One interesting investigation found that if women in active labour are given some control over parts of the delivery process, positive effects can be seen in terms of reduced pain, reduced tiredness and increased energy even if this control is only at the level of monitoring.
Taking some control over the cause of pain or the method of analgesia has a beneficial effect. Those who respond actively to pain or the fear of pain are more likely to adjust effectively.
Psychological factors in pain perception
The importance of psychology in the expression, understanding and treatment of pain was recognized in early theories of nociception. These theories accepted the top?down influence of midbrain and cortical structures in pain expression. Similarly, with the advancement of the psychology of behaviour in the 1950s and 1960s, the role of environment in shaping treatment behaviour and complaining behaviour was also further developed. These theories were clinical in nature as they arose from the growing problem of patients suffering from chronic unremitting pain and disability. Psychology also found its place in pain treatments after the growing recognition that the extent of complaint and disability reported by many patients could not be explained by the extent of damage or disease.
Pain, tissue damage and disability
Pain is the most common reason for patients to enter health?care settings and the most common reason given for self?medication. Pain interrupts all other activity and arrests current behaviour. It functions to prime escape or protective behaviour. As it is an everyday and frequent experience, there is also a common understanding of pain, both lay and professional, that it is a useful signal of damage. Indeed, in the majority of cases pain is a relatively reliable signal of damage and one that refers well to its spatial location. Also, the intensity of pain often refers well to the extent of damage. For example, extracting two teeth hurts about twice as much as extracting one tooth
There is, however, a number of cases where the extent of damage does not refer well to the experience of pain. For example, some people report pain that has no identifiable lesion, as in many cases of back pain, headache and angina. It is also possible to have tissue damage without any pain. For example, up to 40% of patients with established reversible myocardial ischaemia do not report pain. More recently, it has been recognized that it is possible to experience pain in a location distal to the damage or to experience pain in a missing or extra limb or location. Even under laboratory conditions, where we can control the intensity of the pain?inducing stimulus, there is a great deal of variability in patient response.
The fact that pain is not a reliable indicator of tissue damage and that tissue damage is not a reliable indicator of pain.
There is also a number of cases where the extent of damage and the extent of pain together do not refer well to the experience of disability. Some patients appear not to be disabled by extensive damage and pain, whereas other patients respond with extensive disability to seemingly minor damage and pain. This variability can be witnessed in everyday practice. Anyone who is in the business of hurting people as part of their routine work will understand that different people respond differently to the same procedure under the same circumstances, and that the same people respond to the same procedure differently at different times or under different circumstances. A brief and unscientific survey of colleagues or friends as to their choice of analgesia during dental procedures will quickly exemplify this variability.
Understanding differential responding
Related to whether one takes action or takes part in analgesic procedures is the effect of whether one seeks to predict the effects of pain or whether one prefers to be distracted. Many experimental studies of the possible effects of distraction from, or attention to, pain and analgesia have been conducted. The key finding is that both approaches can be effective. However, the most important finding suggests that only those strategies that fit with a person?s preferred or habitual method will be effective. For example, if someone is used to managing the pain of dentistry by thinking of anything else but dentistry, giving the patient detailed information about the procedure will simply undermine an effective strategy. Crombez and colleagues reported an interesting study of what information it might be useful to have for those who pay attention to the pain.
People are intrinsically motivated to make sense of experience. Except in extreme cases of depression or in specific circumstances of prolonged restriction or incarceration, people are motivated to reach an understanding of personal events. Until a pain is understood within a system of knowledge, it will interrupt current thinking and promote worry and concern. Knowing what has caused a pain and what it may mean and does not mean is critical for effective coping. Those patients who are most difficult to help are those who repeatedly present with problems that have no known aetiology. Not knowing compounds distress and an uncertain diagnosis leads to an increased belief in illness.
Clinical implications for acute pain management
The experience and expression of pain are complicated, multifactorial events. However, most clinicians ignore these factors and do not attempt to harness their effects. Worse still, there is a large industry dedicated to the eradication of these effects as they pollute otherwise neat designs for testing the effects of pharmacological agents upon an analgesic response. For it is these effects that make up the placebo element of all analgesics. Unfortunately, the efforts to limit the placebo effect rather than understand and control it may be throwing the baby out with the bath?water
Perhaps a certain ignorance of the psychological factors is understandable. One could suggest that in most acute pain situations these factors take care of themselves and do not need attending to. I would go further and suggest that, even if the pain relief was not psychologically optimal, then in most cases it is unlikely to lead to any long?term psychological damage. However, there are certain cases where a working and applied knowledge of the above factors can improve the patient?s distress and function, reduce pain and fear of pain, improve the effectiveness of non?psychological analgesics and reduce physician distress.
Supported by
GRoW UP CLINIC Yudhasmara Foundation
WORKING TOGETHER FOR STRONGER, SMARTER AND HEALTHIER CHILDREN BY EDUCATION, CLINICAL INTERVENTION, RESEARCH AND NETWORKING INFORMATION . Advancing of the future pediatric and future parenting to optimalized physical, mental and social health and well being for fetal, newborn, infant, children, adolescents and young adult
Like this:
Be the first to like this.
Source: http://painkillerclinic.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/psychological-of-pain/
1940 census instagram for android dallas news dallas fort worth dfw 1930 census nike new nfl uniforms
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)