gemahrv0430 

Wanted: Luxury-loving couples available to globetrot for six months and get paid to test out the most romantic wedding and honeymoon destinations around the world.

It’s a hard offer to resist, but what’s being Louis Vuitton Belts described as “The Ultimate Job” is just the latest in a series of recent dream positions to capture the public’s imagination and serve as a brilliant marketing tool for people and places.

“It’s been sort of crazy,” said Rosemarie Meleady, managing director of RunawayBrideAndGroom.com, describing the response to the new promotion.

The Irish travel agency came up with the idea in part after seeing last year’s blockbuster “Best Job in the World” campaign in Australia.

More than 1,000 couples have already applied for the chance to be sent to resorts in Africa, Europe, Asia and the United States.

The winners will be asked to blog about their experiences a few times a week “when they can get out of the hammock after sipping a glass of champagne,” Meleady said, and write for The Irish Times once a month.

They will also be paid 20,000 euros (about $27,000). Hopefuls have until April 7 to apply for the “horrendous assignment” — as the company teasingly calls it — which starts mid-May.

You don’t have to be Irish to apply, but you do have to tout Ireland as part of the process.

“We’ve had applications from Korea, China, Macedonia, Croatia, India and Saudi Arabia,” Meleady said. “They’re coming in about five every hour — I’m working around the clock.”

There’s also been high interest from the United States, with one couple who is to be married in a California vineyard this summer vowing to cancel their plans if they win so they can get hitched in Ireland instead.

How it started

The travel dream job craze exploded onto the scene in January 2009 when Australia’s Tourism Queensland announced it was seeking someone to spend six months on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef.

The person was to be paid almost $140,000 to blog about the experience and promote tourism in the area — or the “Best Job in the World.”

Ben Southall, a 34-year-old British man, beat out 34,000 other applicants for the gig, which ended earlier this year.

“I think I’ve done more in these six months than I’ve done in the previous 34 years of my life. To be able to do this sort of thing, in this location, and report on it can’t really be classed as work,” Southall told CNN as he prepared to return home.

The success of the Tourism Queensland idea inspired several similar dream jobs.

Last fall’s “67 Days of Smiles” campaign by the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau in Florida paid a couple $25,000 to spend 67 days visiting every theme park and attraction in Orlando and — you guessed it — write about it.

I had a lot of spectacular times, but it was never a vacation Hardy Wallace, former wine country lifestyle correspondent

Then there was the “Really Goode Job” created by the Murphy-Goode winery in Healdsburg, California. About 2,400 people applied last spring to become the company’s “wine country lifestyle correspondent” — a person tasked with promoting the winery through social media sites. The six-month gig paid $60,000.

“It was the most fun job I’ve ever had in my life,” said wine aficionado and blogger Hardy Wallace, 36, who was selected for the position just a few months after he was laid off from a sales and marketing job in Atlanta, Georgia.

He knows what you’re thinking: The gig probably amounted to nothing more than sipping wine and visiting a few Web sites, right? Wrong, Wallace said; it was actually a replica handbags ton of work. In six months, he wrote 200 blog posts, shot 45 videos, sent 7,000 tweets and attended numerous events to promote the winery, he recalled.

“I had a lot of spectacular times, but it was never a vacation,” Wallace said.

The job opened up many doors when it ended last month, and Wallace now permanently lives in Sonoma County, California, splitting his time working for two small wineries he’s always admired, he said.

“A year ago, I was unemployed, and I was trying to figure out how to make this work. And when I think of everything that’s happened in the past year, I’m extremely grateful,” Wallace said.

Allure of travel fuels viral marketing

Some of the companies behind the campaigns are probably very grateful too.

The “Best Job in the World” generated tens of millions of dollars in free publicity for Tourism Queensland thanks to bloggers and media outlets fascinated by the story, said David Meerman Scott, a marketing strategist and author of “The New Rules of Marketing & PR.”

He travels all over the world as a speaker and has been asking audiences in countries like Japan, India, Estonia and Latvia whether they have heard of the Australian campaign. On average, 20 percent of people raise their hands.

“That’s remarkable — that you can do something which doesn’t cost a lot of money, compared to television commercials, and 20 percent of the world … has heard of it,” Scott said.

The chance to go to exotic places was a big selling point in the “Best Job in the World,” and copycats have followed because travel is associated with luxury and it’s something lots of different people can write about, Scott said.

RunawayBrideAndGroom.com can attest to the allure of globetrotting and the power of viral marketing. The company’s Web site has had 100,000 hits since announcing “The Ultimate Job,” Meleady said.

“It snowballed, it’s so exciting,” she added.

gemahrv0430 

Ever since I was a child, I loved vegetables. My mother used to call me a rabbit, and I would call her lucky. Granted, I was a bit picky in that I only liked my veggies raw, but still, what mother isn’t lucky to have a kid who loves vegetables?

As I’ve gotten older, salad continues IWC watches to be a huge part of my diet. In fact, most lunches and dinners consist of at least a salad appetizer, if not a salad entrée. So, when people complain to me that salad isn’t very fulfilling, it’s hard for me to understand. When I ask them what they put in their salad, however, it becomes clear why they’re unsatisfied. Plain and simple, they’re not putting enough nutrition and calories in their salad!

Salads are a great, healthy food that can be very filling and nutritious. But you have to stop treating salads like diet food and start treating them like meals. These three tips will ensure that your salad leaves you feeling satisfied.

1. Include protein. Most salads aren’t fulfilling because they’re lacking in protein. Granted, salad by definition focuses on vegetables, but protein is crucial to making you feel fuller, longer. Further, protein boosts your metabolism by ensuring you’re maintaining muscle mass, which burns more calories than fat. Here are some ways to get some healthy proteins into your salads:

Chicken: Opt for white meat that is either baked or grilled. Avoid fried chicken, chicken salad, or dark meat. Portion: 3-5 ounces or an amount similar to the size of a deck of cards

Salmon: Loaded with Omega 3s, salmon provide you with protein and healthy fats to keep you fulfilled. Portion: 3-5 ounces or an amount similar to the size of a deck of cards

Low-Fat Cheese: When possible, opt for low-fat or fat-free cheese. This will help to keep the saturated fats down in your meal. Portion: 1/4 cup

Nuts: Nuts give your salad an extra crunch and provide you with wonderful fiber, protein, and nutrients. Portion: 1/4 cup

Beans: Beans are loaded with fiber and protein, both of which are really important in keeping your tummy satisfied. Portion: 1/2 cup

Note: If you’re a vegetarian, combine the nuts and beans in your salad to make a complete protein.

2. Choose a variety of quality vegetables: Throwing some iceberg lettuce into a bowl and calling it salad is like calling a few knock-knock jokes comedy. It just doesn’t make the grade. Vegetables are obviously a key ingredient in a salad—they provide tons of vitamins and minerals and are replica watches a great source of fiber. Use those vegetables that provide the most nutrients for the punch. Further, the more colorful your salad, the more vitamins and minerals you will be getting. Here are some of the most nutrient-dense vegetables:

Baby Spinach/Dark Leafy Greens: When it comes to lettuces, aim to ditch the romaine and iceberg for more dark, leafy lettuces and greens. Spinach especially is filled with nutrients that ward off heart disease, colon cancer, and autoimmune diseases such as arthritis and osteoporosis.

Tomatoes: If you didn’t know already, tomatoes are actually a fruit, but they’re often used in salads. Tomatoes are filled with lycopine, which helps to fight cancer. They’re also filled with vitamins A and K, they keep blood pressure low, and they contain free-radical fighters called antioxidants.

Broccoli: This member of the cabbage family is filled with antioxidants, is high in folate, vitamin C, and beta-carotene, and is a great immune system booster.

Carrots: Carrots are filled with antioxidants and vitamins A and C. They’re wonderful for keeping eyes healthy, and skin and hair looking their best.

Onions: Whether or not you’re an onion fan, they’re great at warding off heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

Bell Peppers: The best part of bell peppers is that they come in a rainbow of colors (there are actually purple bell peppers!) and they’re filled with tons of nutrients that ward off heart disease and cancer.

Cucumbers: Cucumbers taste great in salads. They’re also wonderful for hydrating the body and helping lower blood pressure.

3. Load up on vegetables: It kills me when I see people go to the salad bar and put only a few vegetables in the smallest sized container and call that lunch. No wonder they aren’t satisfied! The truth is, it’s really hard to overdo the amount of vegetables you eat; the more the better. Veggies are very nutritious, are high in fiber, and have very little calories due to their high water content. Further, the more veggies you include, the more likely you’re going to fill up and feel satisfied. So go for that large container and fill it to the brim!

When you dress the salad, always use olive oil and vinegar, or if you want a premade dressing, use vinaigrette. This will help to keep saturated fats, sugar, and sodium out of the goodness of your salad.

Try these tips out and see how filling your salad feels. Do you eat salad for a main course? Do you use these tricks? Do you have your own tricks to make them filling and healthy?

gemahrv0429 

Women who took the birth control pill beginning in the late 1960s lived longer than those never on the pill, a new study says.

British researchers observed more replica watches than 46,000 women for nearly four decades from 1968. They compared the number of deaths in women on the pill to those who never took it.

In the study, women on the pill generally took it for almost four years. Experts concluded the pill cut women’s risk of dying from bowel cancer by 38 percent and from any other diseases by about 12 percent.

The research was published Friday in the British medical journal, BMJ.

Slightly higher death rates were found among women under 30 on the pill, but that began to be reversed by age 50.

Doctors aren’t sure exactly why the pill may lower death rates. It contains synthetic hormones to suppress ovulation, which may have some role in preventing certain diseases.

Previous studies have found the pill does not raise the risk of dying. It also may protect against ovarian and endometrial cancer, but slightly increase the chances of breast and cervical cancer. It may also be that women on the pill are somehow healthier than those that aren’t.

Because the study only observed women on the pill compared with those who weren’t, researchers weren’t able to make any hypotheses about cause and effect.

“In the longer term, the health benefits of the contraceptive pill outweigh any risks,” Richard Anderson, a gynecologist at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. Anderson was not connected to the BMJ study.

But he said the findings might not be projected to women using modern contraceptive pills, which may have a different risks than earlier products. The risks may IWC watches also be higher depending on when women start taking the pill and how long they are on it.

“Many women, especially those who used the first generation of oral contraceptives many years ago, are likely to be reassured by our results,” Philip Hannaford of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, the study’s lead researcher, said in a statement.

Hannaford and colleagues said the pill’s risks and benefits may vary worldwide, depending on how it is used and each patient’s health risks.

gemahrv0429 

When I’m a hundred years old, I wonder what I’ll be doing—in fact, I wonder if I’ll even be alive. Modern medicine is constantly increasing the span Louis Vuitton Belts of active life, so maybe, after blowing out my hundredth candle, I’ll be heading out for a night on the town and atoning for it the next day at the gym. I hope that’s what the future has in store for me, so it’s inspiring to read these stories of centenarians whose accomplishments prove that age is just a number.

1. Canadian Does Laps Around Younger Swimmers

After one-hundred-year-old Jaring Timmerman, from Winnipeg, Canada, set a new world record in the backstroke, he earned the title of Canada’s Swimming Centenarian. According to Fox News, he swam one hundred meters in three minutes and fifty-two seconds, beating the previous world record of just over four and a half minutes.

Timmerman is a role model for late bloomers—very late bloomers. He didn’t start competing until he was eighty, proof that you’re never too old to start something new.

His secret to success? A good diet, exercise, and the fact that he’s the only one swimming in the 100- to 104-year-old category.

2. The One-Hundred-Year Dash

One hundred seems to be a good age for record breaking. According to the Guardian, a South African man named Philip “Flying Phil” Rabinowitz also chose his hundredth year to challenge the limits of human capability.

In 2004, Rabinowitz (who passed away in 2006) clocked 30.86 seconds in the one-hundred-meter run at a Cape Town stadium. The previous record, held by Austrian Erwin Jaskulski, was 36.19. The Guardian reports that Rabinowitz ran an even faster time a week earlier, but that it couldn’t be verified because of a faulty timer.

Rabinowitz’s secret to longevity was taking good care of his health. He drank fresh-squeezed orange juice every morning before breakfast, snacked on an apple after every meal, and walked four miles a day to work at his daughter’s factory.

“Oh, I feel wonderful now, absolutely wonderful,” he told the Guardian a few years ago. “I don’t know how long it is going to be like this. Every time I go, I break my own record. I get younger and younger.”

3. Now, That’s Job Loyalty

If Social Security goes bankrupt, we may all end up like Errett “Eddie” Horst, a Minnesota centenarian who still works half days at the company he has owned since 1955. The difference is that Horst really loves his job, and stays with it out of sheer loyalty. Horst, who marked his one hundredth birthday in February 2009, according to UPI, still punches the clock at Globe Publishing in South St. Paul.

It’s his work that keeps him young, says his son, Bill Horst. “He would’ve been gone at eighty-five if he had retired,” Bill told a reporter from the Pioneer Press. “He comes here every day, and it makes him feel like he’s a part of the place. People—his old clients—still come in replica handbags here to see him and call to see how he’s doing.

” Though Eddie Horst may not have broken any world records, his dedication and conscientiousness are feats of strength we all can emulate.

No Expiration Date

These three centenarians’ everyday accomplishments prove that there is indeed life after one hundred. Whether they’re breaking world records or simply enjoying life, these men and women inspire us by showing us that youth is not just for the young.

gemahrv0428

Being around a pretty woman can make men take more risks, a new study finds. Researchers looked IWC watches at the risk-taking behaviors of 96 young adult men, with an average age of nearly 22, by asking them to do both easy and difficult tricks on skateboards.

First, the young men performed the tricks in front of another man, then in front of a young, attractive female. (The attractiveness of the woman was independently assessed by 20 male raters.)

The testosterone levels of the skateboarders were measured after each trick. Testosterone is a male sex hormone that fuels sexual interest, arousal and activity, and is also associated with increased competition and risk-taking.

When skateboarders attempt tricks, they make a split-second decision about whether to abort the trick or try to land it, based on a mid-air evaluation of the likelihood of success and on the physical costs that failure might bring — such as falling flat on their face.

It was that moment the researchers sought to examine, because it resembles the type of risky decisions that young men make when behind the steering wheel of a car or when in physical confrontations with each other. As a group, young males are at the highest risk of early death of any group in industrialized countries in part because they are the biggest risk-takers.

As the researchers expected, the skateboarders took greater risks in the presence of the attractive female, even when they knew there was a greater chance they could crash. Along with this increased risk-taking, the young men had higher testosterone levels when they performed in front of the female than when they did their jumps in front of another guy.

“This experiment provides replica watches evidence for an effect that has existed in art, mythology, and literature for thousands of years: Beautiful women lead men to throw caution to the wind,” wrote the authors of the study, Richard Ronay and William von Hippel, of the University of Queensland in Australia.

“These findings suggest that, for men, the adaptive benefits gained by enticing mates and intimidating rivals may have resulted in evolved hormonal and neurological mechanisms that facilitated greater risk-taking in the presence of attractive women,” they added.

The results of the research are detailed in the first issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

gemahrv0428
Linda Lajterman suffered one of the worst experiences of her life while on a cruise with her husband and two other couples. Halfway through Burberry Handbags the trip, one of her friends stopped talking to her—for good.

Ms. Lajterman says she has no idea what prompted the woman, who was one of her best friends, to cut her off. They helped take care of each other’s kids, celebrated family events together and shared confidences. After the cruise, which took place a few years ago, she called her friend and asked for an explanation, but received none. She says she was devastated.

“I would have welcomed the opportunity to apologize or discuss it if I did anything wrong,” says Ms. Lajterman, a 52-year-old nurse from Ramsey, N.J. “Instead, it took me three self-help books and two years to make peace with the fact that someone I thought was a good friend ended our friendship.”

There are 50 ways to leave your lover, according to Paul Simon. But how many ways are there to leave a friend?

I know, it’s a terrible question. But think about it: Some of the worst breakups in our lives are not with romantic partners. They are with friends—the people with whom we often share our deepest thoughts. Friends provide guidance, encouragement, laughter and a refuge. Losing a good friend can be one of the saddest experiences in life.

And yet, many friendships just don’t last. Some simply fizzle out, victims of routine life events such as moves, job changes, divorce or a divergence of interests.

Others end badly. Rob Wilson, 53, a writer in Atlanta, saw a 12-year friendship abruptly end after he mentioned he was voting for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Arthur Newton, 46, a hotel manager from Austin, Texas, had a female friend tell him she couldn’t hang out with him anymore because her husband was jealous.

Michael Hassard watched a good friend run away from him—literally. He had heard his pal had begun dating his ex-girlfriend, so Mr. Hassard, 39, a NASA engineer from Muscle Shoals, Ala., approached him in church one day to ask about it. But before he could speak, his friend turned and fled down a hallway, out the door and into his car. He and his former buddy never spoke again.

Friendships are such a Hermes Bracelet nuanced and intriguing relationship that we even follow celebrity friend breakups, as we do their romances. Why else would we care about Mariana Pasternak but for her tell-all book about her former friendship with Martha Stewart, which ended after Ms. Pasternak testified at Ms. Stewart’s 2004 trial.

“It’s a myth that friendships last forever,” says Irene S. Levine, a psychologist, professor of psychiatry at New York University’s medical school and author of “Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend.” We are tied to our family by blood and our spouses by law, so we are often more attentive to those relationships. “Friendships are relationships of choice, so we tend to overlook them,” she says.

As a result, many friendships die from neglect, Dr. Levine says. And this in itself poses a very sticky problem in friendship breakups: How do you know if you’re being neglected—or dumped? What if your friend is always too busy to get together but always seems to have a good excuse? What if she never calls you, but seems happy enough to hear from you when you call?

And there’s the rub. There are no rules or even societal norms for friendship breakups. Friends who want to split don’t go to counseling or get a mediator or a lawyer, as divorcing couples do. And there typically aren’t a bunch of nosy relatives willing to intervene and relay messages, as there are when a split is within a family. Also, dissolving a friendship is harder than ever these days, with so many digital ties holding us together, from social-networking Web sites like Facebook to stored numbers in cellphones.

Dave Nadkarni can tell you all about it. When he decided to end a relationship a few years ago with a close female friend he felt was spreading rumors about him, he stopped returning her calls, defriended her on Facebook, blocked her on his instant-message list, stopped following Burberry Handbags her on Twitter and changed her name in his cellphone to “Do Not Pick Up.” “It was cathartic,” he says.

But it didn’t work. His friend got the hint and stopped calling him, and he has successfully avoided seeing her in real life. But he still runs into her constantly online, every time a mutual friend retweets her Twitter posts or she leaves a comment on a mutual Facebook friend’s status update.

“It sucks,” says Mr. Nadkarni, 29, a sales rep for a security company in Las Vegas. “It’s like the dog that’s stuck on your leg that you can’t shake off.”

So how do you finish off a friendship? Are some ways better than others?

Psychologists recommend ending a friendship in a way that avoids collateral damage with mutual friends, spouses and coworkers, and allows you to start it up again later, if you want. So don’t hurl insults. Don’t assign blame. Try to be polite.

Here are some tips:

Take a deep breath. If you’re mad, give yourself time to calm down. You want to be sure you really want to end the friendship.

Try a temporary separation. You might find you miss each other and want to get back together. Hey, it has worked for married couples.

Lie. Claim to be super busy—blame work or the kids. The experts are with me on this. They say the time to be up-front and honest with your friends is before a breakup.

Go slowly, especially if it’s a close relationship.

Foist your unwanted friend off on another friend. Friends of mine have used this strategy on me before. (They know who they are.)

Become a Facebook pest. I have a gay friend who has had much success getting rid of bigoted high school friends by making his status updates as flamboyant and politically charged as possible.

Issue an ultimatum—but be prepared to lose your friends.

That’s what happened to Nelson De Sousa. Last spring, he repeatedly got into heated arguments with his two best friends from high school, whom he been close to for more than 20 years. He felt they were too sympathetic to his wife’s point of view after his divorce. In one day, he screamed at them both on the phone. Each of them hung up on him.

For months after that, Mr. De Sousa says there was a “cold war atmosphere” in the friendship. When he called his friends, they often refused to pick up the phone. When they did, they were icy to him.

Finally, he’d had enough. So he left a message for each one of them on their home phones: “Tag, you’re it. I’m not playing this game anymore. The ball is in your court.” That was last August. He hasn’t heard from them since.

Now Mr. De Sousa can’t hear any music by bands that were big when he was in high school, such as Duran Duran, New Order, R.E.M. or James, without feeling sad. And to make matters worse, he got engaged last week and would love to share the news with his old friends.

“I was the cutter-offer,” says Mr. De Sousa, 37, a trade compliance manager from Union, N.J. “But perhaps it wasn’t the best strategy.”

gemahrv0427 

There are dreams that our conscious minds never register. There are dreams that seem clear when we first awaken but are forgotten as the day goes on. And then there are Burberry Handbags dreams so strange and jumbled that they stick with us for days and even years at a time. These are the ones full of objects and odd occurrences that practically demand interpretation (or an appointment with a therapist).

Dream dictionaries claim to unlock the meaning behind our sleep sagas. I’ve looked into some of the more common dream symbols and what various dictionaries say about them. But, based on the sheer multitude of entries, it’s clear that everything we dream about is ripe for symbolism. And often, our dreams allude to emotions or situations we need to confront in our waking hours.

1. Animals

They represent the inner desires that we tend to keep hidden. If the animal is domestic, like a cat or a dog, it could mean you’re yearning for security and comfort. If it’s wild, it symbolizes primal, baser urges. Pay attention to how the animal’s acting and your relationship to it in the dream. Are you fighting with it? Are you setting it free? That demonstrates your feelings about the desire.

2. Bugs

Creepy-crawlies are the manifestation of problems that we’re not facing. Bugs on your skin mean an unsettling change is taking place in your life. The more bugs you encounter in your dream, the greater your problems and unconscious anxieties.

3. Babies

Babies in dreams are symbols of purity, rebirth, and vulnerability. Again, it’s important to recognize what’s happening with the baby to figure out how it relates to your life. A crying or abandoned baby could mean that you’re not paying enough attention to your own needs. Perhaps you feel especially needy and vulnerable right now, or you might have doubts about being able to take care of someone other than yourself.

4. Candles

If the candle is aflame, that might mean good luck’s coming your way, or at least that there’s a reason to be hopeful. If it’s not lit, the candle could represent a lack of initiative or not living up to one’s promise. A candle that’s blown out has to do with leaving something behind, which could be good or bad.

5. Death

This makes for a sad dream, but death isn’t as ominous a theme as you’d think—it’s more about change on the horizon. If someone you know dies in a Hermes Bracelet dream you have, think about your connection to that person. Is there an aspect of your relationship that needs changing? Or is there something about the person’s life that you’d like to see manifesting itself in your own? Death-related dreams might also be about incoming change or the dreamer’s need to change.

6. Hair

Hair in our sleep life has multiple meanings, including sensuality, self-image, and strength. If you’re cutting your hair, that symbolizes taking power over your life and letting go of unnecessary burdens. Brushing or fixing your hair alludes to heightened self-consciousness. Hair falling out has to do with fear of getting old and/or physical weakness.

7. Work

Who hasn’t had dreams about working? Dreams about your job suggest that certain work habits need fixing—either not being on-task enough or working too much. When worries about job performance leak into our subconscious, there’s a lack of balance somewhere, either in effectiveness or in leisure time.

8. Mirrors

Mirrors in dreams reflect our inner qualities—both how others perceive us and how we see ourselves. If the mirror is foggy or clouded, however, that means we’re not seeing things accurately and need to figure out why. Shattering a mirror is allegedly bad luck in real life, but in the dream world, it represents breaking away from the inner self.

9. People Would you guess the people we encounter in dreams are variations on ourselves? Pay close attention to these figures, because they represent personality traits we don’t acknowledge, either because they’re hidden or because they’re negative. When the person’s a stranger, it usually means the former; when he or she is familiar, it tends to signify the latter, although it could also mean that you should take a closer look at the ways in which you interact with that person in real life, and perhaps change your behavior toward him or her. 10. Roads Traveling down a road during a dream is like traveling down the path to your goals in life. Sometimes it’s windy or full of potholes, which means you Burberry Handbags have hardships to overcome. If it’s smooth, you’re making good choices and feel confident about your future success. And if the road ahead looks dark and looming, it might indicate that you’re making choices along the way without all the information you need, which could produce difficult outcomes. 11. Tears

If you’re crying in a dream, you’re likely grappling with a pent-up emotion that you’re not letting go of in real life, and it’s a way for your subconscious to provide you with the emotional outlet you deny yourself otherwise. If someone else is crying in your dream, it could be a message to you to be mindful of the thoughts and feelings of those around you.

12. Water

Whether it’s a rushing river or a calm ocean, water represents our emotional state. Calm, clear water means that we’re generally content and peaceful at the moment. Murky, rough water suggests we’re feeling overwhelmed by negative thoughts and not making choices that support our emotional well-being.

When analyzing dreams, it’s essential to remember how the objects made you feel. That’ll give you a better idea of why they appeared and what you’re meant to learn from them. Even the wackiest dreams have some sort of meaning attached—it’s just up to us to wade through the crazy symbolism of dream life and find its basis in reality.

gemahrv0427
On Saturn’s giant moon Titan, it is so cold that water is frozen as hard as granite. And yet there is a complete liquid cycle of methane and ethane. Scientists wonder whether there could also be life.

New discoveries have a way of messing with old definitions. Take, for example, the concept of a habitable world. The Louis Vuitton Belts standard definition of a “habitable world” is a world with liquid water at its surface; the “habitable zone” around a star is defined as that Goldilocks region – not too hot, not too cold – where a watery planet or moon can exist.

And then there’s Titan. Saturn’s giant moon Titan lies about as far from the standard definition of habitable as one can get. The temperature at its surface hovers around 94 degrees Kelvin (minus 179 C, or minus 290 F). At that temperature, water is a rock as hard as granite.

And yet many scientists now believe life may have found a way to take hold on Titan. Water may all be frozen solid, but methane and ethane are liquids. In the past few years, instruments on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and images captured by ESA’s Huygens probe have revealed an astonishing world with a complete liquid cycle, much like the hydrologic cycle on Earth, but based on methane and ethane rather than on water.

“What Cassini actually found on Titan, from 2004 onwards, was a methane-ethane cycle that very much echoes the kind of hydrologic cycle we see on the Earth,” says Jonathan Lunine, currently at the University of Rome Tor Vergata while on leave from the University of Arizona. Cassini has revealed rivers and lakes of methane-ethane, the lakes evaporating to form clouds, the clouds raining hydrocarbons back down onto the surface, flowing through rivers and collecting in lakes. It is the only world in our solar system other than Earth where a liquid cycle like this takes place. There’s just no water.

But there are plenty of hydrocarbons. Methane and ethane are the simplest hydrocarbon molecules. By themselves, they are of limited biological interest. But hydrocarbons are versatile: they can assemble themselves into fantastically complex structures. Indeed, complex hydrocarbons form the basis of what we call life. So one has to wonder: has hydrocarbon chemistry on Titan crossed the threshold from inanimate matter to some form of life?

One thing is for certain: if there is life on Titan, it is not life as we know it. There is no way that terrestrial life could have originated or could survive on Titan. “DNA and RNA,” says Lunine, “form out of compounds that require oxygen and phosphorus, and there’s very little oxygen in the Titan system.” And the very structure of DNA depends on liquid water. “DNA forms a helix because of its water-loving and water-repellant ends.” So life on Titan “would have to find other molecules that carry information.” Moreover, because Titan is so cold, the amount of energy available for building complex biochemical structures is limited. But as Lunine points out, that’s not necessarily a showstopper. “We don’t have a lot of experience with the chemistry that might go on at these temperatures.” We don’t know what’s possible.

The chance to discover a form of life with a different chemical basis than life on Earth has led some researchers to consider Titan the most important world on which to search for extraterrestrial life. In a recent paper in the journal Astrobiology, Robert Shapiro, a professor of chemistry at New York University, and Dirk Shulze-Makuch of Washington State University rated Titan a higher-priority target for investigation than even Mars.

On Mars, and on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus as well, astrobiological efforts center on the hunt for water-based life. But such life, even if it is found, could have shared a single origin with life on Earth, getting started on one world and being transferred by meteorites to others. Not so for Titan. If there is life on Titan, it arose separately from life on Earth.

Not everyone agrees that Titan is the priority, though. NASA and ESA recently gave the nod to a Jupiter-system mission that will explore Europa as the next flagship mission to the outer solar system. It may be decades before another major mission flies to Saturn and Titan.

But a smaller-scale and less-expensive lander known as the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) could launch as early as 2015, arriving in 2022 or 2023. Ellen Stofan of Proxemy Research in Rectortown, Va., the principal investigator for the TiME mission, described the lander as a buoy-shaped capsule that would splash down in one of Titan’s northern lakes and float across its surface for a minimum of two Titan days (sixteen Earth days).

“We have a number of instruments on board. The most important from a pure scientific point of view is a mass spectrometer,” Stofan said. “We’ll take basically a sip of [the lake] liquids, several times, and analyze them to really nail down their chemical compositions. We know there’s methane, we know there’s ethane,” but TiME would inventory more complex organic (hydrocarbon) compounds, as well.

If there is life on Titan, it may be difficult to detect. “I don’t expect you to go to these lakes and see beautiful filamentary structures made replica handbags of cells that are macroscopic in size or easily seen,” says Lunine, who is a co-investigator on the proposed TiME mission. The clues could be subtle. “We would have to look for particular peculiarities in composition, hydrocarbons that are lacking that should be there, others that are more abundant” than expected.

No-one knows “what happens to organic chemistry in [Titan’s] environment,” Lunine adds. “Does it go to a kind of a chemistry that we can call life but works in liquid hydrocarbons? We don’t know the answer to that. But the answer is profound.” Because if the answer is yes, it means that the origin of life has taken place more than once. “If the answer is yes, then it says that life … must be a common outcome of planetary processes in the cosmos.”

If the answer is yes, it means we are not alone.

gemahrv0426 

When I went to college, I was right out of high school, overwhelmed by the freedom and very quickly baffled by the academic expectations. Today’s college students replica watches are often much more mature, more experienced – and in many cases, returning to school to improve a life. More often than not, college students are working as well.

College careerWhether you’re eighteen and new to it all or you’re back in the classroom to try and make academics work for you again, college can be rough water if you’re intimidated and/or pushing yourself with family/job/education. Here are some suggestions to maximize the value of your time spent in the academic fold:

1.Don’t let a pile of overpriced books and a quicker learning pace make you think you’re in over your head. It’s just a new environment.

2.No matter what the professors think, classes probably shouldn’t be optional. Look at it this way – until you’re sure you don’t need it, take advantage of all the help you can get.

3.Take notes you can read. If what you’re hearing is too much to process on any given day, find a classmate to bounce your questions off of. But don’t think you have to learn to be a court reporter overnight.

4.This might be counterintuitive or difficult as hell – but asking a few questions of the lecturer doesn’t hurt either. Give yourself a chance to feel like you have an investment in all that academic achievement as well – have a good conversation with someone who is opening up new intellectual doors for you can be an enormous boost. There’s more payback to those classes than credits and a grade.

5. All that reading isn’t insurmountable a chapter at a time. If you break it into manageable bites, you can get through it with a lot less indigestion – and learn more from it in the process. Besides, ignoring it will drive you crazy.

6. You have probably heard this during your previous fifteen years in school – but plan your studying. That’s not to blow a hole in your day, it’s so you won’t blow a hole in your semester. If you do it and stick with it, life gets easier.

7. Weekends may not always be for playing anymore. If you’re working and going to school, for sure they won’t be. Once again, the idea is to make school manageable, which makes it tolerable, which eventually may make it…really intriguing. You can build an afternoon on your bike or a few hours in front of a football game into any schedule if you hit the books when you have it pencilled in. Otherwise you’ll be trying to read a textbook during the beer commercials and not enjoying the game nor learning much either.

8. Always do a draft. As good as you are at slamming a paper together, do yourself the favor of time for a rough draft. Bang it out like it’s a first and final, but leave time to review it anyway. You’ll be amazed at how little adjustments can make a major improvement and once again, what was once anxiety and pressure becomes a manageable chore that may just become an achievement.

9. Now about those exams – they’re going to weigh on you no matter how well you’ve covered the material. The key to taking an exam with confidence is to do as thorough a review as you can and see at least seventy five percent of the material for at least the second time. There’s a difference between holing up for a final review and cramming.

10. Put your best into it and then consider college the art of the possible. If you’re going through the learning process with newly tested initiative and applying standards you’ve never held IWC watches yourself to before, than you can call that a victory. If you get a little better at it the first few weeks or the first few semesters, there will come a day when you know you’re doing an efficient job. That’s all you can ask of yourself.

Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides. It’s your college career, your major, your degree. Resumes aside, the value of an education is an intensely personal thing, so don’t demean it by thinking you should be some other kind of student. Every school experience opens up new horizons, but you won’t see them if you’ve got misguided expectations blocking your view.

gemahrv0426

Would you ever consider throwing sulfuric acid into your face? Hopefully, the answer is no. Yet whenever you chop an onion, what happens isn’t that different from getting acid in your eyes.

Onions, tasty and delicious though they Hermes Bracelet might be, are the bane of many a cook’s existence, since it’s nearly impossible to cut into one without inducing a veil of tears. The bad news is that cutting onions causes an unavoidable chemical reaction that burns your eyes; the good news is that there are ways to make those tears a thing of the past.

Why We Cry

Onions grow underground, where they absorb sulfur from the surrounding soil. The sulfur turns into a substance called sulfoxide, and when you slice into an onion, cutting through membranes and cell walls, those sulfoxides mix with another amino acid, called lachrymatory-factor synthase enzyme. When these two substances combine, the result is sulfenic acid, a highly unstable compound.

When the sulfenic acid hits the air and mixes with oxygen, it changes again, this time into a compound called syn-propanethial-S-oxide, made up of sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide—not exactly chemicals you’d want around your eyes. The gas wafts upward toward your face, and when it hits your eyes, your corneas instinctively recognize it as a caustic, harmful substance. They instruct the lachrymal glands (located behind your eyes) to produce tears to wash the gas away. The tears caused by onions aren’t emotional tears; they’re reflex tears, which the body produces in response to an irritant. They protect the eyes by washing away dust, dirt, smoke, and other debris. Most people instinctively reach up to wash away the waterworks, but think twice when you’re handling onions—your hands will probably be covered with the same chemical that’s irritating your eyes.

Luckily, syn-propanethial-S-oxide is both water-soluble and sensitive to heat, so washing the compound with water or heating it up will render it inert. That’s why washed and cooked onions don’t have the same uncomfortable effects as raw onions do.

If You Can’t Stand It, Beat It

If you just can’t imagine life without French onion soup, fret not—there are several ways to mitigate onions tear-inducing properties.

1. Wear goggles. They protect your eyes from the harmful gas, and they’re easy to find at most kitchen-supply stores. However, they’re bulky and expensive, not Burberry Handbags to mention that they make it hard to see what you’re doing. Some people feel that wearing contact lenses is enough to protect corneas from irritation.

2. Freeze it. Put the onion in the freezer for ten to fifteen minutes before you chop it. The offending compounds and the water in the vegetable will freeze a bit, and won’t mix as readily when cut. Just make sure not to freeze the onion entirely, or it will end up mushy.

3. Light a candle. Some people believe that if you light a candle near your work surface or turn on a burner on a gas stove, the flames will burn up some of the sulfurous gas as it’s produced. Flames also create convection, which pulls the fumes closer and incinerates them.

4. Give it a shower. Cutting the onion under running water will wash away the gas. However, be careful while wielding a wet knife.

5. Keep a slice of bread in your mouth. If you hold on to the end of a piece of bread with your teeth, letting it stick out from your face, supposedly the bread absorbs the gases and prevents them from making it up to your eyes. Some swear by this method; some consider it silly.

6. Chew gum. Gum encourages you to breathe through your mouth and, in so doing, inhale the gases before they reach your eyes. Don’t worry—they won’t corrode your esophagus.

7. Turn on a fan or vent. Setting up a desk fan near your work surface or turning on a ceiling vent can whisk vapors away.

8. Use a sharp knife. Alton Brown of the Food Network recommends using the sharpest knife you have, because precision cuts disturb the fewest amount of cell walls and release the smallest amount of gas. When you hack or gnaw at the onion, the increased cellular breakdown will result in more fumes.

9. Buy milder onions. There are over four hundred kinds of vegetable in the onion family, all of which contain differing levels of enzymes. Spring and summer onions, like Vidalias, Super Sweets, Maui onions, and Walla Wallas, have higher sugar and water contents, which make them noticeably milder. Fall and Burberry Handbags winter onions, such as white, yellow, red, and Spanish onions, are more pungent and tangy. Distant relatives, like shallots, scallions, and garlic, are virtually tearless.

Some methods may work better than others, but if your cooking is suffering from a case of onion-induced despair, anything’s worth trying. If all else fails, there’s one foolproof way to avoid getting this sulfuric acid in your eyes. Remember that it takes about thirty seconds for the chemical reaction to fully kick in and take effect, so … chop faster.