“All five of our studies suggest that organizational success depends on tending to the few who fall at the ‘tails’ of this distribution, rather than worrying too much about the productivity of the ‘necessary many’ in the middle,” Herman Aguinis said of Indiana University.

“A new showing that 51 percent of recent college graduates were employed full-time struck many as a low total, but it represents an improvement over last year. The Rutgers University Worktrends report released Thursday found that 6 percent were unemployed and 6 percent were working part-time while actively seeking full-time jobs. The remainder were either pursuing additional education or training, not looking for work or were engaged in volunteer activities.” Source: By Janice Podsada, The Hartford Courant.

John Stossel – College is a RIP OFF!

Put Away the Bell Curve, and Why?

Researchers amassed a database of more than 600,000 individuals and conducted separate studies applying normal and power-law distributions to assess performers in four carefully chosen fields:

Academics in 50 disciplines, based on publishing frequency in the most pre-eminent discipline-specific journals. Entertainers, such as actors, musicians and writers, and the number of prestigious awards, nominations or distinctions received. Politicians in 10 nations and election/re-election results. Collegiate and professional athletes looking at the most individualized measures available, such as the number of home runs, receptions in team sports and total wins in individual sports.

“According to Aguinis and his co-author, Ernest O’Boyle of Longwood University (soon to join the University of Iowa), the entrenched notion of normality — notably in performance evaluations that force managers to assign only numeric or category ratings — is detrimental to individuals, the group and the larger organization. They suspected that any group, regardless of size or industry, would show a pattern with a few elite performers (“the best”) dominating the many (“the rest”).”

THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION – Visions Of The Future – BBC

Genetics and biotechnology promise a future of unprecedented health and longevity: DNA screening could prevent many diseases, gene therapy could cure them and, thanks to lab-grown organs, the human body could be repaired as easily as a car, with spare parts readily available. Ultimately, the ageing process itself could be slowed down or even halted.

Image Source: techi.com

Image Source: whoguides.com

Albert von Kolliker discovered the existence of mitochondria around 1857. He was studying human muscle cells when he noted strange granules in them.

Dr. Terry Wahls learned how to properly fuel her body. Using the lessons she learned at the subcellular level, she used diet to cure her MS and get out of her wheelchair.

Minding My Mitochondria 2nd Edition: How I overcame secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) and got out of my wheelchair.

Story Referral Credit: The Future of Cardiology – Meet a Super Cardiologist Specializing in Interventional Electrophysiology

Read More About Dr. Terry Wahls

 

About Dr. Terry Wahls

I am a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A., where I teach internal medicine residents in their primary care clinics. I also do clinical research and have published over 60 peer-reviewed scientific abstracts, posters and papers.

 

In addition to being a doctor, I am also a patient with a chronic, progressive disease. I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis in 2000, just as I began working for the University. By 2003 I had transitioned to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. I underwent chemotherapy in an attempt to slow the disease and began using a tilt-recline wheelchair because of weakness in my back muscles. It was clear: eventually I would become bedridden by my disease. I wanted to forestall that fate as long as possible.

Because of my academic medical training, I know that research in animal models of disease is often 20 or 30 years ahead of clinical practice. Hoping to find something to arrest my descent into becoming bedridden, I used PubMed.gov to begin searching the scientific articles about the latest multiple sclerosis research. Night after night, I relearned biochemistry, cellular physiology, and neuroimmunology to understand the articles. Unfortunately, most of the studies were testing drugs that were years away from FDA approval. Then it occurred to me to search for vitamins and supplements that helped any kind of progressive brain disorder. Slowly I created a list of nutrients important to brain health and began taking them as supplements. The steepness of my decline slowed, for which I was grateful, but I still was declining.

In the fall of 2007, I had an important epiphany. What if I redesigned my diet so that I was getting those important brain nutrients not from supplements but from the foods I ate? It took more time to create this new diet, intensive directed nutrition, which I designed to provide optimal nutrition for my brain. At that time, I also learned about neuromuscular electrical stimulation and convinced my physical therapist to give me a test session. It hurt, a lot, but I also felt euphoric when it was finished, likely because of the endorphins my body released in response to the electrical stimulation. In December 2007, I began my intensive directed nutrition along with a program of progressive exercise, electrical stimulation, and daily meditation. The results stunned my physician, my family and me: within a year, I was able to walk through the hospital without a cane and even complete an 18-mile bicycle tour.

In 2007 I was losing my phone and keys and was afraid my chief of staff would soon be calling me to his office to tell me that it was time to revoke my clinical privileges. I expected to become ever more dependent because of my illness. Instead, within a year of starting my regimen I regained the ability to commute to work on my bicycle, do my rounds on foot without canes or wheelchairs, conduct clinical trials and write grants, all by making changes to the foods I ate and keeping up with exercise and stress management. Getting my life back was a gift I did not believe was possible. Grateful to have that life back, I have spent the last three years researching, teaching, lecturing and speaking about my journey and how others may help themselves with intensive directed nutrition. I have recorded many of my public lectures. Fifty percent of the profits from the sales of the lecture DVDs and audio CDs is used to support clinical research in the area of nutrition, meditation, massage, exercise and neuromuscular electrical stimulation in the setting of progressive multiple sclerosis.

Khan Academy founder Sal Khan and
Stanford professors Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun

“Thrun says he can no longer teach at Stanford University.
He says he was presented with the red pill and the blue pill.
“You can take the blue pill and go back to your lecture of 20 students.

But I’ve taken the red pill and seen wonderland.”

From Sebastian’s Welcome! page:
“One of the most amazing things I’ve ever done in my life is to teach a class to 160,000 students. In the Fall of 2011, Peter Norvig and I decided to offer our class “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” to the world online, free of charge. We spent endless nights recording ourselves on video, and interacting with tens of thousands of students. Volunteer students translated some of our classes into over 40 languages; and in the end we graduated over 23,000 students from 190 countries. In fact, Peter and I taught more students AI, than all AI professors in the world combined. This one class had more educational impact than my entire career.”

and
Links Related to the Story

From Sebastian

The top 10 emerging technologies for 2012

By: Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies

Sheikh of Dubai and The World Economic Forum

Global Agenda Council

meets the Sheikh of Dubai

Emerging technologies are critical to building a sustainable and resilient future. But without new understanding, tools and capabilities, their safe and successful development is far from guaranteed.

At the Summit on the Global Agenda 2011 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies asked some of the world’s leading minds within the entire GAC Network which technology trends would have the greatest impact on the state of the world in the near future.

Below, the Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies presents the technological trends expected to have major social, economic and environmental impacts worldwide in 2012. They are listed in order of greatest potential to provide solutions to global challenges:

• 1. Informatics for adding value to information

The quantity of information now available to individuals and organizations is unprecedented in human history, and the rate of information generation continues to grow exponentially. Yet, the sheer volume of information is in danger of creating more noise than value, and as a result limiting its effective use. Innovations in how information is organized, mined and processed hold the key to filtering out the noise and using the growing wealth of global information to address emerging challenges.

• 2. Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering

The natural world is a testament to the vast potential inherent in the genetic code at the core of all living organisms. Rapid advances in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering are allowing biologists and engineers to tap into this potential in unprecedented ways, enabling the development of new biological processes and organisms that are designed to serve specific purposes – whether converting biomass to chemicals, fuels and materials, producing new therapeutic drugs or protecting the body against harm.

(Photo Source: on Dave Sifry’s camera by the sheik’s photographer)

(Con’t) The top 10 emerging technologies for 2012

• 3. Green Revolution 2.0 – technologies for increased food and biomass

Artificial fertilizers are one of the main achievements of modern chemistry, enabling unprecedented increases in crop production yield. Yet, the growing global demand for healthy and nutritious food is threatening to outstrip energy, water and land resources. By integrating advances across the biological and physical sciences, the new green revolution holds the promise of further increasing crop production yields, minimizing environmental impact, reducing energy and water dependence, and decreasing the carbon footprint.

• 4. Nanoscale design of materials

The increasing demand on natural resources requires unprecedented gains in efficiency. Nanostructured materials with tailored properties, designed and engineered at the molecular scale, are already showing novel and unique features that will usher in the next clean energy revolution, reduce our dependence on depleting natural resources, and increase atom-efficiency manufacturing and processing.

• 5. Systems biology and computational modelling/simulation of chemical and biological systems

For improved healthcare and bio-based manufacturing, it is essential to understand how biology and chemistry work together. Systems biology and computational modelling and simulation are playing increasingly important roles in designing therapeutics, materials and processes that are highly efficient in achieving their design goals, while minimally impacting on human health and the environment.

• 6. Utilization of carbon dioxide as a resource

Carbon is at the heart of all life on earth. Yet, managing carbon dioxide releases is one of the greatest social, political and economic challenges of our time. An emerging innovative approach to carbon dioxide management involves transforming it from a liability to a resource. Novel catalysts, based on nanostructured materials, can potentially transform carbon dioxide to high value hydrocarbons and other carbon-containing molecules, which could be used as new building blocks for the chemical industry as cleaner and more sustainable alternatives to petrochemicals.

• 7. Wireless power

Society is deeply reliant on electrically powered devices. Yet, a significant limitation in their continued development and utility is the need to be attached to the electricity grid by wire – either permanently or through frequent battery recharging. Emerging approaches to wireless power transmission will free electrical devices from having to be physically plugged in, and are poised to have as significant an impact on personal electronics as Wi-Fi had on Internet use.

• 8. High energy density power systems

Better batteries are essential if the next generation of clean energy technologies are to be realized. A number of emerging technologies are coming together to lay the foundation for advanced electrical energy storage and use, including the development of nanostructured electrodes, solid electrolysis and rapid-power delivery from novel supercapacitors based on carbon-based nanomaterials. These technologies will provide the energy density and power needed to supercharge the next generation of clean energy technologies.

• 9. Personalized medicine, nutrition and disease prevention

As the global population exceeds 7 billion people – all hoping for a long and healthy life – conventional approaches to ensuring good health are becoming less and less tenable, spurred on by growing demands, dwindling resources and increasing costs. Advances in areas such as genomics, proteomics and metabolomics are now opening up the possibility of tailoring medicine, nutrition and disease prevention to the individual. Together with emerging technologies like synthetic biology and nanotechnology, they are laying the foundation for a revolution in healthcare and well-being that will be less resource intensive and more targeted to individual needs.

• 10. Enhanced education technology

New approaches are needed to meet the challenge of educating a growing young population and providing the skills that are essential to the knowledge economy. This is especially the case in today’s rapidly evolving and hyperconnected globalized society. Personalized IT-based approaches to education are emerging that allow learner-centred education, critical thinking development and creativity. Rapid developments in social media, open courseware and ubiquitous access to the Internet are facilitating outside classroom and continuous education.”

[Source: Forumblog.org]