"MENTAL SUPERPOWERS"

The most promising route to "mental superpowers"

We always try different strategies for dealing with our feelings and emotions, and those strategies often work.

The new technique known as “real-time fMRI” is for see in real time what is happening inside our brain when we experience sensations as pain, anxiety, depression, fear and pleasure.

The technique consists of receiving stimulus about our brain activity and we can learn to consciously control our emotions, with that, we can learn to strengthen control over the mind.

The first demonstration of the successful tool came in 2005, where researchers taught people how to control pain. Eight people were subjected to a painful hot sensation on their skin. The researchers showed them a virtual flame to active the brain region involved in pain processing and the participants swiftly learned to control the size of the flame. They reduced their pain over 50%.

A recent study showed that the training could fight obesity. Overweight mans learned to control areas involved in executive functioning and improved self-control and led to healthier food.

Another study published this year found how adolescents could decrease ADHD symptoms and improve sustained attention. Other recent studies have found that the training can be use to treat PTSD in war veterans, depression, anxiety, cigarette addiction.

And a study at the University of Texas showed how to regulate levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which could be used to treat Parkinson.

This is a clearly demonstration of the many uses of technology, but how effective can it be in long term? So, all this technique requires expensive equipment at the moment, but, over time the equipment will become cheaper, smaller and more accessible. And, who knows, it can be more useful than we think. 

LET'S TALK ABOUT LOVE

There are many ways to love. And I truly think love is something hard to get but when you get it is the most beautiful thing you can feel. So, if you had the chance, keep it in your heart and strive yourself not to lose it. Love is sacrifice. It’s a desire to take care of another person, putting their needs before yours, is accept the imperfections and deal with the problems that will come up.

If you had asked my opinion about love three months before I’m sure I would not have answered the same as now. Today, I can say I’m plenty in love with my boyfriend, who’s called Oriol. I knew him thank a friend of both and we met for first time on 15^th January of this year. And you may think this is so hasty but I’m so sure I want him for many time ahead. I had never loved someone as much as I love him, besides, he is my first true love.

I don’t know if love makes people be better or what. What I realised is that my grades are better than before and I feel more happy than ever. Love is something great if you find the correct person.

In my opinion, the most important thing in a relationship is respect. When the couple respects each other the relation can be longer. To me, love is accepting the other person as they are, who the other person really is, without trying to change it.

Nowadays relationships are so complicated but ours is perfect. Our relationship is simple, it’s light. I don’t need more but him. I would never be able of hurt him. I will always respect him, support him and miss him. And, above all, I will be there for him both in good and in bad. I just need to complement who I am with him. 

"The paradox of love is to be oneself, without ceasing to be two."

HOW I SEE MYSELF IN A FUTURE

I don't think so much in my future because I haven't the time for do it. I am very stressed with many things and I need to deal with them before I think about my future.

The other day I had a dream about my future. I saw myself doing purchases with my boyfriend. We had a list and we were crossing out all things we put in our shopping cart. After we paid we gone to put all we bought in my car’s boot. It seems I had a white Peugeot with two doors, it was small. In my family we had a Peugeot before but I never liked it.

During the ride back home my boyfriend was singing to me all songs we listened at the radio, he was so cute. In my dream I was living into an apartment in Barcelona because I was studying Pharmacy at Barcelona’s University. It was my last year and I had already worked like a pharmacist in a lab.

I was living in a third floor and the apartment was little and beautiful. When we arrived home we put everything in the respective place and then we went for a walk. Then was when I get up.

This dream was so realistic and I truly thought it was real. I had never thought about my future at University, I always imagine myself shearing room with others two girls into a univesitary residence. 
When I was little and I was thinking about my future I imagined I had a chalet next to the beach, many dogs, an expensive car… well, quite unrealistic things. But, nowadays, things changed. I’m not the girl I was and now I’m less creative but more realistic. Well, after this dream I don’t expect a big house but an apartment, a big car but a small one,… And all this don't disappoint me, quite the opposite, I don’t need a big house neither an expensive car and if someday I want it I will exert myself until I get it.

GLOBAL ISSUES: RACISM

CAPTCHA

Google develops invisible web security Captcha form

The website security checks will probably disappear in favour of a new system developed by Google: Captcha. This new system ask people to complete a puzzle that a computer would have struggle to complete correctly.

They are designed to stop automated bots using websites.

Google's new system tracks how persons interact with websites to prove they're real, so the puzzles are no longer necessary.

The Captcha checks can appear when someone is trying to log in to a website with the wrong password.

The puzzles are simply challenges for people but computers can find it more difficult. Those puzzles can be:

• Identifying photographs of dogs in a gallery of animal pictures.
• Typing numbers from a photograph of a road sign into a box.
• Listening to somebody reading out numbers over music and typing the numbers into a box.

The puzzles benefit companies, as Google, by helping train artificial intelligence algorithms. But for users this may be a nuisance.

Google has already simplified the process asking users to tick a check box on the website they're using. The box controls how persons interacted with it to separate human clicks from bots.

The latest actualization removes the check box and instead analyses how people have interacted with other elements on a website. But some suspicious activities will still trigger a puzzle.

This kind of control system is very necesary in our lives. We are a society connected to Internet and websites and we have to protect ourselves from hackers and others interactons from bots. 

DIABETES

Can sweat patches revolutionise diabetes?

Scientists have developed a sensor that can control our blood sugar levels by the analysing of sweaty skin. This sensor needs just one millionth of a litre of sweat to do the test.

A South Korean team said the sensor was accurate and they trully think it could help patients with diabetes.

The sensor is flexible and can move with the skin. But scientists needed to overcome a series of challenges to make it worth.

Firstly, there is less sugar in sweat than in blood, so it's harder to find and, secondly, there are other chemicals in sweat which can disrupt the results, as lactic acid.

So the patch has three sensors for monitoring the sugar levels, four sensors which controls the acidity of the sweat and a humidity sensor for analysing the amount of sweat.

All this information recollected by the sensor is passed onto a portable computer which does the analysis.

Scientists conclude saying this new sistem provide important advances for diabetes but they want to test how the patches work in the long-term.

All patients with diabetes deserve this method because the other one is too painful and dangerous. In blood there are a lot of illnesses and there are easy to propagate. This future method will be more safe and easy to use.

A blaze leaves 19 dead

Guatemala children's home blaze 'leaves 19 dead'

Firefighters say that 19 children have died in a blaze at a children's care home. About 25 others were injured in the fire at the Virgen de Asuncion shelter about 25 km south-east of Guatemala City.

There is no information about what caused the blaze but one police officer said the fire started with burning mattresses in one of the bedrooms.

Yesterday, the police intervined after a riot and about 60 children escaped. Some of them alleged they had been mistreated or sexually abused.

The UN children's fund in Guatemala said on Twitter it condemns the tragedy at the Virgin of the Assumption Home. That these children and adolescents must be protected.

The capacity of the home is 400 but there were many more children in the home.

The shelter takes in children up to the age of 18 who have suffered abuse or trafficking, or have been abandoned.

The shelter was also a juvenile detection centre where judges were sending adolescents involved in criminal cases.

It's not fair for those children to be tragically condamned in a children's care home with disastrous conditions. They have to be protected by law, not sexually abused.