Week 2: How to live with stress?

I've chosen this subject at the end of tiring week for me - probably too tiring. I would like to discuss with yours about stress.
I know that stress is a term defined in psychology: it is a feeling of strain and pressure. But I think that it is also such common thing that we can exchange some information about dealing with it without scientific knowledge.

At first please watch the following video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend.html

When I was watching it I understood why people talk under a pressure :-).

Next let's try to discuss following topics:
1. What are the most typical stress factors (which may be described on our public blog) in your life?
2. What do you prefer: fighting with stress or avoiding stressful situations and why?
3. What do you do during and after stressful situations? Would you like to change some of these behaviors?
4. What do you do for relaxing yourself after a stressful day?
5. Referring to the video: what do you think about reaching out to others as a mechanism for stress reduction?
6. What do you think about Kelly's advice (given at the end of video) that it's better for your health to choose something meaningful than only to try an avoidance of discomfort? Please, describe us a situation when you  choose more stressful way than simpler one and explain us what caused your choice?

Week 1: Data-mining our dreams

Hello guys,

I'am sorry for posting this with a delay  caused by technical problems with the Internet. :)
I hope you will find the subject very interesting.

Here it is :

http://www.kurzweilai.net/data-mining-our-dreams?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9bfb5df872-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-9bfb5df872-281896945

It looks like we are on the brink of being  able to record our dreams :)

 What do you think about this fascinating possibility? Is it dangerous?

Does it open a new road to mind reading and possibility to cure many psychological disorders ?

Week 1: PhD endeavour

There are many people who decide to  continue their education to get a  PhD degree. 

Give us a few tips how to accomplish this goal.   What do you do to reach your goal? Do you have any strategy? Do you share literature with your group mates?  Where do you look for it? What about time-management? 

Winter Term 2013/14

Dear Students,
The course will start on 21 October 2013.
1. Each week  there will be presented texts/films and presentations, which I would like you to read/watch and comment on.

2.  You should also present a scientific article with your comments and questions for the group to discuss: you do not write it, you just find something of your interest online, present it and moderate the discussion of it.  Put your name on the list of blog moderators next to the date when you would like to do it.

1.   21-27.10 Kinga M.
2.   28.10-3.11 Grzegorz G.
3.   04-10.11 Wiktor
4.   11- 17.11 Grzegorz K.
5.   18-24.11 Jacek
6.   25.11-1.12 Artur, Waldemar K.
7.   2-8.12 klec, Kamil Drabek
8.   16-22.12 Sławek H. Kamil Pawlak,  Sławomir Janiak
9.   6-12.01.14 Krzysztof S. , Mati, Piotr M.

Week 8 - High-altitude wind power

Winds at higher altitudes become steadier, more persistent, and of higher velocity. Historically, wind turbines are placed on Earth’s surface, but idea of capturing the power of winds high in the sky seems to be great chance. According to research presented on this page:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n2/full/nclimate1683.html
“Turbines placed on Earth’s surface could extract kinetic energy at a rate of at least 400 TW, whereas high-altitude wind power could extract more than 1,800 TW.”
Idea of high-altitude wind power is quite old.  Was introduced by John Etzler's technological utopianist in 1833 but nowadays we can observe huge interest it this area. Few days ago Google has acquired a US company Makani Power specialized in fully autonomous flights of robot kites bearing its power-generating propellers. You can read nice article about that on BBC web page.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22636565
Some other interesting thinks about this concept you can find in a little bit older article on this web page:
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/high_altitude_wind_energy_huge_potential_and_hurdles/2576/

• What do you think about concept of high-altitude wind power?
• What about Google investment. Is it yet another PR trick to be known as company putting its resources into some novel technologies like self-driving cars and wearable  devices with not always have a future?
• What do you think about traditional wind plants ?  They are always highly visible in any landscape. Some people like it, others are against saying that is not healthy for people and kills millions of birds.

Week 8 - The future of the Web

Do you know http://archive.org/web/web.php  ? If not you should try to check it. By this web page you are able to “travel in time” ;). Type www.onet.pl or other URL to see how these web pages were looked like in the past (e.g. 15 ears ago).

But today, all we are a part of changes that is currently happening at the Web.  As you probably know The World Wide Web Consortium (W3c) is currently engaged into creation of HTML 5 and CSS3 specifications. Most of these specifications (they are divided into many smaller modules ) have still under working draft status. Besides that limitation, we are able to use what they provide today (providing  we have the newest version of the web browser). If you are confused whether to use HTML5 right now you should read this article: http://tympanus.net/codrops/2011/11/24/top-10-reasons-to-use-html5-right-now/
So this post will be about new  features of HTML 5 and CSS3. Let’s think about another usage of HTML5 and situations they can help, facilitate live of others and enrich some kind of experience of using the web. You can share you idea, interesting links about innovations like new frameworks for building new interface of sites, tutorial, examples, articles etc.

Here I am writing some ideas that we can start to talk about them.  Innovative way of building interfaces and new approach to design are the aims that CSS3 helps to achieve them quite easy.
Let’s start talking about typography. The following article is about using web fonts as a primary design element. Using an uncommon or novelty typeface can add a lot of visual interest
http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/05/01/effective-typography-driven-web-design/
The websites based on the parallax effect present very interesting approach for building eye-catching web sites:  http://designmodo.com/parallax-design/

Which direction the design of web sites goes to? Here we have two interesting articles that deal with that:

http://tympanus.net/codrops/2011/02/21/designing-for-feature-rich-websites/

http://designmodo.com/google-interface-flat/

Making a presentation using Web Browser and HTML5 -  instead of Power Point has becoming more and more popular. The following article presents several frameworks that we can use building our own presentation available on the web:

http://zoomzum.com/6-best-html5css3-presentation-frameworks/

I couldn’t finish here without mention about 3D and animations. The complex animation in pure CSS3 are still not very popular. But due to rapid development of the new products of Adobe (e.g. Adobe Edge Animate) for making animation it will change. I have an impression that these new possibilities carry a completely new approach for building a websites and presenting information on the web.

http://www.creativebloq.com/css3/animation-with-css3-712437

I realize that there are many another aspects that have not been moved here. Do you have any thoughts about that changes? If you read interesting article or know spectacular tool, sites or idea that you want to share with us -  please do it. Thank You.

Week 8 - Should our genetic information remain personal?

"Genetic information" is information about genes, gene products, or inherited characteristics that may derive from the individual or a family member.

Genetic information about individuals can reveal very important and sometimes private information about ancestry, activities, health, and health prospects.

Because there are so many potential uses of genetic information, and because social norms about how such information should or should not be used have yet to develop, it is very difficult to make judgement in this area. Some businesses, however, are already positioning themselves to help consumers maximize beneficial uses of genetic information while protecting privacy.

Passing on information to help prevent serious crime or indeed to establish a guilty party may on occasions be necessary.

Genetic study may also affect other members of the family. Therefore assurances need to be given to the person consenting to the tests that there will be no breach of confidentiality. This is especially important in small communities where confidentiality is a major issue.

Because no human being has a perfect set of genes, every person is at risk for genetic discrimination. In fact, there are well-documented public instances of genetic discrimination.

http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/20/can-you-be-fired-for-your-genes/

Young men and women who are carriers for a given disorder may be discouraged from courting each other, because their children could be born with a fatal genetic disorder.

Some individuals avoid genetic testing out of fear it will affect their ability to purchase insurance or find a job.

In addition access to genetic information about employee can give information about personality, overall performance, competence, health and vulnerability to work related diseases and life durability.

For more information please read this article: http://www.genome.gov/10002077

Please answer following questions:

Do you think that genetic information should be personal?

What is fair to discriminate?

}        Personality-to the level affecting employment

}        Competence at duties

}        Age

}        Health

◦         Smoking

◦         Medical history ?

◦         Family history ?

What other aspects of life in your opinion can be affected by making genetic information accessible?