Fifteen years ago, or 2007 to be more precise, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma or SLL and in 2008 started treatment being infused with a drug called RITUXAN. Two years later, I had a silent heart attack and instead of having a triple bypass, I had 5 stents inserted into 3 left heart ateries, 3 of which went into the LAD. In 2012, and quite possibly because of my cancer treatments, I contracted Melanoma which started in my foot, spread to my groin, and then to my neck.
Over the course of my cancer treatments, I have had chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and immunotherapy to simultaneously control my two cancers. I am not eligible for any clinical trials because I am battling two cancers simultaneously. Currently, I am being treated with immunotherapy drugs:
Opdivo infusions for my Melanoma - monthly infusions
Imbruvica (pills) - 240 mg daily
IVIG infusions to help boost my immune system
This past Thursday, I had my 55th Opdivo infusion and so far there have been no adverse side effects except for night sweats, anemia, low immunity, and fatigue. My body seems to be tolerating it fairly well according to what my Oncologist said during our office visit.
On Monday morning, I go in for my monthly infusion of IVIG to help boost my immune system and according to my Oncologist, there is no reason why I cannot have both infusions on the same day... which is what I will be doing from now on starting in February. I will have my morning infusion, then go to the cafeteria at the hospital, grab a bite to eat, surf the web, and go to my second infusion an hour or so later and be home by 4/5 that afternoon. Long day, but don't have to go twice.
As far as I can tell, I will be taking some sort of cancer treatments for the rest of my life, even if the doctors are confident that the Melanoma has left my body and is not returning... because my SLL is the type Lymphoma that never leaves one's body once it is there. What a pisser...
Exhibiting emotional intelligence is more important than ever in the workplace. We are in the midst of the Great Resignation, and people are increasingly less likely to stick with jobs where they do not feel seen, heard, or valued.
Employees want to work with and for people who exhibit high degrees of emotional intelligence—teammates and managers who project leadership along with self-awareness, empathy, and humility.
The cornerstone of emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, evaluate, interpret, and manage emotions—both your own and those of others—and use those insights to drive positive action.
This sensibility can improve everything from communication and personal relationships to effectiveness and job satisfaction. Here are some key phrases that are used by emotionally intelligent leaders.
“I’m listening” / “I hear you”
Never underestimate the power of telling someone you’re listening. We’ve all been on the receiving end of barely-made eye contact or lukewarm nodding while we’re mid-sentence with another person.
How much more validated and valued would we feel if they confirmed we have their undivided attention with some eye contact and a simple “I’m listening”? READ MORE...
LOS ANGELES -- The descendants of Native American tribes on the Northern California coast are reclaiming a bit of their heritage that includes ancient redwoods that have stood since their ancestors walked the land.
Save the Redwoods League planned to announce Tuesday that it is transferring more than 500 acres (202 hectares) on the Lost Coast to the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council.
Priscilla Hunter, chairwoman of the Sinkyone Council, said it’s fitting they will be caretakers of the land where her people were removed or forced to flee before the forest was largely stripped for timber.
“It’s a real blessing,” said Hunter, of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians. “It’s like a healing for our ancestors. I know our ancestors are happy. This was given to us to protect.”
The transfer marks a step in the growing Land Back movement to return Indigenous homelands to the descendants of those who lived there for millennia before European settlers arrived. READ MORE...
Those who were paying close attention to a study released by the UK National Health Service might have gotten excited about their latest find.
The study's report showed a correlation between those who consume certain kinds of wine and their likelihood for contracting COVID-19.
Though it might be tempting to jump to the conclusion that drinking some wine could help ward off the highly-transmittable virus, that isn't exactly what the study suggests (via Wine-Searcher).
The study found that those who do not drink at all were more likely to get COVID-19 while those who drink liquor had no more or less of a chance of contracting the virus.
But the key findings were that those who drank 14 glasses of red wine or fewer per week were 10 to 17% less likely to get COVID-19. The same number of glasses of fortified wine reduced the risk by 12%.
Those who drank white wine or Champagne were up to 8% less likely to get the virus. However, it is vital to remember that these figures were reported as correlative patterns, rather than the direct effect of alcohol on COVID-19. READ MORE...
As icebergs drifted by his Antarctica-bound ship, David Holland spoke this week of how the melting glacier he’s cruising towards may contain warning signals for the coasts of far-off Canada.
The atmospheric and ocean scientist from Newfoundland is part of an expedition to one of the world’s most frigid and remote spots – the Thwaites glacier in the western portion of the continent – where he’ll measure water temperatures in an undersea channel the size of Manhattan.
“The question of whether sea level will change can only be answered by looking at the planet where it matters, and that is at Thwaites,” said Holland, director of the environmental fluid dynamics laboratory at New York University, during a satellite phone interview from aboard the South Korean icebreaker Araon.
It’s over 16,000 kilometres from Holland’s hometown in Brigus, N.L., on Conception Bay, to the site about 100 kilometres inland from the “grounding zone” where the Thwaites’ glacier leaves the continent and extends over the Pacific.
The team’s 20,000 tonnes of drilling gear will be assembled to measure the temperatures, salinity and turbulence of the Pacific waters that have crept underneath and are lapping away at the guts of the glacier.
“If it (the water) is above freezing, and in salt water this means above -2 centigrade, that’s not sustainable. A glacier can’t survive that,” said Holland.
Since 2018, more than 60 scientists from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration group have been exploring the ocean and marine sediments, measuring warming currents flowing toward the deep ice, and examining the stretching, bending, and grinding of the glacier over the landscape below.
The Florida-sized Thwaites glacier faces the Amundsen Sea, and researchers have suggested in journal articles over the past decade it may eventually lose large amounts of ice because of deep, warm water driven into the area as the planet warms. Some media have dubbed Thwaites the “doomsday glacier” due to estimates that it could add about 65 centimetres to global sea level rise. READ MORE...
Ransomware — malware that prevents you from accessing your files unless you pay the hacker that infected your computer — has been an issue plaguing computer users and businesses for years. Given its prevalence and the fact that a ransomware infection can lead to the loss of valuable files like documents or family pictures, it’s a good idea to make sure you’re protected. Starting with Windows 10, Microsoft has added features to its built-in Windows Security software that can help keep your computer safe from ransomware.
As far as ransomware is concerned, there are two levels to Windows Security. The first consists of malware scans, which are on by default, and which you can learn more about here. While this will work to keep ransomware from being installed on your computer, if a piece of malware does manage to slip by, the scans won’t be able to protect your files.
The second level is Windows’ ransomware protection, which you have to turn on manually. However, before you do, it is worth noting that this feature is not on by default for a reason. It works by only letting approved apps make changes to your files — which, in theory, prevents ransomware from encrypting them and locking them away. This, however, can cause some problems with apps that aren’t expecting it, so you may have to do some occasional trouble-shooting if you’ve got ransomware protection turned on.
As a result, as we go over how to enable ransomware protection, it’s worth keeping in mind that there will probably be some tinkering involved with this process.
HOW TO TURN ON RANSOMWARE PROTECTION Windows’ built-in ransomware protection is included in its security app. To get to it, either search “Windows Security” from the start menu or go to “Settings”> “Privacy & Security”> “Windows Security.” READ MORE...
The big idea One factor that influences the use of the labels “soft science” or “hard science” is gender bias, according to recent researchmycolleaguesand I conducted.
Women’s participation varies across STEM disciplines. While women have nearly reached gender parity in biomedical sciences, they still make up only about 18% of students receiving undergraduate degrees in computer science, for instance.
In a series of experiments, we varied the information study participants read about women’s representation in fields like chemistry, sociology and biomedical sciences. We then asked them to categorize these fields as either a “soft science” or a “hard science.”
Across studies, participants were consistently more likely to describe a discipline as a “soft science” when they’d been led to believe that proportionally more women worked in the field. Moreover, the “soft science” label led people to devalue these fields – describing them as less rigorous, less trustworthy and less deserving of federal research funding.
Why it matters Over the past decade, a growing movement has encouraged girls and women to pursue education and careers in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. This effort is sometimes described as a way to reduce the wage gap.
Our research suggests this may not be the case. Stereotypes about women and STEM persist, even in the face of evidence that women can and do productively participate in STEM fields. These stereotypes can lead people to simply devalue the fields in which women participate. In this way, even science and math can end up in the “pink collar” category of heavily female fields that are often devalued and underpaid. READ MORE...
The radio telescope at the Parkes Observatory at sunset near the town of Parkes, Australia, July 15, 2019. Stefica Nicol Bikes/Reuters
Mysterious radio waves emanating from the center of the galaxy have astronomers stumped. Four objects have briefly emitted radio signals that don't resemble any known type of star. Scientists think each of the four signals could come from a new type of object unknown to astronomy.
Ziteng Wang found a needle in an astronomical haystack.
Wang, a physics PhD student at the University of Sydney, was combing through data from Australia's ASKAP radio telescope in late 2020. His research team had detected 2 million objects with the telescope and was classifying each one.
The object emitted powerful radio waves throughout 2020 — six signals over nine months. Its irregular pattern and polarized radio emissions didn't look like anything the researchers had seen before.
Even stranger, they couldn't find the object in X-ray, visible, or infrared light. They lost the radio signal, too, despite listening for months with two different radio telescopes.
It reappeared suddenly, about a year after they first detected it, but within a day, it was gone again. READ MORE...
Archeologists found two large sphinx statues during the restoration of a temple in Luxor, Egypt.
The "Temple of Millions of Years" was a vast funerary temple of King Amenhotep III, who ruled about 3,300 years ago.
The limestone statues measured around 26 feet in length and depict the Pharoah in the form of a sphinx.
Archeologists discovered two colossal sphinx statues while restoring the ancient Egyptian funerary temple of King Amenhotep III, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
King Amenhotep III was a pharaoh who ruled Egypt around 3,300 years ago when it was rich in gold and oversaw a peaceful period of prosperity and growing international power.
The limestone statues measure around 26 feet in length and depict King Amenhotep III in the form of a sphinx – a mythological creature with a lion's body and a human head – wearing a mongoose headdress, a royal beard, and a wide necklace, the ministry said.
An Egyptian-German archeological mission found the statues half-submerged in water inside the Luxor temple, known as the "Temple of Millions of Years."
The team also found three black granite busts of the goddess Sekhmet, a goddess of war also associated with healing which is often depicted as a part lion.
A trio of separate research teams from three different continents published individual papers indicating similar quantum computing breakthroughs yesterday. All three were funded in part by the US Army and each paper appears to be a slam dunk for the future of quantum computing.
But only one of them heralds the onset of the age of nuclear quantum computers.
Maybe it’s the whole concept of entanglement, but for a long time it’s felt like we were suspended in a state where functional quantum machines were both “right around the corner” and “decades or more away.”
But the past few years have seen a more rapid advancement toward functional quantum systems than most technologists could have imagined in their wildest dreams.
The likes of IBM, Microsoft, D-Wave, and Google putting hybrid quantum systems on the cloud coupled with the latter’s amazing time crystal breakthrough have made 2018-2021 the opening years of what promises to be a golden age for quantum computing.
Despite this amazing progress, there are still holdouts who believe we’ll never have a truly useful, fully-functional, qubit-based quantum computing system.
If the multiverse exists, there could be another you somewhere out there, doing exactly what you're doing now. (Image credit: Getty Images) The multiverse is a hypothetical group of multiple universes. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", "alternate universes", or "many worlds". SOURCE: Wikipedia
Multiverse Theory
...suggests that our universe, with all its hundreds of billions of galaxies and almost countless stars, spanning tens of billions of light-years, may not be the only one. Instead, there may be an entirely different universe, distantly separated from ours — and another, and another. Indeed, there may be an infinity of universes, all with their own laws of physics, their own collections of stars and galaxies (if stars and galaxies can exist in those universes), and maybe even their own intelligent civilizations.
It could be that our universe is just one member of a much grander, much larger multitude of universes: a multiverse.
The concept of the multiverse arises in a few areas of physics (and philosophy), but the most prominent example comes from something called inflation theory. Inflation theory describes a hypothetical event that occurred when our universe was very young — less than a second old. In an incredibly brief amount of time, the universe underwent a period of rapid expansion, "inflating" to become many orders of magnitude larger than its previous size, according to NASA.
Inflation of our universe is thought to have ended about 14 billion years ago, said Heling Deng, a cosmologist at Arizona State University and an expert in multiverse theory. "However, inflation does not end everywhere at the same time," Deng told Live Science in an email. "It is possible that as inflation ends in some region, it continues in others."
Thus, while inflation ended in our universe, there may have been other, much more distant regions where inflation continued — and continues even today. Individual universes can "pinch off" of larger inflating, expanding universes, creating an infinite sea of eternal inflation, filled with numerous individual universes. READ MORE...
INTERESTING THOUGHT – EVERYTHING HAS A VALUE BASED ON CONFIDENCE – LOSE THE CONFIDENCE AND IT IS WORTH NOTHING
How Crypto Currency works... an analogy in Layman’s terms.
Not long ago a merchant found a lot of monkeys that lived near a certain Village .
One day he came to the Village saying he wanted to buy these monkeys !
He announced that he would buy the monkeys at $100 each.
The Villagers thought that this man must be crazy - How can somebody buy Stray Monkeys at $100 each ?
Still some People caught some monkeys and gave it to this merchant and he gave $100 for each monkey.
This News spread like wildfire and People caught monkeys and sold them to the merchant.
After a few days, the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys at $200 each.
The lazy villagers also ran around to catch the remaining monkeys!
They sold the remaining monkeys at $200 each.
The merchant then announced that he will buy monkeys for $500 each!
The villagers start to lose sleep!.....They caught six or seven monkeys, which was all that was left and got $500 each.
The Villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.
Then the merchant announced that he is going on Holiday for a week, but when he returns, he will buy monkeys at $1000 each!
He also said that his employee will be in charge, and would take care of the monkeys he bought pending his return.
The Merchant went on holiday!
The Villagers were frantic and very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell it at $1000 each as was promised by the Merchant.
Then the Merchant’s Employee contacted them and told them that he would secretly sell them some monkeys at $700 each.
The news spread like wildfire. As the Merchant promised on his return that he would buy monkeys at $1000 each, they would achieve a $300 profit for each monkey.
The next day The Villagers queued up near the Monkey Cage.
The Employee sold all the monkeys at $700 each. The Rich bought monkeys in large lots. The poor borrowed money from money lenders and bought the rest of the monkeys!
The Villagers took care of their monkeys & waited for the Merchant to return!
However nobody came ! ..... Then they ran to Find the Employee ....However he was not to be found!
The Villagers then realized that they have been duped buying the useless Stray monkeys at $700each, and were now unable to sell them!
This Monkey Business is now known as Bitcoin !
It will make a-lot of People bankrupt and a very few People filthy rich in this kind of Monkey Business.
Watch the sun set from a particularly dark patch of Earth and you may spot a triangle of what scientists call zodiacal light extending from where our star passed below the horizon.
Zodiacal light in Earth's skies is created when sunlight bounces off the dust that fills the solar system, the remains of pulverized asteroids and flurry left by passing comets.
And according to new research by a team of astronomers and high school students based in China, a similar phenomenon occurs in the skies of at least a few potentially habitable exoplanets. The light could be one more clue for scientists seeking to puzzle out what those exotic neighborhoods might look like.
"If we can detect zodiacal light from a distant planet system, then this system likely has components like asteroids and comets, which can't be easily detected directly in other ways," lead author Jian Ge, an astronomer at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China, said during a news conference held virtually on Jan. 13 by the American Astronomical Society.
Ge had been scheduled to present the research at a meeting organized by the group that was canceled due to COVID-19. TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS, CLICK HERE...
