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Mattis: North Korea nuclear threat accelerating

Image copyrightAFP/GETTYImage captionNorth Korea engaged in "outlaw" behaviour, Mr Mattis said

The threat of nuclear attack from North Korea is increasing, US Defence Secretary James Mattis said during a visit to South Korea.

Mr Mattis warned it would face a "massive military response" if it used nuclear weapons.

Separately, North Korea released a South Korean fishing boat which it said had been found in North Korean waters illegally.

The crew of 10 were released on Friday evening, South Korean officials said.

It comes at a time of heightened tension in the region, with both sides running a series of military exercises.

"North Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbours and the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear weapons programs," Mr Mattis said, AP news agency reported.

He said North Korea engaged in "outlaw" behaviour and said US-South Korean security collaboration had taken on "new urgency".

Washington could not accept a nuclear North Korea, he added, speaking alongside his South Korean counterpart Song Young-moo.Image copyrightAFP/GETTYImage captionThe threat of nuclear attack from North Korea is increasing, Mr Mattis says
Mr Mattis is in Seoul for annual defence talks with South Korea.

US President Donald Trump is due to visit South Korea in November as part of a trip to Asia.

In September North Korea carried out its sixth nuclear test, which was its biggest yet.

The bomb was thought to have had a power range from 50 to 120 kilotonnes. A 50kt device would be about three times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

It has also carried out a series of missile tests, firing two ballistic missiles over Japan in August and September.

South Korea has begun deploying the US Thaad (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense) missile defense system in response to the threat of a missile attack from the north.

Earlier this month, the US and South Korea also began joint military exercises in waters surrounding the Korean peninsula, involving fighter jets, destroyers and aircraft carriers.

The drills anger the North, and Pyongyang has in the past denounced them as a "rehearsal for war".

Separately, the US has imposed sanctions on seven North Koreans and three entities over "flagrant" human rights abuses.

Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said those sanctioned included diplomats placed in China and Vietnam who had taken part in the forced repatriation of North Korean asylum-seekers.

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A rare, intimate look at the lives of single mothers in Afghanistan

Millions of women singlehandedly raise their children in the war-torn country, but their stories are rarely told in the media. Photographer Kiana Hayeri captures their struggles and strength in these photos.

Malika is 28 years old. Just 14 when she was married off by her family, she lives with her five children in a small room in the Wazir Abad neighbourhood in Kabul, Afghanistan. Malika is also a single mother -- when she was eight months pregnant with her fifth child, her husband was murdered, and she now supports her family on a monthly income of 800 afs, or $12, from washing clothes. The hardest part of being a single mother, Malika says, is watching her children go to bed hungry.

Photographer Kiana Hayeri, based in Tehran, Iran, was the same age as Malika when she spent one month last summer photographing the intimate and scarcely seen daily lives of around 30 single mothers in Kabul and at a women’s prison in Herat. “When you ask somebody outside of Afghanistan what they picture when they think of the country, everyone talks about war, land mines, men with beards,” says Hayeri. “But never mothers, and especially single mothers.”

Malika, 28, comforts her son after a fight with his siblings. Malika and her five children live in a small room in the Wazir Abad neighbourhood in Kabul.

Culturally, women in Afghanistan are expected to be modest, which means most are reluctant to be photographed. But Hayeri believes that because the mothers in her images did not have husbands, they were more willing to welcome her into their homes and tell her their stories. “A lot of these women are very lonely, so for them, it was nice to talk about everything and vent out their frustrations at the difficult parts of life,” she says.

Hayeri, a Fellow, has an eye for under-the-radar stories like these -- stories of everyday life from places around the world known to most outsiders for their civil strife or extreme violence. She has photographed queer teenagers in her home country of Iran, ex-child soldiers learning capoeira in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syrian refugees seeking asylum in South Africa.

Mina, 38, became paralyzed from the waist down during childbirth. Now jobless, Mina pulled her oldest daughter (left) out of school so she could help rear her siblings.

Nearly four decades of war, terror and internal conflict in Afghanistan have left Malika and millions of mothers like her without husbands. Yet there is no word for “single mothers” in Dari and Pashto, the languages spoken in Afghanistan. “Single moms are described only by the status of their husbands,” Hayeri says, “so they're either widowed or divorced. But their motherhood is not recognized.”

Although more Afghan women in urban areas have started going to school and getting jobs in recent years, 85 percent of women in the country are still illiterate and only 20 percent are employed. “Women really don't have lives outside of their homes,” Hayeri says. When a woman’s husband dies, she is often forced by family to marry a brother-in-law, usually as his second or third wife, so she will have a man who can take care of her family. But what happens to those who don’t remarry? “Unfortunately, in Afghanistan, and even in Kabul, a woman without a man in the house is considered immoral or available,” Hayeri says. “Single mothers endure serious harassment, abuse and threats, usually coming from neighbors and shop owners.”

Aziza, 52, puts on makeup as she prepares to go out after lunch.

Most of the single mothers Hayeri met were either unemployed or barely able to provide for their families with jobs cleaning homes and washing clothes for the wealthy. When one women she photographed, Mina, was pregnant with her fifth child, she was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis and became paralyzed from the waist down while giving birth; the child did not survive. Her husband kicked her and their children out of the house, and he re-married. Jobless, Mina has attempted suicide multiple times and told Hayeri she resented her own daughter for saving her life.

Afghan single mothers receive very few social services from their government, and media coverage of the ongoing war as well as international aid for women have both declined in recent years. Only a small fraction of the single mothers that Hayeri met have defied the odds and found success. Aziza, 52, for example, has a good job at the National TV and Radio of Afghanistan. She lost her husband to cancer in 2006 and has brought up her four children on her own with the support of her brother-in-law, a prominent musician.

A photo of Aziza and her late husband from the 1970s.

Unsurprisingly, the children of single mothers in Afghanistan are forced to grow up very quickly, and their lives are stressful and their opportunities constrained. Often, the oldest daughter will be forced to leave school to assist their mother. “The daughter of one woman I met, Shakar, was very resentful and bitter to her mother, because she made the decision not to pull out the oldest son from school, but to pull her out instead,” Hayeri says.

After speaking to so many single mothers and observing them and their families, Hayeri believes that education is key to changing their fates. Ensuring that young women remain in school will help a new generation of women enter the workforce and achieve greater independence and better jobs. And while not all educated Afghan women are able to find employment, they tend to allow their children more freedom and let them stay in school for as long as possible.

Reihana, 28, and her children at home. She was only 14 when she was sold by her father to a man twice her age, who abused her. Eventually, she ran away with her five children, now aged 5 to 11 years old, and also takes care of her niece. Reihana studies part-time at a university and works full time at the Ministry of Counter Narcotics.


Of course, the culture cannot change if the men don’t too, acknowledges Hayeri. A staggering 87 percent of women in Afghanistan have reported experiencing physical, sexual or psychological violence, and most of the men Hayeri met showed little respect for women’s rights. She did, however, observe that the sons of single mothers exhibited a deeper appreciation for the role women play in Afghan society. “All of the men I met who were brought up by single moms have more respect for women, for their wives, even for their own mothers,” she says. “If women can teach their sons to have respect and value for their wives and their sisters and their mothers, the next generation will be a little bit better.”

Hayeri’s photos, which were published in Harper’s Magazine in May, won her the International Academic Forum’s grand prize in documentary photography earlier this year. But she says that most of the single mothers haven’t seen their published photographs yet -- and probably won’t, because they lack access to smartphones or the Internet. Hayeri recalls many of her subjects asking how their lives would change after she took their photographs. She remembers telling them, “I honestly don't know. But I think sharing your story will touch some people, so hopefully in the bigger picture it will make changes.”

Shakar, 29, lost her husband to a suicide attack; she now works as a cleaner. She has five children and had to pull her oldest daughter out of school so she could help take care of the home and her siblings. Here, the oldest daughter rubs Shakar’s temples to ease the pain of a migraine.

What’s next for Hayeri? She is working on a project that profiles women in Afghanistan as agents of change, as opposed to victims of circumstances. Her subjects include a successful TV host of the first women-focused station in the country, women in the police force and military, and a judge who works on child abuse cases. “At a time when international interest in Afghanistan is diminishing, it’s crucial to illustrate the progress that Afghanistan has made in the past 15 years,” Hayeri says. “It is important to show there are still people thriving inside the country -- especially a younger generation that has seen nothing but war -- whose lives could drastically change if they just have the opportunity to change them.”

Shakar’s children team up to hang a photo of their father on the wall.

All photos from Kiana Hayeri.

Taking care of children are very hard tasks, they can be challenging and might require a lot of attention, Effort and most intriguing Time. Children Means a lot to us.

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How to fix a frayed Charger Cord

Problem: Frayed charger cord

Time: 1 to 2 hours

Materials: Silicone sealant, painter's tape (which is less sticky than regular masking tape), protective gloves (optional)

A frayed power cord can be dangerous.
Because a notebook that travels needs to be plugged in and unplugged several times a day, the cord and connector can take a beating, leading to a frayed power cord. If this happens, it's important to get a new cord or fix it right away, because it not only can damage the system's battery through intermittent charging, but it can also be a fire hazard.

Fortunately, most power adapters have removable AC power cords, which cost a few dollars and are available at stores like Radio Shack. On the other hand, if the connector that plugs into the computer is the problem, it can cost $50 to $75 to replace because you have to find the exact AC adapter for your laptop from your notebook manufacturer or an online retailer such as Shop For Battery, LaptopTraveller.com or Notebook AC Adapter (search for your make and model name followed by "AC adapter").

Or you can just fix it yourself.

There's a quick-and-dirty repair for a frayed cord: Just roll electrical or duct tape over the damage and hope for the best. A better way is to make a more permanent repair with silicone sealant, available at any hardware store and many supermarkets, which will insulate and protect it. It's best to use black to match the cord's color, but clear sealant works just as well.

To protect the surface you're working on, lay down a wide strip of painter's tape, sticky side down, and place the frayed area of the cord on top of it. The sealant won't stick to the back of the painter's tape the way it might to other barriers made out of paper or plastic, and the painter's tape should peel right off the table when you're done. (Note, however, that you shouldn't be doing any kind of computer repairs on your good furniture.)

Next, squeeze out a gob of sealant onto the area that needs fixing. Work the gooey sealant into place, covering the damage with a liberal coating. If you have sensitive skin, it's a good idea to wear thin protective gloves for this part.

Applying silicone sealant to the frayed cord.

Let the sealant cure for an hour or two until it is firm. Gently remove the cord from the tape (and the tape from the table), and you have the equivalent of a new power cord that's flexible and ready for years of road work.

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BLACK FRIDAY!!! What it is really all about.

BLACK FRIDAY

Thanksgiving Day in the United States (the fourth Thursday of November). Since 1952, it has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the U.S., and most major retailers open very early (and more recently during overnight hours) and offer promotional sales. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but California and some other states observe "The Day After Thanksgiving" as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the following Friday off, which, along with the following regular weekend, makes it a four-day weekend, thereby increasing the number of potential shoppers. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, although news reports, which at that time were inaccurate, have described it as the busiest shopping day of the year for a much longer period of time. Similar stories resurface year upon year at this time, portraying hysteria and shortage of stock, creating a state of positive feedback.

In 2014, spending volume on Black Friday fell for the first time since the 2008 recession. $50.9 billion was spent during the 4-day Black Friday weekend, down 11% from the previous year. However, the U.S. economy was not in a recession. Christmas creep has been cited as a factor in the diminishing importance of Black Friday, as many retailers now spread out their promotions over the entire months of November and December rather than concentrate them on a single shopping day or weekend.

The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday applied to the day after Thanksgiving in a shopping context suggests that the term originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This usage dates to at least 1961. More than twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit, thus going from being "in the red" to being "in the black".

For many years, it was common for retailers to open at 6:00 a.m., but in the late 2000s many had crept to 5:00 or 4:00. This was taken to a new extreme in 2011, when several retailers opened at midnight for the first time. In 2012, Wal-Mart and several other retailers announced that they would open most of their stores at 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, prompting calls for a walkout among some workers. In 2014, store opened at 5:00 PM on Thanksgiving Day while stores such as Target, Wal-Mart, Belk, and Sears opened at 6:00 PM on Thanksgiving Day. Three states, Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts, prohibit large supermarkets, big box stores, and department stores from opening on Thanksgiving, due to what critics  refer to as blue laws. The Massachusetts ban on forcing employees to work on major holidays is not a religion-driven "blue law" but part of the state's Common Day of Rest Law. A bill to allow stores to open on Thanksgiving Day was the subject of a public hearing on July 8, 2017. 

There have been reports of violence occurring between shoppers on Black Friday. Since 2006, there have been 7 reported deaths and 98 injuries throughout the United States. It is common for prospective shoppers to camp out over the Thanksgiving holiday in an effort to secure a place in front of the line and thus a better chance at getting desired items. This poses a significant safety risk, such as the use of propane and generators in the most elaborate cases, and in general, the blocking of emergency access and fire lanes, causing at least one city to ban the practice.

 Shop Online

These day's most Black Friday items are available online as well. Checkout thetelefuture.info for all online deals. This is one of the best and most frequently updated website on the web so you are sure to get all bargains there. With rising gas prices, sinking temperatures (harsh winter) and many online deals with Free Shipping Offers, Online Shopping is gaining ground.

 If you miss the deal, No problem! We highly recommend you to visit dealsofamerica.com every hour - throughout the year - as they have new deals every 30 minutes or so. You are likely to see black Friday like deals throughout the year. You can set a Keyword Alert for the item that you are looking for, as soon as they post that item you will receive an alert.

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Rooting your Android Phone

I believe that you've heard the word "root" a lot from the geek guys. But do you know what exactly "root" is? Here we will give you a comprehensive introduction on what is "root", what to do before rooting and how to root Android devices with Kingo Root. Now let's know more details about "Root Android".

Note:

Verizon and AT&T have locked the Bootloader in Android, leading to difficulties in rooting Android and possibilities of bricking the device. So the solution we offer below may not works on Android manufactured by Verizon or AT&T and it is better not root your phone with this method.


In brief, "root Android" means getting the highest authority on Android and has access to better use your Android phone by optimizing your phone, and its data, etc.

Part 2: Precautions before rooting Android
Before you root your Android, you'd better do the things below in advance:

Back up your Android, in case you fail rooting your Android and need to recover your lost data, you need to have an backup file with you.

Make sure that your Android has at least 50% of battery remained. If unfortunately, your Android runs out of battery, the device is likely to turn brick.

Find a third-party root tool which provides less and easy steps with higher success rate freely, for example, KingRoot.

Part 3: Get Your Android Rooted via KingRoot on PC
Step 1. Launch the program - KingRoot after installing it.

Step 2. Connect your Android smartphone to PC via USB cable. When it asks you to set up debugging mode, please follow the guide. Otherwise, the connecting would fail.




Step 3. As it is successful to get connected, the program will detect your phone to check whether it is supported.

Step 4. If your phone/tablet has not been rooted yet, just click “Start to Root” and the process will get started.




Step 5. In this process, your mobile will restart itself, which is normal. As there is a signal called “Successfully Gained Root” on the screen, your device is rooted.

Part 4: Steps to Root Android Device with KingRoot App

Note: You are not allowed to root your Android phone with Mac. For example, when you are intended to root your Android phone and then use our software, 

you can directly root on the Android phone with the below method.

Step 1. Run KingRoot on Android

Install KingRoot on your Android phone. Tap the icon of KingRoot. This will start the app. And you will have the interface as below. If your phone is unrooted, you can see the prompt saying that "Root access is unavailable". Then click the button "START ROOT".





Step 2. Root Android with KingRoot

When rooting, you can view the progress. When it is done, you will see the big green tick icon. After that, you can remove apps, purify system, etc. with this app.


As an open operating system, Android triggers a wide range of Android mobile brands and Android OS versions, we still have not found out a program which is 100% compatible for every Android phone or leads to absolutely successful rooting, particularly for Android 4.4 and the later. If both two programs fail to root your mobile, we suggest you turn to other solutions, please refer to this link.

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9 pieces of practical advice about bullying

A teacher, psychologist, crisis-line supervisor and others share their suggestions for what you can do.

Bullying knows no borders -- it occurs in every country in the world -- and its impact can last long after the incidents end. For National Bullying Prevention Month, we asked people from the TED community who have firsthand experience of the problem to offer their best advice.

1. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness ...
“Don’t think that letting someone else know you’re being bullied or asking them for help is a sign of weakness or that it’s a situation you should be able to handle on your own. Going through it alone isn’t a sign of strength on your part, because that’s what the bully wants. They want your isolation, they want you to feel helpless, and if they think they got you in that position, then they’re often emboldened. That was a mistake I made as a kid. It made things worse. When you don’t reach out, you feel like nobody understands what you’re going through and nobody can help you. Those monologues in your mind start getting louder.”

2. ... And telling someone about being bullied is not snitching.
“Often, kids have this fear of what they call snitching. But if you feel significant stress when you come to school, if it’s too hard for you to come into the building, or if you have the fear that someone will bother you by saying something or touching you inappropriately, then you must tell someone. This is not snitching -- you’re protecting yourself.”

3. Surround yourself with allies.

“Bullies tend not to want to bully someone when that person is in a group, so make sure you’re with friends, people you trust and connect with. Knowing you have defenders around you who will stand up for you can really help.”

4. Try to pity, rather than hate, your bullies.
“I was bullied as a child, and I like to think the experience contributed to my sense of empathy. I want to see people treated with dignity, always. But for those who are being bullied, the key thing for them to remember is that bullying is not a show of strength but a show of weakness on the bully’s part. And if you can pity those who are bullying you -- which I know is not so easy to do -- then you can defend your inner self from their behavior.”

5. It’s possible to triumph over bullies in your own mind.
“Fighting back on the inside can be as important as what happens on the outside. There was a study of 81 adults who were held as political prisoners in East Germany. They were subjected to mental and physical abuse, and decades after release, about two-thirds of the prisoners had struggled or were still struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder; one-third of the prisoners had not. Why? The smaller group had fought back in their own minds. Even though they complied with guards and signed false confessions, they prevailed on the inside in ways no one could see. Secretly, they refused to believe they were defeated, and they imagined that, sooner or later, they’d triumph.”

6. Focus on everything that’s great about you; others notice those things, too.
“If you’re being bullied, remind yourself of all the good and beautiful things about you. You, like most of us, are here to make the world a better place. Nobody is liked by everyone, so just because one bully or one group of bullies doesn’t like you doesn't mean other people don't see all your amazing qualities.”

7. The traits singled out by your bullies are the ones that make you the wonderfully singular person you are.
“Bullies think and think about us to come up with various ways to make us feel down. But whatever reason you’re bullied for, that’s exactly what makes you unique! Do they call you fat? Correct them: you are not fat; you are just easier to see! Do they say you have a big nose? Tell them you breathe better than other people do! Everything about you is unique, like nothing else in the world.”

8. If you’re considering retaliating against your bullies, stop before you act.
“Pause for a moment, and understand that what you’re about to do or about to say can have long-range implications. What you do or say will be how you’re remembered. So think: how do you want to be remembered? As somebody who was kind or mean?”


9. If you ever witness someone being bullied, show them your support.
“This can be in the moment or afterwards, and it can consist of sending them a text, an anti-bullying emoji, or asking them to sit with you. Stepping into a bullying situation can sometimes be helpful if handled in the right way, but that's not always right for each situation or each up stander.”

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The story behind LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves

Three American scientists have just been awarded the Nobel Prize for their space-time breakthrough, and LIGO team astrophysicist Gabriela González tells us about all the researchers, work and technology that contributed to it.

A little over 100 years ago, in 1915, Einstein published his theory of general relativity, which, despite its name, is a theory that actually explains gravity. It states that mass -- meaning all matter, including the planets -- attracts mass, not because of an instantaneous force but because all matter wrinkles the flexible fabric of space-time.

Space-time is this thing in which we live and that connects us all. It's like when we lie down on a mattress and distort its contours. The masses move when they see this space-time curvature and they follow the little curves, just like when our bedmate nestles up to us because of the curvature of the mattress.

A year later, Einstein derived from his theory that gravitational waves existed and that these waves were produced when masses move. For example, when two stars revolve around one another, they create folds in space-time that carry energy from the system, and the stars move toward each other. However, he also estimated these effects were so minute, it would never be possible to measure them.


A long time ago, two black holes were revolving around one another, accelerating until they were almost at the speed of light, and they fused into a massive black hole.

Thanks to the work of hundreds of scientists working in many countries over the course of many decades, these gravitational waves were finally discovered for the very first time in 2015. The story starts 1.3 billion years ago. A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, two black holes were revolving around one another -- or, as I like to say, dancing the tango. They started moving slowly, but as they emitted gravitational waves, they grew closer together, accelerating in speed until they were revolving at almost the speed of light and fused into a single black hole that had 60 times the mass of the Sun compressed into the space of 360 kilometers. (That's the size of the state of Louisiana, where I live.) And this incredible effect produced gravitational waves that carried the news of this cosmic hug to the rest of the universe.

It took us a long time to figure out the effects of these gravitational waves, because the way we measure them is by looking for those effects in distances. When the gravitational waves passed by the Earth, which was in 2015, they produced changes in all distances -- the distances between all of you, the distances between you and me, our heights -- every one of us stretched and shrank a tiny bit. It was predicted the effect would be proportional to the distance. But it's still extremely small: even for distances much greater than my height, the effect is infinitesimal. For example, the distance between the Earth and the Sun changed by just one atomic diameter.

In 2015, we didn't think we'd see anything in the data we were collecting via LIGO -- and then nature surprised us.

How can that be measured? Fifty years ago, visionary physicists at Caltech and MIT -- Kip Thorne, Ron Drever, Rai Weiss -- thought they could precisely measure these distances using lasers that measured the distances between mirrors placed kilometers apart. (Editor’s note: on October 3, 2017, Thorne and Weiss -- along with Barry Barish -- were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.) It took many years, a lot of labor, and many scientists to develop the technology and the ideas. Almost 30 years ago, researchers started building the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO): a pair of gravitational wave detectors, or interferometers, in the US. Each is four kilometers long; one is in Livingston, Louisiana, in the middle of a beautiful forest, and the other is in Hanford, Washington, in the middle of the desert.

These L-shaped interferometers have lasers that travel from the center through four kilometers in a vacuum, they’re reflected in mirrors, and then they return via separate arms. We measure the differences in the distances of the two identical arms. These detectors are very, very, very sensitive -- they're the most precise instruments in the world. But why make two? The signals we want to measure come from space, but since the mirrors are moving all the time, we need two interferometers in order to distinguish the gravitational wave effects (which are astrophysical effects and should show up on the two detectors) from the local effects (which should appear separately, on either of the detectors).

In September 2015, we were finishing installing the second-generation technology in the detectors. We weren't at the optimal sensitivity that we wanted -- and we're still not, two years later -- but we wanted to gather data. We didn't think we'd see anything, but we were ready to start collecting. And then nature surprised us. On September 14, 2015, we saw, in both detectors, a gravitational wave. In both detectors, we saw a signal with cycles that increased in amplitude and frequency and then went back down. These were the same in both detectors, and they were gravitational waves. And not only that -- in decoding this type of wave, we were able to deduce they came from black holes fusing together to make one, more than a billion years ago. That was fantastic.

At first, we couldn't believe it. We didn't imagine this would happen until much later; it was a surprise for all of us. It took us months to convince ourselves it was true, because we didn't want to leave any room for error. But it was true. To clear up any doubt the detectors really could measure these waves, we measured another gravitational wave -- it was smaller than the first one -- in December 2015. The first gravitational wave produced a difference in the distance of four-thousandths of a proton over four kilometers. The second detection was even smaller, but it was still very convincing by our standards.


We like to say gravitational waves have a purpose, because they're opening up a new way to explore the universe.

Despite the fact that these are space-time waves and not sound waves, we like to put them into loudspeakers and listen to them. We call this "the music of the universe." If you listen to the first two notes, the second, shorter sound was the last fraction of a second of the two black holes which, in that fraction of a second, emitted vast amounts of energy. It was so much energy, it was like three Suns converting into energy, following that famous formula E = mc2. We love this music so much we actually dance to it.

People frequently ask me, "What can gravitational waves be used for?” When they asked author Jorge Luis Borges, "What is the purpose of poetry?" he asked them, "What's the purpose of dawn? What's the purpose of caresses? What's the purpose of the smell of coffee?" And he answered, "The purpose of poetry is pleasure; it's for emotion, it's for living."

Since time immemorial, when humans -- all of us, everyone, as kids -- have looked up at the sky for the first time and seen the stars, we’ve wondered, "What are stars?" That curiosity is what makes us human. And that's what we do with science. We like to say gravitational waves have a purpose, because they're opening up a new way to explore the universe. Until now, we were able to see the light of the stars via electromagnetic waves. Now we can listen to the sound of the universe, even to things -- like gravitational waves -- that don't emit light.


As we make the detectors more and more sensitive, we'll be able to see other objects, like neutron stars that fuse and turn into black holes, or explosions of supernovas.

Are they useful? Can we derive any technology from gravitational waves? Yes, probably. But it will probably take a lot of time. Even though we've developed the technology to detect the waves, maybe we'll discover in 100 years that they’re useful. It takes a lot of time to derive technology from science, but that's not why we do it. All technology is derived from science, but we practice science for the enjoyment.

So what's left for us to do? A lot. As we make the detectors more and more sensitive -- and we have lots of work to do there -- not only are we going to see more black holes and be able to catalog how many there are, where they are, and how big they are, we'll also be able to see other objects. We'll see neutron stars fuse and turn into black holes. We'll see a black hole being born. We'll see rotating stars in our galaxy produce sinusoidal waves. We'll see explosions of supernovas in our galaxy. We'll be seeing a whole spectrum of new sources.

We like to say we've added a new sense to the human body: now, in addition to seeing, we're able to hear. This is a revolution in astronomy, like when Galileo invented the telescope. Or, it’s like when they added sound to silent movies. This is just the beginning. We like to think the road to science is very long (it’s also very fun). Our large, international community of scientists, working from many countries together as a team, is helping make this road -- we're shedding light, sometimes encountering detours, and building, perhaps, a highway to the universe.

Watch this video to understand why gravitational wave changes

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Are You Desperate to quit your JOB? Read this first.

Instead of spending your days complaining, you might try changing your workplace from within, says leadership expert Simon Sinek.


Simon Sinek now spends his days helping people create inspiring workplaces, but he found this calling only after experiencing profound professional despair. “I hated waking up in the morning,” he recalls. “I was no fun anymore, and I became paranoid.” His lack of fulfillment was due to a misalignment between his purpose -- what he calls his “why” -- and his job. Despite being someone who believes that people should only do jobs they love, Sinek does not advocate simply leaving a so-so job.“The opportunity to quit is always there, but I don’t recommend doing it until you exhaust all the other avenues,” he says. In a Facebook Live conversation at TED’s NYC headquarters in September, he shared the steps he advises people to take before throwing in the towel.

1. If your boss or work environment are abusive, leave immediately.

2. If your boss or work environment aren't abusive and you’ve been there for only a few months, hold off on giving notice.

“If I were to offer some advice to people, it’s that sometimes they make the decision to leave too quickly. They show up, start working and after four months, they’re like, ‘This is not for me.’ However, it takes around six months for anyone to settle into a job.”

3. If you’ve been there for more than six months, try to figure out what’s wrong. For starters, check your attitude.

“People can come in with the attitude that ‘Work is just for work, and I find fulfillment in other places.’ Which means they're showing up half-hearted and not committed, they’re acting like this job is just a means to an end. And guess how they're going to be treated? If you show up just to check in and check out, because you get your fulfillment somewhere else, then you'll be labelled as such. No one's going to be looking after you and watching out for your career.”

4. Consider the other possibilities.


“Uncover what it is exactly that's not sticking. Is it your coworkers? Your boss? The job itself?”


5. If you have a difficult boss, try a little empathy.

“When a boss is particularly hard in a meeting, yelling at people or being short with them, you can walk into their office, close the door and say, ‘Hey, you were really short with us in the meeting. Are you OK?’ You don't have to use those words, but you want to get across that you think they’re acting out of character and you want to check on them. Sometimes it gets them to open up. It might not happen immediately, and maybe they won't open to you, but it can be an impetus for them to open up to someone.

6. Treat your boss like a person, not a problem.

“The other thing you can do is to inquire about your boss as a human being, saying something like, ‘Can we start this meeting by talking about what we did this weekend? We can learn a little bit about each other. Hey, [Boss’s name], what did you do this weekend?’ We can be so quick to criticize bad leaders, yet they're human, too, and they want to feel heard and feel like they belong. We don't know why they're bad leaders -- maybe they’re under stress or pressure, maybe they don't realize that they're bad, or maybe they’re just bastards. But we have to give them the benefit of the doubt first.”

7. If that doesn’t work, then be the leader you wish you had.

“We might be the most junior person in the organization, but we still work with people. We can occupy ourselves with helping them go home fulfilled, that they feel heard, that they feel someone has their back. If you commit yourself to being the leader you wish you had and see your friends and colleagues love their work, it actually affects leadership, believe it or not. We've seen it happen; it's kind of amazing. You can build a little subculture. We worked with a large software company, and we helped just a small group in the company build a stronger culture. And they started getting phone calls from all across this company wanting to find out if there were any jobs available in this group. Everybody wants in! Commit yourself to being a leader you wish you had, and building that subculture.”

8. Know this process doesn’t happen overnight.

“It's going to take time, like any relationship. Some people might be suspicious at the start. I find being open about it allays some of the suspicions. You could say something like, ‘Hey, guys, I wish we had a stronger culture here’ or ‘We can complain about our culture until we're blue in the face, so I'm going to try and contribute to building a culture for us so we come to work and feel fulfilled and hopefully we'll have an impact on those around us.’”

9. If you’re still certain you want to quit, put your energy into growing -- not griping.

“For my first job out of school, I had a terrible boss -- just terrible! So I committed myself to learn how not to lead, and I actually got a lot out of it because I was like, ‘Oh, I'm not going to do that one day.’ I also made incredibly good friends with the people with whom I worked, because misery loves company. We all took care of each other, and we learned teamwork from camaraderie. I was learning leadership at a very junior level. And when opportunities arose, I moved on. So there are ways to work at a job you don’t like without complaining every day. Try and seek the advantages and the lessons you can learn.”

10. Never settle for a job that’s just “good enough.”

“I think one of the biggest mistakes our counselors and parents is telling us, ‘Find a job.’ Nobody ever says, ‘Find a job you love.’ People are often told that they don’t need to find a job that’s fulfilling because they can find fulfillment elsewhere. But that’s like saying you don't have to love the person you marry, because you can get that somewhere else. That's not going to set you up for a great marriage; it's the same thing with a job. You're going to spend more time at work than being with your family or friends or doing anything else. So you should absolutely find a job you love.”

Your Job Helps you a lot, Why not face the challenges, Overcome Them and have a beautiful live. Remember humans are created to take Risks, Face Challenges And Solve Problems. Consider this before Picking choices. 

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The extraordinary Antarctic plants with superhero powers

They hibernate for centuries and then come back to life! They make their own antifreeze and their own sunscreen! You’ll never look at moss the same way again.

If you’ve ever had difficulty keeping a houseplant alive, imagine trying to grow anything in Antarctica. The sun shines 24/7 in the summer and then vanishes in the winter. Fresh water is available in the spring or summer if the weather is mild enough, but most of the year, it’s trapped as ice. In the winter, temperatures plummet to about -56° F (or 56 degrees colder than your freezer, and that doesn’t include wind chill). How do plants endure here? Unlike Antarctica’s penguins and seals, they can’t just take to the sea when the going gets tough.

Against all odds, a plucky group of mosses call Antarctica home. Sharon Robins, on a plant ecophysiologist at Australia’s University of Wollongong, studies the three species of moss -- Schistidium antarctici, Bryum pseudotriquetrum and Ceratodon purpureus -- that grow in East Antarctica, a particularly cold, windy and rocky area of the continent. Through their leaves (yes, they have teeny leaves), the mosses can absorb water as well as nutrients from sources like penguin poop. “Every time I go to Antarctica, I think, 'How on Earth do these tiny, tiny plants survive in these really, really tough conditions?'” Robinson says. “We humans have got on layers of polar fleece, merino wool and Gore-Tex, and they're just hanging out.” She wants to pinpoint the reasons for their resilience, which could shed light on thriving in extreme environments (like Mars) or preserving food.



The mosses can go into suspended animation for centuries and centuries. Say you’re living at the South Pole. Conditions around you are going downhill -- your water supply is drying up or freezing; the sunlight that you need for energy is disappearing; and the temperature is plunging. But if you’re a moss, no worries! You just dry out, go into stasis, and when the ice melts, you grow again. In 2014, a team from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Reading revived Antarctic moss that had been dormant for more than 1,500 years. The researchers had collected moss that was frozen in permafrost. The team then sliced a moss shoot into sections and incubated the pieces at typical springtime temperatures. Soon, a moss section that was at least 1,530 years old -- according to carbon dating -- began producing new shoots.

They make their own antifreeze! When an ice crystal forms inside the cell of a plant or animal, the ice will expand and burst the cell walls, causing the cell to die -- and leading eventually to the organism’s death as cell after cell expires. The mosses of Antarctica store their own antifreeze, a combination of special sugars and sugar alcohols, in their cells. During the fall and winter months, these compounds become more concentrated and “stop the nucleation process,” the first steps in the formation of an ice crystal, says Robinson. Researchers from the University of Ottawa and the University of Alberta are now studying an antifreeze compound found in Antarctic fish that could someday lead to creating a substance that might be used on human organs or other tissue. What about moss antifreeze? More studies need to be done first, says Robinson.



And they generate their own sunscreen! Every spring, the ozone hole -- an opening in the ozone layer -- appears over Antarctica. This hole exposes Antarctic moss to dangerous levels of UV-B radiation just when they’re trying to photosynthesize. But the mosses, the ultimate preppers, produce antioxidants to help neutralize the effects of free radicals. Some mosses appear to be more successful at fighting off radiation than others, thanks to where they store their antioxidants and when, and Robinson and her team are trying to figure out why. These answers could help scientists develop new sunscreens for humans or other defenses against skin cancer.

The creatures that make their homes in the mosses are pretty incredible, too. There is a whole community of microorganisms living in the moss, Robinson says, from single-celled algae to insect-like invertebrates that dry out and crumple up in the winter. While some inhabitants have been identified, “we haven't really started to look at what's there,” Robinson says. Among them is the microscopic tardigrade, a species that scientists say will be the last one standing on Earth, surviving until the sun dies. “I'm sure there are invertebrate species we haven't identified yet and lots of microbes we’re not aware of,” she says. Maybe, hiding in the moss, is a microbial key to discovering … who knows? If we don’t continue to study the mosses, we’ll never find out, Robinson says.



Like Antarctica itself, the mosses serve as barometers of climate change. In the same way that the bubbles of trapped air in polar ice cores reveal information about the atmosphere in past eras, absorbed carbon in mosses show us changes in carbon levels over the centuries. “Mosses also have chemical signatures that can tell us how wet or dry it was at particular times,” Robinson says. “For example, we can look at the mosses now, and we can see they're under drier conditions than they were 100 years ago.” Due to climate-induced changes in polar winds, East Antarctica is becoming more of a desert.

To protect these plants, which are among the oldest living things in the world, Robinson is attempting to map the moss on the entire continent. "The big problem in Antarctica is that the mosses are fragmented and scattered over a large area, with rocks in between,” Robinson says. “You don't want to step on them, since they're hundreds of years old, but covering those areas without having people traipsing all over them is a challenge." Plus, they’re very hard to see. In collaboration with NASA, her team is deploying low-flying drones with spectrometers and heat cameras to conduct an aerial survey and assess in which areas the mosses are healthy and where they’re in distress. The goal is to collect enough information so researchers can develop a targeted plan to study and safeguard the plants.

Skeptics might wonder: with all the problems in the world, why worry about moss? Because if they were to go extinct, we’d lose access to a new scientific frontier. “Losing them would be like losing old-growth forests just as they're unlocking their secrets for us,” Robinson says. “Antarctica is a preserve for peace and science, so we have to take responsibility for preserving that biodiversity and take action on climate change. If we do it right, then 500-year-old moss beds could still be around to celebrate their 1,000th birthday.”

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Here is a Customization to your Andriod Mobile

The best thing about Android is that it’s completely customizable. There’s almost nothing you cannot change about it.

Many of the best tweaks can be done on devices that haven’t been rooted, but there are many more advanced customizations you can make that make rooting absolutely worthwhile.The Best Tweaks You Can Make To Your Android Without Rooting The Best Tweaks You Can Make To Your Android Without RootingCustomizing your Android device isn't only for the tech savvy. Learn how to get the most out of your unrooted Android phone or tablet

1. A Custom ROM

The most comprehensive way to customize your device, and one of the main reasons people root in the first place, is to flash a custom ROM. For the uninitiated, a custom ROM is an entirely new build of the Android operating system that you “flash” onto your device to replace its original software.What Is Rooting? What Are Custom ROMs? Learn Android Lingo What Is Rooting? What Are Custom ROMs? Learn Android LingoEver had a question about your Android device, but the answer had a bunch of words in it that you didn't understand? Let us break down the confusing Android lingo for you.

Flashing a ROM often has practical benefits. Less than 3% of Android devices have been updated to Marshmallow — if yours hasn’t, you can flash a Marshmallow-based ROM to do the update yourself. If you visit forums.xda-developers.com and search for your device, you’ll find countless ROMs available to try.




The best custom ROMs contain new features and can also look radically different. The popular CyanogenMod includes a permissions manager, built-in equalizer, and comprehensive theming support.What Are The Best Custom Android ROMs? What Are The Best Custom Android ROMs?The moment you realize you can flash your Android phone with a new ROM is a pivotal one. Suddenly, you're free: Endless customization options, no more vendor bloatware.

MIUI, owned by the Chinese handset manufacturer Xiaomi, enables you to turn your Android into something with a more than passing resemblance to an iPhone. And there are so many more options from smaller developers who build them in their free time.

2. Customize Performance

One step down from the custom ROM, but no less powerful, is the ability to customize your phone’s performance. For best results, you could flash a custom kernel, which would then enable you to control the hardware, including how fast the processor runs.Why You Should Consider Using A Custom Android Kernel Why You Should Consider Using A Custom Android KernelDo you want the best performance out of your Android device? Or maybe you want the best battery life? Consider a custom kernel.

Apps like Device Control or Kernel Adiutor are great for this, and they’re free.




Even if you don’t want to change your kernel, you can still makes tweaks to much of your phone’s hardware. With the App Cf.lumen, you can change your display’s color temperature to taste by adjusting the red, green and blue values separately — a feature that will be included in Android N as standard.Everything You Need to Know About Android N Everything You Need to Know About Android NWant to install Android N or just learn about the next Android version? We've got your back.
By flashing Dolby Atmos, ported from Lenovo devices, you can enhance the sound quality coming from your phone’s speakers. And there are tons of root tweaks you can make to improve your battery life.
Usability Tweaks

It’s hard to find phones smaller than 5.2-inches these days. While the size makes them great for most things — browsing the web, watching videos, playing games — they’re not always comfortable to use, especially one-handed.

3. One-Handed Mode



It’s possible to switch your phone into a one-handed mode, if the device is rooted. Apps such as One Hand Mode Xposed Mod (which uses the Xposed Framework) and One Hand Mode Enabler work great for this.Customize Your Phone Without Flashing a ROM With The Xposed Framework Customize Your Phone Without Flashing a ROM With The Xposed FrameworkIt is common knowledge that the best way to customize your Android device is to flash it with a new ROM. It is also wrong.

These apps shrink the interface down into the corner of the screen so that it’s more accessible to your thumb. They aren’t perfect, and some apps don’t react well to it, but you can toggle the feature on and off, and choose when you you want to use it.

4. Thumb Friendly Controls

Along similar lines is LMT Launcher. Available for download directly from the XDA forums, this app places a pie-shaped control panel beneath your thumb containing a group of standard buttons, such as Home and Back.

These buttons perform the corresponding task with a single tap, but can be programmed to perform additional roles through multiple taps, long-presses, and multi-button combinations. If you’re willing to invest some time setting up and learning LMT Launcher, it can become a very efficient way to navigate your phone quickly.

5. Gesture Controls

LMT Launcher also supports basic gestures, but for a truly comprehensive way of controlling your device by swiping your fingers on the screen, look out for GMD GestureControl. The app offers a combination of pre-defined single and multi-finger gestures to do things like go back or open the app drawer.

You can also record your own by drawing a shape (such as a letter) on screen and then assigning a function or app to it. GMD is particularly good for multitasking, since you don’t need to exit your current app to use the gestures. Switching from one app to another, then back again, is done with just a swipe of the screen.

6. Ever-Present App Launcher

If multitasking is your thing, then you will love the omni-present app launcher you can set up using the Xposed module, GravityBox. By first enabling the Custom Key under Navigation bar tweaks then picking your apps under Application launcher, you can assign up to 12 apps to appear in a mini-launcher on the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen.GravityBox Vs XBlast: Which Is The Best All-Purpose Xposed Module? GravityBox Vs XBlast: Which Is The Best All-Purpose Xposed Module?Out of the two great all-purpose Xposed modules for customizing your rooted Android device, which is the best?

Because the navigation bar is almost always visible, you’re never more than two taps away from opening your favorite app.

7. View Running Apps

Once you start switching between multiple apps more frequently, you might need to keep an eye on which ones are running in the background.

Ever since Android 5.0 Lollipop, the Recents button has shown a list of every app you’ve recently used, which means it eventually just lists every app on your phone. With Recently you can change this to only display the apps that are still running. You can then identify which ones you need to close to reclaim your system resources

Customizations don’t always have to be purely functional. Sometimes they’re more about changing how your phone looks, giving it the personal touch.

8. Customize the Navigation and Status Bars

In GravityBox for Xposed, you can tweak the status bar in various ways. It’s possible to redesign the battery icon, move the clock, hide persistent icons (such as Bluetooth) and notifications, and also change the colors of the notifications pane and status bar.



You can also change the color of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, and with the app SoftKeyZ it’s even possible to change the navigation buttons themselves. SoftKeyZ gives you well over a hundred different styles to choose from, or you can design your own.
9. Boot Animations

An easy and fun way to personalize your phone is to change the boot animation. You can find animations online on various Android enthusiast forums and flash them manually, or you can do it the quick way using a root app called Boot Animations.

It comes with several dozen alternative animations to choose from and requires no more than a couple of screen taps to install.



If you do decide to do this, it’s essential that you make a Nandroid backup first. If something goes wrong with your boot animation, it can actually prevent the phone from booting altogether. Your backup will enable you to recover pretty quickly.

10. New Emojis

Finally, how about changing up your emojis? Every phone comes with its own set; they mean the same thing but look different. Some platforms may also have a few extra characters not seen elsewhere, and these won’t show up if your device doesn’t support them.



With the app Emoji Switcher you can choose between Google, Samsung, LG, and iOS emojis. If you have a lot of iOS-using friends, then this mod is well worth doing. You can even get those fancy new iOS 9.1 emojis.How to View & Send the New iOS 9.1 Emojis on Android How to View & Send the New iOS 9.1 Emojis on AndroidTired of seeing little boxes when your iPhone-using friends send you emojis? Well, no more. Now you can have all the emojis on your Android device too!

Your Own Customizations

Rooting your Android phone or tablet opens it up to a truly expansive range of customizations. You can tweak how the hardware performs, change how the interface looks, and even adjust how easy it is to use. From the fun to the functional, nothing is off limits.

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How our projects shape our personalities — and how we can use them to remake who we are

Most of us believe there are two driving forces behind the person known as “you”: nature and nurture. But, according to personality and motivational psychologist Brian R. Little, there’s a third: projects.

There are two ways in which you can think about your personality. The first is in terms of the personality attributes that you have, or your openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeability and neuroticism (what I call the Big Five personality traits). The second is in terms of what you do, or your personal projects: for example, “get over my social anxiety,” “deliver an awesome pitch in my sales meeting,” or “stop procrastinating.” By studying our personal projects, the “doings” of daily lives, we can get a different perspective and greater scope to reflect on our lives than the study of our “havings” alone.

What you do affects who you are. That’s because personal projects are all about the future -- they point us forward, guiding us along routes that might be short and jerky, or long and smooth. By tracing their route, we can map the most intimate of terrains: ourselves. Most thrilling is that we can learn to adjust our trajectories, riding over the rough patches and extending the smooth stretches to make our endeavors more effective. In this way, projects help define us by shaping our capacity for a flourishing life. In a sense, as go your projects, so goes your life.

An important clarification: personal projects are not limited only to formal projects that are required of us, such as getting Mom into a good nursing home. They are also, crucially, acts we gladly choose. Toddlers are pursuing projects when they toddle, and so are lovers when they love. Personal projects can also be fairly trivial pursuits, like taking the dog -- or the cat that thinks it’s a dog -- for a walk. But they can also represent the highest reaches of human aspiration and acts of courage, like Rosa Parks choosing not to move to the back of the bus.

Take a moment to conduct an inventory of your own projects. For ten minutes, list the various projects you are pursuing at present. Don’t agonize over what to write down -- it will probably be a mixture of trivial pursuits and magnificent obsessions. The content 0f this type of assessment, which I call a Personal Projects Analysis (PPA), can be very revealing. My colleagues and I have now studied the PPAs of thousands of individuals, and we’ve identified several major types of content. Here are the most frequent categories of projects that adults engage in (with the most frequent first), together with examples:

Occupational/Work: Make sure department budget is done.

Interpersonal: Have dinner with the woman in the floppy hat.

Maintenance: Get more bloody ink cartridges.

Recreational: Take cruising holiday.

Health/Body: Lose fifteen pounds.

Intrapersonal: Try to deal with my sadness.

Although relatively infrequent, interpersonal projects are especially interesting and important. These are projects focused on the self, such as “try to be less socially anxious” or “become a better listener.” Are they good or bad for us? On the downside, such projects are known to be linked with feelings of depression and vulnerability. If you have projects of this sort, you may find that you get into a kind of ruminative loop where you can’t make progress -- you overthink the change you feel you need to make and over-scrutinize your (lack of) progress. But on the upside, we also have evidence that engaging in interpersonal projects can be associated with aspects of creativity and openness to experience. Why, on the one hand, is a self-change project associated with negative emotions and vulnerability, and on the other, seen as a creative adventure? It is likely due to the origin of the self-focused project.

So if you listed an intrapersonal project or projects, ask yourself: who instigated it? If they spring from your own vision of a possible self, you are likely to feel better while pursuing them, and those projects are ultimately more likely to succeed. Those initiated by others might be willingly undertaken, but if forced or coerced, they may be nonstarters. There is now a significant body of research that shows “intrinsically regulated” project pursuit will be more successful and lead to greater well-being than “externally regulated” pursuit.

The greatest value in thinking of personality as “doing projects” rather than “having traits” is in three powerful words: potential for change. We can consciously choose and adapt our projects in ways that we cannot change our traits. But that doesn’t mean we can leave our traits back on shore, speeding freely across the water toward a self shaped by projects alone. Our projects and our traits are connected. Our research shows that where you stand on the Big Five trait dimensions (to recap, those are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extra version, agree ability and neurotic-ism) affects your appraisal of your personal projects. And this has practical implications for which projects you undertake and how challenging they are for you. For instance, neurotic people have a generalized sense of negative emotions and so are much more likely to appraise all their projects, whether they are interpersonal or academic or work-related, as stressful. If this describes you, there is one practical implication you should know. Make a space in your life for projects that you find uplifting. These needn’t be major projects; indeed, it is better if you have frequent engagement with smaller-scale projects that give you a sense of pleasure. Your natural tendency to see the downside of the larger endeavors of life can be offset by frequent, intense experience with the little things.

Personality traits are certainly a strong predictor of happiness, but projects can trump traits when it comes to well-being. For example, a disagreeable introvert is not necessarily constrained to a life of unhappiness. She might engage passionately in writing a politically charged blog. It brings her deep pleasure both because of its intrinsic meaning but also because she loves making others squirm. This should give you some hope that you are not the victim of the traits with which you entered this world. Your deeds speak louder than your dispositions.

Let’s say, however, that what you wish to do goes against your natural grain. Maybe you are a biogenically agreeable sort, averse to conflict in any form, who nonetheless loves mysteries and dreams of being a hard-boiled detective. Or you’re a natural introvert with a chance to work as a sales representative, a job that requires you to be an over-the-top extravert. Or a highly conscientious, regimented planner who wants to become more improvisational to connect with your free-spirited child. Are you confined only to projects that suit your inborn traits? Not necessarily. In fact, one of the things that makes you so intriguing is your ability to sometimes act “out of character.”

This capacity for shape-shifting is a startling and fascinating aspect of our personalities. The reason we often take on new traits is to more effectively pursue our personal projects. This is how what you do can remake who you are -- and it’s a revelation that turns previous ideas about human personality on their heads. How exactly does this work? Sometimes we want things that require us to stretch ourselves to achieve them. An agreeable person may act disagreeably to book an urgent appointment with an in-demand physician, or a biogenically anxious person may appear poised and unruffled when first meeting her in-laws. These people are engaged in what I call “free traits,” and they are doing so to more successfully pursue a personal project. Free traits may “trick” others into thinking that you are, say, agreeable when in fact you are a biogenically disagreeable person. Or stable when you are highly neurotic. So when we meet and I begin to form my impressions of you, is what I see displayed who you are, really? Is your behavior a trick or a trait? Perhaps neither -- it could be a free trait.

Consider having a job as a flight attendant or a debt collector. Each has an associated personal style that may or may not align with the biogenic personalities of those who work those jobs. A grumpy, taciturn, impatient flight attendant isn’t going to last, nor is a sweet, engaging and forgiving bill collector. But a person who is not biogenically suited to a certain role may still desire to fill it. To survive in their fields, they become site-specific free-trait adopters. At first this can be difficult, but during the course of developing their occupations, they practice again and again until it becomes more natural. Though seasoned travelers might be able to spot them, pseudo-hospitable flight attendants are generally able to pass. Their professional roles matter to them.

If we practice such free traits often enough, they can creep into our personalities in more pervasive and permanent ways.“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.” This quote, by Archibald Leach, perfectly demonstrates the power of using free traits to shape who you are. Archibald was a high school dropout, a traveling circus performer. But he wanted more. When he began to gain success as an actor, he changed his name to the one we all know him by: Cary Grant. By consistently acting the part of the cool, confident, witty charmer he eventually, as he put it, truly became that person. Or that person became him. And he flourished.

The phrase “acting out of character” actually has two meanings. It means acting away from our characteristic way of behaving, but it also means acting from character. We often act out of character in the second sense when we guide our actions by our values. You may not be naturally open and extroverted. But given an important occasion or project, you have little choice but to act out of character, to rise to the occasion and be an alternative you -- in a sense, perhaps, an optimized you.

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7 smart ways to use technology in classrooms

Elementary school teacher Kayla Delzer’s students tweet, post on Instagram and watch YouTube in class. Here’s why she thinks all all kids should do the same.

Many schools and teachers have an uneasy relationship with technology: they decry its power to distract young people but see it as a necessary evil to be tolerated, or at least strictly limited. Fargo, North Dakota, third-grade teacher Kayla Delzer believes that technology can truly revolutionize education -- but only if educators make wise choices about what is used and how it’s used.

Watch Reimagining Classroom Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders 

It’s way too late to try to keep tech out of classrooms -- or children’s lives. “We may think we're protecting students when we keep them in a tech-free bubble for the school day, but they eventually leave, graduate, get jobs,” says Delzer. “If we block technology from them, we might actually be inhibiting them. We need to put them in dynamic, responsive environments at school so they can be successful later on.” After trying different approaches and a variety of devices, programs and apps with her students, she has come up with some common-sense guidelines for how adults can help their kids use technology to their best advantage.

Tech tip #1: Something boring on paper is still boring on a tablet or a laptop.

“Using technology simply for the sake of using it is wasteful,” Delzer says. “If tech doesn't transform your classroom, your teaching or your students’ learning, skip it.” One easy rule of thumb: If a project can be done using paper or pencil but you’re doing it on a computer or device, it's not transforming your classroom.

One way that Delzer’s students learn math is by playing an augmented-reality geometry board game called Cyberchase Shape Quest. To participate, kids point an iPad camera at a paper board, which then comes to life with animated math challenges. “It teaches geometry, problem solving and spatial reasoning in an interactive, responsive way,” she says.

Tech tip #2: How tech teaches is as important as what is taught.

Delzer avoids any software that relies on drills and repetition to educate. Instead, she chooses programs that encourage kids to create. One example: Cargo-bot, an app that requires students to write programs that control a robot moving boxes. The goal, says Delzer, is to compose code that makes the robot carry the boxes in the most efficient way possible, forcing kids to develop a number of important abilities, like critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving and logic.

Tech tip #3: Let students sometimes be the teachers.

The thought of mastering many apps, devices and programs in addition to their regular lesson plans will probably make teachers feel overwhelmed. Delzer’s advice: “You don't need to master every single tool before you hand it over.” She likes to give a new tool to a student and ask them to learn how to use it first. After they figure it out, they can teach everyone else -- including the teacher.

Tech tip #4: Find technology that lets kids learn from themselves and each other.

Using an app called AudioBoom, Delzer’s students take turns recording themselves reading classroom books aloud. Each recording is approved by Delzer, who helps kids evaluate factors like intonation, phrasing, speed, emotion and accuracy. Approved recordings are turned into a QR code that is taped to the back of the book that was read. Some books have multiple QR codes attached to them, Delzer says, letting students hear the different choices that their classmates make when reading the same thing.

“At the beginning of the year, my students thought that fast reading was fluent reading,” Delzer says, but after reading aloud and hearing their friends' renditions, they understand the importance of pacing and emotion. Kids can then re-record their favorite books and compare their own recordings to see how their performances evolve after practice. “This helped instill a sense of pride among my students,” says Delzer.

Tech tip #5: Rather than ban phones or YouTube, educators should find smart ways to use them.

“Many schools in the US block YouTube, but I’ve heard it’s the number-one search engine among students in grades 5 through 12,” says Delzer. “So much learning is lost when we block resources from our students. Also, students are pretty savvy, and they can get around even complex filters.”

Delzer’s students create video newsletters that are added to YouTube every month. “I started replacing paper newsletters with video newsletters in 2014 and never looked back,” she says. “There’s a lot of power in having students report what they’re up to, rather than my typing it up in a newsletter.” The kids plan the newsletters -- where they evaluate what they’re learning and discuss classroom happenings -- as well as film them, edit them and add effects.

Tech tip #6: Adults should serve as champions of digital citizenship.

A safe, friendly environment like a classroom is a great place for children to learn how to behave responsibly on the Internet. Delzer has written student rules for Internet use and they include: never tweet anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face or in front of their grandma; never share personal information; only go to appropriate websites; and always report cyberbullying to an adult. She set up a moderated Twitter account for her classroom so they can practice their digital etiquette, learn how to use social media, and explore their digital footprint. Her students tweet with experts from around the world; they also tweet with other classrooms around the world to share and compare what they're learning.

Teachers should ask their students to Google themselves and then think about what their digital record says about them, advises Delzer. “93 percent of employers now use social media in some way to either recruit or hire employees,” she explains. “That means if our students have a negative digital footprint, they might have just a 7 percent chance of getting a job.” To practice what they preach, adults should also Google themselves and reflect on what they find.

Tech tip #7: Give kids some space to cultivate their own interests.

Inspired by Google’s former 20 percent policy, which let employees use that amount of their workweek on passion projects, Delzer lets her students pursue their own “genius” hours. Her students follow their interests for one hour a week, and some -- but not all -- of their projects are tech-focused. One student built a tin-can robot after learning how to do it by watching YouTube tutorials, and another filmed and edited her own movie. “It really gives kids ownership in their learning,” says Delzer.

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