When Ruth White founded The Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success, she didnt think it would see its 35th anniversary. This sentiment is not from lack of faith in her nonprofit organization, which helps African American students achieve academic success and connect with their cultural roots, but from the hope that one day its programs []

When Ruth White founded The Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success, she didnt think it would see its 35th anniversary.

This sentiment is not from lack of faith in her nonprofit organization, which helps African American students achieve academic success and connect with their cultural roots, but from the hope that one day its programs wouldnt be necessary.

I knew that the program was necessary from what I was doing at Washington [High School], she said about the beginnings of The Academy in the late 1980s. But I certainly didn't think it was going to last this long, because I thought that society would pull itself together Now I'm convinced that a program like this needs to happen until it's not needed anymore. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to see the end of it.

Ms. White, who holds a P.h.D. in American studies from the University of Iowa, was teaching English and literature at Washington High School when she founded The Academy. She was also serving as the Cedar Rapids Community School Districts (CRCSD) academic advisor to minority students, a new position at the time.

It turned out to be extremely informative to me," she said. One of the things I learned was that our students of color, by and large, had no sense of their heritage history legacies.

Ms. White noticed that many of these students would fall into the abyss after high school graduation, academically. She founded The Academy in hopes of cultivating community connection and inspiring pride in their heritage.

The Academy began with a summer program for high school-aged students, which continues to this day. This program, which partners with CRCSD and takes place at Mount Mercy University, offers African American students additional opportunities to learn more about unique and specific subjects such as Black history, gardening, nutrition, and yoga, as well as more traditional subjects like math, science and literature. The Academy has also helped students prepare for college with postsecondary seminars.

To Ms. White, it is important for The Academys students to be taught by teachers who look like them. She said representation makes a difference in the programs', and students, success.

A student of color in [the Cedar Rapids School District] can go from kindergarten through high school and never see a teacher of color, she said. The fact of the matter is, kids do better when they can relate to the person that's teaching them. Does that mean that everybody who teaches them should look like them? Absolutely not But it does mean that there is an intangible advantage that a student benefits from if they have that opportunity.

Students taking part in the high school summer program also have the opportunity to experience travel to culturally significant places. The Academys students have visited Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Memphis, New Orleans and more.

According to Ms. White, every aspect of these trips becomes an opportunity to learn about and connect with cultural heritage. Students have visited museums, seen plays, and gone on college visits. They often meet Black entrepreneurs and experience culturally-significant food at meal times.

There's nothing like actually seeing and experiencing something, Ms. White said. I want to take them to places where they can actually see African American culture in a positive reflection.

The Academy has greatly expanded to include programs for elementary and middle school-aged students, which continue throughout the school year. None of The Academys programs are remedial, which means students must apply to participate and are accepted based on academic achievement and recommendations.

Selective, but not exclusive Ms. White called it.

A 501(c)3 nonprofit with a board of directors and a staff of eight, The Academy is no longer a one-woman show. Ms. White is now looking at establishing a succession plan.

It doesnt keep me up at night yet, but I spend a lot of time thinking about it, Ms. White said. We have to have somebody who has a love for the work and for the kids and some sense of the importance of education and cultural awareness. Someone who can keep body and soul together.

For now, Ms. White is still that somebody and like The Academy itself she is still needed right where she is.

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Black excellence: The Academy celebrates 35 years of uplifting African American students - Corridor Business

It turns out convenience can come with a hefty price.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs), or groups of individual stocks trading under a single ticker symbol, are meant to simplify investing. A few ETFs can diversify your investments in minutes, versus spending gobs of time screening and selecting dozens of individual companies to trust your money with.

In cryptocurrency, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC -3.63%) can take much of the work out of owning Bitcoin (BTC -3.68%).

But what's the point of owning a Bitcoin ETF instead of just Bitcoin? The cryptocurrency has proved it can make investors millionaires. Can this ETF do the same?

Here is what you need to know.

On the surface, it's a straightforward investment. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is an ETF that holds Bitcoin. Buying shares gives investors indirect exposure to the crypto's price movements.

Why wouldn't someone directly hold Bitcoin instead? Well, doing that can be trickier. For example, it puts the responsibility of security on the owner. You can hold the crypto on exchanges or in physical (cold) storage, but each has pros and cons.

Suppose you lose access to your wallet or the exchange you use faces trouble, like FTX, the disgraced cryptocurrency exchange. The Grayscale ETF uses cold storage (it's kept in servers offline through a company called Coinbase Custody Trust) to secure the Bitcoin represented by its shares. So it's a secure and convenient way to benefit from investing in the cryptocurrency without the onus of owning and managing it yourself.

A couple of factors affect the value of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. The fund charges a 1.5% annual fee for managing the crypto, which you wouldn't have to pay if you managed your own instead. The ETF also might trade at a premium or discount to the underlying value of its Bitcoin at any given time.

Investors should consider how the ETF trades relative to Bitcoin's price to decide whether they want to buy shares. You can do this by comparing the ETF's share price to its net asset value per share.

A quick look at Bitcoin's success over the years makes it obvious why investors would consider adding the Grayscale ETF to their portfolios. As an asset, the digital coin has handily outperformed the broader stock market for the past decade:

Bitcoin price data by YCharts.

The investment thesis in Bitcoin is straightforward: The supply of fiat currency is ever-expanding, far faster than that of Bitcoins. As the U.S. dollar loses value (through inflation), the price of the crypto has gone higher over time. The supply grows more slowly over time as halvings occur every four years or so, further limiting the supply in the face of increased demand by people wanting to invest in and use Bitcoin.

So the token's price boils down to supply versus demand. The hope for investors is that demand will indefinitely increase as the supply rises at an ever-slowing pace.

The million-dollar question is whether investors will pay for the convenience this ETF offers. What's the cost? Quite a bit, actually.

You can see below that the ETF has handily underperformed Bitcoin itself over time. Those management fees turn out to be quite expensive in the long run.

GBTC data by YCharts.

But with that said, the fund has still far surpassed the broader stock market, making the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF an obvious high-potential long-term investment that can absolutely still churn out millionaires if the cryptocurrency's investment thesis continues to play out over the coming years.

Justin Pope has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Is the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF a Millionaire Maker? - The Motley Fool

Dr. Kenneth Cooper, 93, spoke at UT Tyler Health Science Center for National Public Health Week about the importance of exercise and the history of aerobics. Founder of the physical conditioning system that can improve health, Cooper is known as the Father of Aerobics and also owns the Cooper Clinic in Dallas.

When Cooper was in medical school in the 1950s, nutrition and fitness were not taught. In high school, he made all-state as a basketball player. However his dad actively discouraged him from continuing basketball and never went to his games. At that time, it was believed poeople could develop an enlarged heart from doing too much exercise, he said. His dad discouraged him because he thought he would die.

The theory was you get an athletic heart and thats when your heart gets larger, Cooper said. It gets muscular and then when you stop exercising it disburses the fat.

Cooper helped pioneer treadmill stress tests when he was in the United States Air Force while working with Nasa along with his colleague Dr. Bill Thornton. They developed a way to do them safely without an EKG (electrocardiogram). When he started doing them, people thought they were dangerous. He conducted treadmill stress tests for former president George W. Bush. He said they asked Bush if he wanted to continue multiple times. At one point the chief of cardiology said, Youre gonna kill the president, Cooper recalled.

Through the test they found he had 98% obstruction in his left anterior descending artery, LAD, also known as widowmaker, Cooper said.

If that blocks off, youre dead because thats where the heartbeat comes from, Cooper said. We saved his life. That was done within two hours.

At the event in Tyler, Cooper advised people to have a BMI under 25, exercise five days a week for 30 minutes, consume 5 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily, limit alcohol to seven a week and not to use habit-forming drugs. He also advised against the use of tobacco. He recommended people take vitamins D3 and Omega-3s. He also encouraged stress control activities such as exercise, meditation and sleep. He recommends people do a comprehensive physical exam. For those over 50, they should be doing the exam annually. For those 40 to 50, they should be doing the exam every 12 to 18 months. For those 35 to 40, they should do a baseline exam.

76% of diseases are preventable and 45% of cancers are preventable, Cooper said. And no question about the benefits of an active lifestyle.

Cooper shared statistics from 1970-2015 regarding survival rate for women and men who follow Coopers recommendations. On average, the survival age for women is 94.4. The survival age for men is 86.5. This is higher than the average American at 77.

Dr. Jarrett Berry, who used to work at Cooper Clinic with Cooper and now works at UT Health East Texas North Campus, reached out to Cooper for the talk for National Public Health Week after Theresa Byrd, UT Tyler School of Health Professions Dean, asked him about getting him for the talk. She was excited for this talk since she had read his work and gone to various of his talks.

This is the first time Cooper came for a talk at UT Tyler. The first time Byrd met Cooper was 30 years ago.

I was really happy for people to hear this message that we really can prevent disease and we can lengthen our life and I think a lot of people do not know that, Byrd said. Theyre not gonna understand how important it is to keep moving.

For National Public Health Week, UT Tyler partnered with NET Health to conduct various events focused on public health. They emphasized nutrition and fitness. In East Texas, there are underlying factors contributing to the high health disparities.

We have a real problem in East Texas, we have an obesity problem [and] we have a smoking problem, Byrd said. Physical activity is very helpful for those things. Its hard to be physically active if youre smoking. Also, physical activity can help people decrease weight, just make them healthier overall. So I think its really important.

Villatoro, a Report for America Corps member reporting for the Tyler Morning Telegraph, can be contacted a rvillatoro@tylerpaper.com. To make a donation to support work like this, visit https://bit.ly/supportlocaljournalists. Your support helps to write the narrative that truth matters, that undercovered stories deserve to be told, and that on-the-ground journalism serves our communities in immeasurable ways. Your gift supports Report for America corps members salaries to cover key issues including health, justice, education and the environment.

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'Father of Aerobics' Dr. Kenneth Cooper, 93, visits Tyler and talks about importance of exercise - Tyler Morning Telegraph

Photo by ANGELA BENITO on Unsplash

Theres a core concept in machine learning that I often tell laypeople about to help clarify the philosophy behind what I do. That concept is the idea that the world changes around every machine learning model, often because of the model, so the world the model is trying to emulate and predict is always in the past, never the present or the future. The model is, in some ways, predicting the future thats how we often think of it but in many other ways, the model is actually attempting to bring us back to the past.

I like to talk about this because the philosophy around machine learning helps give us real perspective as machine learning practitioners as well as the users and subjects of machine learning. Regular readers will know I often say that machine learning is us meaning, we produce the data, do the training, and consume and apply the output of models. Models are trying to follow our instructions, using raw materials we have provided to them, and we have immense, nearly complete control over how that happens and what the consequences will be.

Another aspect of this concept that I find useful is the reminder that models are not isolated in the digital world, but in fact are heavily intertwined with the analog, physical world. After all, if your model isnt affecting the world around us, that sparks the question of why your model exists in the first place. If we really get down to it, the digital world is only separate from the physical world in a limited, artificial sense, that of how we as users/developers interact with it.

This last point is what I want to talk about today how does the physical world shape and inform machine learning, and how does ML/AI in turn affect the physical world? In my last article, I promised that I would talk about how the limitations of resources in the physical world intersect with machine learning and AI, and thats where were going.

This is probably obvious if you think about it for a moment. Theres a joke that goes around about how we can defeat the sentient robot overlords by just turning them off, or unplugging the computers. But jokes aside, this has a real kernel of truth. Those of us who work in machine learning and AI, and computing generally, have complete dependence for our industrys existence on natural resources, such as mined metals, electricity, and others. This has some commonalities with a piece I wrote last year about how human labor is required for machine learning to exist, but today were going to go a different direction and talk about two key areas that we ought to appreciate more as vital to our work mining/manufacturing and energy, mainly in the form of electricity.

If you go out looking for it, there is an abundance of research and journalism about both of these areas, not only in direct relation to AI, but relating to earlier technological booms such as cryptocurrency, which shares a great deal with AI in terms of its resource usage. Im going to give a general discussion of each area, with citations for further reading so that you can explore the details and get to the source of the scholarship. It is hard, however, to find research that takes into account the last 18 months boom in AI, so I expect that some of this research is underestimating the impact of the new technologies in the generative AI space.

What goes in to making a GPU chip? We know these chips are instrumental in the development of modern machine learning models, and Nvidia, the largest producer of these chips today, has ridden the crypto boom and AI craze to a place among the most valuable companies in existence. Their stock price went from the $130 a share at the start of 2021 to $877.35 a share in April 2024 as I write this sentence, giving them a reported market capitalization of over $2 trillion. In Q3 of 2023, they sold over 500,000 chips, for over $10 billion. Estimates put their total 2023 sales of H100s at 1.5 million, and 2024 is easily expected to beat that figure.

GPU chips involve a number of different specialty raw materials that are somewhat rare and hard to acquire, including tungsten, palladium, cobalt, and tantalum. Other elements might be easier to acquire but have significant health and safety risks, such as mercury and lead. Mining these elements and compounds has significant environmental impacts, including emissions and environmental damage to the areas where mining takes place. Even the best mining operations change the ecosystem in severe ways. This is in addition to the risk of what are called Conflict Minerals, or minerals that are mined in situations of human exploitation, child labor, or slavery. (Credit where it is due: Nvidia has been very vocal about avoiding use of such minerals, calling out the Democratic Republic of Congo in particular.)

In addition, after the raw materials are mined, all of these materials have to be processed extremely carefully to produce the tiny, highly powerful chips that run complex computations. Workers have to take on significant health risks when working with heavy metals like lead and mercury, as we know from industrial history over the last 150+ years. Nvidias chips are made largely in factories in Taiwan run by a company called Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC. Because Nvidia doesnt actually own or run factories, Nvidia is able to bypass criticism about manufacturing conditions or emissions, and data is difficult to come by. The power required to do this manufacturing is also not on Nvidias books. As an aside: TSMC has reached the maximum of their capacity and is working on increasing it. In parallel, NVIDIA is planning to begin working with Intel on manufacturing capacity in the coming year.

After a chip is produced, it can have a lifespan of usefulness that can be significant 35 years if maintained well however, Nvidia is constantly producing new, more powerful, more efficient chips (2 million a year is a lot!) so a chips lifespan may be limited by obsolescence as well as wear and tear. When a chip is no longer useful, it goes into the pipeline of what is called e-waste. Theoretically, many of the rare metals in a chip ought to have some recycling value, but as you might expect, chip recycling is a very specialized and challenging technological task, and only about 20% of all e-waste gets recycled, including much less complex things like phones and other hardware. The recycling process also requires workers to disassemble equipment, again coming into contact with the heavy metals and other elements that are involved in manufacturing to begin with.

If a chip is not recycled, on the other hand, it is likely dumped in a landfill or incinerated, leaching those heavy metals into the environment via water, air, or both. This happens in developing countries, and often directly affects areas where people reside.

Most research on the carbon footprint of machine learning, and its general environmental impact, has been in relation to power consumption, however. So lets take a look in that direction.

Once we have the hardware necessary to do the work, the elephant in the room with AI is definitely electricity consumption. Training large language models consumes extraordinary amounts of electricity, but serving and deploying LLMs and other advanced machine learning models is also an electricity sinkhole.

In the case of training, one research paper suggests that training GPT-3, with 175 billion parameters, runs around 1,300 megawatt hours (MWh) or 1,300,000 KWh of electricity. Contrast this with GPT-4, which uses 1.76 trillion parameters, and where the estimated power consumption of training was between 51,772,500 and 62,318,750 KWh of electricity. For context, an average American home uses just over 10,000 KWh per year. On the conservative end, then, training GPT-4 once could power almost 5,000 American homes for a year. (This is not considering all the power consumed by preliminary analyses or tests that almost certainly were required to prepare the data and get ready to train.)

Given that the power usage between GPT-3 and GPT-4 training went up approximately 40x, we have to be concerned about the future electrical consumption involved in next versions of these models, as well as the consumption for training models that generate video, image, or audio content.

Past the training process, which only needs to happen once in the life of a model, theres the rapidly growing electricity consumption of inference tasks, namely the cost of every time you ask Chat-GPT a question or try to generate a funny image with an AI tool. This power is absorbed by data centers where the models are running so that they can serve results around the globe. The International Energy Agency predicted that data centers alone would consume 1,000 terawatts in 2026, roughly the power usage of Japan.

Major players in the AI industry are clearly aware of the fact that this kind of growth in electricity consumption is unsustainable. Estimates are that data centers consume between .5% and 2% of all global electricity usage, and potentially could be 25% of US electricity usage by 2030.

Electrical infrastructure in the United States is not in good condition we are trying to add more renewable power to our grid, of course, but were deservedly not known as a country that manages our public infrastructure well. Texas residents in particular know the fragility of our electrical systems, but across the US climate change in the form of increased extreme weather conditions causes power outages at a growing rate.

Whether investments in electricity infrastructure have a chance of meeting the skyrocketing demand wrought by AI tools is still to be seen, and since government action is necessary to get there, its reasonable to be pessimistic.

In the meantime, even if we do manage to produce electricity at the necessary rates, until renewable and emission-free sources of electricity are scalable, were adding meaningfully to the carbon emissions output of the globe by using these AI tools. At a rough estimate of 0.86 pounds of carbon emissions per KWh of power, training GPT-4 output over 20,000 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere. (In contrast, the average American emits 13 metric tons per year.)

As you might expect, Im not out here arguing that we should quit doing machine learning because the work consumes natural resources. I think that workers who make our lives possible deserve significant workplace safety precautions and compensation commensurate with the risk, and I think renewable sources of electricity should be a huge priority as we face down preventable, human caused climate change.

But I talk about all this because knowing how much our work depends upon the physical world, natural resources, and the earth should make us humbler and make us appreciate what we have. When you conduct training or inference, or use Chat-GPT or Dall-E, you are not the endpoint of the process. Your actions have downstream consequences, and its important to recognize that and make informed decisions accordingly. You might be renting seconds or hours of use of someone elses GPU, but that still uses power, and causes wear on that GPU that will eventually need to be disposed of. Part of being ethical world citizens is thinking about your choices and considering your effect on other people.

In addition, if you are interested in finding out more about the carbon footprint of your own modeling efforts, theres a tool for that: https://www.green-algorithms.org/

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Environmental Implications of the AI Boom | by Stephanie Kirmer | May, 2024 - Towards Data Science

Zhifeng Kong, a UC San Diego computer science PhD graduate, is the first author on the story.

Modern deep generative models often produce undesirable outputs such as offensive texts, malicious images, or fabricated speech and there is no reliable way to control them. This paper is about how to prevent this from happening technically, said Zhifeng Kong, a UC San Diego Computer Science and Engineering Department PhD graduate and lead author of the paper.

The main contribution of this work is to formalize how to think about this problem and howto frame it properly so that it can be solved, said UC San Diego computer science Professor Kamalika Chaudhuri.

Traditional mitigation methods have taken one of two approaches. The first method is to re-train the model from scratch using a training set that excludes all undesirable samples; the alternative is to apply a classifier that filters undesirable outputs or edits outputs after the content has been generated.

These solutions have certain limitations for most modern, large models. Besides being cost-prohibitiverequiring millions of dollars to retrain industry scale models from scratch these mitigation methods are computationally heavy, and theres no way to control whether third parties will implement available filters or editing tools once they obtain the source code. Additionally, they might not even solve the problem: sometimes undesirable outputs, such as images with artifacts, appear even though they are not present in the training data.

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Fighting AI Fire with ML Firepower - University of California San Diego

Recent scientific advancements have shed light on the potential synergistic effects of meditation and psychedelic substances. A study published in Scientific Reports reveals how psilocybin, a psychedelic compound, when combined with open monitoring meditation may enhance the depth of insightfulness in experienced meditators. This enhancement appears to be mediated by changes in the brains organizational patterns.

Open monitoring meditation is a type of meditation that emphasizes the broad, non-reactive awareness of the content of experience from moment to moment. Unlike focused attention meditation, which narrows the attention on a single object such as breath or a mantra, open monitoring encourages practitioners to remain aware of all experiences without attachment or judgment. This practice is thought to enhance meta-awareness the awareness of awareness itself.

Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in certain species of mushrooms. Known for its ability to induce profound alterations in perception, emotion, and cognitive processes, psilocybin has been a subject of both traditional use in ritual contexts and modern scientific research. In clinical settings, psilocybin has shown promise for treating various mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Its effects include the disruption of normal thought patterns, potentially leading to increased psychological flexibility and openness.

The rationale for combining psilocybin with open monitoring meditation in this study stems from a hypothesis about the complementary nature of their effects on the brain and consciousness. Both meditation and psychedelics are believed to alter the functional connectivity patterns within the brain meditation through trained introspection and increased meta-awareness, and psilocybin through its pharmacological impact on serotonin receptors, which significantly alters perception and thought.

Researchers at the University of Zurich aimed to investigate how the combination of psilocybin and meditation could influence brain connectivity during meditative practice. They used a mathematical method known as topological data analysis to visualize and analyze the brains activity.

I was interested in the technical part of the topic, because I am fascinated by how pure mathematics, especially topology, can be applied to extract important information from latent structures in data that is not apparent to other methods, explained study author Berit Singer, a PhD in pure mathematics. Psychedelic neuroscience and mediation is particularly interesting to me, because I can see that there is a lot of research needed to better understand the mechanisms of these substances and techniques, and because I wish that this will help to use them in a beneficial way for individuals and society.

The study included 36 healthy, experienced meditators, matched for age, sex, previous meditation experience, and dispositional mindfulness. The core of the study was a five-day silent meditation retreat. On the fourth day of this retreat, participants were administered either psilocybin or a placebo during their routine meditation practice.

To capture the effects of the interventions on brain activity, participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans both one day before and one day after the retreat. Each fMRI session included sequences of resting state, focused attention meditation, and open monitoring meditation.

To analyze the data, the researchers employed the Mapper algorithm, a method used in topological data analysis to dissect and visualize high-dimensional data sets. This algorithm constructs a graphical representation, known as a Mapper shape graph, which captures the global and local structure of the data. By applying this algorithm, the researchers could map and quantify the relationships and dependencies between different meditative and resting brain states, revealing insights into how these states interact and overlap.

It surprised me that the subject-specific Mapper graphs were at first sight very different and did not seem to share many similarities, but when described and simplified using suitable graph measures (the optimal transport distance and centrality) their common structure was revealed and turned out to be quite stable across both groups, Singer said. In other words, their common features were not obvious to spot by eye from looking at the subject-specific Mapper graphs, but only after calculating their topological features.

After the meditation retreat, there was a notable increase in the degree centrality of the nodes associated with open monitoring meditation. This suggests that these brain regions became more connected with other regions following the retreat and psilocybin intake. The closeness centrality of the nodes related to open monitoring meditation also increased after the retreat, which implies that these brain regions could disseminate information more efficiently across the brain network.

A key finding from the study was that psilocybin significantly affected the brains connectivity patterns. The optimal transport distance, a measure used to assess the similarity between different brain states, indicated that psilocybin induced notable changes in how different meditation states are connected.

Specifically, participants in the psilocybin group showed greater shifts in the brains functional architecture between the resting state and open monitoring meditation compared to those in the placebo group. This suggests that psilocybin enhances the brains ability to transition between different functional states during meditation.

This increased differentiation was particularly marked in individuals experiencing positive derealization, a state where reality is perceived in a novel and often more meaningful way. Additionally, perceived insightfulness was strongly linked to positive derealization, and models incorporating changes in brain connectivity offered better predictions of insightfulness than those considering positive derealization alone.

The findings suggest that psilocybin may enhance the depth and quality of meditation by facilitating a more profound disengagement from ordinary consciousness and promoting a heightened state of openness and awareness. This could potentially make meditation practices more effective, particularly in inducing states of deep introspection and expanded awareness, which are often the goals of such practices.

The key finding is that meditation and psilocybin are likely to form a useful synergy that brings about insightfulness and that they do so by balancing each others effects, Singer told PsyPost. The research also highlights the advantages of topology to analyze data and uncover latent structures Singer said. This particular method brings an alternative and useful way to look at brain imaging data.

While the study provides evidence that psilocybin can significantly modify the cognitive and perceptual effects of meditation, there are limitations to consider. The participant pool consisted entirely of experienced meditators, which limits the generalizability of the results to broader populations, including novice meditators or individuals without any meditation experience. Additionally, the studys sample size was relatively small, which could affect the statistical power and robustness of the findings.

Long-term goals are to link the topological structures of the Mapper shape graphs and related phenomenology with the usual functional connectivity, similar to the work of Saggar et al. and Geniesse et al., Singer explained. Another long-term goal is to do similar research with other psychedelics and understand their common and distinct features particularly combined with mediation. Finally, it would be nice to create an understanding of the landscape of different psychedelics and meditative states and how they are related and how they interact.

The study, Psilocybin enhances insightfulness in meditation: a perspective on the global topology of brain imaging during meditation, was authored by Berit Singer, Daniel Meling, Matthias Hirsch-Hoffmann, Lars Michels, Michael Kometer, Lukasz Smigielski, Dario Dornbierer, Erich Seifritz, Franz X. Vollenweider, and Milan Scheidegger.

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Brain connectivity maps shed light on the synergistic effects of meditation and psilocybin - PsyPost

Its Mental Health Awareness Month. If youre one of the 32 percent of US adults who experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression last year, your doctor or mental health care provider may have recommended you learn meditation to help manage your stress. But how exactly does this age-old practice change the brain? Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, PhD 76, the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of WisconsinMadison, discusses his decades of research on meditationenabled in part by a collaboration with the Dalai Lamaand dispels myths about how it works and when, where, and how it can be done.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and correctness.

Well, I first met the Dalai Lama in 1992. He was the one who recognized the important currency of science in the modern Western world and wanted to encourage serious scientific research in this area. And he heard about me through the grapevine. He knew I was a closet meditator. He also knew that I was a serious neuroscientist.

And he asked me a very simple question when we first met: Why cant you use the same tools of modern neuroscience that youre using to study depression and anxiety and stress and use those tools to study kindness and to study compassion? And so, I made a commitment to the Dalai Lama, on that day in 1992, that I was going to do everything I could to put qualities like kindness and compassion within the crosshairs of modern science.

You also asked about key findings or key insights, and I think that one of the key insights is the finding that engaging in this very simple form of, if you will, a kind of mental exercise is accompanied by changes in the brain that we believe facilitate the enduring impact of these changes.

Yes, he did. His support and direct involvement were critical in recruiting these very long-term practitioners, and thats where our research began in this area. Because we reasoned, in a very simple-minded way, that we would first test these very long-term practitioners. And if we didnt see anything different in their brains, it was very unlikely that we would see differences in people who are just learning to meditate.

So, we brought people into our lab. We flew them from Asia. They came to Madison, Wisconsin. They spent, typically, somewhere between three and five or six days with us. And we tested them over this period of time in the laboratory. And there are a number of seminal publications that resulted from that that helped to establish that there was a there therethat there was something different about their brains.

And then we began to pursue that using other strategies, including looking at more novice practitioners because the work with long-term practitioners is super interesting and kind of flashy, but ultimately, its not fully scientifically satisfying because there are always questions about these long-term practitioners. After all, most people would not elect to live their life this way. And so these people are highly self-selected and presumably quite different to start with. And a skeptic could say, Well, maybe their brains are just different that way to begin with. Maybe it has nothing to do with meditation.

And so in order to do more rigorous scientific work, we needed to do a randomized controlled trial where you take people whove never meditated before. You randomly assign one group to meditation and another group to a control condition. You train them over time, and you test them before and after. And thats the kind of method that we and others have used to much more definitively establish that it is indeed the meditation that is producing the kinds of changes that were talking about.

We have found differences in, for example, the presence of certain brain waves that we can measure from the scalp surface. There is a frequency of brain oscillation called gamma oscillations, which are very fast frequencies. They are, on average, 40 cycles per second or 40 hertz. Most people do have gamma oscillations, but when you measure them in a typical average person, you see them for very short bursts. Theyre typically less than one second in duration, and they accompany states of focused attention. And you see a burst that may last a quarter of a second.

In these long-term practitioners, we saw these gamma oscillations present for minutes, not seconds. They were very large amplitudes. We actually could see them with the naked eye, which is almost unheard of in this kind of research. And we also saw that they were highly synchronized among different regions of the brain so that theyre aware of more things at any given time than most ordinary people. That was actually the very first major finding that we published.

In this case, were talking about people whove done just a little bit of practice. And so, in certain cases, theyre taking a course that lasts two months. And theyre meditating a total of somewhere between 24 and 30 hours over this two-month period. And there, we see clear changes in the functioning of the brain. We see changes in networks that are important for attention. We also see changes in networks that are important for the regulation of emotion. And in general, one of the important outcomes of this kind of training is improvements broadly in self-regulation, in our capacity to regulate both attention and emotion. And we see changes in the brain networks that are important in those aspects of self-regulation.

What we might say is that meditation represents a family of exercises that involve the intentional use of our mental capacities to improve our well-being and to nurture human flourishing. You dont need to be in any special place. You dont need to be in any special posture, and you can meditate anywhere any time.

We had one particular very long-term practitioner who made many visits to our laboratory over the course of a 12-year period. And so we have 12 years of serial MRI scans. And of course, we know the date on which each of these scans occurred, and we have lots of normative data now. And we can age and gender match it to know what the normal curve is for brain age over this period of life.

And so we can compare this very long-term practitioner. This is a practitioner who, when we first tested him, the very first time he came into the lab, had 62,000 hours of lifetime practice. Thats a big number. What we found is that he was in the 99th percentile of brain age. That is, he had the slowest brain age of a normative database of 1,000 people over this period of 12 years.

So thats one possibility for you. Your brain may be aging, and I would predict it would be aging, more slowly than your chronological age.

Yeah, there are literally hundreds of different kinds of meditation practices, and we have classified meditation into at least three broad families of practice. One we call awareness practices, and thats where mindfulness kinds of practices would be. The second we call deconstructive practices. The most important prototype for this is a kind of meditation that, for example, is most commonly done by the Dalai Lama but actually has received very little scientific attention. And its what we call analytic meditation, where through reasoning, there is a deconstruction of the self, if you will.

One example of that is the sentence that people might commonly use when they might say, Im in pain. If you use that sentence, when you say Im in pain, what does that actually mean? Who is the I in this sentence and does it mean that all of you is in pain, every cell in your body? And so what does it mean to say something like that? Or with an emotion when we say, Im sad. What does that actually mean? And what is the I in that sentence? So, reflecting on that is really beneficial, and thats a deconstructive practice.

The third category is constructive practice, actually generating a specific kind of emotion. The prototype for that is compassion meditation, where youre actively and intentionally generating this quality of compassion, or it could be kindness but one of these virtuous emotions.

To give a high-level summary, awareness practices and focused attention and concentration practices mostly affect systems in the brain that are concerned with the regulation of attention. The deconstructive practices are going to affect the default mode of the brain. This is the mode of brain function that has been linked to self-referential thought. The constructive practices, particularly compassion and kindness, will activate positive emotional centers in the brain and also activate, to some extent, perspective-taking areas of the brain that also are involved in empathy.

Yeah, that is a complete myth and stereotype. Meditation does not involve requiring in any way getting rid of thoughts. Human minds and brains, at least in large part, are there to produce thoughts. The goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts at all. Even the greatest meditation masters, and weve been lucky to study some of them in our laboratory, have thoughts. So, meditation may involve changing our relationship to thoughts, but it doesnt involve getting rid of thoughts.

Yeah, I would strongly agree with Jud. I think that thats a very important insight. And we have found that particularly in beginning practitioners, doing really short periods of practice several times a day is much more effective in producing desirable long-term outcomes.

Let me give you one example from a very recently published study that we did with K-12 public school teachers in the US. This study was actually done during COVID when the stress levels of K-12 educators were skyrocketing. On average, these teachers were practicing for a little less than five minutes a day. And they did it for 30 days, but they did it consistently. We found dramatic improvements in their well-being and reductions in standardized measures of depression and anxiety. And these improvements persisted at a follow-up that we did four months following the intervention. I should say this was done in the context of a rigorous, randomized controlled design.

The second thing that we did in this particular study, is we said, you dont have to meditate sitting in a chair or sitting on a cushion. You can meditate while youre commuting. You can meditate while youre washing the dishes. You can meditate while youre doing physical exercise. You can meditate while youre brushing your teeth. And it turns out that, 40 percent of the time, people were electing to do these practices actively while they were engaged in other activities of daily living. And the important finding is that the benefits were just as effective, whether they were sitting on a cushion or doing these actively.

People, in public talks that I give, people often ask, well, Whats the best form of meditation that I could do? And Ill say, Ill tell you, the best form of meditation that you could do is the form of meditation that you actually do.

My reading of the data is that its basically comparable in terms of its impact on, for example, symptoms of anxiety and depression. Whats different is that it has fewer side effects. That is, meditation has fewer side effects. And were much more likely to continue with meditation than we are with pharmaceuticals because of the side-effect profiles.

People dont want to be on these drugs for the rest of their lives. And we dont even know what the safety profile is for very long-term maintenance on these kinds of pharmaceuticals. There is some data to suggest that, in part, because of what I just said, the longer-term effects, particularly in preventing relapse, are more in favor of meditation.

And then finally, I think the last point to make here, is that I think that there is some reason to think strength-based approaches, rather than deficit-based approaches may ultimately be better. Because theres a lot of reason to believe that many of the skills which are important for flourishing, are actually innate, at least the seeds of them are innate. And so, strengthening them, and cultivating them makes more sense than simply treatments to get rid of the symptoms.

Theres some research on a mechanistic level looking at the brain, which has found some similarities but also some differences in how psychedelics and meditation might work. In my view, the application of psychedelics to the treatment of specific disorders is different than the application of psychedelics to people who dont have a frank disorder and who otherwise, might be interested in meditation and/or psychedelics for the purposes of further enhancing their well-being or flourishing or spiritual development, whatever that might be.

We know that the nature of a psychedelic experience is at least in part a function of the guide or facilitator that one has. And just like in meditation, receiving instruction from a really experienced practitioner is very different than receiving instruction from someone who just took an MBSR course.

And so, the training of these psychedelic guides is a serious issue. And what were seeing today is a proliferation of these money-making one-year programs at various places around the country to train psychedelic guides for people who, otherwise, had very little experience. And that frightens me, to be honest.

A second concern is that meditation is not about the experience we have when were meditating. We can have all kinds of experiences when were meditating. We can have blissful experiences. We can also have really difficult experiences. And sometimes those really difficult experiences end up being as important, if not more important than the blissful experiences. And its not about the experience. And psychedelics produce really dramatic experiences. And often, people get very focused on the experience. And people who have had a psychedelic experience often want to recreate that experience. But it really is not about the experience.

Its not going to help you become a kinder person. And those are the measures, ultimately, which matter. Does your spouse think youre nicer, and youre more cooperative and more altruistic? Both meditation and psychedelics, in their original form, as plant-based medicine were, in the psychedelic case, embedded in Indigenous contexts and the meditation in religious and spiritual contexts, both of which have an ethical container. And I think that this ethical framework is really important and is an active ingredient in the beneficial effects that these might have.

(Reprinted with permission from the Harvard Gazette. Click here to read the original post.)

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Meditation Changes the Brain: Heres How - India New England

Now a hotly anticipated recurring event that happens roughly every four years is taking place: the bitcoin halving. This could have further significant impact on the value of the cryptocurrency.

To understand what the halving is and what it could mean, we have to understand how bitcoin works. Bitcoin is a digital currency that makes use of what's called blockchain technology to securely store, record and publicly publish all transactions.

It is distinct from fiat currencies, such as dollars or pounds, because it has no central authority and members of the network have equal power. Each transaction is made and recorded with the user's public address, a code that enables them to remain anonymous.

Bitcoins are created by so-called miners who contribute computing power to secure the network and solve complex mathematical puzzles in order to process transaction data. These miners are then rewarded for their work with newly minted bitcoins.

The idea for bitcoin was first proposed in a white paper published online in 2008 by a mysterious individual or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. To combat inflation, Nakamoto wrote into the code that the total number of bitcoins will only ever be 21 million. Currently, more than 19.6 million bitcoins have been mined.

At the beginning, back in 2009, miners received 50 bitcoins for every block (unit of transaction data) they mined. But after every 210,000 blocks (roughly every four years), the reward halves.

So in 2012 the reward fell to 25 bitcoins, then to 12.5 bitcoins in 2016 and to 6.25 bitcoins in 2020. The latest halving means the reward will be just 3.125 bitcoins.

Why does bitcoin halve?

Nakamoto has never explained explicitly the reasons behind the halving. Some speculate that the halving system was designed to distribute coins more quickly at the beginning to incentivise people to join the network and mine new blocks. Block rewards are programmed to halve at regular intervals because the value of each coin rewarded is deemed likely to increase as the network expands.

But this may lead to users holding bitcoin as a speculative asset rather than using it as a medium of exchange. Additionally, the 21 million cap on the number of coins that can enter circulation makes them scarce (at least in comparison to dollars or euros), which for some people is enough to make them valuable.

So what impact does the halving have on the price? After the halving, the number of new bitcoin entering circulation shrinks. Demand should, in theory, be unaffected by this event and therefore the price should go up.

"The theory is that there will be less bitcoin available to buy if miners have less to sell," said Michael Dubrovsky, a co-founder of PoWx, a crypto research non-profit. While the first halving happened in 2012, when bitcoin was less well known and quite hard to buy and sell, we can learn from the subsequent two halvings.

The second halving on July 16 2016 was highly anticipated. The price dropped by 10 percent, but then shot back up to where it had been before. Although the immediate impact on the price was small, bitcoin did eventually respond and some argue that the 2017 bull run when the market boomed was a delayed result of the halving.

Beginning the year around US$900, by the end of 2017 bitcoin was trading above US$19,000. The third halving in 2020 happened during a bullish period for bitcoin and it continued to rise to more than US$56,000 in 2021.

Making an asset of scarcity

These few data points are not enough however to offer any concrete causal relationship or trend. But we do know that instantly miners' rewards are halved, meaning their revenue immediately halves and their profit margins are severely affected. Consequently, unless there is a price appreciation, many miners may become unprofitable and could cease the practice.

Bitcoin's scarcity is arguably one of its most significant characteristics, especially in a time of high inflation, quantitative easing and high interest rates. With the real value of fiat currencies falling, bitcoin's limited supply is an attractive feature and can be reassuring for investors.

Bitcoin hit an all-time high in February following the approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which effectively make it easier for retail investors and big banks to invest in bitcoin.

This, coupled with a more favorable regulatory environment on the horizon and the fact that it is becoming more integrated in the financial system, means bitcoin may continue on the rise it has experienced in 2024 so far.

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Andrew Urquhart is a professor of Finance & Financial Technology, ICMA Centre, Henley Business School at University of Reading in England.

This article was republished under a Creative Commons license with The Conversation. The views and opinions in this article are solely those of the author.

https://theconversation.com/bitcoin-is-halving-again-what-does-that-mean-for-the-cryptocurrency-and-the-market-228213

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Bitcoin is halving again what does that mean for cryptocurrency and market? - Aju Press

An hour before tipoff of Game 2 between the Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers at Madison Square Garden on Monday, backup Sixers guard Buddy Hield is sitting at his locker.

Hield didnt want to speak to the media not while he was preparing for the second of a seven-game first-round playoff series. But he said one word while hunched over, holding a bunch of socks in one hand and his phone in the other, eyes peeled on the projected displaying film on the opponent he was about to face.

Adjust.

The playoffs are all about adjustments.

The right adjustment can swing an entire series in a teams favor, regardless of a perceived talent discrepancy between the two squads.

The wrong adjustment? Well, the wrong adjustment can send a team into a spiral. The wrong adjustment could cost a team a series, a head coach his job.

Adjustments will be abundant in a chess match between two teams with injured stars and high playoff hopes.

The Knicks are on this playoff run without Julius Randle, a three-time All-Star who suffered a season-ending dislocated right shoulder in January.

And for the 76ers, both All-Stars Joel Embiid (meniscus) and Tyrese Maxey (ill) were questionable and listed as game-time decisions before both decided to play through the adversity in Game 2.

I mean listen: I think that you get into the series after Game 1 for sure, said Sixers head coach Nick Nurse. You see a lot of the things that are happening. You can only guess what the coverages will be, what the matchups are gonna be, and all that kind of stuff. So you certainly have a lot of information going into the next game about where youre gonna move your pieces, if theres any matchups you want to change, any schemes you want to change, all that kind of stuff.

You just kind of move the guesses to some more of the factual information youve been presented, and then see how that affects what youre gonna do the next game.

Isaiah Hartenstein, too, is at his locker, a 90-second stroll from where Hield uttered the word adjust.

Hartenstein laughs. This is a question for the head coach, not for the player.

The playoffs are not just about adjustments, but also anticipation: Can you anticipate what the opposing coach is going to do and have a plan of attack ready for it?

For head coach Tom Thibodeau, much of the work leading into this series had been done long before the Knicks knew the victor between the Play-In Tournament matchup between the 76ers and Miami Heat on Wednesday.

As the Sixers and Heat battled for the right to play the Knicks in the first round, Thibodeaus staff spent time finding similarities between the two potential opponents in order to gain a head start for Game 1.

You do it all year long, so you dont have to adjust, Thibodeau said ahead of tipoff on Monday. So, same thing you do with your preparation, you dont change. You analyze the game that you, the things you did well, the things you have to improve upon and get ready for the next one.

Under Thibodeau, the Knicks have their foundational principles: They want to defend hard, shoot a ton of threes, crash the glass and protect the ball. If they do these four things, they believe they can sustain both a poor shooting night of their own or a furious opponent-scoring run.

We come in, we watch film. We have our principles of how we play, Hartenstein said pregame. An adjustment is always going to be made, but at the end of the day, weve got to stick to our principles and just kind of getter better as a team at what we want to do.

Game 1 gave both teams plenty of adjustments to make moving forward.

The Knicks, for example, couldnt stop Tyrese Maxey, who put his superior speed on display to the tune of 33 points in Game 1.

The Sixers found success defending Jalen Brunson, who shot just 8-of-26 from the field for 22 points but to do so, they helped off of Josh Hart, who hit four threes, including a trio of treys in the fourth quarter to help put the Sixers away late.

The Knicks also got some help from Deuce McBride, Bojan Bogdanovic and Mitchell Robinson, who combined to score 42 points off the bench in Game 1, while the Sixers got little else from players not named Embiid and Maxey.

Hield didnt score at all in Game 1 and missed each of the two shots he took in 11 minutes off the bench for the Sixers. The Sixers picked him up specifically for a scoring punch off the bench in a playoff matchup like this one.

Its why hes muttering one word at his locker adjust and why every series has unforeseen twists and turns, regardless of whos suiting up on a given night.

Read more:

Knicks-Sixers playoff is series a chess match rife with adjustments: 'You see a lot of the things that are happening' - New York Daily News

Retirement is a source of anxiety for many Americans, with older employees worried about being forced out of work before they are ready and younger generations less than convinced they will be able to afford to retire at all. But many college-educated baby boomers are flipping the script and redefining how and when they retire on their own terms, a trend that could have significant effects on the workplace for years to come.

Of course,theres no single approach to work and retirement in the U.S.while some are able to exit the workforce at 65 to travel and pursue hobbies without worrying about their finances, many others are never able to fully retire at all. Others who want or need to continue working are pushed out by employers, while some are set on leaving the traditional work world as soon as possible, with the goal toquit in their 50s, or even earlier.

Phased retirement is different still, and, according to some reports, could be a growing trend. Rather than a hard-stop retirementhere for 40 years, gone tomorrowworkers are given the option to gradually pare back hours and reduce stress while still earning income and maintaining connections. Proponents say it not only helps employees with the transition to retirement, both mentally and financially, but that it also benefits employers.

Businesses are all struggling with recruiting and retaining talent, so you have to keep the talent you havethats a lot more effective, efficient, and productive, Chris Littlefield, president of retirement and income solutions at Principal, previously told Fortune. Its a mega-trend in the workforce. It will be a very significant lever for them over the next decade.

How does that work in practice? Heres what three baby boomers approaching or past the traditional retirement age told Fortune about their ideal phased exit.

Name: George Cavedon Age: 73 Location: New Hampshire

After a decades-long career working in retail, George Cavedon retired in his fifties after his company was sold, a dream for many workers. But Cavedon soon found the early retirement life wasnt for him; he missed having somewhere to go during the day that wasnt a golf course, and Eventually, he joined the ranks of the unretired, and found a new job working at a small marketing firm. Hes been there for 18 years, with no intention of slowing down anytime soon.

Im trying to cut back. Being 73, my energy isnt what it used to be, Cavedon says. But I enjoy what I do, I enjoy coming in and working with people. Im a social kind of guy.

For Cavedon, his current working arrangement is ideal. He gets out of the house but has some flexibility with his hourssomething he was never allowed in his first career in retail. Because he works in sales and meets with clients in person, his mind stays sharp, he says, and talking with younger coworkers keeps him up-to-date on trends and perspectives hed otherwise miss.

Cavedon recognizes his approach to work isnt for everyone. He has plenty of friends who have retired and moved to states like Florida with warmer weather and more leisure activities. But for better or worse, he says part of his identity is tied up in his work. Eventually hell scale back to working three days a week rather than five, but not yet. And the money doesnt hurt, either.

Retirement to me is a scary thing. How much can you lay on the beach? he says.For my own personal mental health and well-being, I like being active and working.

Name: Renee Stanton Age: 61 Location: New Jersey

Phased retirement is the goal for Renee Stanton, who has worked in IT-adjacent roles her entire career. She has no desire to leave the workforce completely but would appreciate the flexibility to go skiing and sailingher lifelong passionsduring the on-seasons, and to spend more time with her adult children and aging parents. A self-described frustrated artist, Stanton also foresees wiling away more afternoons in her dads art studio.

Its not a problem for me to fill my timethe problem for me is to find the time for all the things I want to do, says Stanton, 61. They say you have to have retirement goals. My retirement goal isthey have front-row parking for skiers 80 and above. My goal is to be parking there.

Though she has enough moneyand passionsto retire now, Stanton says she learned a lesson when her father, a cabinetmaker, retired in his sixties. Now 87 and going strong, he believes he left the workforce too early and could have benefitted financially from staying employed longer. With potentially decades ahead of her, she is being extra cautious with her finances.

She plans to reduce her hours significantly and move to a contractor role, so she can work when she wants to and take time off on her own terms. Ill be in full control, she says. That will allow her pensions and Social Security payments to continue to grow, and because she still has a few years until Medicare coverage kicks in, shell need to earn enough to pay for her health insuranceand her ski passes.

Its time for me to take a step back and plan more time for fun, says Stanton. I still want to work and bring some money in. I saved for retirement, but not ski-addiction retirement.

Name: Joy W. Age: 66 Location: New York

At 50, Joy W., who asked that her last name be withheld to freely discuss her career plans, completed a masters degree in psychology. A long-time human resources worker, Joy, now 66, decided to pursue a second act that better aligned with her desire to help people. That first degree lit a match, and a few years later, she also completed a masters in social work. She now works as a full-time psychotherapist in rural Connecticut, with clients ranging in age from 25 to 95, but many who are post-retirement.

Through her work, Joy has realized she has no desire to stop working completely, though she and her husband are financially secure and shes past the traditional retirement age. But she is beginning to scale back, working four days a week instead of five.

When I think about ending my career, I imagine Ill be doing some sort of volunteer work that takes advantage of my skills, says Joy. I wont just drop out 100% one day. Ill be doing something. Its interesting, its stimulating for me, and theres a huge need for it.

Her clients also have influenced her choice to keep working. Many of them have some form of regret about retiring, she says, and its usually because they did so too soon. Talking with them validates her zigging-zagging path toward phased retirement.

They werent ready for how they felt the day they woke up after retirement, she says. They didnt know how to do retirement, and that took them by surprise.

Many family members, including her father and some siblings, were retired by their companies, which also informs her approach to work. She wants to make the choice for herself, and one benefit of switching careers when she did, Joy says, is that shes been in the drivers seat since the beginning. Her current employer knew from the jump that she didnt plan to work full time for long. Theyre just happy to have her while they do.

That felt really liberating, she says. It really lowered the anxiety level, at least mine, and probably theirs too. We each knew where the other stood.

What is your retirement budget?Fortuneis writing about what Americans at different income levels are spending in retirement. To share your story, email senior writer Alicia Adamczyk atalicia.adamczyk@fortune.com.

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How 3 baby boomers are approaching phased retirement, the 'mega-trend' reshaping workplaces - Fortune