BC SCIENCE
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THREAD
The world is littered with hacks and quick fixes.

Magic routines, butter in our coffee, special supplements, exotic foods. All promising to transform our lives.

Nearly all of it is BS. Here are 12 science-backed "hacks" that actually work.

 Read a Book.

An expert in their field has taken their vast knowledge and distilled it to what's most important. Writing forces you to make difficult decisions on what's important and what's not. Writing demands clarity. You're getting an expert's lifetime of work for $15.
Talk to people who know more.

The best way to "hack" knowledge? Have a conversation with those who are informed. They've done the hard part of figuring out of sorting through the mess of information AND making sense of it. Having a conversation brings clarity for application.
Show up, no matter what.

Day after day. Sit down to write. Get out to exercise. Whatever the task you're trying to master, just keep showing up.

If you show up enough, you'll get better.
Sleep.

Just getting your 8+ hours has enormous benefits from the psychological to physical. Sleep is when your body restores & grows with its highest output of growth hormones, & when your mind processes and coalesces information. Translating knowledge from superficial to deep
Move. Often easy. Occasionally with ferocious intensity.

Get out and move. Most should be easy to moderate so you can keep coming back day after day. Some should be moderate/hard. And very occasionally you should "go see god" to remind yourself what going to the well is like.
Find Nature.

Being outside can increase creativity, mood, and well-being. Just being near nature, according to one study, was equivalent health-wise to being 7 years younger. Even just looking at pictures of nature can do the trick, improving mood and performance.
Form Lasting Relationships.

One of our fundamental needs as a person is to belong. If we satisfy this need, our health and motivation improve We're more likely to persist, and tackle difficult challenges.
One study found that being with a friend or loved one made challenging tasks appear to be a bit more manageable. Another found that being around a loved one, decreased our stress response to frightening things.

Feeling like we belong allows us to feel secure in who we are.
Surround Yourself Wisely

Moods and behaviors are contagious. Research from the Framingham study found that sadness and happiness rippled through the town. Living nearby a friend who becomes happy increases your probability of becoming happy by 25%
Research has found that sitting close to a high performer improved performance by 15%.

Sitting close to a low performer decreased performance by 30%.

Surround yourself with people who lift you up. https://t.co/KTms7fVddp
Challenge Yourself Ever So Slightly

When life is too easy, we get bored and unmotivated. When we don't have a shot at winning, our motivation wanes and we give up.

Find challenges that are in the sweet spot of just beyond your current capabilities. A slight stretch.
For most, don't diet.

Find something that is sustainable. Dieting is akin to going all-in on the latest exercise fad, lasting for 3 weeks and giving up exercising for 6 months…It's much better to find something that is sustainable for you.
What you find sustainable will be different from me and friends and family. That's fine. Eat real foods and limit heavily processed ones. Your diet isn't your religion or who you are.
Behave like a Kindergartner...(on some things!)

Follow your interests. Go deep when something catches your eye. But don't be afraid to ditch it and move on to the next thing if it no longer meets your needs. Don't tie your identity too closely to what you do. Explore the world.
Have a purpose that's greater than yourself.

A self-transcending purpose allows us to persist a bit longer, perform a bit better. In physical pursuits, our brain loosens the reigns allowing us to dig a bit deeper.
In life, according to a Harvard study, those who had meaning and purpose in their life lived longer and healthier lives. https://t.co/NWSXGyOziZ
None of these things are real "hacks." In fact, they are all pretty boring and straightforward.

Move. Sleep. Belong.

But that's the point. We spend so much time looking for shortcuts when the boring stuff right in front of us has a much bigger effect.

Choose the boring stuff!
Most of us need to focus on the 99%, not the 1%.

We are seeking the silver bullet, when the reality is we need to zoom back out and nail the basics before we even consider the final 1 percent.
If you enjoyed this thread, I tweet threads about the science of performance 2x per week, so follow along!

If you like deep dives on topics, consider checking out my free weekly newsletter.

Thanks for taking the time to read my work! https://t.co/Esomf74PKg

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https://t.co/odzm9VTdwZ

Thread for today. /0

It is fashionable for people to create sympathy to the unseen / unknown organisms. The poor things that can't stand up and fight for their own existence.

It makes for a brilliant narrative. It melts your hearts. And you get to play saviour of the oppressed by outraging. /1

But, for most part, such things are also false.

Amazon are the lungs of the world. Never mind that most of the world's oxygen production happens in open oceans. But these are harmless ones. Of course, we all love to maintain forests.

However, some things are sheer scare mongering.

For instance - take this: coral reefs will be permanently gone if mean / median temperatures raise by 1°C ..

But, really - how? Then you get a lecture on how CO2 will affect calcification.

Dig a bit deeper from another angle+

+ and you find that the earth was much much warmer during the age of Dinosaurs. So much so, that we had cold blooded lizards growing to sizes of buildings. Surely, there must have been tons of CO2 then!

And the ocean temps were quite high too.
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1/Just had an interview scheduled with @goddeketal, Dr Simon Goddek, the post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Mathematics and Statistics in the field of biotechnology, at an unnamed Dutch university. This researcher has been publicly pointing out that the paper that...

2/ the PCR test as the gold standard underlying global "lockdowns" was passed after maximum ONE day of peer review, as opposed to the average at that same journal of 172 days in 2019. Also that several authors have conflicts of interest. Unfortunately we were forced to cancel..

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@jameshay218
Ct values can be used to estimate epidemic dynamics UPDATE! Ct values are expected to change depending on whether the epidemic is growing or declining, and we harness this to estimate the epidemic trajectory. Lots of cool new analyses and methods!

Highlights:
- Cts from symptom-based surveillance change over time, but the effect is weaker
- Methods to infer incidence using single cross-sections of Cts
- Unbiased by changing testing coverage
- Gaussian process (wiggly line) model for incidence tracking using Ct values
2/12

This work is *JOINTLY led* with @LeekShaffer and PI’d by @michaelmina_lab. Thank you also to the ever insightful @mlipsitch and to coauthors @SanjatKanjilal @gabriel_stacey and @nialljlennon. 3/12

Premise: times since infection depend on the epidemic trajectory. Distributions of randomly sampled viral loads proxy times since infection. With calibration, Ct values can estimate growth rate. We focus on qPCR in SARS-CoV-2, but the principle applies to any outbreak. 4/12

Result 1: viral loads are shifted higher (Cts lower) during epidemic growth and lower (Cts higher) during decline when individuals are sampled *based on the onset of symptoms*. We simulated linelist data under symptom-based surveillance and looked at TSI and Cts over time. 5/12
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Smit Patel
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Super excited to share my very first lead-author paper in @ScienceAdvances

Supported by @HIRN_CC @NIDDKgov @UFBME @UFWertheim @ufdiabetes @UMCoEDean
Lead by @Cherie_Stabler & @ashu83

link: https://t.co/FbqVWQ0n5p

This is a thread 👇

Highlights:
⚪️A Lab-on-a-Chip platform for organoids w/ wide capabilities: long-term culture | controlled & dynamic perifusion | in situ spatio-temporal imaging | serial cell assessment | ease of sample retrieval


⚪️Continuous fluidic flow increased local oxygen supply to islets in hydrogels & reduced cellular hypoxia
⚪️Flow increased cellular viability & reduced apoptosis & cell death

⚪️Human islets in hydrogels were highly functional during the 10 day in situ culture in our chips, while islet function was rapidly lost under static conditions
⚪️Glucolipotoxicity study showed a treatment window as small as 2.5 hours can elevate cell death

What are organoids? – A miniaturized version of an organ that imitate an aspect of human interface. They are commonly developed from stem cells in a lab. Human body also produces organoids naturally particularly within the pancreas.
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You want to know something about how bullshit insane our brains are?
OK, so there's a physical problem with our eyes: We move them in short fast bursts called "saccades", right? very quick, synchronized movements.
The only problem is: they go all blurry and useless during this

having your vision turn into a blurry mess every time you move your eyes is obviously not a good idea, so our brains hide it from us. Now, imagine you're an engineer and you have this problem.

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Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal #temple -Gunaseelam,Near Trichy,TN #Thread

Gunaseela Mahatmyam,a chapter of Bhavishyottara Purana describes greatness of this place.

Venkatachlapathi of Tirumala Tirupati appeared b4 Gunaseela Rishi here,so Gunaseelam is known as Ten(South)Tirupati


Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal is in a standing posture with 4 arms holding sankha & chakra in the upper hands.The lower right hand is in abhaya pose,blessing devotees &left hand is in kati hasta,resting on waist.

A sceptre(senkkol)rests on right shoulder,with which this murti is believed to cure people affected by mental illness.These patient stay here for a period-48 days& participate in poojas&most of them get relieved of their problems.There is a temple run Mental Rehabilitation center

#storytimethread -As per Sthala Puranam,existence of this temple is due to efforts of Gunaseela Rishi, a disciple of Thalpiya Maharishi.
Thalpiya Maharishi along with his disciple Gunaseela Rishi once went to Himalayas.On his way back, Gunaseela Rishi stayed back at Tirupathi.


He was so wanted to have darshan of Venkatachalapathy in Gunaseelam near his asharam & bless the devotees.

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