Motivation: The Scientific Guide on How to Get and Stay Motivated

Motivation is a powerful, yet tricky beast. Sometimes it is really easy to get motivated, and you find yourself wrapped up in a whirlwind of excitement. Other times, it is nearly impossible to figure out how to motivate yourself and you're trapped in a death spiral of procrastination. This page contains the best ideas and most useful research on how to get and stay motivated.

This isn't going to be some rah-rah, pumped-up motivational speech. (That's not my style.) Instead, we're going to break down the science behind how to get motivated in the first place and how to stay motivated for the long-run. Whether you're trying to figure out how to motivate yourself or how to motivate a team, this page should cover everything you need to know.

You can click the links below to jump to a particular section or simply scroll down to read everything. At the end of this page, you'll find a complete list of all the articles I have written on motivation.

What is Motivation?

So what is motivation, exactly? The author Steven Pressfield has a great line in his book, The War of Art, which I think gets at the core of motivation. To paraphrase Pressfield, “At some point, the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it.”

Common Misconceptions About Motivation

One of the most surprising things about motivation is that it often comes after starting a new behavior, not before. We have this common misconception that motivation arrives as a result of passively consuming a motivational video or reading an inspirational book. However, active inspiration can be a far more powerful motivator.

Common Misconceptions About Motivation

One of the most surprising things about motivation is that it often comes after starting a new behavior, not before. We have this common misconception that motivation arrives as a result of passively consuming a motivational video or reading an inspirational book. However, active inspiration can be a far more powerful motivator.

The work of top creatives isn’t dependent upon motivation or inspiration, but rather it follows a consistent pattern and routine. Here are some examples of how you can apply ritual and routine to get motivated:

• Exercise more consistently: Use the same warm up routine in the gym.
• Become more creative: Follow a creative ritual before you start writing or painting or singing.
• Start each day stress-free: Create a five-minute morning meditation ritual.
• Sleep better: Follow a “power down” routine before bed.

Fifth State of Matter confirmed!

@iammoteh/Quanta Magazine

By Ines Urdaneta, Research Scientist at Resonance Science Foundation

We are familiarized with the four states of matter acknowledged so far: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Who would have imagined a fifth state of matter, containing simultaneously two states? Within the diversity of crystallization forms or phases of water from liquid to solid ice (more than seventeen crystalline and several amorphous ice structure), appeared a new one: ionic oxygen crystal with ionic hydrogen (mainly protons) moving inside, like a fluid. It has been named ice XVIII, and it is both a new phase of water (because it depends on applied temperature and pressure) and a new state of matter (because it gathers both a solid and a fluid).

Crystals are formed by ionized atoms, such that the electrostatic forces between cations and ions keep the lattice solid. The common salt crystal has anions of Chlorine (Cl-) and cations of Sodium (Na+), is in solid state at room temperature, but the superionic crystal of water synthesized recently requires extremely high pressure and temperature to form, as it first has to ionize its atoms -breaking the water molecules-. In all other crystallization forms of ice water, the molecules remain; the ice forms precisely because of cold temperatures that freeze the system. But in this superionic experiments, high temperature (above 2000 kelvin) brakes the water molecules, and high pressure (above 100 gigapascals) densifies the system.

One wonders what natural scenario could host such an extravagancy. Apparently, a perfect scenario for it can be found in Ice Giants like Uranus and Neptune, which are composed mainly by Ice water (at least 65%). As a matter of fact, superionic ice at extreme pressure and temperature is relevant as an explanation for their core, where such extreme conditions are expected. Their cores must have a particularity, given the exotic magnetic fields emanating from of these Ice Giants, compared to the remaining planets of the solar systems that have a magnetic field pretty much aligned with the axe of rotation and with a simpler shape suggesting a conductive fluid region in the core that swirls, allowing the emanation of massive magnetic fields.

Neptuno and Uranus magnetic fields behave differently, and this could be explained if the conducting fluid responsible for the “dynamo effect” was confined into a thin outer shell of the planet, instead of letting it reach down into the core. The exotic magnetic field behavior could be explained with this new state of matter.

“This suggested superionic ice would conduct electricity, like a metal, with the hydrogens playing the usual role of electrons. Unlike the familiar ice found in your freezer or at the north pole, superionic ice is black and hot. A cube of it would weigh four times as much as a normal one.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/black-hot-superionic-ice-may-be-natures-most-common-form-of-water-20190508/

On the other hand, we have been used to understanding conductivity of elementary charged particles such as electrons that compose the electronic current. Who would have guessed a current of protons -which are not considered to be elementary particles because of their additional internal structure-? Though this exotic behavior of water was expected from numerical simulations more than thirty years ago, the fact of observing it for the first time is breathtaking, especially when considering the amount of approximations involved in the model since the complexity of the system prevented exact quantum chemical calculations.

The authors of this work published in Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1114-6) resume in their abstract the experience: “Particularly intriguing is the prediction that H2O becomes superionic6–with liquid-like protons diffusing through the solid lattice of oxygen— when subjected to extreme pressures and high temperatures. Numerical simulations suggest that the characteristic diffusion of the protons through the empty sites of the oxygen solid lattice (1) gives rise to a surprisingly high ionic conductivity above 100 Siemens per centimetre, that is, almost as high as typical metallic (electronic) conductivity, (2) greatly increases the ice melting temperature to several thousand kelvin, and (3) favours new ice structures with a close-packed oxygen lattice.“

This discovery, gathering a diversity of topics, addressed simultaneously all scales, from the atomic to the cosmological, connected in a single thread just as the unified theory proposed by Nassim Haramein.

Missing molecule finally discovered

The evolution from the first molecule to the complex chemistry that exists in our universe today is now one step closer to being understood.

When we think of complex chemistry, we usually think of all the matter that exists on our planet which in our atmosphere is a massive 10 trillion trillion molecules per cubic meter. As we move away from our planet this drops exponentially. However, surprising as it may be, space space – like the interstellar and intergalactic regions – are host to a myriad of molecules. Albeit not at quite the same high densities.

How these molecules formed and became the complex chemistry that we see today remains to be fully understood. It is currently agreed that the early universe consisted of only a few kinds of atoms and it wasn’t until the age of 100,000 years that hydrogen and helium combined to form the first molecule – helium hydride. However, although theorized to exist it has never been detected. That was until a team of scientists from NASA’s SOFIA Science Center (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) observed its signature – in our own galaxy.

Previously, scientists were able to successfully combine helium and ionic hydrogen to create helium hydride in the laboratory. They then speculated that astrophysical plasmas such as those found in planetary nebulae – an expanding shell of dust that has been ejected from its host star as it runs out of fuel – provided the prefect environment for helium hydride to form. The young, dense planetary nebula, NGC 7027, located around 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, seemed like the perfect candidate. However, the instruments of the time were not sufficient to distinguish its signal and the observations were thus inconclusive.

Finally, in 2016, utilizing the world’s largest airborne observatory SOFIA, scientists were able observe NGC 7027 above the interfering layers of Earth’s atmosphere and clearly distinguish the elusive signature of helium hydride.

RSF—in perspective

In the unified perspective everything is interconnected, and evolution is a natural consequence resulting from the information feedback dynamics of spacetime – or space memory. Read more here. This view sees a world where forms take familiar shapes and patterns are repeated across scales. Observations confirming the first molecule that led to molecular hydrogen and the complex chemistry we observe today will therefore add insight into the feedback dynamics that give rise to these fundamental patterns.

By: Dr. Amira Val Baker, RSF research scientist

A tiny Galaxy with a Big Heart!

Photo: Hubble image depicting galaxy ESO 495-21 at the center. From NASA/ESA

Evolution of our understanding of Black Holes (BH) has gone from the mathematical outcome with no physical counterpart, up to their detection at the center of various galaxies and visualization of their shadow through the reconstructed image presented for the first time just a few months ago by the EHT global initiative (https://resonancescience.org/the-first-image-of-a-black-hole-is-finally-here/). Now it is thought that every galaxy hosts a BH in its core. When the first BHs were inferred from cosmological observations, we believed they were an extravagant exceptional behavior in the universe. Since, they have proven not so exceptional as they are detected with increased frequency, but they remain an extravagancy, and not for the same reasons.

ESO 495-21 is a galaxy just 3.000 light years across in diameter, very small compared to the almost 53.000 of our Milky Way galaxy. Located 30 million light years away in the constellation of Pyxis, it presents two contrasting features with respect to our galaxy; it forms huge numbers of stars and it hosts an enormous BH in its center, much bigger that what could be expected by its galactic size.

Galaxies that form stars at exceptionally high rates -star nurseries- create stellar newborns up to 1000 times faster than our galaxy, and are called Starburst galaxies. ESO 495-21 is a dwarf starburst galaxy because it is small in size. Usually we would expect that bigger the galaxy more massive the BH in its center. If our galaxy hosts Sagittarius A*, a supermassive BH over four million times as massive as our Sun, one would expect Henize 2-10 -the BH at the center of ESO- to be much smaller. But, the second intriguing observation is that ESO 495-21 galaxy -a 3% size of our galaxy- hosts a supermassive BH at its core, million times as massive as our Sun, too!

This extremely unusual scenario raises questions about our current astrophysical models and the relation between Black holes, galaxies and the universe. This finding is a strong indication that black holes may have come first, and that galaxies form and evolve around them. The question is, how?

do the galaxies form first and then crush material at their centers into black holes, or do pre-existing black holes gather galaxies around them? Do they evolve together—or could the answer be something else entirely?

– ESA/Hubble Information Centre

The NASA/ESA studied the activity bursts and explored the very dense regions a few million years old within ESO 495-21, and the data comprising the images were gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope with the advance camera for surveys and the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

RSF in perspective:

This finding is a strong indication that Black Holes came first, so then a question remains… how can a galaxy form and evolve around it, if we have believed BHs to be devouring monsters? The Unified theory developed by Nassim Haramein finds that BHs not only came first but they are in fact the responsible for the matter and posterior galaxy formation, as he has claimed for more than 25 years. Fortunately, astronomical observations not only have been unable to discard his findings and on the contrary, they point out in that same direction. In this sense we could literally say that the BH at the core IS the pumping heart of the galaxy.

By Ines Urdaneta, Research Scientist at RSF

More at:

Hubble observed tiny galaxy with big heart: https://phys.org/news/2019-06-hubble-tiny-galaxy-big-heart.html

Chote sahibzaade shahidi Diwas di vadhai

They sacrificed the selfless for sikhism

didn't fear in front of Mughals. 

Sikh religion is eternal. 

Merry christmas

Merry x-mas to everyone, have
a great time. 👍❤️

Early-life exposure to dogs may lessen risk of developing schizophrenia

Dog and chalkboard addition (stock image).

Dogs spontaneously process basic numerical quantities, using a distinct part of their brains that corresponds closely to number-responsive neural regions in humans, finds a study at Emory University.

Biology Letters published the results, which suggest that a common neural mechanism has been deeply conserved across mammalian evolution.

"Our work not only shows that dogs use a similar part of their brain to process numbers of objects as humans do -- it shows that they don't need to be trained to do it," says Gregory Berns, Emory professor of psychology and senior author of the study.

"Understanding neural mechanisms -- both in humans and across species -- gives us insights into both how our brains evolved over time and how they function now," says co-author Stella Lourenco, an associate professor of psychology at Emory.

Such insights, Lourenco adds, may one day lead to practical applications such as treating brain abnormalities and improving artificial intelligence systems.

Lauren Aulet, a PhD candidate in Lourenco's lab, is first author of the study.

The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan dogs' brains as they viewed varying numbers of dots flashed on a screen. The results showed that the dogs' parietotemporal cortex responded to differences in the number of the dots. The researchers held the total area of the dots constant, demonstrating that it was the number of the dots, not the size, that generated the response.

The approximate number system supports the ability to rapidly estimate a quantity of objects in a scene, such as the number of predators approaching or the amount of food available for foraging. Evidence suggests that humans primarily draw on their parietal cortex for this ability, which is present even in infancy.

This basic sensitivity to numerical information, known as numerosity, does not rely on symbolic thought or training and appears to be widespread throughout the animal kingdom. Much of the research in non-humans, however, has involved intensive training of the subjects.

Previous research, for example, has found that particular neurons in the parietal cortex of monkeys are attuned to numerical values. Such studies had not clarified whether numerosity is a spontaneous system in non-human primates, because the subjects underwent many trials and received rewards for selecting scenes with greater numbers of dots in preparation for the experiments.

Behavioral studies in dogs that were trained in the task of discriminating between different quantities of objects have also indicated that dogs are sensitive to numerosity.

The Emory researchers wanted to delve further into the neural underpinnings of canine number perception using fMRI.

Berns is founder of the Dog Project, which is researching evolutionary questions surrounding man's best, and oldest friend. The project was the first to train dogs to voluntarily enter an fMRI scanner and remain motionless during scanning, without restraint or sedation.

Lourenco primarily researches human visual perception, cognition and development.

Eleven dogs of varying breeds were involved in the current fMRI experiments. The dogs did not receive advance training in numerosity. After entering the fMRI, they passively viewed dot arrays that varied in numerical value. Eight of the 11 dogs showed greater activation in the parietotemporal cortex when the ratio between alternating dot arrays was more dissimilar than when the numerical values were constant.

"We went right to the source, observing the dogs' brains, to get a direct understanding of what their neurons were doing when the dogs viewed varying quantities of dots," Aulet says. "That allowed us to bypass the weaknesses of previous behavioral studies of dogs and some other species."

Humans and dogs are separated by 80 million years of evolution, Berns notes. "Our results provide some of the strongest evidence yet that numerosity is a shared neural mechanism that goes back at least that far," he says.

Unlike dogs and other animals, humans are able to build on basic numerosity in order to do more complex math, drawing primarily on the prefrontal cortex. "Part of the reason that we are able to do calculus and algebra is because we have this fundamental ability for numerosity that we share with other animals," Aulet says. "I'm interested in learning how we evolved that higher math ability and how these skills develop over time in individuals, starting with basic numerosity in infancy."

Additional authors of the study include Veronica Chiu and Ashley Prichard, Emory graduate students in psychology, and Mark Spivak, CEO of Comprehensive Pet Therapy. Spivak and Berns co-founded Dog Star Technologies to develop techniques to study how dogs perceive the world.

The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the John Merck Fund and the Office of Naval Research.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Emory Health Sciences. Original written by Carol Clark. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Bioengineer Researchers Discover New Type of Cell Communication

Collective intercellular communication through ultra-fast hydrodynamic trigger waves:

Researchers studying one of the longest single cell organisms—Spirostomum ambiguum—which can grow up to lengths of 4mm (a unicellular organism observable to the naked eye) have discovered that it is also one of the fastest cells ever documented. The gargantuan protist can contract its long body by 60% within milliseconds, experiencing an acceleration force of up to 14g.

The contractile behavior protects the unicellular organism from would-be predators, as small vacuoles along the cellular membrane containing toxins are dispersed when undergoing the extreme g forces of the contraction. Remarkably, researchers have discovered that the contractions also generate long-ranged vortex flows that function as hydrodynamic signals to other Spirostomum.

This is the first time that hydrodynamic cellular signaling has been documented, and opens the door to investigating other instances where cells are communicating via long-range vorticular hydrodynamic signals.

RSF—in perspective:

RSF—in perspective: the subcellular components that allow for this blazingly fast contractile motion are microtubules. Microtubules are a central facet of current theories of quantum consciousness and cellular information processing producing memory and intelligent behavior.

As such, it is perhaps not so surprising that the intelligent behavior and communication via hydrodynamic signaling from rapid contraction by this unicellular organism involves microtubules.

Related article: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/428573v1

Black Holes … Black Suns?

Image from ESA

Stars were thought to be the principal and most important component for life to thrive… till now. Researchers from Harvard university explain that radiation coming from Black holes could do the same!

Habitable zones in outer space have been defined with respect to stars (suns), as regions where the stars radiation and energy are suitable for emergence of life. Closer or farther away from this source of energy, temperature would be too cold or too hot in order for liquid water to exist in a planet´s surface. The zones were liquid water and biological opportunity can happen are known as “Goldilocks zone”.

A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal have found such zones around supermassive black holes as well. This is quite surprising, since the surroundings of a black hole, consisting on swirling disks of gas and dust called Active Galactic Nuclei -AGN-, emit enormous amounts of radiation (mainly x-ray, gamma and ultraviolet light) that could destroy nearby planets´ atmospheres, creating a dead zone around the BH.

After numerical simulations using programs that model AGNs, researchers were able to identify such regions around the BHs and concluded that the destruction regime was highly overestimated. For instance, the damaging zone is located 100 light years away, a much shorter distance than the 3,200 light years predicted by former studies for Sagittarius A* -Milky ways´ supermassive BH-. Meanwhile, its Goldilocks region extends 140 light years from the black hole center.

Being the dangerous distance of the AGN region narrower than the total extension of the AGN zone, if placed within the remaining AGN region, a planet´s atmosphere could remain intact while at the same time the radiation of the active nuclei could break molecules to create the biological building blocks which are lipids, proteins and DNA. For a galaxy as our own, the AGN-powered photosynthesis region would extend up to 1,100 light-years out from the center of the galaxy. At the same time, light emanating from the AGN could facilitate photosynthesis, a particularly important fact for free floating planets believed to have no source of light energy around them.

“Astronomers have estimated there could be around 1 billion such rogue planets drifting in the Goldilocks zone of a Milky Way-like galaxy”

according to Manasvi.

Concerning the damaging effects of the ultraviolet and X-ray radiation in these zones, the scientists claim that bacteria on Earth created biofilms to protect themselves from ultraviolet rays, and that X-rays and gamma-rays are also readily absorbed by Earth-like atmospheres, reducing considerably their impact.

RSF in perspective:

Like the recently discovered AGN goldilocks zone, astrophysicist had already re-evaluated and extended the habitability zone due to M type stars. The increase in habitability keeps growing, which implies an exponential probability of life in outer space and therefore a high probability for intelligent life. We are most probably not alone in the galaxy. On the other hand, if black holes are so directly related to suns, wouldn´t the other direction apply? Wouldn´t suns behave or be white holes?

By Ines Urdaneta, Research Scientist at Resonance Science Foundation

More at:
Black Holes could feed Alien Life
Radiation from black holes may create life

Black Gold material breakthrough!

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

“Black” gold that harvests sunlight and uses it to turn carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful chemicals and fuel, has been developed by a team of researchers from India and Seoul.

One of the most amazing things about nanomaterials, concerns their design properties. It´s astonishing how in a nanoparticle of a particular element, the same atom disposed in different geometries from that of the bulk confers a completely different behavior regarding chemical or physical properties (conductivity, resistance, melting point, etc) to that of the bulk material … it´s like we were dealing with a completely different element!

In the case of the new, and black, gold, by varying the inter-particle distance between gold nanoparticles through a cycle-by-cycle growth approach and optimizing the nucleation-growth step with dendritic fibrous nanosilica, researcher from TIFT (India) and Seoul National University, synthetized gold material which instead of reflecting light, absorbs most of it. They grew the gold in the nanostructure by laying a silica foundation whose fibers were used as the deposition site for gold nanoparticles.

Picture: © Editage/Royal Society of Chemistry

This black gold not also has the ability to absorb both visible and the near-infrared Sun radiation -which makes it a perfect candidate for high-efficiency solar panels-, but it also absorbs carbon dioxide, which is something not possible with traditional gold.
________________________
“If we develop an artificial tree with leaves made out of back gold, it can perform artificial photosynthesis, capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into fuel and other useful chemicals,” said Polshettiwar.
____________________
Researchers believe that the black gold ability to harvest solar energy can be used for portable nano-heaters which can convert seawater into drinking water via steam generation under atmospheric reaction conditions, addressing one of India´s biggest concerns.

RSF in perspective:

The outstanding dependence of a nanomaterials´ physical-chemical properties with respect to its surface-to-volume relationships is a very intriguing fact that can be interpreted by means of the holographic approach, where a fundamental nondimensional constant Φ representing the surface to volume potential transfer, is the key element for quantization of gravity.

By Ines Urdaneta, Research Scientist at Resonance Science Foundation

More at:
–Indian Scientists create black gold
–Turning black gold into artificial trees

Nassim Haramein talks unified physics with Dr. J!

Nassim Haramein talks unified physics and the Foundation in a recent interview with Dr. J on Dr. J Radio Live!

Patterns of water in light: optical solitons observed in non-linear medium

By William Brown, Biophysicist at the Resonance Science Foundation

Researchers studying the wave propagation of light in nonlocal, nonlinear media have observed that it behaves the same as waves in water. The researchers observed optical soliton interactions that produce complex waveforms. A soliton or solitary wave is a self-reinforcing wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity.

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A soliton is a unique kind of wave that is much more stable than ordinary waves and can propagate for long distances, so much so that even after collisions these solitary waves continue propagating nearly unperturbed. Soliton waves can often be observed naturally occurring in shallow areas of water, and indeed, in the latest study, researchers demonstrated that the same equation—the Kadomtsev-Petvishvili II equation—that models water solution interactions can also be used to model optical solution interactions in the exact same way, revealing that the same wave dynamics of water are found in light.

While the wave-nature of light has been well documented and observed in myriad phenomena, this is the first description of light behaving as solitons. This is an important advancement because understanding the wave-nature of light, and the various ways in which waves can behave that produce unusual qualities, can be used to explain confounding observations like the double-slit experiment using simple wave-dynamics.

RSF In Perspective

The remarkable property of non-linear propagating solitary waves, solitons, is not limited to the fluid dynamic properties of water and light but is also a remarkable property of the macromolecules of the biological system. Measurements of the energy transmission along neuronal axons, biopolymers, and some proteins have shown that energy is being transmitted as solitons. This shows that the living system utilizes the remarkable properties of solitons for cellular and molecular signaling, so much so that solitons have even been described to play a potentially vital role in the process of consciousness—where a certain class of solitons propagating along the semi-fluid plasma membrane of neurons causes quantum tunneling of vesicles at the axonal synapse such that it is theorized neurotransmitter release can be regulated by casual influence of consciousness.

Reference article: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.0110
Reference article: https://resonancescience.org/liquid-light-at-room-temperature/