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10 Ways to Look After Your Mental Wellbeing (with added kitties)

1. Talk about your feelings

Talking about your feelings can help you stay in good mental health and deal with times when you feel troubled.

2. Keep active

Regular exercise can boost your self-esteem and can help you concentrate, sleep, and look and feel better. Exercise keeps the brain and your other vital organs healthy, and is also a significant benefit towards improving your mental health.

3. Eat well

Your brain needs a mix of nutrients in order to stay healthy and function well, just like the other organs in your body. A diet that’s good for your physical health is also good for your mental health.

4. Drink sensibly

We often drink alcohol to change our mood. Some people drink to deal with fear or loneliness, but the effect is only temporary.

When the drink wears off, you feel worse because of the way the alcohol has affected your brain and the rest of your body. Drinking is not a good way to manage difficult feelings.

5. Keep in touch

There’s nothing better than catching up with someone face to face, but that’s not always possible. You can also give them a call, drop them a note, or chat to them online instead. Keep the lines of communication open: it’s good for you!

6. Ask for help

None of us are superhuman. We all sometimes get tired or overwhelmed by how we feel or when things don’t go to plan.

If things are getting too much for you and you feel you can’t cope, ask for help. Your family or friends may be able to offer practical help or a listening ear.

Local services are there to help you.

7. Take a break

A change of scene or a change of pace is good for your mental health.

It could be a five-minute pause from cleaning your kitchen, a half-hour lunch break at work, or a weekend exploring somewhere new. A few minutes can be enough to de-stress you. Give yourself some ‘me time’.

8. Do something you’re good at

What do you love doing? What activities can you lose yourself in? What did you love doing in the past?

Enjoying yourself can help beat stress. Doing an activity you enjoy probably means you’re good at it, and achieving something boosts your self-esteem.

9. Accept who you are

We’re all different. It’s much healthier to accept that you’re unique than to wish you were more like someone else. Feeling good about yourself boosts your confidence to learn new skills, visit new places and make new friends. Good self-esteem helps you cope when life takes a difficult turn.

10. Care for others

‘Friends are really important… We help each other whenever we can, so it’s a two-way street, and supporting them uplifts me.’

Caring for others is often an important part of keeping up relationships with people close to you. It can even bring you closer together.

(Source: mentalhealth.org.uk)

#KnowYourHistory: #Stonewall

Check out this robotic hand which can touch and feel, improving perception and reflexes for its user. [ Δ ]

Inside the new MTA K-9 training center in Stormville, New York

At a sprawling campus north of New York City, a 3-year-old German Shepherd named Johnny frantically sniffed through seats and luggage bins on an out-of-service commuter rail train trying to catch a whiff of hidden explosive.

When Johnny found a black bag with the faint scent of C-4, commonly used to blow up buildings, he sat statue-still at attention, alerting handler Kevin Pimpinelli of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority police to his discovery. In return, Pimpinelli rewarded him with a prized chew toy.

“In the real world, he can find the explosive before it gets on the train,” Pimpinelli said. "Our job is to try to prevent that device getting in.”

Johnny is one of 50 of the transit authority’s police dogs being trained at its $13 million, 72-acre training center in Stormville, New York, about 70 miles (113 km) north of New York City.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority operates subways, buses, and railroads in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and provides more than 2.7 billion trips each year to travelers, according to the agency’s website.

The canine training center, the biggest facility of its kind in the United States, begins full operations on June 8, 2016,  and will train dogs used by police across the nation.

Amid attacks including the March bombing of a Brussels train station and airport, which killed 32 people, U.S. police agencies see highly trained dogs as key to maintaining security in large public spaces.

Their sharp sense of smell exceeds the ability of humans and machines to detect explosives and track suspects.

“The importance of this facility is growing daily because we get more threats daily,” said MTA Police Lieutenant John Kerwick, who oversees the agency’s police-dog training operations.

The dogs are carefully selected. Only about one in 30 dogs assessed at breeders are chosen for the canine police force. The dogs are mainly German Shepherds like Johnny or Belgian Malinois, high-energy breeds known for a strong desire to work.

HIGHLY TRAINED SNIFFERS

Those handpicked few are trained to detect threats such as explosives or contraband including narcotics, said David Ferland, who heads the United States Police Canine Association (USPCA).

The MTA dog training facility includes rooms modeled after classrooms and bus stations, 26 kennels and a veterinary clinic. Outside, there are nine buses, ponds and train cars at the end of a retired Metro North railroad track. All are used to train the dogs.

While there is no central database tracking the number of police dogs in service in the United States, the USPCA estimates the figure at about 10,000.

Ferland said interest in training police dogs has risen dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, evidence of a sense of urgency in combating similar threats.

“Before 9/11, there were only a handful of these training sites,” Ferland said. “Now, there are training facilities an hour’s drive from every major city in the U.S.”

The Stormville facility will offer initial 12-week courses where dogs learn to detect explosives and the refresher courses that dogs are required to take each month.

The canines are exposed to heights, loud noises, fumes, moving vehicles and other distractions they would face on the job.

Typically they work until about the age of 10, after which they normally go on to live as pets in their primary handlers’ homes.

“They’re like family,” said Officer Keith Flood with his three-year-old black Shepherd-Malinois mix named Doc, after finishing a training exercise. (Reuters)

See more images of the K-9 training center on Yahoo News!

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Six facts you didn’t know about the Sun

With summer on our doorstep, we thought it would be a good time to get to know the star that we so actively seek out at this time of year. The importance of the Sun in relation to the Earth has been recognized from time immemorial, but in recent years we’ve started to harness the Sun’s power, making it work for us by producing energy. Here we have six scientific facts about the Sun that you probably don’t yet know.

A solar hot water heater is over three times as efficient as solar cells (photovoltaic devices).

The Sun can supply all the people of the Earth’s yearly energy needs in one hour.

A solar cell cannot absorb low energy light rays (radiation) but can absorb high energy. To put in perspective, you wouldn’t be able to catch a ball if it were thrown extremely softly at you (it wouldn’t reach you); however, if the ball were thrown with a greater force towards you, you’d be able to catch it. This is the miracle of quantum mechanics.

The Sun can be used for air conditioning to make a house cooler by using a solar chimney.

A new type of solar energy device called a Solar (Power) Tower can trace its roots back to Leonardo da Vinci who envisioned the hot air rushing up a chimney could turn a pig on a spit.

It is possible to run a coal-fired power plant with solar power by using the Sun to make steam.

Image: Solar Flare by skeeze. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Curving and bending a ball using the magnus effect is common in every sport. The effect can be reversed though - kick the ball the same way, and it will bend in the opposite direction!  

Thanks to Nicole from @fuckyeahfluiddynamics for explaining the reverse magnus effect in this video! 

Teacher Draws Impressively Detailed Anatomical Illustrations on Classroom’s Chalkboard

Illustrator and anatomy instructor Chuan-Bin Chung composes stunning and highly detailed illustration of the human drawing. He creates the ephemeral drawings on chalkboards as a learning guide. He beautifully depicts the body’s muscles, bones and tendons.

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