How to Search for knowledge

  As my blog title implies 'knowledge Quench' when you have a quench for knowledge search for it, since we live in a era of technically advanced  trending digital world as we name it. Finding  knowledge and information is on your finger tip if you know the typical road to it. Simply question yourself on simple actions, although it's rhetoric yet it's effective and immeasurably useful.

 yep! What do we do when when we feel thirsty? we resort the help of a fluid to satiate the need, particularly  glass of water or kind of juice that would quench our thirst. This is a simple fact that when we feel thirst, we look for any kind of potable fluid. Did we ever think why we became thirsty.. ? It's an undeniable fact that our body is becoming dehydrated and we need fluid to moisturise, this is the simple reason. But there are many medical conditions related to thirstiness. Your body needs water to function properly. For example, water helps to regulate your body temperature, lubricate your joints, and remove waste from your body. Adequate daily water intake is very important. Furthermore, it is important to increase your usual water intake when you are ill, exposed to hot temperatures, or engaged in physical activities. Thus if you find an answer for this question, you are somewhat knowledgeable. Apart from this, if you know  other elements or science of water you are infact really knowledgeable on the subject. 

In the similar manner seeking knowledge and know how solely depends on the individual person. When you know the real ways and means it's much easier in this digital world than our thoughts. Just click these words and find one of the ways.  Guacamol      potable  

The Science of a Meaningful Life Video Series

What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.

Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.

Though it has its roots in Buddhist meditation, a secular practice of mindfulness has entered the American mainstream in recent years, in part through the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which he launched at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979. Since that time, thousands of studies have documented the physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness in general and MBSR in particular, inspiring countless programs to adapt the MBSR model for schools, prisons, hospitals, veterans centers, and beyond.

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Why Practice Mindfulness?

Studies have shown that practicing mindfulness, even for just a few weeks, can bring a variety of physical, psychological, and social benefits. Here are some of these benefits, which extend across many different settings.

• Mindfulness is good for our bodies: A seminal study found that, after just eight weeks of training, practicing mindfulness meditation boosts our immune system’s ability to fight off illness.
• Mindfulness is good for our minds: Several studies have found that mindfulness increases positive emotions while reducing negative emotions and stress. Indeed, at least one study suggests it may be as good as antidepressants in fighting depression and preventing relapse.
• Mindfulness changes our brains: Research has found that it increases density of gray matter in brain regions linked to learning, memory, emotion regulation, and empathy.
• Mindfulness helps us focus: Studies suggest that mindfulness helps us tune out distractions and improves our memory and attention skills.
• Mindfulness fosters compassion and altruism: Research suggests mindfulness training makes usmore likely to help someone in need and increases activity in neural networks involved inunderstanding the suffering of others and regulating emotions. Evidence suggests it might boost self-compassion as well.
• Mindfulness enhances relationships: Research suggests mindfulness training makes couples more satisfied with their relationship, makes each partner feel more optimistic and relaxed, and makes them feel more accepting of and closer to one another.
• Mindfulness is good for parents and parents-to-be: Studies suggest it may reduce pregnancy-related anxiety, stress, and depression in expectant parents. Parents who practice mindfulnessreport being happier with their parenting skills and their relationship with their kids, and their kids were found to have better social skills.
• Mindfulness helps schools: There’s scientific evidence that teaching mindfulness in the classroom reduces behavior problems and aggression among students, and improves their happiness levels and ability to pay attention. Teachers trained in mindfulness also show lower blood pressure, less negative emotion and symptoms of depression, and greater compassion and empathy.
• Mindfulness helps health care professionals cope with stress, connect with their patients, andimprove their general quality of life. It also helps mental health professionals by reducing negative emotions and anxiety, and increasing their positive emotions and feelings of self-compassion.
• Mindfulness helps prisons: Evidence suggests mindfulness reduces anger, hostility, and mood disturbances among prisoners by increasing their awareness of their thoughts and emotions, helping with their rehabilitation and reintegration.
• Mindfulness helps veterans: Studies suggest it can reduce the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the aftermath of war.
• Mindfulness fights obesity: Practicing “mindful eating” encourages healthier eating habits, helps people lose weight, and helps them savor the food they do eat.
• to be continued...............
• Credit to:  http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/

How to Cultivate Mindfulness?

Jon Kabat-Zinn emphasizes that although mindfulness can be cultivated through formal meditation, that’s not the only way. “It’s not really about sitting in the full lotus, like pretending you’re a statue in a British museum,” he says in this Greater Good video. “It’s about living your life as if it really mattered, moment by moment by moment by moment.”

Here are a few key components of practicing mindfulness that Kabat-Zinn and others identify:

• Pay close attention to your breathing, especially when you’re feeling intense emotions.
• Notice—really notice—what you’re sensing in a given moment, the sights, sounds, and smells that ordinarily slip by without reaching your conscious awareness.
• Recognize that your thoughts and emotions are fleeting and do not define you, an insight that can free you from negative thought patterns.
• Tune into your body’s physical sensations, from the water hitting your skin in the shower to the way your body rests in your office chair.

To develop these skills in everyday life, you can try these exercises used in Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR program and elsewhere:

• The body scan, where you focus your attention along your body, from the toes to the top of your head, trying to be aware and accepting of whatever you sense in these body parts, without controlling or changing those feelings.



• The raisin exercise, where you slowly use all of your senses, one after another, to observe a raisin in great detail, from the way it feels in your hand to the way its taste bursts on your tongue. This exercise is intended to help you focus on the present moment, and can be tried with different foods.



• Walking meditation, where you focus on the movement of your body as you take step after step, your feet touching and leaving the ground—an everyday activity we usually take for granted. This exercise is often practiced walking back and forth along a path 10 paces long, though it can be practiced along most any path.



• Loving-kindness meditation, which the GGSC’s Christine Carter explains in this post, involves extending feelings of compassion toward people, starting with yourself then branching out to someone close to you, then to an acquaintance, then to someone giving you a hard time, then finally to all beings everywhere.

Over the years on Greater Good, we’ve identified successful programs for cultivating mindfulness; here are some highlights.

• Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR), in which students meet for two-to-three hours per week for eight weeks, practicing at home between classes; it has helped tens of thousands of people build mindfulness.
• Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) adapts the MBSR model specifically for people suffering from depression and chronic unhappiness. Developed by Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale, MBCT combines mindfulness practices with practices from cognitive therapy, and it has been backed up by a great deal of research.
• Megan Cowan, founder of the Mindful Schools program, offers tips for teaching mindfulness to kids in this Greater Good article.
• In another Greater Good article, Margaret Cullen, founder of the SMART-in-Education program, explains how she uses mindfulness to help teachers take care of themselves and keep from burning out.
• Nancy Bardacke’s Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) program offers mindfulness training to expectant parents; her book Mindful Birthing describes her program and also offers detailed instructions for cultivating mindfulness in everyday life.
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• Page reviewers: Leah Weiss, LCSW, Ph.D., Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education; Steve Hickman, Psy.D., UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness.

Knowledge Management Systems

The issue of knowledge management systems has probably always been the most discussed and debated topic within knowledge management (KM). Even though knowledge management systems are not the most important part of KM (with some arguing that they are not even absolutely necessary), this is still the subject that generates most interest.

On this site, I have considered the impact of IT in all the knowledge management strategy subsections, with particular emphasis on its role in knowledge sharing. From this point on, the discussion will be organized as follows:

• This subsection will discuss the theoretical implementation of knowledge management systems and its impact on the organization.
• The section titled "KM Tools" will look at some of the main categories of systems available.

What are Knowledge Management Systems?

Knowledge management systems refer to any kind of IT system that stores and retrievesknowledge, improves collaboration, locates knowledge sources, mines repositories for hidden knowledge, captures and uses knowledge, or in some other way enhances the KM process.

If my explanation above makes the definition of these systems seem vague, that is because there is no consensus as to what constitutes a knowledge management system, much like there is no consensus regarding KM. Furthermore, since KM is involved in all areas of the firm, drawing a line is very difficult.

James Robertson (2007) goes as far as to argue that organizations should not even think in terms of knowledge management systems. He argues that KM, though enhanced by technology, is not a technology discipline, and thinking in terms of knowledge management systems leads to expectations of "silver bullet" solutions. Instead, the focus should be determining the functionality of the IT systems that are required for the specific activities and initiatives within the firm.

I fully agree with his reasoning. However, for the purpose of this site (intended to be useful for those people that do search for terms like knowledge management systems), I will break these down into the following general categories (adapted from the work of Gupta and Sharma 2005, in Bali et al 2009):

• Groupware systems & KM 2.0
• The intranet and extranet
• Data warehousing, data mining, & OLAP
• Decision Support Systems
• Content management systems
• Document management systems
• Artificial intelligence tools
• Simulation tools
• Semantic networks

These categories will cover the vast majority of the systems that people will normally link directly to KM.

Problems and Failure Factors

Too often, the effects of technology on the organization are not given enough thought prior to the introduction of a new system. There are two sets of knowledge necessary for the design and implementation of a knowledge management system (Newell et al., 2000):

• The technical programming and design know-how
• Organizational know-how based on the understanding of knowledge flows

The problem is that rarely are both these sets of knowledge known by a single person. Moreover, technology is rarely designed by the people who use it. Therefore, firms are faced with the issue of fit between IT systems and organizational practices, as well as with acceptance within organizational culture (Gamble & Blackwell 2001).

Botha et al (2008) stress the importance of understanding what knowledge management systems cannot do. They point to the fact that introducing knowledge sharing technologies does not mean that experts will share knowledge - other initiatives have to be in place.

Akhavan et al (2005) identify several additional failure factors including: lack of top management support, organizational culture, lack of a separate budget, and resistance to change.

Building upon all this, and incorporating previously discussed elements, failure factors of knowledge management systems are as follows:

• Inadequate support: managerial and technical, during both implementation and use.
• Expecting that the technology is a KM solution in itself.
• Failure to understand exactly what the firm needs (whether technologically or otherwise).
• Not understanding the specific function and limitation of each individual system.
• Lack of organizational acceptance, and assuming that if you build it, they will come – lack of appropriate organizational culture.
• Inadequate quality measures (e.g. lack of content management).
• Lack of organizational/departmental/etc fit - does it make working in the organization. easier? Is a system appropriate in one area of the firm but not another? Does it actually disrupt existing processes?
• Lack of understanding of knowledge dynamics and the inherent difficulty in transferring tacit knowledge with IT based systems (see segment on tacit knowledge under knowledge sharing).
• Lack of a separate budget.

Promoting Acceptance and Assimilation

According to Hecht et al. (2011) the process of successful implementation has three stages: adoption, acceptance, and assimilation. Based on recognized models and theories, the authors identified three comprehensive sets of factors affecting these three elements. The resulting model organized the KMS implementation factors into the following categories:

• Adoption:
  • Influenced by design: Innovation characteristics, fit, expected results, communication characteristics.
  • Not influenced by design: Environment, technological infrastructure, resources, organizational characteristics.
• Acceptance
  • Influenced by design: Effort expectancy, performance expectancy.
  • Not influenced by design: Social influences, attitude towards technology use.
• Assimilation:
  • Influenced by design: social system characteristics, process characteristics.
  • Not influenced by design: Management characteristics, institutional characteristics.

Step 1: KMS Adoption

Some of the key factors identified by Hecht et al (2011) are: characteristics, commercial advantage, cultural values, information quality, organizational viability, and system quality. To promote KMS adoption:

• Start with an internal analysis of the firm.
• Evaluate information/knowledge needs & flows, lines of communication, communities of practice, etc. These findings should form the basis of determining the systems needed to complement them.
• Make a thorough cost-benefit analysis, considering factors like size of firm, number of users, complexity of the system structure, frequency of use, upkeep & updating costs, security issues, training costs (including ensuring acceptance) etc. vs improvements in performance, lower response time, lower costs (relative to the previous systems) etc.
• Evaluate existing work practices and determine how the systems will improve - and not hinder - the status quo.
• One very interesting rule of thumb presented by Botha et al (2008), is that "the more tacit the knowledge, the less high-tech the required solution". For example, expert knowledge is often best supported by multimedia communication technology and by expert finders. Beyond that, it is about human interaction and collaboration.

Step 2: KMS acceptance

Some of the factors outlined by Hecht et al. (2011) include: anxiety, ease of use, intrinsic motivation, job-fit, results demonstrability, and social factors. Promoting acceptance can be improved by:

• Involve the users in the design and implementation process when possible (Liebowitz 1999).
• Involve the user in the evaluation of the system when applicable (Liebowitz 1999).
• Make it as user friendly and as intuitive as possible (Frank 2002).
• Support multiple perspectives of the stored knowledge (Frank 2002).
• Provide adequate technical and managerial support.
• Use product champions to promote the new systems throughout the organization.

Step 3: KMS Assimilation

Some of the factors identified by Hecht et al. (2011) include: knowledge barrier, management championship, process cost, process quality, and promotion of collaboration. Assimilation can be improved by:

• Content management (Gamble & Blackwell, 2011): In order for the system to remain useful, its content must be kept relevant through updating, revising, filtering, organization, etc.
• Perceived attractiveness factors (Gamble & Blackwell, 2001): This includes not only the advantages of using the KMS, but also of management's ability to convince users of these advantages.
• Proper budgeting: i.e. planning expenses and implementing a KMS that is cost efficient.
• Focus on collaboration. In particular, consider the adoption of enterprise 2.0 / KM 2.0systems, which by design promote collaboration while generally being inexpensive and often quite popular.
• Management involvement: The system must be championed by management at all levels.

Naturally, these factors do not apply to all systems. Some are fairly straightforward and accepted in today's society (e.g. email). However, the strategic implications of implementing knowledge management systems that significantly aim to change the way things are done in the organization requires proper consideration and careful planning.

by Alan Frost. Free paper released Jan. 2014.

Albert Einstein on the Secret to Learning

Shane Parrish writes Farnam Street

Find that which brings you joy

In 1915 Einstein, who was then 36, was living in wartime Berlin with his cousin Elsa, who would eventually become his second wife. His two sons, Hans Albert Einstein and Eduard “Tete” Einstein were with his estranged wife Mileva in neutral Zurich.

After eight long years of effort his theory of general relativity, which would propel him to international celebrity, was finally summed up in just two pages. Flush with his recent accomplishment, he sent his 11-year-old Hans Albert the following letter, which is found inPosterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children.

My dear Albert,

Yesterday I received your dear letter and was very happy with it. I was already afraid you wouldn’t write to me at all any more. You told me when I was in Zurich, that it is awkward for you when I come to Zurich. Therefore I think it is better if we get together in a different place, where nobody will interfere with our comfort. I will in any case urge that each year we spend a whole month together, so that you see that you have a father who is fond of you and who loves you. You can also learn many good and beautiful things from me, something another cannot as easily offer you. What I have achieved through such a lot of strenuous work shall not only be there for strangers but especially for my own boys. These days I have completed one of the most beautiful works of my life, when you are bigger, I will tell you about it.

I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits, better even than school. Because those are things which fit a young person such as you very well. Mainly play the things on the piano which please you, even if the teacher does not assign those. That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes. I am sometimes so wrapped up in my work that I forget about the noon meal. Also play ring toss with Tete. That teaches you agility. Also go to my friend Zangger sometimes. He is a dear man.

Be with Tete kissed by your

Papa.

Regards to Mama.

courtesy : Times of Oman

HOW GENIUS ARE YOU?

Are you a GENIUS? Find out with a few of the most fiendish brain-teasers ever

Book by Robert Streeter and Robert Hoehn republished from 1930s

Originally designed to discover clever people by posing hard questions

A book designed to discover clever people in the 1930s has been republished and is full of tricky questions and brain-teasers. The answers can be found at the bottom of the page.

1. Rearrange the following letters so as to make the name of a living creature:

1. B R I N O

2. Four men can build four boats in four days. How long will it take one man to build one boat?

3. Test your memory on this passage: Three men and their wives and a widower left by car at noon one day for a picnic. After they had gone three miles, they saw two men and a child in another car that had broken down. ‘That is tough luck,’ said one of the picnickers. At 1 pm they arrived at the picnic grounds, where they saw only the old one-armed caretaker and his son. They immediately started to eat their luncheon of sandwiches, fruit and cake. Question: How many people have been mentioned?

4. Which is heavier, milk or cream?

5. What one word means both ‘dodge’ and ‘immerse’?

6. Rearrange the letters in the word ‘sleuth’ to make another word.

7. What word meaning ‘ship’ would mean ‘small collections of water’ if the letters were read backwards?

8. If a clock is stopped for a minute every ten minutes, how long will it take the minute hand to complete a revolution?

9. What adjective which means ‘pertaining to citizenship’ spells the same from right to left as it does from left to right?

10. When seen in a mirror, which of the following words printed in capital letters will look the same as when viewed directly?

MAN TOOT DEED

11. There is a monosyllable which, if you add to it a single letter, becomes a word of three syllables. What is it?

12. A man lived in a house that could be entered by only one door and five windows. Making certain that there was no one in the house one day, he went out for the afternoon. Upon his return, although the windows were still locked and unbroken and the door had not been forced, he discovered a thief in his house robbing it. If the thief did not use a skeleton key, or pick any of the locks, how did he get into the house?

13. If a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs will seven hens lay in six days?

14. The first two syllables of the name of one of the States of the United States is suggested by a girl’s name. The third syllable is suggested by a word meaning ‘debark’. What is the name of the State?

15. How will the following sentence, attributed to Napoleon, read if you start with the last word and read all the letters and words backwards?

‘Able was I ere I saw Elba.’

If a clock is stopped for a minute every ten minutes, how long will it take the minute hand to complete a revolution?

If a clock is stopped for a minute every ten minutes, how long will it take the minute hand to complete a revolution?

16. In the following word, eliminate the second letter and every alternate letter thereafter. What word do the remaining letters form?

GLEAM

17. Rearrange the following letters so that they make the name of an article of furniture: 

 C H O CU

                                                                  

  18. My father is the brother of your sister. What relative am I of yours? Cousin, nephew, son, uncle, son-in-law?

19. By eliminating one letter in each of four words in the following sentence, a new sentence of an entirely different meaning will remain.

They heard meat was stewed.

20. What two four-letter words pronounced the same but spelled differently mean ‘valley’ and ‘curtain’?

21. Which two of the following words are composed of the same letters?

AGATE, AGITATE, GATES, STAGS, STAGE, GRATE

22. Write the following on your answer sheet and, by inserting two full-stops and a question mark, make the meaning clear.

That that is is that that is not is not is that not so

23. The first part of the name of a certain make of American car is suggested by a word meaning ‘call’; the second, by a word meaning ‘insinuation’. What is the make of the car?

24. There were three horses running in a race. Their names were Tally-ho, Sonny Boy, and Juanita.

Their owners were Mr Lewis, Mr Bailey and Mr Smith, although not necessarily in that sequence.

Tally-ho unfortunately broke his ankle at the start of the race. Mr Smith owned a brown and white three-year old. Sonny Boy had previous winnings of £20,000. Mr Bailey lost heavily although his horse almost won.

The horse that won was black. This race was the first race that the horse owned by Mr Lewis had run. What was the name of the horse that won?

FIND THE ANSWERS BELOW   ****************************************************

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3026944/Are-GENIUS-fiendish-brain-teasers-ever.html#ixzz3WVZ2Ywi7