Understanding Quantum Mechanics: What is Electromagnetism? 03-31

Understanding Quantum Mechanics: What is Electromagnetism?

On the face of it, both electricity and magnetism are remarkably similar to gravity. Just as two masses are attracted to each other by an inverse square force, the force between two charged objects or two poles of a magnet  are also inverse square. The difference is that gravity is always attractive, whereas electricity and magnetism can be either attractive or repulsive.For example, two positive charges will push away from each other, while a positive and negative charge will pull toward each other.

As with gravity, electricity and magnetism raised the question of action-at-a-distance. How does one charge “know” to be pushed or pulled by the other charge? How do they interact across the empty space between them? The answer to that question came from James Clerk Maxwell.

Maxwell’s breakthrough was to change the way we thought electromagnetic forces. His idea was that each charge must reach out to each other with some kind of energy. That is, a charge is surrounded by a field of electricity, a field that other charges can detect. Charges possess electric fields, and charges interact with the electric fields of other charges. The same must be true of magnets. Magnets possess magnetic fields, and interact with magnetic fields. Maxwell’s model was not just a description of the force between charges and magnets, but a also description of the electric and magnetic fields themselves. With that change of view, Maxwell found the connection between electricity and magnetism. They were connected by their fields.

A moving electric field creates a magnetic field, and a moving magnetic field creates an electric field. Not only are the two connected, but one type of field can create the other. Maxwell had created a single, unified description of electricity and magnetism. He had united two different forces into a single unified force, which we now call electromagnetism.

Maxwell’s theory not only revolutionized physics, it gave astrophysics the tools to finally understand some of the complex behavior of interstellar space. By the mid-1900s Maxwell’s equations were combined with the Navier-Stokes equations describing fluids to create magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Using MHD we could finally begin to model the behavior of plasma within magnetic fields, which is central to our understanding of everything from the Sun to the formation of stars and planets. As our computational powers grew, we were able to create simulations of protostars and young planets.

Although there are still many unanswered questions, we now know that the dance of plasma and electromagnetism plays a crucial role in the formation of stars and planets.

While Maxwell’s electromagnetism is an incredibly powerful theory, it is a classical model just like Newton’s gravity and general relativity. But unlike gravity, electromagnetism could be combined with quantum theory to create a fully quantum model known as quantum electrodynamics (QED).

A central idea of quantum theory is a duality between particle-like and wave-like (or field-like) behavior. Just has electrons and protons can interact as fields, the electromagnetic field can interact as particle-like quanta we call photons. In QED, charges and a electromagnetic fields are described as interactions of quanta. This is most famously done through Richard Feynman’s figure-based approach now known as Feynman diagrams.

Feynman diagrams are often mis-understood to represent what is actually happening when charges interact. For example, two electrons approach each other, exchange a photon, and then move away from each other. Or the idea that virtual particles can pop in and out of existence in real time. While the diagrams are easy to understand as particle interactions, they are still quanta, and still subject to quantum theory. How they are actually used in QED is to calculate all the possible ways that charges could interact through the electromagnetic field in order to determine the probability of a certain outcome. Treating all these possibilities as happening in real time is like arguing that five apples on a table become real one at a time as you count them.

QED has become the most accurate physical model we’ve devised so far, but this theoretical power comes at the cost of losing the intuitive concept of a force.

Feynman’s interactions can be used to calculate the force between charges, just as Einstein’s spacetime curvature can be used to calculate the force between masses. But QED also allows for interactions that aren’t forces. An electron can emit a photon in order to change its direction, and an electron and positron can interact to produce a pair of photons. In QED matter can become energy and energy can be come matter.

What started as a simple force has become a fairy dance of charge and light. Through this dance we left the classical world and moved forward in search of the strong and the weak.

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NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Biologically Useful Nitrogen on Mars 03-31

NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Biologically Useful Nitrogen on Mars

A team using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite aboard NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first detection of nitrogen on the surface of Mars from release during heating of Martian sediments. The nitrogen was detected in the form of nitric oxide, and could be released from the breakdown of nitrates during heating. Nitrates are a class of molecules that contain nitrogen in a form that can be used by living organisms. The discovery adds to the evidence that ancient Mars was habitable for life.

Nitrogen is essential for all known forms of life, since it is used in the building blocks of larger molecules like DNA and RNA, which encode the genetic instructions for life, and proteins, which are used to build structures like hair and nails, and to speed up or regulate chemical reactions.

However, on Earth and Mars, atmospheric nitrogen is locked up as nitrogen gas (N₂) – two atoms of nitrogen bound together so strongly that they do not react easily with other molecules. The nitrogen atoms have to be separated or "fixed" so they can participate in the chemical reactions needed for life. On Earth, certain organisms are capable of fixing atmospheric nitrogen and this process is critical for metabolic activity. However, smaller amounts of nitrogen are also fixed by energetic events like lightning strikes.

Nitrate (NO₃) – a nitrogen atom bound to three oxygen atoms – is a source of fixed nitrogen. A nitrate molecule can join with various other atoms and molecules; this class of molecules is known as nitrates.

There is no evidence to suggest that the fixed nitrogen molecules found by the team were created by life. The surface of Mars is inhospitable for known forms of life. Instead, the team thinks the nitrates are ancient, and likely came from non-biological processes like meteorite impacts and lightning in Mars' distant past.

Features resembling dry riverbeds and the discovery of minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water suggest that Mars was more hospitable in the remote past. The Curiosity team has found evidence that other ingredients needed for life, such as liquid water and organic matter, were present on Mars at the Curiosity site in Gale Crater billions of years ago.

"Finding a biochemically accessible form of nitrogen is more support for the ancient Martian environment at Gale Crater being habitable," said Jennifer Stern of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Stern is lead author of a paper on this research published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science March 23.

The team found evidence for nitrates in scooped samples of windblown sand and dust at the "Rocknest" site, and in samples drilled from mudstone at the "John Klein" and "Cumberland" drill sites in Yellowknife Bay. Since the Rocknest sample is a combination of dust blown in from distant regions on Mars and more locally sourced materials, the nitrates are likely to be widespread across Mars, according to Stern. The results support the equivalent of up to 1,100 parts per million nitrates in the Martian soil from the drill sites. The team thinks the mudstone at Yellowknife Bay formed from sediment deposited at the bottom of a lake. Previously the rover team described the evidence for an ancient, habitable environment there: fresh water, key chemical elements required by life, such as carbon, and potential energy sources to drive metabolism in simple organisms.

The samples were first heated to release molecules bound to the Martian soil, then portions of the gases released were diverted to the SAM instruments for analysis. Various nitrogen-bearing compounds were identified with two instruments: a mass spectrometer, which uses electric fields to identify molecules by their signature masses, and a gas chromatograph, which separates molecules based on the time they take to travel through a small glass capillary tube -- certain molecules interact with the sides of the tube more readily and thus travel more slowly.

Along with other nitrogen compounds, the instruments detected nitric oxide (NO -- one atom of nitrogen bound to an oxygen atom) in samples from all three sites. Since nitrate is a nitrogen atom bound to three oxygen atoms, the team thinks most of the NO likely came from nitrate which decomposed as the samples were heated for analysis. Certain compounds in the SAM instrument can also release nitrogen as samples are heated; however, the amount of NO found is more than twice what could be produced by SAM in the most extreme and unrealistic scenario, according to Stern. This leads the team to think that nitrates really are present on Mars, and the abundance estimates reported have been adjusted to reflect this potential additional source.

"Scientists have long thought that nitrates would be produced on Mars from the energy released in meteorite impacts, and the amounts we found agree well with estimates from this process," said Stern.

The SAM instrument suite was built at NASA Goddard with significant elements provided by industry, university, and national and international NASA partners. NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, a division of Caltech, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The NASA Mars Exploration Program and Goddard Space Flight Center provided support for the development and operation of SAM. SAM-Gas Chromatograph was supported by funds from the French Space Agency (CNES). Data from these SAM experiments are archived in the  Planetary Data System (pds.nasa.gov).

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Milk could be good for your brain 03-31

Milk could be good for your brain

New research conducted at the University of Kansas Medical Center has found a correlation between milk consumption and the levels of a naturally-occurring antioxidant called glutathione in the brain in older, healthy adults.

In-Young Choi, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology at KU Medical Center, and Debra Sullivan, Ph.D., professor and chair of dietetics and nutrition at KU Medical Center, worked together on the project. Their research, which was published in the Feb. 3, 2015 edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests a new way that drinking milk could benefit the body.“We have long thought of milk as being very important for your bones and very important for your muscles,” Sullivan said. “This study suggests that it could be important for your brain as well.”

Choi’s team asked the 60 participants in the study about their diets in the days leading up to brain scans, which they used to monitor levels of glutathione – a powerful antioxidant – in the brain.

The researchers found that participants who had indicated they had drunk milk recently had higher levels of glutathione in their brains. This is important, the researchers said, because glutathione could help stave off oxidative stress and the resulting damage caused by reactive chemical compounds produced during the normal metabolic process in the brain. Oxidative stress is known to be associated with a number of different diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and many other conditions, said Dr. Choi.

“You can basically think of this damage like the buildup of rust on your car,” Sullivan said. “If left alone for a long time, the buildup increases and it can cause damaging effects.

Few Americans reach the recommended daily intake of three dairy servings per day, Sullivan said. The new study showed that the closer older adults came to those servings, the higher their levels of glutathione were.

“If we can find a way to fight this by instituting lifestyle changes including diet and exercise, it could have major implications for brain health,” Choi said.

An editorial in the same edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition said the study presented “a provocative new benefit of the consumption of milk in older individuals,” and served as a starting point for further study of the issue.

“Antioxidants are a built-in defense system for our body to fight against this damage, and the levels of antioxidants in our brain can be regulated by various factors such as diseases and lifestyle choices,” Choi said.

For the study, researchers used high-tech brain scanning equipment housed at KU Medical Center’s Hoglund Brain Imaging Center. “Our equipment enables us to understand complex processes occurring that are related to health and disease,” Choi said. “The advanced magnetic resonance technology allowed us to be in a unique position to get the best pictures of what was going on in the brain.”

A randomized, controlled trial that seeks to determine the precise effect of milk consumption on the brain is still needed and is a logical next step to this study, the researchers said.

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More schools, more challenging assignments add up to higher IQ scores 03-31

More schools, more challenging assignments add up to higher IQ scores

More schooling — and the more mentally challenging problems tackled in those schools — may be the best explanation for the dramatic rise in IQ scores during the past century, often referred to as the Flynn Effect, according to a team of researchers. These findings also suggest that environment may have a stronger influence on intelligence than many genetic determinists once thought.

Researchers have struggled to explain why IQ scores for developed nations — and, now, developing nations — have increased so rapidly during the 20th century, said David Baker, professor of sociology and education, Penn State. Mean IQ test scores of American adults, for instance, have increased by about 25 points over the last 90 years.

“There’ve been a lot of hypotheses put forward for the cause of the Flynn Effect, such as genetics and nutrition, but they generally fall flat,” said Baker. “It really begged the question of whether an environmental factor, or factors, could cause these gains in IQ scores.”

School enrollment in the United States reached almost 90 percent by 1960. However, the researchers, who report their findings in the current issue of Intelligence, suggest that it is not just increasing attendance, but also the more challenging learning environment that are reasons behind the IQ score rise.

“If you look at a chart of the Flynn Effect over the 20th century in the United States, for example, you notice that the proportion of children and youth attending school and how long they attend lines up nicely with the gains in IQ scores,” said Baker. “As people went to school, what they did there likely had a profound influence on brain development and thinking skills, beyond just learning the three R’s. This is what our neurological and cognitive research shows.”

He added that over the century, as as a higher percentage of children from each new generation went to school and attended for more years, this produced rising IQ scores.

“Even after full enrollments were achieved in the U.S. by about the 1960s, school continued to intensify its influence on thinking,” said Baker.

While even basic schooling activities can shape brain development, over the past century, schools have moved from learning focused on memorization to lessons that require problem solving and abstract thinking skills, which are often considered functions of fluid intelligence, Baker said.

“Many like to think that schooling has become ‘dumbed down,’ but this is not true,” said Baker. “This misperception has tended to lead cognitive scientists away from considering the impact of schooling and its spread over time as a main social environment in neurological development.”

Just as more physical exercise can improve sports performance for athletes, these more challenging mental workouts in schools may be building up students’ mental muscles, he added, allowing them to perform better on certain types of problems that require flexible thinking and abstract problem solving, such as IQ tests.

“Certain kinds of activities — like solving problems, or reading — stimulate the parts of the brain that we know are responsible for fluid intelligence,” said Baker. “And these types of activities are done over and over in today’s schools, so that you would expect these students to have higher development than populations of people who had no access to schooling.”

Students must not only solve more challenging problems, they must use multiple strategies to find solutions, which adds to the mental workout in today’s schools, according to Baker.

The researchers conducted three studies, from neurological, cognitive and demographic perspectives, according to Baker.

He said that genetics alone could not explain the Flynn Effect. Natural selection happens too slowly to be the sole reason for rising IQ scores. This suggests that intelligence is a combination of both genetics and environment.

“The best neuroscience is now arguing that brains of mammals, including, of course, humans, develop in this heavy genetic-environmental dependent way, so it’s not an either-or situation,” said Baker. “There’s a high genetic component, just like there is for athletic ability, but the environment can enhance people’s abilities up to unknown genetic limits.”

In the first study, the researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to measure brain activity in children solving certain math problems. They found that problems typical of today’s schooling activated areas of the brain known as centers of fluid intelligence, for instance, mathematical problem solving.

A field study was also conducted in farming communities in Peru where education has only recently become fully accessible. The survey showed that schooling was a significant influence on improved cognitive functioning.

To measure the challenge level of lessons, the researchers analyzed more than 28,000 pages of content in textbooks published from 1930 to 2000. They measured, for example, whether students were required to learn multiple strategies to find solutions or needed other mental skills to solve problems.

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Having a purpose in life may improve health of aging brain 03-31

Having a purpose in life may improve health of aging brain

Having a strong sense that your life has meaning and direction may make you less likely to develop areas of brain damage caused by blockages in blood flow as you age. This research is reported in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke.

When a blockage interrupts blood flow in a vessel within the brain, a stroke can result or brain tissue can be damaged. This damaged tissue, called infarcts, may contribute to dementia, movement problems, disability, and death as people age.

“Mental health, in particular positive psychological factors such as having a purpose in life, are emerging as very potent determinants of health outcomes,” said Patricia Boyle. Ph.D., study co-author and associate professor of behavioral sciences at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “Clinicians need to be aware of patients’ mental state and encourage behaviors that will increase purpose and other positive emotional states.”

Researchers analyzed autopsy results on 453 people, average age 84, who volunteered for the Rush Memory and Aging Project and underwent annual physical and psychological evaluations until they died, at an average age of 90. None of the participants had known dementia when they started the study and all participants had agreed to organ donation at death.

Among the participants, 114 had clinically diagnosed stroke. At autopsy, they found:

• Nearly twice that many had macroscopic infarcts (visible to the naked eye) or microinfarcts (visible with microscope) (47.7 percent).

• Participants who had reported a stronger purpose in life were 44 percent less likely to have macroscopic infarcts. The study did not find a significant relationship between purpose in life and microinfarcts.

• Adjusting for vascular disease risk factors, including blood pressure, physical activity, blood pressure, depression, and diabetes did not change the relationship between purpose in life and infarcts;

• The findings related to purpose in life were most significant in small infarcts in the blood vessels supplying deep brain structures (lacunar infarcts);

• The relationship between purpose in life and infarcts was not influenced by Alzheimer’s disease or clinically diagnosed stroke.

Although people’s scores on measures of purpose in life changed little during the course of the study, researchers believe that it can be improved.

“Purpose in life differs for everyone and it is important to be thoughtful about what motivates you, (such as volunteering, learning new things, or being part of the community) so you can engage in rewarding behaviors,” said Lei Yu, Ph.D., study lead author and assistant professor of neurological sciences at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center.

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Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time? 03-31

Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time?

FOR NEARLY A century, “reality” has been a murky concept. The laws of quantum physics seem to suggest that particles spend much of their time in a ghostly state, lacking even basic properties such as a definite location and instead existing everywhere and nowhere at once. Only when a particle is measured does it suddenly materialize, appearing to pick its position as if by a roll of the dice.

The experiments involve an oil droplet that bounces along the surface of a liquid. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet’s interaction with its own ripples, which form what’s known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles — including behaviors seen as evidence that these particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured.

This idea that nature is inherently probabilistic — that particles have no hard properties, only likelihoods, until they are observed — is directly implied by the standard equations of quantum mechanics. But now a set of surprising experiments with fluids has revived old skepticism about that worldview. The bizarre results are fueling interest in an almost forgotten version of quantum mechanics, one that never gave up the idea of a single, concrete reality.

Particles at the quantum scale seem to do things that human-scale objects do not do. They can tunnel through barriers, spontaneously arise or annihilate, and occupy discrete energy levels. This new body of research reveals that oil droplets, when guided by pilot waves, also exhibit these quantum-like features.

To some researchers, the experiments suggest that quantum objects are as definite as droplets, and that they too are guided by pilot waves — in this case, fluid-like undulations in space and time. These arguments have injected new life into a deterministic (as opposed to probabilistic) theory of the microscopic world first proposed, and rejected, at the birth of quantum mechanics.

“This is a classical system that exhibits behavior that people previously thought was exclusive to the quantum realm, and we can say why,” said John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has led several recent bouncing-droplet experiments. “The more things we understand and can provide a physical rationale for, the more difficult it will be to defend the ‘quantum mechanics is magic’ perspective.”

Magical Measurements

The orthodox view of quantum mechanics, known as the “Copenhagen interpretation” after the home city of Danish physicist Niels Bohr, one of its architects, holds that particles play out all possible realities simultaneously. Each particle is represented by a “probability wave” weighting these various possibilities, and the wave collapses to a definite state only when the particle is measured. 

The equations of quantum mechanics do not address how a particle’s properties solidify at the moment of measurement, or how, at such moments, reality picks which form to take. But the calculations work. As Seth Lloyd, a quantum physicist at MIT, put it, “Quantum mechanics is just counterintuitive and we just have to suck it up.”

A classic experiment in quantum mechanics that seems to demonstrate the probabilistic nature of reality involves a beam of particles (such as electrons) propelled one by one toward a pair of slits in a screen. When no one keeps track of each electron’s trajectory, it seems to pass through both slits simultaneously. In time, the electron beam creates a wavelike interference pattern of bright and dark stripes on the other side of the screen.

 But when a detector is placed in front of one of the slits, its measurement causes the particles to lose their wavelike omnipresence, collapse into definite states, and travel through one slit or the other. The interference pattern vanishes. The great 20th-century physicist Richard Feynman said that this double-slit experiment “has in it the heart of quantum mechanics,” and “is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way.”

Some physicists now disagree. “Quantum mechanics is very successful; nobody’s claiming that it’s wrong,” said Paul Milewski, a professor of mathematics at the University of Bath in England who has devised computer models of bouncing-droplet dynamics. “What we believe is that there may be, in fact, some more fundamental reason why [quantum mechanics] looks the way it does.”

Riding Waves

The idea that pilot waves might explain the peculiarities of particles dates back to the early days of quantum mechanics. The French physicist Louis de Broglie presented the earliest version of pilot-wave theory at the 1927 Solvay Conference in Brussels, a famous gathering of the founders of the field. 

As de Broglie explained that day to Bohr, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and two dozen other celebrated physicists, pilot-wave theory made all the same predictions as the probabilistic formulation of quantum mechanics (which wouldn’t be referred to as the “Copenhagen” interpretation until the 1950s), but without the ghostliness or mysterious collapse.

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IMD business school and Cisco join forces on digital business transformation 03-31

IMD business school and Cisco join forces on digital business transformation Cisco will make a contribution to IMD valued at $US 10 million to develop thought leadership and address business challenges in digital transformation

March 26, 2015

LAUSANNE/SAN JOSE (26 MARCH 2015)—IMD, the top-ranked business school focused on executive education, announced today a contribution valued at $US 10 million from Cisco to become the world leading destination for research, innovation and leadership to drive digital transformation to all aspects of enterprises, in every industry.

Cisco intends to fund the Cisco Chair in Digital Business Transformation and create the IMD/Cisco Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, to be located on IMD's campus in Lausanne, Switzerland, and fully operational by summer 2015.

The collaboration will combine Cisco's leadership in providing technology solutions for the Internet of Everything (IoE) with IMD's expertise in developing global leaders. According to Gartner Research, by 2020, 75 percent of businesses will be a digital business or will be preparing to become one, yet only 30 percent of these efforts will be successful due to lack of talent and technical expertise. Gartner reveals the number one reason companies fail in digital transformation efforts is a failure to re-imagine and reinvent the business from top to bottom before they begin.

The partnership between Cisco and IMD will combine original research and Cisco Consulting's open innovation approach in order to generate practical insights that executives can apply directly to their businesses. By conducting original research, the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation will work to define digital business transformation, what it means for companies today, and how to stay relevant in today's competitive marketplace.

The Global Center aims to become a world-leading hub of research and innovation, helping executives take advantage of digital opportunities and neutralize digital threats. Employing full-time researchers from both IMD and Cisco, the Center will produce cutting-edge thought leadership and organize learning events. It will also collaborate with Cisco's existing network of innovation centers around the world.

QUOTES

Dominique Turpin, IMD President

"IMD has had an excellent relationship with Cisco and its top executives for many years. We are extremely grateful to Cisco for funding this new initiative so generously, and are excited about the research to come. I would like to thank Cisco's leaders for the trust they have put in IMD, particularly Thierry Maupilé, an IMD MBA alumnus and Head of the Strategic Ecosystem Group at Cisco, for his crucial role in making this happen."

Michael Wade, Professor of Innovation and Strategic Information Management at IMD

"This new Global Center will operate at the intersection of technology and organizations. Its main goal is to help executives who are struggling with the 'how' of digital business transformation. These executives know that they must change and adapt to digital opportunities and threats, but they don't know how."

Edzard Overbeek, Senior Vice President, Cisco Services

"We are excited to be partnering with IMD, the prestigious school of business management, which attracts thousands of executives to its campus each year.IMD stands out among the top global business schools because of its unique applied model of management education, which will be instrumental as we seek to help our customers manage through rapid market changes due to digitization.Together, Cisco and IMD will 'write the book' on managing transformation in the new digital age."

Stephan Strauss, Division President, DB Schenker, Germany

"As a business leader in a traditional industry who needs to take his company on the journey of digital transformation, it is a challenge to take the best route.How to leverage digital technologies to create sustainable competitive advantage? In which way transform our business model and what should be the focus? How can we transform our culture and take our organization with us on that journey? What is the right pace?The IMD/Cisco Global Center for Digital Business Transformation will be a most valuable asset to work on addressing these challenges."

Frank Vivier, Richemont Group Director of eBusiness, Switzerland
Thomas Lindemann, Richemont Group HR Director, Swizerland

"Richemont (the owner of several luxury brands, including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Piaget, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Montblanc, etc) congratulates IMD on its new Global Research Center on Digital Business Transformation. The digitization of the luxury goods industry worldwide is presenting significant change management challenges and opportunities. IMD's digital research and education initiative will provide a very timely contribution to the development of organizational competencies and leadership skills to both local and global luxury groups, thus benefitting the industry's competitiveness and growth."

Tom Touchet, CEO, Smart City Media, USA

We are in a period of prolific and profound change, driven by digital disruption and accelerated by the Internet of Things. That opportunity is the focus of virtually all business leaders. Understanding and leveraging and leveraging the impact of these new business models and their competitive dynamics is instrumental to our success. The creation of the Cisco-IMD Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, which is dedicated to tackling these issues, and to creating roadmaps for organizational change, is an important step towards this goal.

Aparna M. Dogra, Temasek Management Services Pte Ltd, Singapore

We are very excited to hear about the new IMD-Cisco partnered research centre on Global Digital Transformation. Forward looking companies that invest in new technologies and embrace digitally driven processes and business models are better positioned to compete in the fast paced digital age. We are confident that the cutting edge research coming out of the IMD-Cisco Research Centre will serve companies well in making such investment decisions and transformational changes to ensure that their businesses stay relevant and competitive.

******

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Student Level of Happiness and GPA, Is there a co-relation. 03-31

Because I’m Happy

AN INTRIGUING STUDY NOTES A CO-RELATION BETWEEN A STUDENT’S LEVEL OF HAPPINESS AND GPA

As policymakers, administrators, and teachers, we want the children in our classrooms to be happy, of course. But how much does their happiness really matter when it comes to learning? According to a new study by HGSE lecturer Christina Hinton, Ed.D.’12, the answer is clear: It matters a lot.

Hinton examined the interplay of happiness, motivation, and success in a K–12 setting, and she also looked at the school factors that support student happiness.

Using both quantitative and qualitative measures, she found that from elementary school to high school, happiness is positively correlated with motivation and academic achievement. She also found that the culture of the school and the relationships that students form with their teachers and their peers play an influential role in their happiness.

In order to conduct the study, Hinton collaborated with theSt. Andrew’s Episcopal School near Washington, D.C., which educates students in grades K–12. “We developed surveys to collect data on students’ happiness and motivation,” Hinton says. “We also collected qualitative data on happiness and motivation to dig more deeply into the construct. In addition, we collected data on students’ grade point averages. We then analyzed this data to explore the relationships among happiness, motivation, and academic achievement.”

Her analysis found several key associations that open the door to further research on how schools can optimize students’ learning experiences. Among them:

• Happiness is positively associated with intrinsic motivation (a personal drive to learn) for all students, and also with extrinsic motivation (outside sources like rewards, praise, or avoiding punishment) for students in grades K–3.

• Happiness is also positively associated with GPA for students in grades 4–12.
• Happiness and standardized test scores did not seem to be related, but further research is needed to confirm this.

• Happiness is predicted by students’ satisfaction with school culture and relationships with teachers and peers.

The finding that happiness is positively correlated with GPA is significant, Hinton notes, because GPA provides a broader picture of academic achievement than standardized test scores, encompassing multiple types of abilities and the influence of social dynamics.

Moving past quantitative scores, the study examined the relationship between happiness and achievement from the students' perspectives, as well as the source of the happiness that students report feeling in the classroom. “We asked the students what supports their learning, and then we coded the responses for themes,” says Hinton. “Students often reported that happiness, or positive feelings like enjoyment or fun, promotes learning.” They cited many reasons for their positive feelings, including feeling safe and comfortable at school and having secure relationships with their teachers and their peers.

These findings set the stage for important future research, Hinton says, as well as for exploring interventions that can successfully boost students’ overall happiness — and their performance in the classroom.

“In this study, we found that a network of supportive relationships is at the heart of happiness,” Hinton says. “If schools want to support student well being and achievement, they should take seriously nurturing positive relationships among teachers and students.”

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Love, Romance and Quantum Entanglement? 03-29

Love, Romance and Quantum Entanglement?

One of history’s greatest engineers Nikola Tesla, who invented the means to transfer and to distribute electricity over long distances, once said, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” The same holds true for Love, Romance and Quantum Entanglement; the world in which we live; our interactions with each other; and indeed our interactions within.

Quantum Entanglement & Quantum Coherence

Much like Love and Romance, Quantum Entanglement occurs when two entities or systems appear to us to be separate but through Quantum Coherence act as one system, with states being able to be transferred wholesale from one entity to the other. Quantum Entanglement is at the heart of understanding how events across significant distances operate at the macro- and micro- level in a correlated way despite considerable distance between them.

The Source

More than a century ago, in 1910, the American ‘New Thought’ author Wallace D Wattles wrote in “The Science of Getting Rich”: “Everything you see on earth is made from one original substance, out of which all things proceed… there is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe… a thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by thought… man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.” In other words, thoughtware, software and hardware are interchangeable. To confirm this point, the latest 3D printers can now print almost anything solid from scratch.

Pure Energy

Scientific experiments in Quantum Physics and particularly those at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research — CERN — at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, continue to demonstrate that once we break everything down to its core, pure energy is behind everything. When we go down to the sub-atomic level we do not find matter, but pure energy. Some call this the unified field or the matrix. Others talk about pure potentiality: all being energy. Others feel this potentiality as love and romance.

Vibrating Field

This pure energy vibrates a field around it. A vibrating field of energy, which attracts — like a magnet — and attaches to energy of the same vibrating frequency. The more vibrating energy that is compressed into this field of energy, the more intense the vibration gets within that field. Eventually the energy field manifests into matter: particle-by-particle. As the father of Quantum Physics, Max Planck, once said, “All the physical matters are composed of vibration.”

Action at a Distance

In Quantum Mechanics, non-locality refers to "action at a distance" arising from measurement correlations on Quantum Entangled states. The dividing line between the micro world of Quantum Processes and the macro world of classical physics is fading. Evidence is being increasingly acquired of the relevance in nature of Quantum properties and processes including Quantum Entanglement. Recent science has shown that Quantum Coherence and Entanglement may provide a viable explanation for a series of mysteries in nature: how photosynthesis in plants works, how birds keep orientation while migrating, and more including love and romance.

Illusion

A table may look solid and still, but within the table are billions and billions of subatomic particles “running around” and “popping” with energy. The table is pure energy and movement. Everything in this universe has its own vibrational frequency. It is the law of vibration in action. However we can’t see it so it appears separate and solid to us. This is actually an illusion! Our frequency of perception of electro-magnetic waves defines what we can and cannot see within the visible spectrum of light. However, at a different frequency, like X-rays, the entire solid object would appear to be completely like a sieve.

Unified Field

Every object in the Universe moves and vibrates — everything is vibrating at one speed or another. Nothing rests. Everything we see around ourselves is vibrating at one frequency or another and so are we. However, our frequency is different from other entities in the universe, hence it seems like we are separated from what we see around ourselves — people, animals, plants, trees and so on. But we are not separated — we are in fact all living in a continuous ocean of energy. We are all connected at the highest level: the unified field.

Frequency Control

At the very leading edge of biophysics today, scientists are recognising that the molecules in our bodies are actually controlled by these frequencies. In 1974, Dr Colin W F McClare, an Oxford University Bio-Physicist, discovered that frequencies of vibrating energy are roughly one-hundred times more efficient in relaying information within a biological system than physical signals, such as hormones, neurotransmitters, other growth factors and chemicals.

Vibration as Sound and Light

What’s most interesting is that, if a frequency is vibrating fast enough, it’s emitted as a Sound and if it is vibrating much faster, it is emitted as a colour of Light. If we wanted to convert Sound to Light, we would simply raise its frequency by forty octaves. This results in a vibration in the trillions of cycles per second. So, if a pianist could press a key way above the eighty-eight keys that exist on a piano, that key would produce Light. This could create a chord of Light in the same way they can create a chord of sound. And it would be seen as colours of Light because it would be moving at the speed of Light.

Resonance

When two frequencies are brought together, the lower will always rise to meet the higher. This is the principle of resonance. So, when a piano is tuned, a tuning fork is struck, and then brought close to the piano string that carries that same musical tone. The string then raises its vibration automatically and attunes itself to the same rate at which the fork is vibrating. This principle of resonance works for biological systems too.

Consciousness and Awareness

Everything has a vibrating energy field and behind the field is pure energy. This pure energy has a source that is found within everything throughout the universe. What is this source? Consciousness. Yet, the source of consciousness behind everything can be measured by the amount of awareness it has within any given energy field. In other words, there are different levels of awareness to every state of consciousness.

Vibration Frequency

The lower the vibration frequency, the slower the vibration; the higher the vibration frequency the faster the vibration. The difference between the manifestations of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels of connectivity result simply from different levels of vibrating energy or frequencies. So, while the feelings of fear, grief and despair vibrate at a very low frequency, the feelings of love, joy, romance and gratitude may vibrate much quicker at a higher frequency, and meditation states higher still, as demonstrated by the frequency of the electro-magnetic waves generated by the human brain in a number of scientific experiments around the world.

Layers Stacked On Top of Each Other All The Way to Full Consciousness

In short everything can be stripped away in layers in this order:

1. Physical — 

The lowest layer is Matter;

2. Vibrating Field — 

The layer above Matter is a Vibrating Field of Energy;

3. Pure Energy — 

If we peel away the Vibrating Field of Energy we have the layer of Pure Energy;

4. Consciousness —

Above the layer of Pure Energy is Consciousness; and

5. The Source — 

The highest layer is Supra Consciousness, which is the Source of Everything.

Layers of Awareness Within Consciousness

Consciousness also has layers: the layers of awareness depend on their frequency of vibration. Those layers are defined in this order:

1. Action-and-Reaction — 

This is the lowest layer of awareness. This is, in fact, the layer of physicality and physical objects.

2. Stimulus Response — 

This is the next layer above objects. We find this layer of awareness in cells. At this level, the cells are only aware of the group as a whole, a herd, and responding together with no realisation of self or others. For example, nests and hives have this level of consciousness.

3. Stimulus Individual Response — 

This layer has even more of an awareness than Stimulus Response. This amount of awareness is the recognition of individuals. In this layer of awareness, families are created through realising individuals inside the group or the herd. Monkeys and mammals similar to them have the awareness to develop families and demonstrate this layer of awareness.

4. Discernment or Judgment Response — Stimulus response means reacting to things. To see similarities and differences between things, is a higher order of consciousness and it allows the ability to make decisions about things, rather than just reacting to stimuli. This is the power of discernment or judgment. The mind or ego is the tool that notices similarities and differences between things. Anything that has a mind or ego has this layer of awareness or consciousness within it.

Consciousness Layers Reveal Significance

Every layer of consciousness above the lesser ones, has the awareness of all the lower-level layers too. For example, when we are trapped in a traffic jam, we feel much like part of a herd. We are feeling the layer of Stimulus Response. Yet when we are feeling like we are an individual, there is an extreme difference in our awareness. This understanding of higher levels of consciousness is very important. The importance lies within the fact that Consciousness is the Source of Everything and we have the awareness of every layer of consciousness in existence. This is significant because it allows us the privilege to attract and to attach to any energy field. We have the ability to vibrate at different frequencies and manifest different energy fields into matter depending on our level of consciousness.

Conclusion

Using the principle of resonance, we can actually increase the speed at which the energy field of our bodies and minds vibrates, through higher frequency thoughts of love, joy, romance and gratitude and accessing even higher consciousness states via meditation. Modern science demonstrates that when pure energy slows down, lower dimensional matter is created; conversely when the vibration field speeds up, the higher dimensions of consciousness can be accessed. 

And the higher our consciousness is raised, the closer to the Source we become, perhaps in a similar fashion to quantum entanglement of distant photons acting as one. “In the beginning was the Word”, the primordial vibration of sound and light, which according to thousands of years old Vedic science resonates to different phonetic sounds at different levels including the original “Aum” and different quantum entangled frequencies of light stimuli at differing energy vortices or chakras. 

Are love and romance any different from quantum entanglement? Probably not!

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