Can you actually think yourself into a different person

Can you actually think yurself into a different personCan you actually think yourself into a different personFor years she had tried to be the perfect wife and motherbei but now, divorced, with two sons, having gone through anotlagelageher break-up and in despair about her future, she felt as if shed failed at it all, and she welches tired of it. On 6 June 2007 Debbie Hampton, of Greensboro, North Carolina, took an overdose. That afternoon, shed written a note on her computer Ive screwed up this life so badeanstalt that there is no place here for me and nothing I can contribute. Then, in tears, she went upstairs, sat on her bed, and put on a Dido CD to listen to as she died.But then she woke up again. Shed been found, rushed to the hospital, and saved. I welches mad, she says. Id messed it up. And, on top of that, Id brain-damaged myself. After Debbie emerged from her one-week coma, her doctors gave her their diagnosis encephalopathy. Thats just a general term which means the brains not operating right, she says. She couldnt swallow or control her bladder, and her kralles constantly shook. Much of the time, she couldnt understand what she welches seeing. She could barely even speak. All I could do welches make sounds, she says. It was like my mouth was full of marbles. It was shocking, because what I heard from my mouth didnt match what I heard in my head. After a stay in a rehabilitation center, she began recovering slowly. But, a year in, she plateaued. My speech was very slow and slurred. My memory and thinking was unreliable. I didnt have the energy to live a normal life. A good day for me was emptying the dishwasher.It was around this time that she tried a new treatment called neurofeedback. She was required to have her brain monitored while playing a simple Pac-Man-like game, controlling movements by manipulating her brain waves. Within ten sessions, my speech improved. But Debbies real turnaround happened when her neurofeedback counselor recommended a bo ok the international bestsellerThe Brain that Changes Itselfby Canadian psychotherapist Norman Doidge. Oh my God, she says. For the first time, it really showed me it was possible to heal my brain. Not only that it was possible, that it was up to me.After reading Doidges book, Debbie began living what she calls a brain-healthy life. That includes yoga, meditation, visualization, diet and the maintenance of a positive mental attitude. Today, she co-owns a yoga studio, has written an autobiography and a guide to brain-healthy living and runs the website thebestbrainpossible.com. The science of neuroplasticity, she says, has taught her that, Youre not stuck with the brain youre born with. You may be given certain genes but what you do in your life changes your brain. And thats the magic wand. Neuroplasticity, she says, allows you to change your life and make happiness a reality. You can go from being a victim to a victor. Its like a superpower. Its like having X-ray vision.Debbies not alone in her enthusiasm for neuroplasticity, which is what we call the brains ability to change itself in response to things that happen in our environment. Claims for its benefits are widespread and startling. Half an hour on Google informs the curious webbrowser that neuroplasticity is a magical scientific discovery that shows that our brains are not hard-wired like computers, as was once thought, but like play-doh or a gooey butter cake. This means that our thoughts can change the structure and function of our brains and that by doing certain exercises we can actually, physically increase our brains strength, size and density. Neuroplasticity is a series of miracles happening in your own cranium that means we can be better salespeople and better athletes, and learn to love the taste of broccoli. It can treat eating disorders, prevent cancer, lower our risk of dementia by 60 percent and help us discover our true essence of joy and peace. We can teach ourselves the skill of happine ss and train our brains to be awesome. And age is no limitation neuroplasticity shows that our minds are designed to improve as we get older. It doesnt even have to be difficult. Simply by changing your route to work, shopping at a different grocery store, or using your non-dominant hand to comb your hair will increase your brain power. As the celebrity alternative-medicine guru Deepak Chopra has said, Most people think that their brain is in charge of them. We say we are in charge of our brain.Debbies story is a mystery. The techniques promising to change her brain via an understanding of the principles of neuroplasticity have clearly had tremendous positive effects for her. But is it true that neuroplasticity is a superpower, like X-ray vision? Can we really increase the weight of our brain just by thinking? Can we lower our risk of dementia by 60 percent? And learn to love broccoli?Some of these seem like silly questions, but some of them dont. Thats the problem. Its hard, for th e non-scientist, to understand what exactly neuroplasticity is and what its potential truly is. Ive seen tremendous exaggeration, says Greg Downey, an anthropologist at Macquarie University and co-author of the popular blog Neuroanthropology. People are so excited about neuroplasticity they talk themselves into believing anything.For many years, the consensus was that the human brain couldnt generate new cells once it reached adulthood. Once you were grown, you entered a state of neural decline. This was a view perhaps most famously expressed by the so-called founder of modern neuroscience, Santiago Ramn y Cajal. After an early interest in plasticity, he became skeptical, writing in 1928, In adult centres the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, immutable. Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated. It is for the science of the future to change, if possible, this harsh decree. Cajals gloomy prognosis was to rumble through the 20th century.Although the notion that the adult br ain could undergo significant positive changes received sporadic attention, throughout the 20th century, it was generally overlooked, as a young psychologist called Ian Robertson was to discover in 1980. Hed just begun working with people who had had strokes at the Astley Ainslie Hospital in Edinburgh, and found himself puzzled by what he was seeing. Id moved into what was a new field for me, neuro-rehabilitation, he says. At the hospital, he witnessed adults receiving occupational therapy and physiotherapy. Which made him think if theyd had a stroke, that meant a parte of their brain had been destroyed. And if a part of their brain had been destroyed, everyone knew it was gone forever. So how come these repetitive physical therapies so often helped? It didnt make sense. I was trying to get my head around, what was the model? he says. What was the theoretical basis for all this activity here? The people who answered him were, by todays standards, pessimistic.Their whole philosophy w as compensatory, Robertson says. They thought the external therapies were just preventing further negative things happening. At one point, still baffled, he asked for a textbook that explained how it all was supposed to work. There was a chapter on wheelchairs and a chapter on walking sticks, he says. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, on this notion that the therapy might actually be influencing the physical reconnection of the brain. That attitude really went back to Cajal. He really influenced the whole mindset which said that the adult brain is hardwired, all you can do is lose neurons, and that if you have brain damage all you can do is help the surviving parts of the brain work around it.But Cajals prognosis also contained a challenge. And it wasnt until the 1960s that the science of the future first began to rise to it. Two stubborn pioneers, whose tales are recounted so effectively in Doidges bestseller, were Paul Bach-y-Rita and Michael Merzenich. Bach-y-Rita is per haps best known for his work helping blind people see in a new and radically different way. Rather than receiving information about the world from the eyes, he wondered if they could take it in in the form of vibrations on their skin. Theyd sit on a chair and lean back on a metal sheet. Pressing up against the back side of that metal sheet were 400 plates that would vibrate in accord with the way an object was moving. As Bach-y-Ritas devices became mora sophisticated (the most recent version sits on the tongue), congenitally blind people began to report having the experience of seeing in three dimensions. It wasnt until the advent of brain-scanning technology that scientists began to see evidence for this incredible hypothesis that information seemed to be being processed in the visual cortex. Although this hypothesis is yet to be firmly established, it seems as if their brains had rewired themselves in a radical and useful way that had long been thought impossible.Merzenich, meanwh ile, helped to confirm in the late 1960s that the brain contains maps of the body and the outside world, and that these maps have the ability to change. Next, he co-developed the cochlear implant, which helped deaf people hear. This relies on the principle of plasticity, as the brain needs to adapt to receive auditory information from the artificial implant instead of the cochlea (which, in the deaf person, isnt working). In 1996 he helped establish a commercial company that produces educational software products called Fast ForWord for enhancing the cognitive skills of children using repetitive exercises that rely on plasticity to improve brain function, according to their website. As Doidge writes, In some cases, people who have had a lifetime of cognitive difficulties get better after only thirty to sixty hours of treatment.Although it took several decades, Merzenich and Bach-y-Rita were to help prove that Cajal and the scientific consensus were wrong. The adult brain was plastic . It could rewire itself, sometimes radically. This came as a surprise to experts like Robertson, now a Director of Trinity College Dublins Institute of Neuroscience. I can look back on giving lectures at Edinburgh University to students where I gave wrong information, based on the dogma which said that, once dead, a brain cell cannot regenerate and plasticity happens in early childhood but not later, he says.It wasnt until the publication of a series of vivid studies involving brain scans that this new truth began to be encoded into the synapses of the masses. In 1995, neuropsychologist Thomas Elbert published his work on string players that showed the maps in their brain that represented each finger of the left hand which they used for fingering were enlarged compared to those of non-musicians (and compared to their own right hands, not involved in fingering). This demonstrated their brains had rewired themselves as a result of their many, many, many hours of practice. Three yea rs later, a SwedishAmerican team, led by Peter Eriksson of Sahlgrenska University Hospital, published a study inNaturethat showed, for the very first time, that neurogenesis the creation of new brain cells was possible in adults. In 2006, a team led by Eleanor Maguire at the Institute of Neurology at University College London found that the citys taxi drivers have mora grey matter in one hippocampal area than bus drivers, due to their incredible spatial knowledge of Londons maze of streets. In 2007, DoidgesThe Brain that Changes Itselfwas published. In its review of the book, theNew York Timesproclaimed that the power of positive thinking has finally gained scientific credibility. It went on to sell over one mio copies in over 100 countries. Suddenly, neuroplasticity was everywhere.Its easy, and perhaps even fun, to be cynical about all this. But neuroplasticity really is a remarkable thing. What we do know is that almost everything we do, all our behavior, thoughts and emotions, physically change our brains in a way that is underpinned by changes in brain chemistry or function, says Robertson. Neuroplasticity is a constant feature of the very essence of human behavior. This understanding of the brains power, he says, opens up new techniques for treating a potentially spectacular array of illnesses. Theres virtually no disease or injury, I believe, where the potential doesnt exist for very intelligent application of stimulation to the brain via behavior, possibly combined with other stimulation.Does he agree that the power of positive thinking has now gained scientific credibility? My short answer is yes, he says. I do think human beings have much more control over their brain function than has been appreciated. The long answer is yes, but with caveats. First, theres the influence of our genes. Surely, I ask Robertson, they still hold a powerful influence over everything from our health to our character? My own crude rule of thumb is a 5050 split in terms of the influence of nature and that of nurture, he says. But we should be very positive about that 50 percent thats environmental.Adding extra tangle to the already confused public discussion of neuroplasticity is the fact that the word itself can mean several things. Broadly, says Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Deputy Director of Londons Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, it refers to the ability of the brain to adapt to changing environmental stimuli. But the brain can adapt in many different ways. Neuroplasticity can refer to structural changes, such as when neurons are created or die off or when synaptic connections are created, strengthened or pruned. It can also refer to functional reorganizations, such as those experienced by the blind patients of Paul Bach-y-Rita, whose contraptions triggered their brains to start using their visual cortices, which had previously been redundant.On the larger, developmental scale, there are two categories of neuroplasticity. They are really different , says Blakemore. You need to differentiate between them. Throughout childhood, our brains undergo a leiter of experience-expectant plasticity. They expect to learn certain important things from the environment, at certain stages, such as how to speak. Our brains dont finish developing in this way until around our mid-20s. Thats why car insurance premiums are so high for people under 25, says Robertson. Their frontal lobes arent fully wired up to the rest of their brains until then. Their whole capacity for anticipating risk and impulsivity isnt there. Then theres experience-dependent plasticity. Thats what the brain does whenever we learn something, or whenever something changes in the environment, says Blakemore.One way in which science has been exaggerated has been by the blending of these different types of change. Some writers have made it seem as if almost anything counts as neuroplasticity, and therefore revolutionary and magical and newsworthy. But its definitely not news, f or example, that the brain is highly affected by its environment when were young. Nevertheless, inThe Brain that Changes ItselfNorman Doidge observes the wide variety of human sexual interests and calls it sexual plasticity. Neuroscientist Sophie Scott, Deputy Director of Londons Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, is dubious. Thats just the effect of growing up on your brain, she says. Doidge even uses neuroplasticity to explain cultural changes, such as the broad acceptance in the modern age that we marry for romantic love, rather than socioeconomic convenience. That isnt neuroplasticity, says Scott.This, then, is the truth about neuroplasticity it does exist, and it does work, but its not a miracle discovery that means that, with a little effort, you can turn yourself into a broccoli-loving, marathon-running, disease-immune, super-awesome genius. The deep question, says Chris McManus, Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London, is, Why do people, even scientists, want to believe all this? Curious about the underlying causes of the neuroplasticity craze, he believes it is just the latest version of the personal-transformation myth thats been haunting the culture of the West for generations.People have all sorts of dreams and fantasies and I dont think were very good at achieving them, says McManus. But we like to think that when somebody is unsuccessful in life they can transform themselves and become successful. Its Samuel Smiles, isnt it? That book he wrote,Self-Help, was the positive thinking of Victorian times.Samuel Smiles Full disclosure Samuel Smiles is my great-great-uncle is commonly cited as the inventor of the self-help movement and his book, just like Doidges, spoke to something deep in the population and became a surprise bestseller. The optimistic message Smiles delivered spoke of both the new, modern world and the dreams of the men and women living in it. In the 18th century, power had all been about the landed gentry, says historian Kate Williams. Smiles was writing in the era of the Industrial Revolution, widespread education and economic opportunities offered by Empire. It was the first time a middle-class man could work hard and do well. They needed a formidable work ethic to succeed, and thats what Smiles codified inSelf-Help.In the latter part of the 19th century, US thinkers adapted this idea to reflect their national belief that they were creating a new world. Adherents of the New Thought, Christian Science and Metaphysical Healing movements stripped away much of the talk of hard work, insisted upon by the Brits, to create the positive thinking movement to which some believe neuroplasticity has given scientific credence. Psychologist William James called it the mind-cure movement, the intuitive belief in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervou sly precautionary states of mind. Here was the inherently American notion that self-confidence and optimism thoughts themselves could offer personal salvation.This myth that we can be whoever we want to be, and achieve our dreams, as long as we have sufficient self-belief emerges again and again, in our novels, films and news, and TV singing competitions featuring Simon Cowell, as well as unexpected crazes like that for neuroplasticity. One previous, and remarkably similar, incarnation was Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which had it that psychological conditions such as depression were nothing more than patterns learned by the brain and that success and happiness were just a matter of reprogramming it. The idea appeared in a more academic costume, according to McManus, in the form of whats known as the Standard Social Science Model. This is the idea from the 1990s where, in effect, all human behavior is infinitely malleable and genes play no role at all.But the plasticity booster s have an answer to the tricky question of genes, and their heavy influence over all matters of health, life and wellbeing. Their answer is epigenetics. This is the relatively new understanding of the ways in which the environment can change how genes express themselves. Deepak Chopra has said that epigenetics has shown us that, regardless of the nature of the genes we inherit from our parents, dynamic change at this level allows us almost unlimited influence on our fate.Jonathan Mill, Professor of Epigenetics at the University of Exeter, dismisses this kind of claim as babble. Its a really exciting science, he says, but to say these things are going to totally rewire your whole brain and gene functioning is taking it far too far. And its not just Chopra, he adds. Broadsheet newspapers and academic journals have also been guilty, at times, of falling for the myth. There have been all sorts of amazingly overhyped headlines. People who have been doing epigenetics for a while are almos t in despair, at the moment, partly because its being used as an explanation for all sorts of things without any real direct evidence.Just as epigenetics doesnt fulfill our cultures promise of personal transformation, nor does neuroplasticity. Even some of the more credible-sounding claims are, according to Ian Robertson, currently unjustifiable. Take the one about reducing our risk of dementia by 60 percent. There is not a single scientific study that has ever shown that any intervention of any kind can reduce the risk of dementia by 60 percent, or indeed by any percentage, he says. No one has done the research using appropriate control-group methodologies to show that there is any cause-and-effect link.Indeed, the clinical record for many famous treatments that use the principles of neuroplasticity is notably mixed. In June 2015, the Food and Drug Administration in the US permitted the marketing of the latest iteration of Bach-y-Ritas on-the-tongue seeing devices for the blind, ci ting successful studies. And yet a 2015 Cochrane Review of constraint-induced movement therapy a touchstone treatment for neuroplasticity evangelists that offers improvements in motor function for people who have had a stroke found that these benefits did not convincingly reduce disability. A 2011 meta-analysis of neuroplasticity Godfather Michael Merzenichs Fast ForWord learning techniques, described to such thrilling effect by Doidge, found no evidence that they were effective as a treatment for childrens oral language or reading difficulties. This, according to Sophie Scott, goes for other treatments too. Theres been a lot of excitement about brain-training packages and, actually, big studies of those tend not to show very much effect, she says. Or they show youve got better at the thing youve practiced at, but it doesnt generalize to something else. In November 2015, a team lead by Clive Ballard at Kings College London found some evidence that online brain-training games might help reasoning, attention and memory in the over-50s.Its perhaps understandable why crazy levels of hope are raised when people read tales of apparently miraculous recovery from brain injury that feature people seeing again, hearing again, walking again and so on. These dramatic accounts can make it sound as ifanythingis possible. But whats usually being described, in these instances, is a very specific form of neuroplasticity functional reorganization which can happen only in certain circumstances. The limits are partly architectural, says Greg Downey. Certain parts of the brain are better at doing certain kinds of thing, and part of that comes simply from where they are.Another limitation, for the person hoping to develop a superpower, is the simple fact that every part of a normal brain is already occupied. The reason you get reorganization after an amputation, for example, is that youve just put into unemployment a section of the somatosensory cortex, he says. A healthy brain just doesnt have this available real estate. Because it keeps getting used for what its being used for, you cant train it to do something else. Its already doing something.Age, too, presents a problem. Over time, plastic sets, says Downey. You start off with more of it and space for movement slowly decreases. Thats why a brain injury at 25 is a total different ballgame to a brain injury at seven. Plasticity says you start off with a lot of potential but youre laying down a future thats going to become increasingly determined by what youve done before.Robertson speaks of treating a famous writer and historian whod had a stroke. He completely gelbkreuzgas the capacity for all expressive language, he says. He couldnt say a word, he couldnt write. He had a huge amount of therapy and no amount of stimulation could really recover that because the brain had become hyper-specialized and a whole network had developed for the highly refined production of language. Despite what the currents o f our culture might insistently beckon us towards believing, the brain is not Play-Doh. You cant open up new areas of it, says McManus. You cant extend it into different parts. The brain isnt a mass of grey gloop. You cant do anything you like.Even the people whose lives are being transformed by neuroplasticity are finding that brain change is anything but easy. Take recovery from a stroke. If youre going to recover the use of an arm, you may need to move that arm tens of thousands of times before it begins to learn new neural pathways to do that, says Downey. And, after that, theres no guarantee its going to work. Scott says something similar about speech and language therapy. There were dark days, say, 50 years ago, where if youd had a stroke you didnt get that kind of treatment other than to stop you choking because theyd decided it doesnt work. But now its becoming absolutely clear that it does, and that its a phenomenally good thing. But none of it comes for free.Those who over -evangelize emerging disciplines like neuroplasticity or epigenetics can sometimes be guilty of talking as if the influence of our genes no longer matters. Their enthusiasm can make it seem, to the non-specialist, as if nurture can easily conquer nature. This is a story that attracts people in great numbers, to newspapers, blogs and gurus, because its one our culture reinforces, and one we want to believe that radical personal transformation is possible, that we have the potential to be whoever and whatever we want to be, that we can find happiness, success, salvation all we need to do is try. We are dreamers down to our very synapses, we are the people of the American Dream.Of course, its our malleable brains that have molded themselves to these rhythms. As we grow up, the optimistic myths of our culture become so embedded in our sense of self that we can lose touch with the fact that they are just myths. The irony is that when scientists carefully describe the blind seeing and th e deaf hearing, and we hear it as talk of wild miracles, its the fault of our neuroplasticity.

My startup job makes me feel like I have an impact. Google didnt. (The Story Behind a Resume)

My startup job makes me feel like I have an impact. Google didnt. (The Story Behind a Resume)My startup job makes me feel like I have an impact. Google didnt. (The Story Behind a Resume)Last year, we lost a dear colleague here at . But its bedrngnis like shes dead to us, or anything. She just went off to do cooler things. Things like developing a vaginal probe in China (which is bedrngnis exactly true but thats what she told us back then ).But we understand. Developing a resume builder simply doesnt have the same ring to it.Anyway, we thought her story was awesome and everybody would like to hear it too. Which is why we decided to bewerbungsgesprch her for ur blog.By the way, mora interviews are soon to follow. leid just with our former colleagues, but also with other wonderful people we have the privilege of knowing. And most of them come from the ranks of you- our users.Oh, and dont forget to take a look at Barboras resume at the bottom of this page. We though itd be nice, you k now, to attach a full story to a resume like this.Barbora will tell youWhy IT isnt just for boys (that would be just stupid)How girls are developing a device thats going to help women monitor their fertile daysHow they test the device on themselvesWhat is it like to work for an American start up in China and hows life thereHow to get an internship at Google and get invited to their conferencesAnd then some.Who is Barbora Klembrov? (Software Engineer Resume Sample)What would you tell someone if they asked you about becoming a programmer?I think the most important thing is to enjoy it. Studying computer science simply because you can score a well-paid job is stupid because, sooner or later, it will become stale. In retrospect, I understand that school teaches you to think in a certain way. Learning a specific programming language is not a problem, the key is to know how the principles behind it work.Ive heard you did an internship at at Google. Thats pretty cool How did you get there? I managed to get there twice for a summer internship. I sent them my CV because they had a program for college freshmen. Back then I didnt get in. Still, they kept my CV in the database and came back to me when I finished my bachelors. They wanted to know if I was interested in a full-time job.Finally, we agreed on a summer internship. Then the hiring process began, which consisted of several technical interviews. After several successful rounds, one team had to pick me. When I applied for the internship the second time, I did not have to go through the interview process again, as it was within one year.What exactly did you do during your internship there?The first time round, I worked mostly on minor tasks for my team. I worked on internal tools to make the data overview easier/clearer for my colleagues and also on the availability of monitoring and alerts when something goes wrong.The second time, I worked on a great pipeline that handled the user data and it had to be optimized a nd rewritten in another programming language.What is itlike to be a woman in such a male-dominated field?Its great, theres never a long queue for the ladies room at IT events . Personally, I have a good experience. Boys never behaved to me differently just because I am a girl and I never felt like I had any disadvantage.There are plenty of opportunities for us women too. For example, female programmers also have the chance to attend a conference that Google organizes every year in San Francisco. Even I got there twice thanks to the competition called Code Jam to IO for Women, where 150 girls can win tickets for this event. Not only they paid for my ticket, they also covered a large part of my travel expenses.Also, I had the chance to work for Google full-time. But as a coincidence, during that year a friend of mine recommended me to a company based in San Francisco. So, during the conference I met a co-founder of the company and she introduced me to their philosophy and what they ar e working on.That sounds awesome. Did the company appeal to you so much that you decided to work for them right after the meeting in San Francisco?I needed some time to think about it, because originally my friend told me that I could work remotely from Slovakia or maybe it would alternate with San Francisco. But at the meeting, she informed me that I will have to spend a lot of time in China in Shenzhen, which quite surprised me. However, their project attracted me so much that Ive said to myself that it is a unique opportunity. So I went for it.What is the project about and what kind of company is it?Its basically a very fresh startup founded about a year and a half ago. Our first product which we are currently working on is kegg. Its a vaginal probe that helps women get pregnant. Im more invested in it than in any other project that Ive worked on before. Its also pretty diverse, which means that I can keep learning a lot of new things there.So, basically youre programming a softw are for a vaginal probe.Yes, but since we are only four developers in the company, I have more tasks. Partly, I work on a firmware which is a software that helps to run our device and I test it at the same time. Also, I work on a server where are algorithms and data processing. I also manage our website and work in Google Analytics.How does the device work?In the vagina, the woman has the so-called cervical mucus, which changes during the cycle and during the ovulation it changes so it is permeable for sperms. This period can be calculated but calculations are not always accurate as there are many factors that can delay the fertility phase.With our device, we can directly detect the fluid-structure changes and, based on that, determine whether a so-called fertile window has begun. It is a phase when the woman has the highest chance of conceiving a baby.The device works by inserting it into the vagina, turning on the measurement and taking it out after two minutes. The acquired data are sent to the server, analyzed and synchronized with the mobile app in a few seconds. Therefore, the user has all the data within the app and can view all of her cycles in graphs or also check the prediction when she may expect the next menstruation.Does it mean thatits primary use is to tell women when they have the highest chance of getting pregnant?Yes, and its mainly intended for women who have problems getting pregnant and use different methods to succeed. Our first tester already got pregnant by the way. Are you also testing it?Yes, Im also testing it. Basically, we already have an almost functional version of the device, but still, some new issues are occurring and we have to resolve these issues and fine-tune the device before going to the fruchtfleischet.But there are already other similar products on the market that do the same thing. Is your product in any way different?There are many products that can somehow determine fertile days such as bracelets that measure heartb eat, or thermometers for that measure the womans temperature during her cycle, as the temperature increases during the ovulation. However, these forms are often very inaccurate and especially it does not work for women who have an irregular cycle.The point of our device is that fertile days can be determined by direct measurement and it does not necessarily need to know previous cycles. One product that measures cervical mucus already exists, but it is older and looks much worse. Its a probe attached to a device thats about a cell phone size, and it looks really deterrent and outdated. We are trying to create something new, modern and better.Why China when the company was set up in America?Due to the nature of the product and finances. All the necessary parts were much more expensive and it took much longer to get them. Chinas manufacturing is next-gen, they can produce everything faster and more efficiently. So, we go there for business visits for which we receive Visa for a maximu m of two months. During this time, we meet with various factories and resolve business affairs with them. Then, we return for a while to Slovakia or Czech Republic, or sometimes to San Francisco.It used to be that Made in China was a mark of low quality. Is it still true?Of course, we need to be careful about this because we have to meet certain certifications. We put emphasis on purchasing quality components. We always have the opportunity to go directly to the factory and see the whole production process. At the same time, we can identify any shortcomings in the tests that we do.There is also a very good book about the entire process of hardware development, The Hardware Hacker Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware, written in Shenzhen by the experienced author Andrew Huang. It gave us many helpful tips on what to avoid. The author was very interested in this topic and tested, for example, SD cards that he bought in multiple stores, and then inspected them to see if they were fake, what were the differences between them, and so on.What about work and life there? What do you think are the main differences compared to Europe?I dont know if its just because China itself is so different, but the startup job is definitely different than working for Google. When the deadline is nearing, were working six-day weeks, ten to twelve hours per day. But I never felt like I did not have enough energy. So, its different in the sense that I work a lot more. But we have nothing else to do in China, so most of us dont mind .As for the life, its very different. Ive already experienced a typhoon. Trees were falling and bushes got ripped out. Ive also grown used to the fact that theres no drinkable tap water and that we have to buy bottled water. I was especially surprised to find out that they have cameras everywhere and everybody is being watched, but its not impossible to get used to it. Also, people are always staring at their phones. Almost nobody talks on the subway o r in the street. It seems like everybodys living in their bubble.I guess that working six days a week needs a strong dose of motivation.Its only four of us. That means theres lot of work and its also quite difficult to find someone who would be willing to travel to China and had all the necessary skills. Searching for employees in China is not very logical for us because we want to spend most of our time in the Czech Republic after completing our product.The idea for the future is to have technical team in Czech Republic, travelling to San Francisco for conferences and only part of team working on hardware travelling to China.Youve compared working at a startup vs. Google. Which do you prefer?At Google you usually do just one thing. It is true that you can rotate in the teams or projects, but most of the time you can change it after a year spent in one team. Job for startup is much more diverse and, in particular, I feel like I have a much bigger impact on the world. But of course, Google also has its advantages.You seem to be motivated by the fact that working on such product will help many women.Absolutely. What motivates me the most is the fact that I can influence where the development is going and also the fact that everyone in the company really cares about the product itself.Share Your Feedback or Ideas in the Comments

Carbon Nanotube SuperFabric

Carbon Nanotube SuperFabric Carbon Nanotube SuperFabric Ever since carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1991, they have sparked intense speculation about their potential applications. Materials scientists have long known that carbon-based molecules can possess extreme propertiesafter all, diamonds are pure carbon. But common forms of carbon, such as graphite, are soft rather than strong.At the molecular level, the difference between graphite and carbon nanotubes is similar to that between sheet metal and steel tubing of the same gauge. Thanks to their tubular structure, carbon nanotubes have a measured strength about 50 times that of carbon steel. And because of differences in the way the familiar chicken-wire patterns of carbon atoms line up across the surface, nanotubes can either act as metals (potentially conducting greater current densities than copper) or semiconductors.Using carbon nanotubes to make stronger ceramics, lighter car bodies, or other materials applications could ha ve enormous impact on day-to-day life, similar to the way plastics changed the world in the mid-20th century.These scanning electron micrographs show nanotube ribbons being made at the University of Texas at Dallas. As individual tubes are drawn from a dense thicket of nanotubes (top and middle), they pull away adjoining tubes to create a long, horizontal array.Flexible FibersIn 2000, Phillippe Poulin of the Paul Pascal Research Center in Pessac, France, developed a technique for extruding a fiber from a soup of carbon nanotubes. As the liquid flowed, the nanotubes aligned themselves along the direction of the flow. When dried, the resulting fibers were flexible, but not very strong.In 2003, Ray H. Baughman of the University of Texas spun strong threads made of carbon nanotubes and polyvinyl alcohol the threads were extruded and spun into fibers as thin as a human hair and hundreds of feet long. Tests showed the threads were 17 times stronger than Kevlar and about four times tougher than spider silk, suggesting some potential applications that rely on high strengthcables and protective clothing. Moreover, the nanotube superthreads could conduct and hold electrical charges, suggesting that electronic devices could be directly incorporated into fabrics made of them.Just one problem the process of making the superthreads welches slow.In 2006, Baughmans team discovered a new process that had less in common with spinning yarn than it did with yanking a Band-Aid from a hairy arm. Baughmans group started by growing a carpet of nanotubes on a metallic substrate. The nanotubes, each about 10 nanometers in diameter and 300 micrometers long, grown vertically on the substrate, can pack as closely as one trillion per square inch.In an intuitive leap, Baughmans group, in collaboration with Ken Atkinson, a textile expert at Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Belmont, found a way to make a ribbon of nanotubes in a single motion. A thin ribbon of aerogel unspools across the top of the carpet of nanotubes. Where the aerogel and the nanotubes meet, tubes catch on the aerogel and are pulled from the substrate. Thanks to the close packing of the tubes and to an attractive force operating at the molecular level, a nanotube breaking away from its base will pull away other tubes. Quickly, most of the nanotubes find themselves realigned longitudinally along the surface of the ribbon.Moreover, the process is rapid Baughmans group could produce up to 20 feet of nanotube ribbon per minute.Tartan TapeBaughmans team then layered several ribbons atop one another in a crosswise pattern and dissolved the aerogel substrate, leaving a membrane or thin sheet of nanotubes held together by atomic forces. The sheet was strong laboratory tests showed across its plane, a sheet could support 50,000 times its own weightmaking it stronger pound for pound than a steel sheet of the same dimensions.Moreover, the pure carbon membrane was not only flexible, but an electrical conductor. A swatch of the fabric placed between two electrodes glowed incandescently when a current was applied.The extraordinary strength and lightness of the nanotube sheets suggest they could find use in high-end applications such as military aircraft or motor sports. Also, because the conductive sheets are so thin that theyre nearly transparent when sandwiched between two sheets of plexiglass, they could be incorporated into automobile windshields as antennas or heating elements, or could find a home in photovoltaic cells or in artificial muscles.But the limiting factor is still cost carbon nanotubes are about $1,000 per pound or more, although newer production techniques could bring down the costs under $50 per pound. Although thats a lot for an industrial material, the nanotube supersheets dont require a lot of carbon You could cover an acre with a sheet that weighs only four ounces, Baughman said.Adapted from Wonder Cloth by Jeffrey Wint ers, Associate Editor, Mechanical Engineering, April 2006.Using carbon nanotubes to make stronger ceramics, lighter car bodies, or other materials applications could have enormous impact on day-to-day life.