9 Ways to be Happy in the Next 30 Minutes
There are mornings when we rush out of bed in a vague fog. Days that seem to spiral progressively down the drain. But sometimes, all we need to do is stop. Take a breath. And re-discover ourselves in the moment. "Being happier doesn't have to be a long-term ambition," Gretchen Rubin states. "You can start right now." She suggests that little things, like taking a walk outside, doing a good deed, r... posted on Jun 30, 38255 reads

The Brain of a Sociopath
"You see that? I'm 100 percent. I have the pattern, the risky pattern. In a sense, I'm a born killer." An ironic statement, coming from a neuroscientist who studies the brains of killers. After discovering his own lineage to be wrought with murderers, Jim Fallon peered into his own brain and found that, genetically speaking, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He found an empty area in his o... posted on Jul 2, 6414 reads

The Compliment Guys
"I like your jeans." "I like your brown shoes." "Have a nice day!" Don't you love it when someone says something nice about you? Doesn't that brighten your day? Imagine how wonderful your day would be if someone said something nice about you, just because. Brett Westcott and Cameron Brown, also known as The Compliment Guys at Purdue University, are doing exactly that. "When people come up after th... posted on Jul 5, 3523 reads

Generosity Water
What happens to a young man who has been a successful business person since the 8th grade, who by his senior year was earning six figures then loses it all when the real estate market goes under? Well, if you're Jordan Wagner, you bring clean drinking water to people in need. "I had lost everything I had made. This humbling experience helped me realize that I had been living a pretty selfish lifes... posted on Jul 4, 1963 reads

A Village of Our Future
Tucked away in the small village of Kamikatsu, Japan is a phenomenon that is saving the future of our planet. This township of just over 2,000 residents separates household waste into 34 categories, recycling everything under the kitchen sink: food, phones and even sake bottles! Most likely the first to achieve Japan's mission of a zero waste environment by the year 2020, Kamikatsu emulates hope ... posted on Jul 8, 4679 reads

Leap of Faith
Susan Schaller's story, comparable to "the Miracle Worker, is still not widely known. Perhaps it's so amazing, it's hard to grasp. How can one understand what it means not to have a language at all? For a man already 27 years old, to be in such a situation was considered completely hopeless. Fortunately, Schaller didn't know the situation was considered hopeless. Instead, she followed her instinct... posted on Jul 13, 6881 reads

A Yogi Stumps Science
In hopes to find insights on how soldiers, astronauts, or victims of natural disasters might survive without food or drink, military doctors studied an 83-year-old holy man who says he has spent seven decades without food or water. Prahlad Jani spent 15 days in a hospital in the western India state of Gujarat under constant surveillance from a team of 30 medics equipped with cameras and closed cir... posted on Jul 25, 3764 reads

11-Year-Old Feeds Thousands
It all began in third grade, when Katie Stagliano didn't know what to do with her 40-pound cabbage. She ended up taking it to a local soup kitchen, where her first encounter with homelessness inspired her current journey. Now, in sixth grade, Katie's six gardens have produced over 4,000 pounds of vegetables to feed the needy. "It makes you feel so good to see someone that young with that amount of... posted on Aug 22, 4165 reads

The Miracle of Mistakes
Do you remember the first time you rode a bicycle? Can you relieve the exhilaration of riding free, the sense of triumph as you broke free to the crutches of support? Now step back. How many times did you fall off the bike before that first ride? Today, fear of making mistakes is deeply ingrained in our psyche. At home, mistakes lead to admonishments. At work, mistakes have serious repercussions. ... posted on Jul 27, 7359 reads

The Blazeman: An Ironman
Completing in an ironman triathlon is no small feat - a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride followed by a marathon (26.2 mile run)! Jon Blaise recently completed all of this while having a debilitating disease called ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), which attacks the motor neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain and spinal cord. "I think when I'm sitting in a wheelchair, down the road... posted on Aug 4, 3123 reads

The Little Red Wagon
"Some boys like to play baseball, some boys like to play football. He likes to do charity work," explains Zach Bonner's mom, chuckling. In 2004, six-year-old Zach went door to door with his little red wagon to collect water for the victims of Hurricane Charlie. Inspired by helping others, he started his own charity, aptly named, The Little Red Wagon Foundation. Since then, Bonner has raised thousa... posted on Aug 14, 2385 reads

Box of Chocolates Marathon
For a serious distance runner, 7 hours, 48 minutes is not a great marathon time. But for Brian Fugere, it's a miracle. He'd been diagnosed with synovial sarcoma -- a rare soft-tissue cancer -- in his lung. Yet during his fourth cycle of chemotherapy, he still managed to drag an IV pole for all 26.2 miles. Oh, and this marathon took place in a hospital hallway. Inspired by Lance Armstrong's book th... posted on Aug 18, 3401 reads

Scientists Discover by Sharing
A wealth of recent scientific papers on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is announcing groundbreaking discoveries, thanks to an unprecedented initiative by key players in public, private and academic sectors: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer's disease in the human brain. The key to this Alzheimer's project was an agreement as am... posted on Aug 16, 2622 reads

8 Ways to Keep Cool in Summer
The torrid summer of 2010 will cap off the hottest decade ever recorded on our planet. In efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, people across the globe are stepping up and cooling down, AC-free. "The key is to focus on people-cooling, not building-cooling," states author Steven Cox. "Your body is constantly converting chemical energy from food into heat... But filling a home with chilled, stil... posted on Aug 24, 3861 reads

Lessons From Caring For Strangers
In 1973, Charles Garfield discovered a lost civilization in San Francisco: the occupants of cancer wards in hospitals, hordes of anxious people facing a limited life span, whose social and psychological needs were going unmet by their well-meaning, but largely ignorant caregivers. Turning to volunteers, Garfield trained over 15,000 to provide sophisticated emotional support to the seriously and t... posted on Jan 17, 3402 reads

A Law for Cooperation
What do you call a lawyer who helps people share, cooperate, barter, foster local economies, and build sustainable communities? That sounds like the beginning of a lawyer joke, but actually, it's the beginning of new field of law practice. The evolving nature of our transactions has created the need for a new area of law practice. We are entering an age of innovative transactions, collaborative tr... posted on Oct 9, 4344 reads

Outside the Box, Inside the Cubicle
There are certain kinds of creative, off beat ideas that are simply obvious when you hear them. Tarak Shah and Sabina Nieto came up with one. With the economic downturn, every office building in the country probably has unrecognized resources: vacant cubicles. No doubt many are utilized as storage spaces for disabled copy machines, extra office supplies and the like, but here's an inspired possibi... posted on Sep 2, 3149 reads

The Business of Giving
Recently divorced Mike Hannigan was in a grocery store looking for spaghetti sauce when he came across Newman's Own for the first time. Discovering that all the profits of the competitively priced brand were donated to charity made something to click for the office products company manager. "As a consumer I wasn't making any sacrifice," he says. "Use business as a tool to accomplish a community go... posted on Sep 16, 3317 reads

How To Be Alone
What can we learn about ourselves when we let go of our fear of loneliness? With this fun, quirky video, filmmaker Andrea Dorfman and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis show us how to ease into loneliness- starting in easy places like the bathroom or coffee shop, turning off our cell phone security blankets, honoring the things we like to do by ourselves-as we learn to enjoy it and nurture ourselv... posted on Sep 13, 8594 reads

Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter?
One memorable Swedish study found that, among more than a million 18-year-old boys who joined the army, better fitness correlated with higher I.Q.'s, even among identical twins. Hoping to learn more about how fitness affects the developing brain, a recent study found that fit children had significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and "executive ... posted on Sep 29, 2630 reads

On Perseverence
After losing financial aid and student loans due to unit limitations, college student Brian Smith became homeless and took refuge, sleeping in the practice rooms of his music department.Throughout his struggle, he remained focused on his education by accumulating a 3.65 GPA at CSULB while balancing a heavy workload. His efforts were recognized Tuesday as he received $3,000 from the Hearst/CSU Trus... posted on Sep 25, 2818 reads

Inspiring a Community of Hope
When Nancy Sieglar was diagnosed with breast cancer, sunflowers saved her life. With no reason other than, "they make me feel good and give me inner strength," Sieglar began growing the regal flowers with love, an act that helped her get through some very scary times. Now, her garden - brimming with 26 species of sunflowers, some as tall as 16 feet - is burgeoning into a vibrant sanctuary of hope.... posted on Oct 2, 2908 reads

The Monday Night Soup Master
For some, Monday night is about football. For others, it's dance class or a favorite television sitccom. But for Richard Semmler, it's an evening of soup and service. After serving Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter one year, Richard Semmler thought, "Why not serve every week?" Since that fateful day ten years ago, Semmler, a mathematics professor, has been a steady Monday-night anchor at h... posted on Oct 4, 3306 reads

Can Meditation Increase Kindness?
When Richard Davidson told his advisers at Harvard that he planned to study the power of meditation in the 1970s, they winced. But Dr. Davidson would one day find a mentor with a different frame of mind: the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan spiritual leader recently announced plans to donate $50,000 to the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at Madison, a new research lab founded by Davidson that invest... posted on Dec 18, 3588 reads

4 Ways to a Happier Workday
Do you suffer from the Sunday night blues five nights a week? In his study at Harvard University, author Shawn Achor found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs. From his experience designing a course on happiness, working with Fortune 500 companies across 42 countries, and restarting the world's largest banks after the economic collapse, Achor concludes, "Most people b... posted on Oct 22, 58707 reads

DIY Foreign Aid Revolution
Like so many highly trained young women these days, Elizabeth Scharpf has choices. She could be working in a Manhattan office tower with her Harvard Business School classmates, soaring through the ranks as a banker or business executive, aspiring to become a C.E.O. There's no question that women enjoy opportunities that didn't exist a few decades ago. Yet those exerting the greatest pressure for c... posted on Nov 6, 2861 reads

Phone Booths Find New Lives
It's iconic, a symbol of British-ness the world over: the red telephone box. But they are disappearing as fast as you can say "cell phone." With 85 percent of adult Brits using mobile phones, these booths are rapidly becoming obsolete. Now they are being recycled for astonishing and eccentric uses. The empty, often vandalized phone boxes are a huge expense for British Telecom (BT), so they have be... posted on Dec 7, 3151 reads

Leadership Through Solitude
"We have a crisis of leadership in America." In a speech delivered at West Point, writer William Deresiewicz states that many of today's leaders have jumped through the hoops and climbed up the greasy ladder of hierarchy only to maintain the status quo. Real leadership, though, "means finding a new direction, not simply putting yourself at the front of the herd that's heading toward the cliff." Th... posted on Nov 20, 8294 reads

Grandmother Runs a Hospital of Hope
Several times a week, a 74-year-old grandmother drives into the crime capital of the world to help keep a sanctuary for its citizens alive. Guadalupe Arizpe De La Vega insists on returning to her hometown to preserve the Hospital de la Familia, a health center she started more than 30 years ago. Despite the violence, De La Vega's hospital and its staff- which treats about 900 patients daily, regar... posted on Nov 9, 5038 reads

The Starbucks Cup Dilemma
Eighty percent of drinks walk out of Starbucks stores. An astonishing 3 billion of the 200 billion-plus paper cups thrown into US dumps each year bear its familiar green logo. In October 2008, Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz pledged to make 100 percept of Starbucks cups recyclable by 2012. This lofty-yet-laudable goal has led Starbucks to move from solo redesign efforts to enlisting paper mills, NGOs,... posted on Nov 28, 2967 reads

Dalai Lama: A Professional Laugher?
"I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh often, and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher." So begins an excerpt by Dalai Lama on why he laughs: ... posted on Nov 13, 9513 reads

Couple Gives Away Lottery Winnings
What would you do if you won 11.3 million dollars? If you're Allen and Violet Large, you give it away. The couple discovered they had won the jackpot last July, while Violet was undergoing chemotherapy therapy for cancer. "That money we won was nothing," Allen explains with tears in his eyes. "We have each other." Since July, they've given almost all of it away, first taking care of a family in ne... posted on Dec 4, 3984 reads

In the Footsteps of Gandhi
As they say, the more things change, the more they remain the same. And this adage will be proven true by a British woman who will walk on the path Mahatma Gandhi took 80 years ago. Eight decades ago, Gandhi embarked on a Salt March demanding to break free from British colonialism through a nonviolent movement. Starting today, an inspired Jill Beckingham will retrace his route in the same Gandhian... posted on Nov 18, 2542 reads

A Marathon with Heart, Literally
Just six months after undergoing open heart surgery, John Stamler crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon. Stamler, however, did not just run for himself. He ran to raise awareness and funds for an organization that helped him through the difficulties and isolation of his rare condition. Diagnosed with a condition so rare that it just affects 0.00004% of the US population (or about 1... posted on Dec 6, 2201 reads

Mall Shoppers Get a Surprise
Shopping can be exhausting, whether or not it's the holiday season. Enjoying a meal of pizza and Coke in the food court one afternoon, mall shoppers were also served an unsuspecting and generous reminder of life's spontaneous miracles.... posted on Feb 4, 9955 reads

Fairness Driven By Culture, Not Genes
Human behaviors are often explained as hard-wired evolutionary leftovers of life on the savannah or during the Stone Age. But a study of one very modern behavior, fairness toward total strangers one will never meet again, suggests it evolved recently, and is rooted in culture rather than biology. In a series of behavioral tests given to 2,100 people in societies around the world (from hunter-gathe... posted on Jan 29, 3357 reads

The Empathy Experiment
According to a recent study today's college students are 40 percent less empathetic than graduates from two or three decades ago. A disconcerting finding that raises this question: Can empathy be taught? Denvy Bowman, President of Capital University, is launching a year-long project to find out. Working closely with six students who will undergo an "empathy immersion", Bowman will also study wheth... posted on Dec 12, 2375 reads

New Kind of New Year's Resolution
"I'm not going to shrink my hips or grow five inches in 2011. I didn't in 2010, 2009, or 2008, despite my penchant for making New Year's resolutions that defy common sense and human physiology. The only thing more depressing than a personal pledge unmet is one so unrealistic it couldn't be kept even if plastic surgery was free," Philadelphia Inquirer's Monica Yant Kinney writes. That's why this ... posted on Dec 31, 4676 reads

If Santa Claus Was An Engineer...
Of all the gifts that will be exchanged this holiday season, there probably aren't too many that will change someone's life. But a robotics workshop in Seattle has taken the holiday tradition and given it a high-tech twist. When Yoky Matsuoka started getting emails from parents of disabled children asking for help, the neurobiotics pioneer made it her hobby to build devices to assist kids in need.... posted on Dec 25, 3661 reads

Virtual Doctors Reach the Rural Poor
These days, it's not uncommon to skype a friend overseas, or videochat with family over the holidays. But how about using videoconferencing to provide health care to rural villages? That's what E Health Point Services is up to. By opening clinics up in rural India, the program allows patients to video chat with a doctor, and then run necessary tests and get the appropriate medicine from the clinic... posted on Jan 14, 2973 reads

Man Mails $5 to Strangers to Spread Good Will
Daniel Simonton has been sending $5 bills to strangers in the mail. And in return, he wants nothing. The idea came while he was walking down Broadway Avenue in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. He "distinctly noticed how a lot of people seemed really cranky." "I started to wonder when the last time it was someone did anything nice for these people," Simonton said. And so the experiment began...... posted on Jan 13, 3762 reads

Graphene Wins Nobel Prize
Two University of Manchester scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their pioneering research on graphene, a one-atom-thick film of carbon whose strength, flexibility and electrical conductivity have opened up new horizons for pure physics research as well as high-tech applications. Graphene is one of the strongest, lightest and most conductive materials known to humankind. It's al... posted on Feb 3, 3908 reads

7-Month-Old Babies Can 'Read Minds'
Babies as young as 7 months old may be able to take into account the thoughts and beliefs of other people, a younger age than previously demonstrated. 7-month-olds have little experience with conversation, which has long been thought to play a key role in acquiring this capacity. As a result, this study is thought to be significant in building new theories about how this capacity develops. In the ... posted on Feb 13, 1724 reads

Giant Water Lily: Nature's Hidden Designs
In still or slowly-moving waters there is one easy way to collect light: a plant can float its leaves upon the surface. No plant does this on a more spectacular scale than the giant Amazon water-lily. First surfacing as a simple bud, within a few hours, it bursts open and starts to spread. Expanding at the rate of half a square yard in a single day, the leaf grows until it is six feet across and s... posted on Jan 8, 4876 reads

Stem Cell Transplant Helps Athletic Student See Again
Taylor Binns was nearly blind by the time he met Allan Slomovic this fall at Toronto Western Hospital. A rare, extremely painful disorder that damages stem cells in the cornea had blurred his vision. Sometimes it felt as if he was being stabbed in the eyes with a knife. But the fourth-year Queen's University student is celebrating the gift of sight thanks to his kid sister, Tori, and a new stem ce... posted on Jan 9, 1598 reads

Jogging for a Smile
Lots of people jog for exercise. And as long as you're going for a run, why not run an errand for someone who needs the help at the same time? That's the idea behind The Good Gym, an organization that matches runners with elderly and less mobile people in their neighborhood who need groceries, errands, or just some friendly human connection. On top of runner's high, The Good Gym volunteers finish ... posted on Jan 23, 1715 reads

Being the Change In Bihar
In an under-construction school building in India's Bihar village, children are learning algebra, chemistry, Newton's laws of motion. There's no teacher in the classroom, no blackboard. The teacher is hundreds of miles away, and he is teaching via Skype. In this very unsual school, teachers mark their attendance using a biometric fingerprinter, and students log their attendance in a computer. The ... posted on Jan 26, 4163 reads

A Light in India
When we hear the word "innovation," we often think of new technologies or silver bullet solutions - like hydrogen fuel cells or a cure for cancer. But some of the greatest advances come from taking old ideas or technologies and making them accessible to millions of people who are under-served. One off-the-grid electricity company based in Bihar is doing just that. With an innovative solution to th... posted on Feb 1, 3482 reads

Building Green Houses from Garbage
Texas home builder Dan Phillips transforms trash into artful treasures, creating intricate floor mosaics with wood scraps, kitchen counters from ivory-colored bones and roofs out of license plates. The fantastical houses which spring from his imagination cost as little as $10,000 and are made almost entirely with materials which would otherwise have ended up in a garbage dump.... posted on Jan 28, 6473 reads

London's Cycle Superhighways Hailed as a Success
Transport for London say the two new Superhighways have been a big success, with an average usage increase of 70%. The traffic on these Superhighways, which connect parts of London to the financial City, is bicycles. Mayor of London's transport advisor, Kulveer Ranger, said: "This research shows that people do believe the routes are of value, make them feel safer, and are allowing them to take di... posted on Feb 18, 3165 reads