Note-Taking

“Physics is in eternal chaos. You have to adapt to this condition and like it or you will become a mathematician.”

— theoretical physicist (via scienceprofessorquotes)

7 Self-Compassion Stress Relievers

1. Start the morning with a time of silence so that you feel calm, and are grounded for the day.

2. Set good intentions for yourself. Make sure your automatic thoughts are positive and healthy.

3. Focus on your breathing to relieve anxiety, and create a sense of being strong and in control.

4. Stretch to release any tightness or tension – so you don’t keep carrying the stresses of the day.

5. Set small, realistic and manageable tasks so you don’t start to panic, and feel overwhelmed.

6. Keep your focus on right now – don’t worry about later. You have you need to live this moment fruitfully.

7. Before you go to bed, think of 3 things that went right – and end the day with gratitude – then rest, and get some sleep.

Astronaut Journal Entry - First Days on Space Station

Currently, six humans are living and working on the International Space Station, which orbits 250 miles above our planet at 17,500mph. Below you will find a real journal entry, written in space, by NASA astronaut Scott Tingle.

To read more entires from this series, visit our Space Blogs on Tumblr.

At 22:00, after initial “safing” and unpacking of Soyuz, we finally retired to our quarters. It was very hard to sleep, and I think the busy days leading us to the International Space Station (ISS) were beginning to take their toll. We were scheduled for a full day of work to include familiarization of safety equipment as well as beginning to prepare several science experiments for action. 

The SpaceX Dragon cargo craft arrived to ISS a couple days before we did, and its cargo included several experiments that needed to be conducted promptly upon arrival. I was doing a great job of floating from one module to another. Since I was a little behind schedule due to having to learn where everything is, I decided I could speed up my floating to be more expeditious. Well, we know how that usually goes and this time was no exception. I gathered a “bag of knots” (aviator slang for “going really fast”) and began a healthy transition from Node 2 into the Columbus module – where I predictably hit the top of my head. Ouch. The following three days (Tuesday-Saturday) were challenging as we worked to integrate all of our new knowledge and increase our efficiencies. The senior crew was very helpful and understanding. I was very grateful of how they managed our arrival and how they slowly passed down the information we needed to get started. Everything was different from life on Earth. Everything. We quickly figured out that we needed to think differently as we began to adapt to life in space. Drinking water, preparing food, eating food, using the toilet, working, physical training, etc., all different. I had a good handle on the differences and what to expect before I got there. But I didn’t expect that when operations got very busy that my reflexes would respond naturally as they did on Earth. The light bulb came on. I was going to have to move slower and think about everything before I took action. This is why space fliers new to this environment appear to be less efficient than most managers and/or operations planners would like. Adaptation to life in space takes time, and you can’t rush it.

On day three, I finally had the opportunity to look out the Cupola (window facing Earth). My Lord, what a beautiful sight. I could see the sun rising in front of us, darkness below and behind us, and a bright blue ring highlighting the curvature of the Earth as the sun began to rise. Absolutely amazing!

We wrapped up our busy week and celebrated Saturday night by enjoying some rehydrated meats and instant juices! Christmas Eve, we had a few tasks that kept us busy, and the same on Christmas Day. Fortunately, we were able to have video conferences with our families over the holiday, and it was really nice to talk with them. We also had a very short celebration for Christmas after work was done. Our wonderful Behavioral Health Professionals at NASA had sent us Christmas stockings in the SpaceX cargo delivery. I added the small gifts that I brought for the crew – superhero socks! Mark got Hulk socks, Nemo (Norishige Kanai) got Spiderman socks, Joe got Deadpool socks, Anton got Superman socks, and Sasha and I got Batman socks. NOW, we are ready to conquer space!  

Find more ‘Captain’s Log’ entries HERE.

Follow NASA astronaut Scott Tingle on Instagram and Twitter.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

Can you spot the Lunar Module in the distance? [Apollo 17, Station 6 - North Massif]

To celebrate coming back to uni and getting 100 followers (one. hundred. :O ), it’s #optomstudies here with my first ever study tips post! Here’s a step-by-step guide on sleeping and waking up early! Follow me for weekly study tips!

I decided to make this my first topic because this year I’m unfortunately going to have 8am lectures, meaning I’ll need to wake up at 5:30am to get there from my house! And on top of that night time clinic will last until 9:30pm we’re told, meaning I’m going to be getting home at like 11:30pm :( So I’m resetting my body clock to prepare for it :)

The sunrise from this morning’s run :) #nofilter

THE NIGHT BEFORE

Turn off your devices an hour before sleep. The blue light from your computer and mobile can really disrupt the natural melatonin levels that control your sleep cycle, so I always try to end the day with some sort of reading, whether that be for leisure or some summary notes at the end of the day.

Don’t drink any tea or coffee before you sleep. Better to finish the night off with some warm milk and honey (thank you kuroshitsuji) or something similarly soothing. 

Write down a list of what you want to achieve by waking up early. Seeing or even remembering the list can stop you from crawling back to the warmth of your bed, especially in the middle of winter. When the morning you isn’t able to think clearly, let the motivated you make the decisions! And I wouldn’t recommend making a list of what you achieved today to feel accomplished because how’s that going to help you when you’re going to be asleep and unconscious anyway?

Pick out the clothes you want to wear for tomorrow, and make sure they match the weather! Like with the tasks you want to achieve, it’s not a good idea to let the morning you fumble with clothes and what matches well. Definitely do include a jacket or hoodie that you can slip off once the day gets warmer!

Keep your bed reserved for sleeping. Put your smartphone on the other side of the room so that you aren’t tempted to go and check up on your messages on social media. This will reduce the chance that you start a conversation with some night owl friend that ends up continuing past midnight.

Make sure your room is pitch black. This is so that light doesn’t end up disrupting your sleep cycle and so that you condition your body into thinking that it’s time for sleep.

Clear your mind. Whether you achieve this by meditating or otherwise, don’t think about anything, lest you stay up tossing and turning. This includes both exciting events tomorrow and sad events from today. 

Get either 7.5 or 9 hours of sleep. This is because the brain has sleep cycles that are approximately 90 minutes long, so sleeping past will immediately pull you into the next sleep phase. When you wake up in the middle of deep sleep, you end up feeling groggy and tired throughout the whole next morning.

THE NEXT DAY

Reset your sleep cycle by waking at the same time each day. We all have those nights where we absolutely need to finish something by tomorrow (because the professors all conspired with each other and decided to give us double the homework for each subject due the next day :P) but try to keep it constant when you wake. So if you miss the point where you would’ve slept 7.5 hours, go for 6, since you still have a complete sleeping period, and usually that extra hour or so is enough to get the work finished. So don’t think about sleeping in for afternoon classes, because you’ll just feel worse for wear the next time you have morning classes. 

Go cold turkey. Willpower is like a muscle, the more you exercise it the stronger it gets, and I can see no greater struggle than waking up early, jks. I have tried the gradual method of waking up at 7:30, 7:15, 7:00, etc. but I found the best way is to just so straight to your target wake up time. The first day you feel tired in the middle of the day, but it’s easier than adjusting to a new sleep cycle each morning for a week (or longer if you miss a day). 

Wake up with a full blast of natural light. If your bed is next to a window like mine, then pull up the blinds to let as much natural light in as possible to stop the production of melatonin. 

Set an alarm that you know will wake you up. Whether it be a song you like or a super annoying alarm bell, choose something that you can associate with waking up in the morning. For me, I always use BoA’s song Who Are You, because the music video reminds me of a new day, and it has a lovely and soft piano intro :)

Wake up the first time your alarm rings. Although you want to sleep a little longer in order to feel more refreshed, hitting the snooze button is actually detrimental as this explanation from Maimonides Medical Centre explains:

According to Dr. Yizhak Kupfer, Assistant Director of Critical Care and Pulmonary Medicine, using an alarm clock often wakes a person up in the middle of their sleep cycle and cuts rapid eye movement (REM) sleep short. “Over the course of a night, a person goes through five shifting stages of sleep,“ explains Dr. Kupfer. “The brain constantly goes through these stages, emitting different brain waves that reflect if a person is experiencing lighter or deeper periods of sleep.” People who are reliant on their snooze button can diminish the positive effect of a good night’s rest because they are constantly drifting back to sleep only to be abruptly woken up a few minutes later. This causes a shortened, disrupted sleep cycle right before a person starts their day. 

Jump out of bed immediately. Don’t lie in bed thinking; you’ll just drift off again. 

Have a glass of cold water, but don’t just down a whole bottle in one go, because your kidneys are remarkably good at preventing our electrolyte balance from being thrown out of homeostasis, so downing a heap of water will just make them overwork to reduce the water levels. Just see this ELI5 from reddit, though probably with a pinch of salt, considering all the differing opinions. Best to keep that glass of water next to you as you work and drink a few sips at a time while you are working. 

If you drink an excess of water, you have diluted the careful balance of electrolytes. Your kidneys will rapidly dump that water to ensure these electrolyte concentrations are not diluted. 

Put on your clothes quickly! This one comes from personal experience. In the past just to avoid that chilly feel from clothes when winter comes along, I would get out of bed and get my clothes and stuff them under my blanket and take a quick snooze while they got warm. But that usually just ended with me getting my clothes wrinkled rather than actually doing much in terms of warming them up >_< Plus, now I find that doing it quickly is like a burst of energy to get you going for exercise. 

Finish what you were going to do. Remember that list we wrote last night? Do it now and feel great about doing at least one thing extra this morning. 

Don’t have a cup of coffee (yet)! On waking, our bodies stop the production of melatonin and start the production of cortisol to get you going. Cortisol isn’t just for stress, it also starts gluconeogenesis to increase your blood glucose levels (which is important for your brain function) and increases your metabolism. Drinking coffee will disrupt this natural waking hormone, and it also reduces blood flow to the frontal cortex which is responsible for higher order thinking and cognition, explained in this article: 

Caffeine increases energy metabolism throughout the brain but decreases at the same time cerebral blood flow, inducing a relative brain hypoperfusion.

What this means is that although there is more sugar available, oxygen supply decreases. If you do drink coffee, it’s recommended to drink it around 9:00 or so, after the natural cortisol kicks in. I say it’s better to stick to exercise, which is proven to benefit your health in almost every way. 

Exercise. There’s no need for me to explain that this is the best way to feel energized and refreshed for the rest of the day and to get your heart pumping! The morning air is dewy and hasn’t yet been tampered by the smell of car fumes and other pollution, so breath in :) Play some music with beats that will get you moving (this morning’s run brought to you by f(x)’s Rude Love). I snapped a picture as I left the house just before the sun started to rise :)

Enjoy the benefits of a job well done. Give yourself a pat on the back, because it’s tiring to get up at 6am or earlier! You’ve got your study space all to yourself, enjoy it with a cup of orange juice, and some peace and quiet. Get to work/uni/school nice and early, ready to learn something new and feel proud that you aren’t one of those groggy students with their heads glued to the table! 

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading my first study tips post, I intend to publish more and better posts in the future too! Follow me, as I’ll be doing the 100 days of productivity challenge starting March! (this coming week!)

MY WEEKLY STUDY TIPS

WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN BEFORE UNIVERSITY STUDY TIPS SERIES

0 Choosing a Degree , 1 Administration , 2 Getting to Class

3 Studying , 4 Extra-Curriculars , 5 Exams , 6 Social Life

7 Part Time Work , 8 Four Secrets Uni Tells You

new!! 9 Best Study Spots on Campus new!!

new!! 10 Saving Money 1 (Food, Transport, Entertainment) new!!

coming soon!! 10 Saving Money 2 (Textbooks, Tax, Scholarships)

SEE ALSO

Study Spaces Masterpost , Studying and your Visual System

Catching Up with Your Studies , Dealing with Bad Results

Sleeping and Waking Up Early , Google Keep

My 2017 Planner and Bullet Journal , Study Space , 2017 goals

+ my cute stationery + washi collection + my spreads!

hey guys! here is the requested biology note taking from textbook tutorial! I hope it helps, be sure to send me more requests, happy studying :-)

28.05.2018 ~

Exam in quantum physics tomorrow !! Eek !!

Ten Observations From Our Flying Telescope

SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP aircraft with a 100-inch telescope used to study the solar system and beyond by observing infrared light that can’t reach Earth’s surface.

What is infrared light? It’s light we cannot see with our eyes that is just beyond the red portion of visible light we see in a rainbow. It can be used to change your TV channels, which is how remote controls work, and it can tell us how hot things are.

Everything emits infrared radiation, even really cold objects like ice and newly forming stars! We use infrared light to study the life cycle of stars, the area around black holes, and to analyze the chemical fingerprints of complex molecules in space and in the atmospheres of other planets – including Pluto and Mars.

Above, is the highest-resolution image of the ring of dust and clouds around the back hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The bright Y-shaped feature is believed to be material falling from the ring into the black hole – which is located where the arms of the Y intersect.

The magnetic field in the galaxy M82 (pictured above) aligns with the dramatic flow of material driven by a burst of star formation. This is helping us learn how star formation shapes magnetic fields of an entire galaxy.

A nearby planetary system around the star Epsilon Eridani, the location of the fictional Babylon 5 space station, is similar to our own: it’s the closest known planetary system around a star like our sun and it also has an asteroid belt adjacent to the orbit of its largest, Jupiter-sized planet.

Observations of a supernova that exploded 10,000 years ago, that revealed it contains enough dust to make 7,000 Earth-sized planets!

Measurements of Pluto’s upper atmosphere, made just two weeks before our New Horizons spacecraft’s Pluto flyby. Combining these observations with those from the spacecraft are helping us understand the dwarf planet’s atmosphere.

A gluttonous star that has eaten the equivalent of 18 Jupiters in the last 80 years, which may change the theory of how stars and planets form.

Molecules like those in your burnt breakfast toast may offer clues to the building blocks of life. Scientists hypothesize that the growth of complex organic molecules like these is one of the steps leading to the emergence of life.

This map of carbon molecules in Orion’s Horsehead nebula (overlaid on an image of the nebula from the Palomar Sky Survey) is helping us understand how the earliest generations of stars formed. Our instruments on SOFIA use 14 detectors simultaneously, letting us make this map faster than ever before!

Pinpointing the location of water vapor in a newly forming star with groundbreaking precision. This is expanding our understanding of the distribution of water in the universe and its eventual incorporation into planets. The water vapor data from SOFIA is shown above laid over an image from the Gemini Observatory.

We captured the chemical fingerprints that revealed celestial clouds collapsing to form young stars like our sun. It’s very rare to directly observe this collapse in motion because it happens so quickly. One of the places where the collapse was observed is shown in this image from The Two Micron All Sky Survey.

Learn more by following SOFIA on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com