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Individuals are now avoiding crowded places due to COVID-19. Many people try to make fewer trips to supermarkets and grocery stores. One suggestion that experts gave amid this pandemic is for families to grow their food inside their homes. An example of this is through hydroponics.

What Is Hydroponics?

Hydroponics is simply growing plants, particularly healthy fruits and vegetables, without having to use soil. These plants rely on both nutrients and water for their growth. This technique has been the go-to approach of commercial greenhouses to produce edible plants throughout the year. 

What’s good about this is that plants grow in this medium faster and better. It also requires less space, so you don’t have to worry about setting one up in your small condo or cramped apartment. Lastly, the growing process is pretty straightforward because you can control several factors, like water quality, lighting, and air circulation in this technique. 

How Do You Start?

Starting hydroponics will rely on three essential factors: nutrients, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. These are crucial when creating your system.

• Air Circulation

As mentioned above, hydroponics can be placed anywhere. If you are planning to do this inside your room, ensure that your system still receives ample carbon dioxide. The easiest way to go about this is to make sure that the inside operates on constant airflow. To do this, you may invest in air circulation equipment, such as an electric fan, to improve the airflow.

This factor is vital to the growth of the plant. Poor air circulation combined with high humidity levels may only lead to microorganisms’ growth and fungal problems.

• Growing Media

Keep in mind that water alone will not be able to drive and sustain plant growth. Several macronutrients, such as magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen, and calcium, and some micronutrients are vital as well. Traditional planting requires soil that serves as a rich source of the said nutrients. However, you don’t have to worry about that when it comes to hydroponics.

Hydroponics is a better alternative system since it ensures that every essential nutrient is found in a single medium. In this set-up, you don’t use soil. Instead, you maximize a growing media to deliver nutrients in the water while you keep the roots oxygenated.

You don’t have to make your own growing media. Instead, there are readily-made ones that you can purchase. You’ll find different forms – either organic or synthetic or dry and liquid.

• Lighting

In traditional planting, plants rely heavily on photosynthesis to generate their food. They won’t face any problem as long as there is a steady amount of light. Once they receive light, the plant can convert carbon dioxide, water, and minerals to energy-rich organic compounds, particularly oxygen. 

As mentioned, you can set up your system inside your room. The only question is, how will the plants receive ample amounts of sunlight? With hydroponics, you don’t have to worry about this too much since you can replace sunlight with LED lights. This way, it will be easier and more manageable to control the amount of light indoors. 

The perfect lighting for this type of planting approach is a high-intensity discharge light fixture. These include metal halide bulbs or high-pressure sodium. Lastly, it’s better if you also incorporate a timer with your lighting set-up to manage your lighting during the selected times of the day. 

Pros And Cons Of Hydroponics

• Pros
  • Faster growth
  • Better growth rate
  • More efficient gardening
  • Eco-friendly
  • Needs less space and water
• Cons
  • Expensive
  • Constant monitoring
  • High chances of plant diseases
  • Complex set-up

The Emergence Of Hydroponics

With COVID-19 limiting our purchase movement, it is suggested to shift to this new age of gardening. At the same time, you’ll also be able to control what types of food to eat, especially if you are nursing mental health problems amid the global pandemic.

“Food plays a significant role in our physical health, as well as our mental and emotional health. When you are struggling with depression, it can be overwhelming to think about eating the right foods. However, some of these small changes in your diet may help to decrease your symptoms and have a positive effect on your daily life,” shares Jodi Clarke, MS, LPC/MHSP.

So, aside from mastering the ins and outs of hydroponics, make sure to be responsible for your daily menu. This will help you manage your overall health to prepare you to combat COVID-19.

I got tickets for the 2019 Metaphysics Event without bothering to look for more information about it. As soon as I read “metaphysics” in the title, my brain already deduced that it would be about space, UFOs, and other out-of-the-ordinary things. I had been into this topic from the young age of 10 as I wondered if everything we experienced were real or not. So, my jaw dropped when I entered the auditorium and realized that the panelists’ focus was on causation.

Since I was already there, I decided to try learning a thing or two about the subject matter. I must admit that hearing those people talk about causation like it was the most curious thing in the world had put me in awe. It seemed so simple at first, but it turned out to have many layers. 

In case causation intrigues you, here’s everything you should know about it.

What Is Causation?

Causation is an abstract idea that states that a situation will not exist if something has not caused it. 

What Makes Causation Stand Out?

The concept seems more advanced than the typical cause-and-effect relationship. When you think of the latter, one cause is equal to one effect—no more, no less. When it comes to causation, though, there can be more than a single impact, depending on the routes that will appear.

To give you an example, think of what will happen if you ride a roller coaster multiple times. You may quickly say, “I will undoubtedly puke my guts out.” Still, it may not occur if you have taken pills for motion sickness or pass out before you can even vomit. Other things may happen in between, which may prevent you from puking.

Why Is Causation Often Mistaken As Correlation?

Causation and correlation often get mistaken for each other because it seems like the latter implies the former. Despite that, their differences are visible when you look at it in a statistical view.

Final Thoughts

Causation is merely one of the many things in the world that may always make us think if it exists or not. If you want to know more about this concept, you should look for a related seminar that you can participate in soon. Good luck!

The COVID-19 pandemic has had everybody on their toes ever since cases have escalated and cities shut down. With almost 200 countries infected and cases amounting to more than four million globally, nations are struggling to flatten the curve in their respective areas.

Governments have actively imposed community quarantine measures, and businesses have been down since then. Only companies with essential products like banking, fast-moving consumer goods like food, agriculture, and pharmacies are allowed to operate.

In some areas, governments are finding ways of creating lifestyle continuity for their constituents in this new normal. It seems both private and public sectors have taken the responsibility to contribute in appeasing this global unresolve. Individual people, organizations, and non-government units have donated goods or equipment to hospitals, governments, and groups in need.

On the other hand, big companies like Google and Apple have also teamed up to use technology in combating COVID-19. They have designed mobile apps as an innovative means for contact-tracing and alerts and updates.

This time is possibly the most suitable time for maximizing technology for the general well-being of humanity. As people turn to technologies for genuine solutions, we would like to share other examples of helpful techniques in action.

The World From Space

Several images from space satellites circulate the internet comparing shots of the world from before and during the COVID siege. They have photos of the Disneyland theme park without lines for the rides, or cars in the parking lots.

As people grasp the reality that COVID brings about long term effects, governments urge them to spend for necessities only. We are all left wondering when this pandemic will end. Therefore, as consumers, we must exercise prudence in only bringing home essentials and prioritizing daily needs. Non-essential items are the least of our concerns.

In some households, strictly sticking to daily necessities is the only option. Around 33 million people filed for unemployment in the United States alone. This statistic implicates people are more dependable on government aid.

Highways and freeways are empty as authorities limit mobility as much as possible. Lanes that once filled with numerous lines of cars are sparse. From space satellites, highways look like an unmoving grey strip. Organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) use these aerial shots as data layers.

Since we’d like to limit mobility, this technology enables us to obtain information without actually visiting the area. These images help in determining the number of supplies needed in a field, how to get there, and mapping transmission patterns to prevent disease.

Probing The Environmental Impacts

In other news, global greenhouse gas emissions are lower according to research from trusted organizations like the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). Being on the same page with business tycoons are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), helping with intel and information.

NASA and ESA have been monitoring this whole situation and the bigger picture, literally. With their satellite footage, CREA observed a drastic decline in nitrogen oxide emissions in cities like Italy and China. 

This observation implies how great of an effect the lockdown and travel ban on land and air transportation has on our environment. Environmentalists identify this change to be short-term unless governments and businesses should strictly enforce sustainable business practices.

Data Is Key

Program Manager for Health and Air Quality Applications, John Haynes, MS, shares how their team helps fight the pandemic. “As we continue to collect Earth-observing satellite data on a global scale, we can aid in the understanding of global changes resulting from the pandemic, as well as investigate potential environmental signals that may influence the spread of COVID-19.”

We’ve all heard before that information is vital. It is power. For instance, NASA’s Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) enables us to understand the environmental effects of COVID; they also have other pertinent tools.

Their datasets from Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) also provide information to power an interactive mapping tool to visualize a population’s spatial data based on age and sex. The information here indicates the spread of the virus among specific demographics.

Aside from those, they also involve themselves with government agencies to share intel on water resources, health, and disasters. These datasets provide findings regarding the environment to make better public health decisions. They also help in collecting information to evaluate crop production to safeguard food supplies in a crisis.

Therefore, space technology like satellites can aid in pooling crucial intel to help the world recover from this pandemic. From providing footage with convenience and monitoring the earth in a bigger picture, we can learn about the pandemic’s effects on-ground while finding solutions toward global recovery.

 

If you haven’t read Part 1, it is best to go over it first before reading this since it’s connected. And to continue… When asked if talking with these scientists has made her a believer in the existence of extraterrestrials, Pasulka replies that although she is no longer a nonbeliever, she would also not call herself a firm believer. She does not yet believe in the existence of intelligent life from other planets, but she does admit that strange phenomena that she cannot explain do exist. She also admitted that she was very surprised at the number of scientists researching UFOs and alien life. She had no idea that people from the best universities who were investigating these phenomena existed.

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Diana Pasulka is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina, and she wrote American Cosmic. She states that faith in the existence of Unidentified Flying Objects and intelligent life from other planets is so strong that it’s almost like a religion. Her book is about the widespread belief in UFOs and extraterrestrials and looks at how religions and myths are born and how individuals cope with experiences that they cannot explain.

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  This is a continuation of last week’s blog. — A probably much darker variant of the Neurodiversity is Supernatural is the nightmare Bedlam-style asylum, using institutions such as a mental hospital as a penalty for a character who believes in concepts not typically known to the common man. This also extends to the ‘that crazy guy/gal’ treatment most people live with this conflict with the supernatural, which often ends up with them being ostracized. Read more

  Mental health and neurodiversity are no easy topics to talk about. In fact, it’s the complete opposite, as a whole can of worms can be opened once the discussion goes on. Treatments and results are a vast and wide variety, and the general society may not be feeling the plight of someone whose chronic illness isn’t immediately visible. You may know someone, ranging from a family member to a friend online, who may have been showing signs of such things like depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, PTSD, and many more, and may feel this topic as something genuinely close to home. Read more

Career development is one of the things that you need to focus on if you want to become successful. “In order to find the career that is right fit for you, you must first get in touch with your 4 P’s – passion, personality, preferences and principles,” says Jamie Lewis Smith, PhD. Keep in mind that there is no other way to go but up when it comes to building a career. According to a therapist, a person’s success in business or work can have a significant effect on how he views life. He also emphasized that successful individual are happier and feel content compared to those who have no idea what to do with their career.  

  If you think that you are struggling in career advancement, do not worry because we are going to give you a list of things that you can consider. Before anything else, you have to accept the reality that it is crucial to work hard for what you want. You cannot just sit in the corner and wait for the magic to appear right in front of you. Make an absolute promise to yourself that you will become relentless in your journey to success. Do not let anyone or anything prevent you from reaching your dreams. “Aligning your career with your mission (or message) can sustain you when setbacks occur,” shares Melissa Slawsky, Ph.D. 

For today’s article, allow us to enumerate the smart strategies that you can do to advance your career. All the tips mentioned below came from the notes of a well-known therapist:  

Know What You Want   The initial step that you must take is to be sure of what you want. Make it a top priority to look into your heart’s desires and consider them in making a decision. Do not choose a career just because other people say that it’s the best choice. The right thing to do is to get to know yourself and be aware of the kind of direction that you want to follow. If it means resigning from your current job, then do not be afraid to take it. Remember that sometimes, you have to be strong enough to take the necessary risks.  

Attend Seminars or Conferences   Another excellent way of becoming a better professional is to invest your time in learning new skills. You have to make time for training seminars or conferences that will teach you about the latest updates in your chosen field. Be humble enough to be aware or recognize the fact that you do not know everything that is going on in your industry. Sometimes, you have to get inputs from learned professionals. Remember that some events can be free, which is why you have to ask around.  

 

Be Fearless In Following Your Dreams   As already mentioned above, it may be possible that the only way to advance in your career is to resign from your current job position and look for another one. Be fearless enough to make this decision as soon as possible. Keep in mind that it is crucial to act fast before it is too late. Do not settle for anything less because it will not take you to the top. Instead, be brave enough to chase your dreams even if it means starting over again. It is better to press the re-start button now than live a life full of regrets in the future. According to David M. Kopp, Ph.D. “Remaining resilient helps make sound decisions, think clearly, creatively and maintain the persistence needed to find a career.”

 

Take A Break And De-stress   Take note that success and happiness come hand in hand. You cannot expect to be successful in what you do if you are constantly in search of happiness. As such, it is essential for you to consider your mental health as you strive hard for career advancement. Learn when is the right time to take a break from work or things that keep you busy. De-stressing is the key if you want to move to a higher level in your career. Failure to do this can make you grumpy to the point that it can affect your aspirations or goals. All of a sudden, you will lose interest in your work because of exhaustion or stress.  

  Be Patient   The last thing that you have to instill in your mind is the significance of patience in turning your dream to a reality. Remind yourself that ultimate success does not happen overnight. Just because you exerted all your efforts today does not necessarily mean that you will see the results the following day. It can take several months or even years before you can be promoted in your job and there is nothing wrong with it. What is highly essential is that you know how to whether your current situation is worth fighting for. Assess your current job position and decide if it is worth keeping.   Career advancement takes time, which is why you must not rush it. Enjoy every moment you get.    

The fundamental study of the effects of high altitude on a person’s body is called aerospace physiology. It includes different pressure and levels of oxygen. It explains the body’s particular function and reaction when there is a different level of altitudes. Usually, it provokes more cardiac output and produces significant erythrocytes. But how can psychologist seem to connect it to mental health? Here is how some experts see it.

The constant changes in the body from consistent oxygen deprivation cause energy waste. The damage promotes muscle tensions, fatigue, loss of motor skills, and even decreased proper coordination. However, all results still vary from different levels of altitude. That is because the affected physiques are different when in space and ground. That also explains why people exposed inside pressurized cabins experiences loss of muscle growth. Typically, with the exposure in a higher altitude along with a partial carbon dioxide pressure, the oxygen production decreases. The oxygen degradation is what people call hypoxia. Throughout higher altitude, the arterial saturation of oxygen decreases in as much as 70% on a rapid state. It may not sound so alarming for a lot of people, but it caters a hidden effect in the brain. But what exactly is happening in there?

Oxygen Deficiency And The Brain

The brain is the most vital part of the body that uses a large amount of oxygen. Although it only constitutes 2% of the body’s total weight, it consumes approximately 20% of the entire oxygen production in the system. The brain cells depend on oxygen so it can support a better function of the body. It helps in the blood circulation to boost its overall system have more energy. It promotes total function and regeneration.

However, when the body suddenly does not get enough oxygen, there becomes shortness of breath, and the nonessential body functions begin to shut down. When that happens, the neurons in the brain become affected and can go on a strain condition. The body reacts to that particular moment and attempts to save itself from the loss of energy. That explains why it eventually shows a slow process that people often misinterpret as a weakness. But usually, it is the body’s way of coping with internal dysfunction. Aside from that, when there is a shortage of the supply of oxygen in the brain, one experiences dizziness followed quickly by fainting. In some unfortunate instances, a blackout can occur.

Inadequate oxygen supply to the brain also causes a stroke. There is swelling due to an increased amount of water in it. It leaves pressure that crushes the brain in a slow phase. Loss of oxygen is also responsible for cerebral hemorrhage or the internal bleeding in the brain.

The Minutely Countdown

In some unfortunate instances, when there is not enough oxygenation, the brain causes more than just hallucinations. That is because of 30 to 60 seconds of deprived oxygen results in loss of consciousness. With that 1 minute mark, the brain cells begin to depreciate and die. And in the 3-minute countdown, the more extensive damage in the neurons tends to become permanent. So in 5-minutes, one can expect immediate death. But on that state, the brain is still functioning and putting all of its effort to regeneration. However, in a 10-minute time, even if the brain is still alive, a coma becomes inevitable. So in a 15-minute damage exposure, it becomes nearly impossible to survive.

Mental Degradation

A lack of oxygen induces shallow breathing, and that results in stress and anxiety. Its severity distorts the proper psychological function where it entirely changes the brain’s overall capability. The damage can manifest in the brain’s structure, size, and roles which eventually target the levels of a person’s genes. From there, it negatively secures the buildup of mental confusion, the inability to follow particular instructions, lack of emotional stability, depression, Alzheimer’s diseases, and other psychological problems. Also, oxygen deprivation to the brain associates in the slow process of learning, memory loss, and nerve cell deterioration due to fewer productions of healthy brain cells.

Takeaway

Aerospace physiology focuses on the physical matter associated with altitude. And since oxygenation gets involved in the topic, mental health also becomes part of it. Honestly, all things that happen in the body have something to do with the brain’s function. Whether it is emotional or physical, the psychological state gets often included in the overall discussion. So when the mental health weakens, all systems will eventually shut down.