Who Wouldn't Want To Be a "Genius"?

First off, who wouldn't want to be a genius or at least bump-up there brains a bit?  And secondly, the written word has never been my strong point.  So you can see how this article caught my eye.  

I've tried writing in a personal journal before, hearing that "successful people" keep journals, and have never kept it up.  Then not sticking with it became disparaging of itself.  So seeing words like: scribbling, trivialize, and lying?, peeked my curiosity right away.  How could these ideas help me be a better writer?  Especially me, actually, the one who loves to write research papers and struggles with speaking about myself or coming up with a cohesive story for children.  

So, I plan on giving this a shot for a week to see what happens.  And for accountabilities sake, I'll post back here on any insights I've gained through the exercise.  Have to exercise your brain remember!  Make sure you keep growing new dendrites.  :-)

5 Freewriting Secrets for Being a "Genius"

These 5 tips enhance freewriting to generate more ideas.

Published on November 21, 2010

You've heard of freewriting, certainly. At its most basic, it's about forcing your internal editor to stay away while you splash your most raw and unusual thoughts onto the page.In Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insights, and Content (2nd edition, revised & updated), Mark Levy tells how he uses freewriting, not only to loosen up his writing muscles, but to solve business problems of all kinds.
Levy, author, writing teacher, and marketing strategist, shares a few "secrets" for making freewriting an indispensible tool:

5 Freewriting Tips

1. Try Easy. "Start scribbling, then remind yourself that you're simply looking to put some decent words and ideas down on the page: you're not trying to produce deathless prose and world-beating ideas in the course of a single night's writing." That recalls my own advice to "trivialize the task."

2. Work the Way You Think. "Use kitchen language. Coined by Ken Macrorie, it's a phrase that describes the language you use around the house when you're lounging in knock-around clothes. It's good strong language, but not the kind you'd normally use to get your point across in most settings."

3. Learn to Love Lying. Freewrite about fantastic scenarios and you may find your mind unclogged. "If an element in your situation is small, think of it as tiny or jumbo." For a fascinating example of this, see the giant puppet girl.

4. Getting a Hundred Ideas Is Easier Than Getting One. When you seek the one great idea, your perfectionism gets in the way of creativity. When you set out to amass lots of ideas, you won't stop at the first halfway decent one.

5. Build an Inventory of Thoughts. Make good use of your freewriting pages by grabbing and sorting keepable ideas into a set of files (or a writer's notebook).
Levy elaborates on each of those tips, and many more, using anecdotes from many realms. (I suggest you keep a batch of yellow stickies handy while you read.)

Copyright (c) 2010 by Susan K. Perry
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creating-in-flow/201011/5-freewriting-secrets-being-genius

Even Closer to the Dream of an HIV Vaccine

Researchers report on the early development of anti-HIV neutralizing antibodies

Friday, January 14, 2011

New findings are bringing scientists closer to an effective HIV vaccine. Researchers from Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (Seattle BioMed), Vanderbilt University and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard report findings showing new evidence about broadly-reactive neutralizing antibodies, which block HIV infection. Details are published January 13 in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens.

According to author Leo Stamatatos, Ph.D., director of the Viral Vaccines Program at Seattle BioMed and a major stumbling block in the development of an effective vaccine against HIV is the inability to elicit, by immunization, broadly reactive neutralizing antibodies (NAbs). These antibodies bind to the surface of HIV and prevent it from attaching itself to a cell and infecting it. However, a fraction of people infected with HIV develop broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) capable of preventing cell-infection by diverse HIV isolates, which are the type of antibodies researchers wish to elicit by vaccination.

"We've found that the people who develop broadly-reactive neutralizing antibodies – which are about 30% of those infected – tend to have a healthier immune system that differs from others who don't develop those antibodies," Stamatatos explained, saying that these antibodies target only a few regions of HIV which is good from the standpoint of vaccine development. "It gives us less to target," he said.

In addition, the new findings show that these antibodies are generated much sooner than previously thought, in some cases as soon as a year after infection.

"These studies provide a strong rationale to begin teasing out the early immunological signals that allow some individuals, but not others, to mount broadly reactive neutralizing antibody responses," adds co-author Galit Alter, Ph.D.

"Now we know that these broadly-reactive neutralizing antibodies don't develop simply by chance and we can work to understand what makes this 30% of the HIV-infected population different," Stamatatos explained. By understanding that, we can hopefully use that information to design new immunogens and immunization protocols that can mimic the early events that lead to the development of such antibodies during natural infection."

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Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org

Thanks to Public Library of Science for this article.

http://www.labspaces.net/108590/Researchers_report_on_the_early_development_of_anti_HIV_neutralizing_antibodies