Gratitude is a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. The experience of gratitude has historically been a focus of several world religions. The systematic study of gratitude within psychology only began around the year 2000, possibly because psychology has traditionally been focused more on understanding distress rather than understanding positive emotions. 

It is an emotion that occurs after people receive help, depending on how they interpret the situation. Specifically, gratitude is experienced if people perceive the help they receive as valuable to them, costly to their benefactor, and given by the benefactor with benevolent intentions rather than ulterior motives. When faced with identical situations where they have been given help, different people view the situation very differently in terms of value, cost, and benevolent intentions, and this explains why people feel differing levels of gratitude after they have been helped. 

Gratitude may also serve to reinforce future prosocial behaviors in benefactors. For example, one experiment found that customers of a jewelry store who were called and thanked showed a subsequent 70% increase in purchases. In comparison, customers who were thanked and told about a sale showed only a 30% increase in purchases, and customers who were not called at all did not show an increase. In another study, regular patrons of a restaurant gave bigger tips when servers wrote “Thank you” on their checks.

A large body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well being. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships. Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance. Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpret and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem.

While many emotions and personality traits are important to well being, there is evidence that gratitude may be uniquely important. First, a longitudinal study showed that people who were more grateful coped better with a life transition. Specifically, people who were more grateful before the transition were less stressed, less depressed, and more satisfied with their relationships three months later. Second, two recent studies have suggested that gratitude may have an unique relationship with well being, and can explain aspects of well being that other personality traits cannot. 

Given that gratitude appears to be a strong determinant of people’s well-being, several psychological interventions have been developed to increase gratitude. One study had participants test a number of different gratitude exercises, such as thinking about a living person for whom they were grateful, writing about someone for whom they were grateful, and writing a letter to deliver to someone for whom they were grateful. Participants in the control condition were asked to describe their living room. Participants who engaged in a gratitude exercise showed increases in their experiences of positive emotion immediately after the exercise, and this effect was strongest for participants who were asked to think about a person for whom they were grateful.

Lapis lazuli is a semiprecious stone prized since antiquity for its intense blue color. It has been mined in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan for 6,500 years, and trade in the stone is ancient enough for lapis jewelry to have been found at Predynastic Egyptian sites. Lapis beads have been found at neolithic burials in Mehrgarh in Pakistan, the Caucasus, and as far from Afghanistan as Mauritania in northwest Africa.

Many of the blues in painting from medieval Illuminated manuscripts to Renaissance panels were derived from lapis lazuli and used in tempera paint. Ground to a powder and processed to remove impurities and isolate the component lazurite, it forms the pigment ultramarine. This clear bright blue, which was one of the few available to painters before the 19th century, was rare and expensive.

As tempera painting was superseded by the advent of oil paint in the Renaissance, painters found that the brilliance of ultramarine was greatly diminished when it was ground in oil and this, along with its cost, led to a steady decline in usage. Since the synthetic version of ultramarine was discovered in the 19th century, along with other 19th century blues such as cobalt blue, production and use of the natural variety has almost ceased, though several pigment companies still produce it and some painters are still attracted to its brilliance and its romantic history.

The first noted use of lapis lazuli as a pigment can be seen in the 6th- and 7th-century AD cave paintings in Afghanistan temples, near the most famous source of the mineral. Lapis lazuli has also been identified in Chinese paintings from the 10th and 11th centuries, in Indian mural paintings from the 11th, 12th, and 17th centuries, and on Anglo-Saxon and Norman illuminated manuscripts from c.1100. Natural ultramarine is the most difficult pigment to grind by hand, and for all except the highest quality of mineral sheer grinding and washing produces only a pale grayish blue powder. At the beginning of the 13th century an improved method came into use, described by the 15th century artist Cennino Cennini.

This process consisted of mixing the ground material with melted wax, resins, and oils, wrapping the resulting mass in a cloth, and then kneading it in a dilute lye solution. The blue particles collect at the bottom of the pot, while the impurities and colorless crystals remain in the mass. This process was performed at least three times, with each successive extraction generating a lower quality material. The final extraction, consisting largely of colorless material as well as a few blue particles, brings forth ultramarine ash which is prized as a glaze for its pale blue transparency.

The pigment was most extensively used during the 14th through 15th centuries, as its brilliance complemented the vermilion and gold of illuminated manuscripts and Italian panel paintings. It was valued chiefly on account of its brilliancy of tone and its inertness in opposition to sunlight, oil, and slaked lime. It is, however, extremely susceptible to even minute and dilute mineral acids and acid vapors, which destroy the blue color producing hydrogen sulfide in the process. Acetic acid attacks the pigment at a much slower rate than mineral acids. Because of this susceptibility, ultramarine was only used for frescoes when it was applied is such a way that the pigment was mixed with a binding medium and applied over dry plaster.

European artists used the pigment sparingly, reserving their highest quality blues for the robes of Mary and the Christ child. As a result of the high price, artists sometimes economized by using a cheaper blue, azurite, for underpainting. Most likely imported to Europe through Venice, the lazuli pigment was seldom seen in German art or art from countries north of Italy. Due to a shortage of azurite in the late 16th and 17th century the demand for the already expensive pigment increased dramatically.

In 1814 Tassaert observed the spontaneous formation of a blue compound, very similar to lazuli if not identical with it, in a lime kiln at St. Gobain, which caused the French Society for the Encouragement of Industry to offer, in 1824, a prize for the artificial production of the precious color. Processes were devised by Jean Baptiste Guimet and by Christian Gmelin, then professor of chemistry in Tubingen. While Guimet kept his process a secret Gmelin published his, and thus became the originator of the artificial ultramarine industry.

It was once believed that lapis had medicinal properties. It was ground down, mixed with milk and applied as a dressing for boils and ulcers. The Romans believed that lapis was a powerful aphrodisiac. In the Middle Ages, it was thought to keep the limbs healthy, and free the soul from error, envy and fear.

Visioning is a popular method in the studies of desirable futures that gives emphasis to values. The visioning process is based on the assumption that images of the future lead peoples’ present behaviours, guide choices and influence decisions. Images of the future can be positive or negative and cause different responses according to the perceptions.

Vision is usually seen as a positive, desirable image of the future and can be defined as a compelling, inspiring statement of the preferred future that the authors and those who subscribe to the vision want to create.

There are a number of issues that need to be addressed while using the visioning method. Vision comprises peoples’ values, wishes, fears and desires. In order to make the visioning process work it is necessary to ensure that it is not making an idealistic wish list, that vision is an image of the future shared by a whole community, and that the vision is translatable into reality.

Vision building is thinking in the future and determining where a person or organization wants to go. Individually, a vision will be different from visioning with a group. This way of visioning may work in this linear form of visioning, but there is a more powerful way of visioning which is called Field Process Visioning. It is a way of thinking about the vision as a surrounding field. 

The epitome of Field Process Visioning is captured in Cervantes’ statement, “The road is more important than the inn.” Here goals are minimized, and the road or the field is emphasized. In so doing, the ubiquitous nature of the vision arises into the present moment. Instead of having a destination to pull a person or organization forward, Field Process Vision permeates and guides the individual and the organization.

Clarity between the difference of vision and mission is essential. Vision is knowing where you want to go or what you want to become. Vision includes both tangibles, such as what products define you in the world, as well as intangible products such as the surrounding values, virtues and culture. Vision is like a collage of you and your family, or you and your organization, and you are all standing in the present while unfolding the future intention.

Peter Senge, in The Fifth Disciple Field Book, says “The test of a vision is not in the statement, but in the directional force it gives the organization.” Mission is the reason for being and the work being pursued to realize the vision. 

Dr. Michael Beckwith states that “Visioning is a process by which we train ourselves to be able to hear, feel, see, and catch God’s plan for our life or for any particular project we’re working on. It is based on the idea that we’re not here to tell God what do or to ask God for things, but to absolutely be available for what God is already doing, to open ourselves up to what’s already happening.”

When Einstein said, “I want to know the thoughts of the creator, the rest is a detail,” he was demonstrating the difference between leadership and management. Management is concerned with the details of the vision, leadership with goals and values. Both are important and both have their place in the creative process in which an individual or organization is engaged as one brings dreams into actuality.

Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University. She was diagnosed as autistic in 1950, and at age two she was placed in a structured nursery school with what she considers to have been good teachers. Grandin’s mother spoke to a doctor who suggested speech therapy, and she hired a nanny who spent hours playing turn based games with Grandin and her sister.

At age four, Grandin began talking, and she began making progress. She considers herself lucky to have had supportive mentors from primary school onwards. However, Grandin has said that middle school and high school were the worst parts of her life. She was the the one who everyone teased and picked on. She would be walking down the street and people would say “tape recorder,” because she would repeat things over and over again. Grandin states that “I could laugh about it now, but back then it really hurt.”

After graduating from Hampshire Country School in Rindge, New Hampshire in the 1960s, Grandin went on to college. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Franklin Pierce College, her master’s degree in animal science from Arizona State University, and her Ph.D. in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Based on personal experience, Grandin advocates early intervention to address autism, and supportive teachers who can direct fixations of the autistic child in fruitful directions. She has described her hypersensitivity to noise and other sensory stimuli. She claims she is a primarily visual thinker and has said that language is her second language. Temple attributes her success as a humane livestock facility designer to her ability to recall detail, which is a characteristic of her visual memory.

Grandin compares her memory to full length movies in her head that can be replayed at will, allowing her to notice small details that would otherwise be overlooked. She is also able to view her memories using slightly different contexts by changing the positions of the lighting and shadows. Her insight into the minds of cattle has taught her to value the changes in details to which animals are particularly sensitive, and to use her visualization skills to design thoughtful and humane animal handling equipment.

One of her most important essays about animal welfare is “Animals are not Things,” in which she posits that animals are technically property in our society, but the law ultimately gives them ethical protections or rights. She uses a screwdriver metaphor: a person can legally smash or grind up a screwdriver but a person cannot legally torture an animal.

Grandin says “the part of other people that has emotional relationships is not part of me” and she has neither married nor had children. She lives alone in Fort Collins, Colorado. Beyond her work in animal science and welfare and autism rights, her interests include horse riding, science fiction, movies, and biochemistry. She describes socializing with others as “boring” and has no interest in reading or watching entertainment about emotional issues or relationships.

She has noted in her autobiographical works that autism affects every aspect of her life. She has to wear comfortable clothes to counteract her Sensory Integration Dysfunction and has structured her lifestyle to avoid sensory overload. She regularly takes antidepressants and uses a squeeze box (hug machine) that she invented at the age of 18 as a form of stress relief therapy.

Despite this anxiety, she has stated that, “If I could snap my fingers and become nonautistic I would not do so. Autism is part of who I am.” As a proponent of neurodiversity, Grandin has expressed that she would not support a cure of the entirety of the autistic spectrum.

Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician and writer. It first appeared in the title of his book The Use of Lateral Thinking, published in 1967. De Bono defines lateral thinking as methods of thinking concerned with changing concepts and perception. Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.

Techniques that apply lateral thinking to problems are characterized by the shifting of thinking patterns, away from entrenched or predictable thinking to new or unexpected ideas. A new idea that is the result of lateral thinking is not always a helpful one, but when a good idea is discovered in this way it is usually obvious in hindsight, which is a feature lateral thinking shares with a joke.

Edward de Bono points out that the term problem solving implies that there is a problem to respond to and that it can be resolved. That eliminates situations where there is no problem or a problem exists that cannot be resolved. It is logical to think about making a good situation, that has no problems, into a better situation. Sometimes a problem cannot be solved by removing its cause. Lateral thinking can be used to help in solving problems but can also be used for much more.

We may need to solve some problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place. – Edward de Bono

Critical thinking is primarily concerned with judging the truth value of statements and seeking errors. Lateral thinking is more concerned with the movement value of statements and ideas. A person would use lateral thinking when they want to move from one known idea to creating new ideas. It can also be put as, critical thinking is like a post-mortem while lateral thinking is like diagnosis.

Lateral Thinking Puzzles are also known as Situation puzzles. They are strange situations where puzzlers are given a limited amount of information and then have to ask questions of a quizmaster who can only answer yes or no. The general principles that apply when tackling lateral thinking puzzles are to check all assumptions, to remain open-minded and to be creative in questioning. The leading authors of books of Lateral Thinking Puzzles are Paul Sloane and Des MacHale who have written a series of books published by Sterling Publishing.

Here are some fun lateral thinking questions:

There is a man who lives on the top floor of a very tall building. Every day he gets the elevator down to the ground floor to leave the building to go to work. Upon returning from work though, he can only travel half of the distance up riding in the elevator and has to walk the rest of the way up unless it’s raining! How can this be?

Mel Colly stared through the dirty soot smeared window on the 26th floor of the office tower. Overcome with depression he slid the window open and jumped through it. After he landed he was completely unhurt. Since there was nothing to cushion his fall or slow his descent, how could he have survived?

There was a hotel where the visitors complained about the slow moving elevator and how long they had to wait for it to come. It became so severe that the manager was asked to do something about it. If you were the manager what would you suggest?

And here are the fun lateral thinking answers:

The man is very, very short and can only reach halfway up the elevator buttons (assuming the levels of the buttons designating floors increases from bottom to top). However, if it is raining then he will have his umbrella with him and can press the higher buttons using it. Alternatively, the man’s daily job finishes in this very building halfway up, except when it’s raining. Perhaps he’s a security guard who makes rounds floor by floor in the morning and watches a security monitor in the afternoon, except when it’s raining. It never said he takes the elevator before walking, just that he does both.

Mel Colly was so sick and tired of window washing, he opened the window and jumped inside. Alternatively, Mel’s office was in another building, on the first floor, and he was looking at the 26th-floor window of another tower. The window in the second sentence then refers to that of Mel’s office, not the 26th-floor one. Mel could also have had a balcony.

Most of us would come up with ideal answers to call the elevator service center and ask them to send someone to fix it. Warn the visitors about it. Change the system. Lateral thinking applied, a consultant advised the hotel to fix mirrors next to the elevators. This would cause people to be busy looking at themselves in the mirror and adjusting their dress, hair and may be watching someone else in the mirror. They would not feel the wait. This actually worked for the hotel, and they did not receive complaints anymore.

The Coast Redwood is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia. It is an evergreen, long lived, monoecious tree living for up to 2,200 years, and this species includes the tallest trees on Earth, reaching up to 379 feet. The current tallest tree was discovered in Redwood National Park during Summer 2006 by Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor and has been measured as the world’s tallest living thing. There are 33 measured living trees more than 361 feet.

Coast Redwoods occupy a narrow strip of land approximately 470 miles and 5-47 miles in width along the Pacific coast of North America. The elevation range is mostly from 90 to 1200 feet, occasionally down to sea level and up to 3,000 feet. They usually grow in the mountains where there is more precipitation from the incoming moisture off the ocean. The tallest and oldest trees are found in deep valleys and gullies, where year round streams can flow and fog drip is regular. The trees above the fog layer are shorter and smaller due to the drier, windier, and colder conditions. In addition, tanoak, pine and Douglas-fir often crowd out redwoods at these elevations. Few redwoods grow close to the ocean, due to intense salt spray, sand and wind.

The northern boundary of its range is marked by two groves on the Chetco River on the western fringe of the Klamath Mountains, 15 miles north of the California-Oregon border. The largest populations are in National Parks in Del Norte and Humboldt Counties, and in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

This native area provides a unique environment with heavy seasonal rains of up to 100 inches annually. Cool coastal air and fog keep the forest consistently damp year round. Several factors, including the heavy rainfall, create a soil with less nutrients than are necessary, causing the trees to depend heavily on the entire biotic community of the forest and complete recycling of the trees when dead. This forest community includes Coast Douglas-fir, Western Hemlock, Tanoak, Pacific Madrone, and other trees along with a wide variety of ferns, Redwood sorrel, mosses and mushrooms. 

Redwood forests provide habitat for a variety of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Old growth redwood stands provide habitat for the federally threatened Spotted Owl and the California-endangered Marbled Murrelet.

The thick, tannin-rich bark, combined with foliage that starts high above the ground provides good protection from both fire and insect damage, contributing to the Coast Redwood’s longevity. The oldest known Coast Redwood is about 2,200 years old. Many others in the wild exceed 600 years. Interestingly enough, Coast Redwoods because of their seemingly timeless lifespan were deemed the everlasting redwood at the turn of the century. In Latin, sempervirens means everlasting, a coincidence unbeknown to those who named these giants.

The prehistoric fossil range of the genus is considerably greater, with a subcosmopolitan distribution including Europe and Asia until about 5 million years ago.

Coast Redwood is one of the most valuable timber species in California, with 899,000 acres of redwood forest, all second growth, managed for timber production. Coast Redwood lumber is highly valued for its beauty, light weight, and resistance to decay. Its lack of resin makes it resistant to fire. Because of its impressive resistance to decay, redwood was extensively used for railroad ties and trestles throughout California. Many of the old ties have been recycled for use in gardens as borders, steps, etc. Redwood burls are used in the production of table tops, veneers, and turned goods.

The Coast Redwood is locally naturalized in New Zealand, notably at Rotorua. Other areas of successful cultivation outside of the native range include Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, the Queen Charlotte Islands, middle elevations of Hawaii, a small area in central Mexico and the southeastern United States from eastern Texas to Maryland.

The tallest non-redwood tree is a 331 foot tall Eucalyptus regnans, dubbed Centurion, discovered near Hobart in Tasmania, Australia.
 

Gold is a highly prized precious metal, having been used as money, in jewelery, in sculpture, and for ornamentation since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, underground veins and in alluvial deposits. Pure gold is dense, soft, shiny and has a bright yellow color traditionally considered attractive.

It has been known and highly valued since prehistoric times. It may have been the first metal used by humans and was valued for ornamentation and rituals. Egyptian hieroglyphs from as early as 2600 BC describe gold. The earliest known map is known as the Turin papyrus and shows the plan of a gold mine in Nubia together with indications of the local geology. Large mines also occurred across the Red Sea in what is now Saudi Arabia.

The Romans developed new methods for extracting gold on a large scale using hydraulic mining methods. One of their largest mines was in Spain, where seven long aqueducts enabled them to sluice most of a large alluvial deposit. The legend of the golden fleece may refer to the use of fleeces to trap gold dust from placer deposits in the ancient world. 

The Mali Empire in Africa was famed throughout the old world for its large amounts of gold. Mansa Musa, ruler of the empire, gave away so much gold that it took over a decade for the economy across North Africa in 1324 to recover, due to the rapid inflation that it initiated. The European exploration of the Americas was fueled in no small part by reports of the gold ornaments displayed in great profusion by Native American peoples, especially in Central America, Peru, and Colombia.

One main goal of Medieval alchemists was to produce gold from other substances, presumably by the interaction with a mythical substance called the philosopher’s stone. Although they never succeeded in this attempt, the alchemists promoted an interest in what can be done with substances, and this laid a foundation for today’s chemistry.

During the 19th century, gold rushes occurred whenever large gold deposits were discovered. The first documented discovery of gold in the United States was at the Reed Gold Mine near Georgeville, North Carolina in 1803. Further gold rushes occurred in California, Colorado, and Klondike.

Gold is the most malleable and ductile metal. A single gram can be beaten into a sheet of one square meter, or an ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become translucent. The transmitted light appears greenish blue, because gold strongly reflects yellow and red.

In various countries, gold is used as a standard for monetary exchange. Gold formed the basis for the gold standard of international currency used before the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Pure gold is too soft for ordinary use as coins and is typically hardened by alloying with copper or other base metals. The gold content of gold alloys is measured in carats (k), pure gold being designated as 24k.

High quality pure metallic gold is tasteless. Some modern esotericists and forms of alternative medicine assign metallic gold a healing power. Gold flake was used by the nobility in Medieval Europe as a decoration in foodstuffs and drinks, either to demonstrate the host’s wealth or in the belief that something that valuable and rare must be beneficial for one’s health. Goldwasser is a traditional herbal liqueur produced in Schwabach, Germany, and contains flakes of gold leaf. 

Gold alloys are used in restorative dentistry, especially in tooth restorations, such as crowns and permanent bridges. The gold alloys’ slight malleability facilitates the creation of a superior molar mating surface with other teeth and produces results that are generally more satisfactory than those produced by the creation of porcelain crowns. The use of gold crowns in more prominent teeth such as incisors is favored in some cultures and discouraged in others.

Because of its historically high value, much of the gold mined throughout history is still in circulation in one form or another. 75% of all gold ever produced has been extracted since 1910. It has been estimated that all the gold in the world that has ever been refined would form a single cube 66 feet wide on each side.

Recent research undertaken by Sir Frank Reith of the Australian National University shows that microbes play an important role in forming gold deposits, transporting and precipitating gold to form grains and nuggets that collect in alluvial deposits.