It's a question we'd all like answered: Is there life after death? In November of 2009 I was pronounced clinically dead. But the diagnosis was correct only up to a point. My experience fed a fierce curiosity to know how normal such experiences are. Since that time, I have interviewed 184 people who have also been to the other side and returned. I have a diverse collection of anecdotal evidence that there is indeed more to life than life. Would you be interested in seeing some or all of my 70,000-word manuscript? I can send the complete manuscript, or if you prefer, sample chapters and a detailed synopsis. I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

Phyllis has arranged to take the morning off to spend time with her daughter, Gloria. Phyllis is so happy that she is able to spend time with her little angel. Things are moving right on schedule and she heads to the supermarket with her daughter. Time passes, and with only an hour left before getting to the office, Phyllis becomes conscious of the clock. Phyllis tries to place her daughter in the shopping cart, but she repeatedly screams NO SIT! With a nervous grin on her face, Phyllis masks the anger she feels. She has never been challenged so strongly by Gloria. In all the mess of the scene, Phyllis does not realize the significance of the event. For the very first time, she heard Gloria put two words together to express a thought.

Archaeologist Mark Aldenderfer set out last year to explore remote cliffside caves in Nepal's Mustang district, aiming to find human remains near an ancient settlement high in the Himalayas. Almost at once, he came face-to-face with what he was seeking: Sticking out from the rock, a skull was looking at him right as he was looking at it. The skull, dating back perhaps 2,500 years, was among many human bones piled inside several burial caves. Aldenderfer and his team hope that DNA analysis will pinpoint the origins of this isolated region's inhabitants, who may have migrated from the Tibetan Plateau or southern points.

Ultrasound, an imaging technique, produces an image by bouncing sound waves off an object inside the body. A picture is then made using the reflected sound waves. The frequency of sound waves used in ultrasound imaging ranges above human hearing. The choice of frequency depends on how deep into the body the sound waves are needed to penetrate. Lower frequencies allow doctors to see structures deeper inside the body. The lower the frequency, however, the less clear the image will become. Doctors use ultrasound to visualize the size and structure of internal organs.

We tend to consider water consumption in strictly immediate terms, such as taking a shower or doing the laundry. But it overlooks the inter-connectivity of water use and does not take into account virtual water consumption. Virtual water refers to water used in the production of an industrial or agricultural product. A single cotton T-shirt, for example, requires over 700 gallons of water to be brought into being. While purchasing a T-shirt involves no direct water expenditure, the garment is the product of a large investment of water resources.

According to a psychologist, a business executive spends an hour of his day reading, two hours talking and eight hours listening. Yet in school we spend a large amount of time teaching children how to read, a small amount of time teaching them how to speak, and usually no time at all teaching them how to listen. I do not believe it would be a good thing to make what we teach in school exactly proportional to what we do after school, but I do think we would be wise to give our children some instruction in the process of listening. Listening well is an exercise of attention and those who listen well tend to have good relationships with colleagues.

Years ago, I was involved in planning a police operation that was to take place in Lakeland, Florida. As the mission planner was describing the operation order, he seemed to have everything covered. His arms were outstretched over two chairs as he confidently explained the very detailed arrest plan. Suddenly someone asked, Have you contacted the Lakeland ambulance crew? Instantly the mission planner withdrew his arms and dropped them between his knees, palms together. He went from dominating a large space to being as narrow as possible, all because he had not made the necessary arrangements. He suddenly lost the initiative. This is a striking example of how quickly our behaviors ebb and flow depending on our level of confidence.

A pot-stirrer is someone who brings up emotional issues that have already been resolved. Pot-stirrers want to feed the emotional fire and keep it burning for the excitement of the conflict. They can be subtle; they often even appear to be the helpful friend or caring listener. Let's say you've just let go of a minor conflict with your neighbor, when your other neighbor continues to bring up how annoying this person is, encouraging you to hold on to your irritation with the person. The same applies at work. A coworker keeps reminding you that it was you, not Gail, who really deserved the credit for that great idea. Every time he or she says it, it upsets you and opens your wound again.

Aristotle distinguished between essential and accidental properties. Essential properties are those without which a thing wouldn't be what it is, and accidental properties are those that determine how a thing is, but not what it is. For example, Aristotle thought rationality was essential to being a human being. Socrates' rationality was essential to his being Socrates. On the other hand, Aristotle thought Socrates' property of being snub-nosed was merely accidental; being snub-nosed was part of how Socrates was, but it wasn't essential to what or who he was. In other words, take away Socrates' rationality, and he's no longer Socrates, but give him plastic surgery, and he's Socrates with a nose job.

A team of researchers found out the alarming low death rate of a small village of Roseto and started to investigate it. While investigating, they realized that the secret of Roseto wasn't diet or exercise or genes or location. They looked at how the Rosetans visited one another. They learned about the extended family clans that underlay the town's social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof, and how much respect grandparents commanded. They noticed the particular belief in equality of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from boasting about their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures. These findings suggested the Rosetans had created a closely connected and protective social structure.

In a study, hundreds of participants were asked to watch a short film and then discuss it with another participant. Half the participants were given an impression management goal to appear outgoing, smart, or happy. After the discussions, participants rated themselves and the person they had chatted with across several personality traits. Those with an impression management goal rated their conversation partner significantly lower on the trait they were trying to show in themselves, but not on other personality traits. This seems to happen because when we focus on exaggerating a particular trait in ourselves, we unconsciously increase the standard for that trait in others ― and they usually fall short. So just because someone you're trying to impress doesn't seem as active, friendly or positive as you are, don't assume that they truly aren't. It could just be that what impression you are trying to give to others has changed the game.

Farmers plant more seeds than are necessary to ensure full breeding. If more plants sprout than are necessary, the extra plants should be pulled out, before they choke out the most promising sprout. It can be difficult for farmers to kill their own offspring, even though they know it's for the best. Writers sometimes face the same dilemma. You are faced with tough choices where certain scenes you love and worked hard on just don't fit into the story. Maybe there is a character you adore, but he does nothing to move the story along. If you are getting good sound advice from all around you that certain materials don't work, think about being flexible in order to make sure you don't choke out the story with them.

In Europe, if your industry declines and you lose your job, it is a big blow but not the end of the world. You will still keep your health insurance and public housing, while receiving unemployment benefits, government-subsidized retraining and government help in your job search. In contrast, if you are a worker in the US, you'd better hold on to your current job because losing your job means losing almost everything. Unemployment insurance coverage is smaller than in Europe. There is little public help with retraining and job search. More frighteningly, losing your job means losing your health insurance and your home, as there is little public housing or public subsidies for your rent. As a result, worker resistance to any industrial restructuring that involves job cuts is much greater in the US than in Europe.

It is the elderly who often suffer the most as temperatures drop. Physiologically, their blood vessels are more liable to contract and their blood pressure rises. Financially, they are less likely to turn up the heating and more likely to use public transport. Socially, they may have fewer people around them to identify their problems. One of the effects of aging is that your body is less able to regulate its temperature, so you become less able to judge if you are warm or cold. Failing to keep adequately warm can expose older people to the threat of cold-related illnesses, which contribute to thousands of excess winter deaths each year.

We tend to think of the skin as a separate organ ― just a wrapping of our more delicate inner parts. But the skin is connected to every system in the body ― from your circular and digestive systems to your immune and nervous systems. All must work interactively for total body health. Both heart and skin, for example, rely on veins. This helps explain why, when you get angry, your heart beats faster and your face reddens. This interconnectedness between the skin and the internal body is largely forgotten by people who see skin as a distinct entity. It's a two-way street. When we damage the skin, we damage our insides. Similarly, what we experience inside our bodies could have indications on the outside.

For many generations, scholars and artists tended to concentrate their energy on one particular subject. For Shakespeare, that interest was literature. For Mozart, that interest was musical composition, and for Newton, physics. Visual artists were not expected to understand higher mathematics, nor were philosophers expected to study engineering. However, with the development of the Internet and other sources of instantaneous information, many people strive to gain at least a working knowledge of many different subjects. So-called pancake people no longer concentrate their energies on one area of interest, but instead choose to spread themselves thinly over a large area. As a result, a new generation of pancake people have essentially become the proverbial jacks of all trades, but masters of none.

Bright colored foods frequently seem to taste better than bland-looking foods, even when the flavor compounds are identical. Foods that somehow look off-color often seem to have off tastes. For thousands of years, human beings have relied on visual cues to help determine what is edible. The color of fruit suggests whether it is ripe; the color of meat whether it is fresh. Flavor researchers sometimes use colored lights to modify the influence of visual cues during taste tests. During one experiment in the early 1970s, people were served an oddly colored meal of steak and French fries that appeared normal beneath colored lights. Everyone thought that the meal tasted fine until the lighting was changed. Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill.

The above graph shows how tuition fees and dorm and board costs for full-time college students changed over the last 30 years. Over the period, both college tuition fees and dorm and board costs for full-time students went up steadily. Of all the periods, the 1978-1984 period was the when college students paid more for their dorm and board costs than for their tuition fees. During the 1988-1989 period, tuition fees surpassed dorm and board costs for the first time and the former cost more than the latter thereafter. The tuition fees of the 2008-2009 period were more than twice those of the 1993-1994 period. The gap between tuition fees and dorm and board costs was the biggest during the 2008-2009 period.

The pilum was a heavy spear, used for thrusting or throwing by Roman soldiers. It had a leaf-shaped iron head, 60 to 90 centimeters long, embedded in or socketed onto a wooden shaft with a short iron spike at the rear. Its length seems to have been around 163 centimeters, although examples as long as 274 centimeters were found in the excavation of a swamp site in Illerup, Denmark. Roman armies were the only ones who used the pilum, which may mean there were strict regulations on its manufacture and trade. During the second century A.D. there was a decline in the use of the pilum, but in the third and fourth centuries it regained its popularity and was used against the early barbarian invaders.

Foot-and-MouthDisease(FMD)isahighlycontagious disease caused by a virus. It is almost exclusive to cattle, sheep, swine, goats, and other cloven-hoofed animals. Among its symptoms are fever, loss of appetite and weight, and blisters on the tongue, lips, other tissues of the mouth, and the feet. The disease is readily spread by contact; by contaminated food or water; or through the air. Humans, who seldom contract the disease, may be carriers, as may rats, dogs, birds, and wild animals. Complete disposal of infected animals and disinfection of contaminated material are prescribed to limit contagion. No effective treatment exists; vaccines control epidemics but have not eliminated them.

I packed the few things that I possessed, and I set out on a journey westward to my uncle's. I mourned both for my mother and the world I was leaving behind. Before I disappeared behind the hills, I turned and looked at my village for the last time. I could see the simple huts and the people going about their chores; the stream where I had splashed and played with the other boys; the maize fields and green pastures where the herds and flocks were lazily grazing. Above all else, my eyes rested on the simple hut where I had enjoyed my mother's love. It was this hut that I associated with all my happiness, with life itself, and I rued the fact that I had not kissed it before I left.

Consider a fascinating study by a major French food manufacturer testing two different containers for a diet mayonnaise product aimed at female shoppers. Both containers held the exact same mayonnaise and bore the exact same label. The only difference was the shapes of the bottles. The first was narrow around the middle, and thicker at the top and on the bottom. The second had a slender neck but a fat, round bottom, like a genie bottle. When asked which product they preferred, every single subject ― all diet-conscious females ― selected the first bottle without even having tasted the stuff. Why? The researchers concluded that the subjects were associating the shape of the bottle with an image of their own bodies.

The motor of our ingenuity is the question Does it have to be like this?, from which arise political reforms, scientific developments, improved relationships, and better books. The Romans hated winter cold and developed under-floor heating. They didn't wish to walk on muddy roads, so they paved them. They didn't want to suffer the frustration of a shallow public baths, so they drew water through mountains and across valleys in a system of aqueducts and underground pipes. The Chinese didn't want to find their sailors lost on the sea, so they invented a compass to help them. They were unhappy when the sailing ship could only move when the wind blew from behind them, so they invented sails that allowed ships to sail against the wind. There would be few great human achievements if we accepted all our frustrations.

The forbidding sands of the Sahara might seem an unusual place for farming. But if you're farming silicon to make solar panels, the conditions in the Sahara are more or less optimal. At least, that's the thinking behind the Sahara Solar Breeder Project. The plan, a joint project proposed by Japanese and Algerian universities, would use the desert's immense supplies of sunlight and sand to breed solar power plants and solar panel factories. The idea is to start with a small number of silicon manufacturing plants that will produce the silicon needed to manufacture solar panels. Once those panels are operating, they can be used to power the silicon plants, which in turn produce more silicon and solar panels. The universities envision breeding enough silicon and solar panels by 2050 to supply half the world's energy.

A tree seems to be vulnerable in many aspects. Its overall architectural and biological design would seem to doom it from the start. A narrow trunk topped by a gigantic sail made of leaves would seem to make it a structure destined to fall over in even a modest wind. The distance between the roots, which gather the water, and the leaves, which transform that water via photosynthesis, is a long, gravity-defying journey ― in some cases a trip exceeding the length of a football field. Their initial growth, a very slow pace compared with the shrubs and weeds around them, would seem to set up a battle for sunlight and water they could never win. Yet, trees have not only survived but thrived.

Anthropologist Brain Hare has done experiments with dogs, where he puts a piece of food under one of two cups, placed several feet apart. The dog knows that there is food to be had, but has no idea which of the cups holds the prize. Then, Hare points at the right cup, taps on it, and looks directly at it. What happens? The dog goes to the right cup virtually every time. Yet when Hare did the same experiment with chimpanzees, the chimps couldn't get it right. A dog will look at you for help, and a chimp won't. This difference is in their cooperations with humans. Hare explains that primates are very good at using the cues of the same species. But they are not good at using human cues when you are trying to cooperate with them. In contrast, dogs pay attention to humans, when humans are doing something very human. Dogs aren't smarter than chimps, but they just have a different attitude toward people, and they are really interested in humans.

When a firm discovers a new drug, patent laws give the firm a monopoly on the sale of that drug. During the life of the patent, the monopoly firm maximizes profit by controlling the quantity and the price. But eventually when the patent on a drug expires, other companies quickly enter the market and begin selling so-called generic products that are chemically identical to the former monopolist's brand-name product. And expectedly, the price of the competitively produced generic drug is well below the price that the monopolist was charging. The expiration of a patent, however, does not cause the monopolist to lose all its market power. Some consumers still remain loyal to the brand-name drug, perhaps out of fear that the new generic drugs are not actually the same as the drug they have been using for years. As a result, the former monopolist can continue to charge a price at least somewhat above the price charged by its new competitors.

Architects are usually rewarded according to the uniqueness of their work. But an architect intent on being different may in the end prove as troubling as an over-imaginative pilot or doctor. However important originality may be, adherence to familiar form emerges as the more significant virtue in architecture. We rarely wish to be surprised by novelty as we go round street corners. We require consistency in our buildings, for there is already too much confusion around us. We need the discipline offered by similarity, just as children need regular bedtimes and familiar foods. We require that our buildings act as guardians of composure when we are in them. The architects who benefit us most may be those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius. They will devote themselves to designing graceful but unoriginal buildings, where we will not feel disoriented.

Sen no Rikyu was the most famous tea master of all in Japan. He was famous for his remarkable ability to harmonize himself with his guests' thoughts and to think one step ahead, enchanting them by adapting to their taste. Once, another great 16th-century Japanese tea master Takeno Sho-o passed by a house. He noticed a young man watering flowers near his front gate. Two things caught Sho-o's attention — first, the graceful way the man performed his task; second, the beautiful rose of Sharon blossoms that bloomed in the garden. He stopped and introduced himself to the man, whose name was Sen no Rikyu. Sho-o wanted to stay, but had to hurry off for a prior engagement. Before Sho-o left, however, Rikyu invited him to take tea with him the next morning. Sho-o happily accepted. When Sho-o opened the garden gate the next day, he was horrified to see not a single flower remained. More than anything else, he had come there to see the rose of Sharon blossoms that he had not had the time to appreciate the day before. Now, disappointed, he started to leave, but at the gate he stopped himself, and decided to enter Sen no Rikyu's tea room. Immediately inside, he stopped in his tracks and gazed in astonishment: Before him a vase hung from the ceiling, and in the vase stood a single rose of Sharon blossom, the most beautiful one in the garden. Somehow Sen no Rikyu had read his guest's thoughts, and with this one eloquent gesture, had demonstrated that this day's guest and host would be in perfect harmony. Sen no Rikyu was no magician or seer — he watched those around him acutely, understanding the subtle gestures that revealed a hidden desire, then producing that desire's image. Although Sho-o never spoke of being enchanted by the rose of Sharon blossoms, Rikyu read it in his eye. He knew that studying people's eyes was a surer barometer of pain and pleasure than any spoken word.

Most managers want huge results with little risk. It just doesn't work that way. You've got to encourage risk taking without penalty. Human beings by nature hate to lose. We're willing to take risks when there's little downside, especially if we can see a huge potential upside. But when things are going fine, we shy away from taking risks. Not a good idea! In a corporation, too often it's one foul and you're benched. But in the NBA, every player is allowed six fouls per game. Company managers and executives should establish a six-foul rule, and make it known to everyone. Think about how some of the most successful coaches in the NBA view fouls. If LeBron and Kobe end the game with zero fouls, you know they're not playing their best game. If they end the game with five fouls, they've pushed it to the limit and chances are they've scored more points, gotten more rebounds, and gotten more steals. Once in a while, you foul out. That's part of the game. Winners know one thing all too well: You're not going to win every game. Let your players get their fouls. Innovations will come faster, sales will be higher, and you'll learn from failure. Remember the traditional path is risk-free, but it will produce average results, average market share, and average profits. Unless you climb a mountain, you may never know what you missed.