Reference: https://www.wired.com/story/living-in-a-simulation/?utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_brand=wired-science&mbid=social_fb_sci&fbclid=IwAR3wVZzKuTmn9n-oKZDNdkjLDn2-HtThIi9fctQq-SIczvI0NZMqIe4LcD8 

Of Course, We’re Living in a Simulation

The only people who absolutely disagree are, well, scientists. They need to get over themselves and join the fun.

The only explanation for life, the universe, and everything that makes any sense is that we’re living inside a supercomputer.ILLUSTRATION: ELENA LACEY; GETTY IMAGES

 

THE BEST THEORY physicists have for the birth of the universe makes no sense. It goes like this: In the beginning—the very, if not quite veriest, beginning—there’s something called quantum foam. It’s barely there, and can’t even be said to occupy space, because there’s no such thing as space yet. Or time. So even though it’s seething, bubbling, fluctuating, as foam tends to do, it’s not doing so in any kind of this-before-that temporal order. It just is, all at once, indeterminate and undisturbed. Until it isn’t. Something goes pop in precisely the right way, and out of that infinitesimally small pocket of instability, the entire universe bangs bigly into being. Instantly. Like, at a whoosh far exceeding the speed of light.

Impossible, you say? Not exactly. As the Italian particle physicist Guido Tonelli has pointed out, it actually is possible to go faster than light. You simply have to imagine spacetime, and the relativistic limits imposed by it, not quite existing yet! Easy peasy. Besides, that’s not even why the theory makes no sense. It makes no sense for the same reason every creation myth since the dawn of, um, creation makes no sense: There’s no causal explanation. What, that is to say, made it happen in the first place?

 

Tonelli, in his confidently titled book Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began, calls the “it” that made it happen the inflaton. It’s the mystery thing/field/particle/whatever that jump-starts the engine of cosmic inflation. (They thought it might be the Higgs boson, but it’s not. The true God particle is still out there.) Imagine, Tonelli says, a skier cruising down a mountain, who then stalls a little in a depression on the slope. That depression, the unexpected dip or hiccup in the ordered way of things, is the inflaton-induced disruption in the foam out of which the entire known universe, and all the matter and energy it would ever need to make stars and planets and consciousness and us, suddenly springs. But, again, the same question intrudes: What made the inflaton make the dip?

It makes no sense … until you imagine something else. Don’t imagine a snowy slope; it’s too passive. Imagine, instead, someone sitting at a desk. First, they boot up their computer. This is the quantum-foam stage, the computer existing in a state of suspended anticipation. Then, our desk person mouses over to a file called, oh I don’t know, KnownUniverse.mov, and double-clicks. This is the emergence of the inflaton. It’s the tiny zzzt that launches the program.

In other words, yes, and with sincere apologies to Tonelli and most of his fellow physicists, who hate it when anybody suggests this: The only explanation for life, the universe, and everything that makes any sense, in light of quantum mechanics, in light of observation, in light of light and something faster than light, is that we’re living inside a supercomputer. Is that we’re living, all of us, and always, in a simulation.

 

THREE THINGS NEED to happen, and probably in this order, for any crackpot idea to take hold of the culture: (1) its nonthreatening introduction to the masses, (2) its legitimization by experts, and (3) overwhelming evidence of its real-world effects. In the case of the so-called simulation hypothesis, you could hardly ask for a neater demonstration.

 

In 1999, a trio of cinematic mindfucks—The Thirteenth Floor, eXistenZ, and, of course, The Matrix—came out, all illustrating the possibility of unreal realities and thus fulfilling condition (1). Four years later, in 2003, (2) was satisfied when the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom concluded in a much-cited paper titled “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” that, heavens to bitsy, you very possibly are. It’s simple probabilities: Given that the only society we know of—ours—is in the process of simulating itself, through video games and virtual reality and whatnot, it seems likely that any technological society would do the same. It could very well be simulations all the way down.

 

As for the arrival of (3), the real-world proof of such a thing, it depends on who you ask. For many liberals, it was the unimaginable election, in 2016, of Donald Trump. For The New Yorker, it was, rather fogeyishly, the 2017 Academy Awards, when Moonlight oops’d its way to Best Picture. For most others, it was the Covid-19 pandemic, whose utter ludicrousness, pointlessness, Zoominess, and neverendingness couldn’t help but undermine, at a breathtaking scale, any reasonable belief in the stability of our reality.

So, nowadays, the result on the ground is that simulation theorists are a digitized dime a dozen. Elon Musk is their fearless leader, but just below him are eager beavers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, lending something like scientific credibility to Musk’s Bostrom-bolstered claim that “the odds that we are in base reality”—the unsimulated original world—are “one in billions.” In a way, it’s like 1999 all over again: Last year, three more movies about dudes who realize the world they live in isn’t real—Bliss, Free Guy, and Matrix 4—came out. Only difference now is, lots of regular guys (and it’s almost always guys) in “real life” believe the same thing. You can meet a bunch of them in the documentary A Glitch in the Matrix, which also came out last year. Or you can just poll some randos on the street. A few months ago, one of the regulars at my local coffee shop, known for overstaying his welcome, excitedly explained to me that each simulation has rules, and the rule for ours is that its beings—meaning us—are primarily motivated by fear. Awesome.

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If that weren’t enough, this past January, the Australian technophilosopher David Chalmers published a book called Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, the central argument of which is, yes indeed: We live in a simulation. Or, more accurately, we can’t know, statistically speaking, that we don’t live in a simulation—philosophers being particularly prone to the plausible deniability of a double negative. Chalmers isn’t some rando, either. He’s probably the closest thing to a rock star the field of philosophy has, a respected mind, a TED talker (is that a leather jacket?), and a coiner of phrases non-philosophers might even know, like “the hard problem of consciousness” or, to explain why your iPhone feels like such a part of you, the “extended mind.” And his new book, despite its terrible title, is far and away the most credible articulation of simulation theory to date, 500 pages of immaculately worked-through philosophical positions and propositions, rendered in clean, if rarely shiny, prose.

Chalmers seems to think his timing couldn’t be better. Thanks to the pandemic, he writes in the intro, our lives are already pretty virtual. So it’s not hard to imagine them only getting more virtual, as time goes on and Facebook/Meta metastasizes, until—within a century, Chalmers predicts—VR worlds will be indistinguishable from the real one. Except he wouldn’t quite phrase it that way. For Chalmers, VR worlds will be—are—just as “real” as any world, including this one. Which might, itself, be virtually simulated, so what’s the difference? One way he attempts to convince you of this is by appealing to your understanding of reality. Picture a tree, he says. It seems solid, very there, very present, but as any physicist will tell you, at the subatomic level, it’s mostly empty space. It’s barely there at all. “Few people think that the mere fact that trees are grounded in quantum processes makes them less real,” Chalmers writes. “I think that being digital is just like being quantum mechanical here.”

 

•  

Makes perfect sense to me, as well as to the great hordes of my fellow simulation theorists out there—but not, again, to the very people who study the makeup of reality. The physicists themselves, unfortunately, still hate us.

ILLUSTRATION: ELENA LACEY; GETTY IMAGES

“BUT THIS IS nonsense,” says the Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli. “I mean, why should the world be a simulation?”

This is typical of the flustered incredulity mustered up by the physics community whenever the subject of the simulation disturbs the learned serenity of their exemplary calculations. Lisa Randall at Harvard, Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, David Deutsch at Oxford, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhin, the list goes on and on, and they all make versions of the same point: Our perceiving brains “simulate” the world around us, sure, but there’s no such thing as a “digital physics” or “its from bits”; real-world things (its) don’t come from code (bits). It’s so reductionist! So presentist! Just play out the thermodynamics! Or consider many-body effects! Even Neil deGrasse Tyson has, more recently, backed away from his Muskian metaphysics. (Though one of his counterarguments is, it should be said, highly untechnical. He simply doesn’t think far-future other-dimensional alien simulators would be entertained by beings as slow-moving and petty and cavemannish as we—in much the way we wouldn’t be entertained by the daily drudgery of actual cavemen.)

OK, but, and with all due respect to these undisputed geniuses: Maybe they should read their own books. Take Rovelli’s latest. In Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution, he puts forward what he calls the “relational theory” of reality. Basically, nothing exists except in relation to something else. “There are no properties outside of interactions,” Rovelli writes. So that tree over there? It isn’t just barely there. If you’re not interacting with it, it can’t be said to be there at all. Well, something is there, it seems, but that something is only and merely the potential for interaction. “The world is a perspectival game,” Rovelli concludes, “a play of mirrors that exist only as reflections of and in each other.”

Note the word he uses there: game. Reality is a game. What kind of game? A video game, maybe? Why not? Though Rovelli wouldn’t take kindly to this interpretation, isn’t that precisely how video games work? When your character is running through a field, whatever’s behind you, or otherwise out of view—trees, items, baddies, something better to do with your time—is only there, meaningfully there, if you turn around and interact with it. Short of that, the game won’t waste resources rendering it. It doesn’t exist, or exists only as a programmed possibility. Video games, just like our reality, are Rovellianly relational.

Or go back to Tonelli. When humans first thought to compare our little corner of the cosmos to all the rest, they made a remarkable discovery: It all looks and feels exactly, almost suspiciously, alike. “How was it possible,” Tonelli asks in Genesis, “that all the most remote corners of the universe, distant from each other by billions of light years, had agreed among themselves to attain exactly the same temperature at precisely the moment when scientists on a small planet in an anonymous solar system of an unremarkable galaxy had decided to take a look at what was happening around them?” Gosh, well, maybe our programmers just rushed to fill in the blanks that way? Some have even gone as far as to suggest that the speed of light might be “a hardware artifact showing we live in a simulated universe.”

In fact, once you start thinking in terms of hardware artifacts and other such indications and requirements of computing, reality really does begin to seem more and more programmed. Making the universe homogeneous and isotropic might be one smart way our supercomputing simulator-overlords, requiring operational speeds far exceeding yottaflops, planned to conserve resources. What might others be? There mustn’t be evidence of alien civilizations, for starters—too demanding on the system. Also, as more and more people are born, you’d want fewer and fewer differences between them. So they should live in the same tract homes, shop at the same stores, eat at the same fast-food restaurants, tweet the same thoughts, take the same personality tests. Meanwhile, to make even more room, animals should go extinct, forests die out, and megacorporations take over. Pretty soon, on this line of thinking, every last aspect of modernity begins to shimmer with a simulated sheen.

Quantum physics most of all. An inflaton? More like a simulaton! Or “spooky action at a distance,” wherein two far-apart but somehow “entangled” particles mirror each other perfectly? Clearly it’s just the computer halving the energy requirements—much as you running into someone you haven’t seen in 15 years at a random house party in a foreign country might be evidence of the same kind of cost-cutting subroutine by the cosmic machinery. Coincidences, concurrences, redundancies: These things must save lots of power, too.

At this, our polite physicists might finally lose their cool and go entropic on us, raging hotly. But why? Why does this kind of playful speculation so incense not only them but so many other highly intelligent people, from philosopher-historians like Justin E. H. Smith to commentators like Nathan J. Robinson? They never really say, beyond dismissing simulation theory as either illogical or out of touch, a plaything of the privileged, but one senses in their skepticism a genuine fear, an unwillingness to even entertain the idea, for to believe that our world is fake must, they seem to think, be to believe, nihilistically, and in a way that makes a mockery of their lifelong pursuit of knowledge and understanding, in nothing.

 

 

OR MUST IT? In the years since the first Matrix came out, there have indeed been cases of young men—you meet at least one of them in the documentary A Glitch in the Matrix—who, believing their world wasn’t real, went on killing rampages. It’s appalling. It’s also, of course, anomalous, freakish, the kind of novelty that plays into a narrative urge on the part of certain hidebound intellectuals to blame new media for the worst impulses of humanity. Any idea, no matter how good, can go bad, and the simulation hypothesis is no different.

That’s why David Chalmers wrote Reality+, I think. Some will read it, cynically, as trendy, opportunistic philosophy in the service of Big Tech, designed to weaken our resolve to fight for what’s real, but that’s just the thing: Chalmers thinks it’s all real. If you’re in VR and see Spot run, virtual Spot is no less real than a physical Spot. He’s just differently real. For now, you may be able to kill virtual Spot—or lowly nonplayer characters, or your friend in avatar form—without consequences, but Chalmers isn’t so sure you should. If it’s possible that your own world, the so-called physical world, is simulated, you’re still living meaningfully, compassionately, and (presumably) law-abidingly in it, so why should the virtuality of VR change anything? In the end, Reality+ is the opposite of nihilistic. It’s a humane, anti-skeptical plea to accept any satisfactory appearance of existence, simulated or not, as sacred.

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The paradox of Chalmers’ “simulation realism,” in fact, is that, once you embrace it, there does not follow from it some corollary disenchanting of reality. On the contrary, so many isms that in modern times have been dismissed as mystical, supernatural—dualism, panpsychism, animism—here find themselves reenchanted, imbued with a profound new vitality. We and everything around us become not less real but, in a way, more real, animated panpsychically by forces both here and, dualistically, there, somewhere else, somewhere, let’s say, above. This line of thinking extends, as you might have already guessed, to the ultimate ism of all, theism, the belief in a creator, and isn’t that all simulation theory, in the final analysis, really is? Religion by a new, technological name?

It’s been said that the simulation hypothesis is the best argument we moderns have for the existence of a godlike being. Chalmers agrees: “I’ve considered myself an atheist for as long as I can remember,” he writes. “Still, the simulation hypothesis has made me take the existence of a god more seriously than I ever had before.” He even suggests Reality+ is his version of Pascal’s wager, proof that he’s at least entertained the idea of a simulator. Not that he’s sure such a being deserves to be worshipped. For all we know, it’s some little xeno-kid banging away at their parents’ keyboard, putting us through catastrophes the way we might the citizens of SimCity.

But the simulator needn’t be omnipotent and omnibenevolent for us to consider the possibility of their existence. So there’s the Old Testament, where the catastrophes were more fire and brimstone. Then, maybe, the simulator matured a bit, and got slyer with age in their methods of destruction. In other words, here we are, in 2022, at the mercy of a precocious teenage simulator-god running an experiment on fear-driven Data Age humans faced with pandemics and climate change and wars and all other manner of sociopoliticoeconomic mayhem. Can we survive?

 

 

At the very least, it’s fun, and oddly calming, to think about. In the beginning, after all, God created light and darkness. Translation: The simulator created 1s and 0s.

EVERY SO OFTEN, when I’m feeling frisky, I go outside and twist up my eyes, just to see if I can catch the quickest glimpse of the pixels making up this pure, planetary simulation we call Earth. Sometimes, and even when I’m completely sober, I feel like it’s working. Tiny squares really do seem to be blipping in and out of existence! Other times, and especially when I’m completely sober, I feel like a complete dinkus.

But this is precisely the fun of it: the uncertainty. You might even say the Heisenbergian uncertainty, the quantum-mechanical indeterminacy underlying our reality. Is this thing before me evidence of a simulation? It is, it isn’t, it might be, it must be.

Over the course of writing this essay, I must confess that everything seemed to confirm the truth of the simulation. Every impossible coincidence I experienced or heard about—simulated. The stranger at the café who quoted practically verbatim a line I was reading in a book—simulated. Every new book I picked up, for that matter—simulated. Seriously, how could every book one reads, in the course of writing about reality, be about reality in such a fundamental way? I’ve asked the grumpy old proprietor at my favorite bookstore for recommendations many times. Why, this time, without having any idea of what I was working on or thinking about, did he hand me The End of Mr. Y, by the brilliant Scarlett Thomas (the title puns on “the end of mystery”), in which the protagonist, a writer obsessed with physics (hello), slowly pierces through to another, deeper, video-game-like dimension (hello)? “When one looks at the illusions of the world,” Thomas writes, in a book within the book, “one sees only the world. For where does illusion end?”

This, it seems to me, is what the physicists, and simulation skeptics of all sorts, are missing. Not a belief in the simulation, per se, but the irresistible possibility of it, the magical conspiracy. It doesn’t diminish or undermine their science; quite the opposite, it enriches and energizes it. How many people, generally unmotivated to learn, find their way to a concept as intimidating as, say, quantum indeterminacy by way of the (far more welcoming) simulation argument? I’d guess a great many, and physicists would do well not to belittle that entry point into their work by calling it fluff, nonsense, the sci-fi pursuits of littler minds.

Nobody knows—most likely, nobody ever will—if this world of ours was simulated by some higher-dimensional alien race, and for what purpose, and ultimately whether our simulators were themselves simulated. At a certain point, really, the specifics of it begin to seem beside the point. If people like Musk, Bostrom, and Chalmers get anything wrong, it’s less their simulation realism than what might be called their simulation literalism. So concerned are they with arguing for the exact likelihood of a simulation, its rules and logics and mechanisms, that they forget the intellectual play, the thought experimentation, of it, the fact that human beings have been wondering if their world was real for as long as they’ve been dreaming. “The origin of all metaphysics,” as Nietzsche called it: “Without the dream one would have had no occasion to divide the world into two.” The simulation hypothesis, stripped of the probabilities and its conflation with technology, is the oldest hypothesis in the book.

 

 

So it might not be so wrong to take it literally after all. “Maybe life begins the moment we know we don’t have one,” one character thinks in Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly. It’s a popular French novel (L’Anomalie) about people living in a possibly simulated world, and it came out—but of course—during the pandemic. The point of the book, I think, is the same as Chalmers’: to make the case not only that one can live meaningfully in a simulated world, but that one should. That one must. Because maybe goodness is what keeps the simulation going. Maybe goodness, and the spark and serendipity that comes of it, is what keeps the simulators interested. For at the end of The Anomaly, the opposite happens. Someone ignores the possibility for hope, and gives into badness, into base inhumanity. The result is the scariest thing imaginable. Someone, somewhere, in whatever dimension is not our own, turns the simulation off.

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/headaches-03-30-2010-89398977/114880.html

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty. And I'm Shirley Griffith. Today we tell about headaches, the pain that strikes almost everyone at some time. 

Have you had a headache recently? If your answer is yes, you are like many millions of people worldwide who experience pain in the head. The pain can be temporary, mild and cured by a simple painkiller like aspirin. Or it can be severe.

The National Headache Foundation says more than forty five million people in the United States suffer chronic headaches. Such a headache causes severe pain that goes away but returns later.

Some headaches may prove difficult and require time to treat. But many experts today are working toward cures or major help for chronic headaches.

The US Headache Consortium is a group with seven member organizations. They are attempting to improve treatment of one kind of headache -- the migraine. Some people experience this kind of pain as often as two weeks every month. The National Headache Foundation says about seventy percent of migraine sufferers are women.

Some people describe the pain as throbbing, causing pressure in the head. Others compare it to someone driving a sharp object into the head. Migraine headaches cause Americans to miss at least one hundred fifty million workdays each year. A migraine can be mild. But it also can be so severe that a person cannot live a normal life.

One migraine sufferer lives in Ellicott City, Maryland. Video producer Curtis Croley had head pain as a child. He does not know what kind of headaches they were. But when he suffered severe headaches as an adult, doctors identified the problem as migraine.

Today, Mister Croley says months can pass without a headache. But then he will have three migraines within a month. If he takes the medicine his doctor ordered early in his headache, it controls the pain. If not, the pain in his head becomes extremely bad. Sometimes he has had to be treated with a combination of drugs in a hospital.

Some people take medicine every day to prevent or ease migraine headaches. Others use medicine to control pain already developed. Doctors treating migraine sufferers often order medicines from a group of drugs known as triptans.

Most migraines react at least partly to existing medicine. And most people can use existing medicine without experiencing bad effects. Doctors sometimes use caffeine to treat migraine headaches. Interestingly, caffeine also can cause some migraines.

Medical experts have long recognized the work of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The Mayo Clinic says several foods are suspected of causing migraines. Cheese and alcoholic drinks are among them. Food additives like salt and monosodium glutamate also are suspected causes.

The Mayo Clinic tells patients to avoid strong smells that have seemingly started migraines in the past. Some people react badly to products like perfume, even if they have a pleasant smell.

The clinic's experts say aerobic exercise can help migraine sufferers. Aerobic exercise increases a person's heart rate. It can include walking, swimming or riding a bicycle. But a sudden start to hard exercise can cause headaches.

The experts advise that people should plan to exercise, eat and sleep at the same times each day.

The Mayo Clinic has advice about estrogen for women who suffer from migraines. The female body makes estrogen. Drugs like birth control pills contain a version of this chemical.

Such medicines may produce headaches or cause them to worsen, the clinic says. The same is true for estrogen replacement drugs for women. Doctors sometimes order estrogen replacement for women who no longer able to have children.

The clinic also says hypnotherapy might help suppress headaches. It says the method could reduce the number and severity of a patient’s headaches. In hypnotherapy, willing people are placed in a condition that lets them receive suggestions. They look like they are sleeping. The suggestions they receive may be able to direct their whole mental energy against pain.

The Mayo Clinic says the hypnotizer can never control the person under hypnosis. It also says the hypnotized person will remember what happened during the treatment.

More people suffer tension headaches than migraines. But most tension headaches are not as powerful.

Events that start tension headaches may include emotional pressure and the deeper than normal sadness called depression. Other tension headaches can start from something as simple as tiredness. Common changes in atmospheric conditions also can be responsible.

The Mayo Clinic says you may feel a tension headache as tightness in the skin around your eyes. Or, you may feel pressure around your head. Episodic tension headaches strike from time to time. Chronic tension headaches happen more often. A tension headache can last from a half hour to a whole week.

The Mayo Clinic says the pain may come very early in the day. Other signs can include pain in the neck or the lower part of the head. Scientists are not sure what causes tension headaches. For years, researchers blamed muscle tension from tightening in the face, neck and the skin on top of the head. They believed emotional tension caused these movements.

But that belief has been disputed. A test called an electromyogram shows that muscle tension does not increase in people with a tension headache. The test records electrical currents caused by muscle activity. Such research caused the International Headache Society to re-name the tension headache. The group now calls it a tension-type headache.

Some scientists now believe that tension headaches may result from changes among brain chemicals such as serotonin. The changes may start sending pain messages to the brain. These changes may interfere with brain activity that suppresses pain.

Medicines for tension headache can be as simple as aspirin or other painkillers. But if your pain is too severe, you will need a doctor's advice.

A web site called Family Doctor dot org provides information from the American Academy of Family Physicians. The group suggests steps to ease or end a tension headache.

For example, it says putting heat or ice on your head or neck can help. So can standing under hot water while you are getting washed. The group also advises exercising often. Another idea is taking a holiday from work. But you had better ask your employer first.

Ask anyone with a cluster headache, and they will tell you that the pain is terrible. The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio says the cluster headache can be many times more intense than a migraine.

Cluster headaches usually strike young people. Smokers and persons who drink alcohol often get these headaches. Men are about six times more likely than women to have them. The Cleveland Clinic says this is especially true of younger men. Doctors say cluster headaches often strike during changes of season.

Cluster headache patients describe the pain as burning. The pain is almost always felt on one side of the face. It can last for up to ninety minutes. Then it stops. But it often starts again later the same day. Eighty to ninety percent of cluster headache patients have pain over a number of days to a whole year. Pain-free periods separate these periods.

The Cleveland Clinic says the cause of cluster headaches is in a brain area known as a trigeminal-autonomic reflex pathway. When the nerve is made active, it starts pain linked to cluster headaches. The nerve starts a process that makes one eye watery and red.

Studies have shown that activation of the trigeminal nerve may come from a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. The Cleveland Clinic says injections of the drug sumatriptan can help. Many other drugs could be used. For example, doctors say breathing oxygen also can help.

Thankfully, modern medicine has ways to treat almost all of our headaches.

This program was written by Jerilyn Watson. Our producer was Brianna Blake. I'm Shirley Griffith.

And I'm Bob Doughty. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

December 21, 2018

Reference: https://www.cancer.ca/en/research-horizons/3/1/3/could-aspirin-prevent-cancer/

Introduction

With Canada’s population growing and aging, researchers predict that the number of new cancer cases in Canada will increase significantly in the next decade. About half of all cancers are preventable, though, so individuals have opportunities to reduce their risk of developing the disease by making healthy changes to their lifestyles and behaviours. Another potential strategy is chemoprevention – using medication to prevent cancer.

Chemoprevention usually repurposes an existing drug, one used for cancer treatment or a completely different condition, for use by people without cancer. For example, researchers have studied whether the breast cancer drugs tamoxifen and exemestane may prevent breast cancer in high-risk women. They have also studied the use of metformin, used to treat type II diabetes, in preventing a variety of cancers.

A cancer prevention drug would need to be taken by healthy people for a long period of time, so it must be extremely safe, inexpensive and easy to access and take, so that users are more likely to comply with the treatment.

A common pill found in many Canadian homes that can fit these criteria and may also prevent cancer is acetylsalicylic acid, also known as Aspirin. “Aspirin is an ideal drug – it is safe and affordable,” says Dr Stephanie Lheureux, a clinician investigator at the University Health Network in Toronto. “There is growing evidence and a lot of recent research that shows aspirin can potentially have an effect in preventing cancer.”

Here, we’ll describe how nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as Aspirin might work to prevent cancer and review existing evidence of its effectiveness against the disease. Some research has suggested that NSAIDs other than Aspirin could be used for cancer prevention, but the evidence seems to be strongest for Aspirin, and as a result, it is the focus of this article.

Importantly, at this time the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) does not recommend that Canadians take Aspirin to reduce their risk of cancer or cancer death. While the evidence so far is promising, we do not yet have a complete understanding of the full risks and benefits of Aspirin as a cancer prevention tool. Without this data, it is still too early for any official recommendations on taking Aspirin to reduce cancer risk. For more information, read the full CCS perspective on Aspirin and cancer.

How NSAIDs Work

Inflammation and NSAIDs

Inflammation is how the immune system responds to an infection by bacteria or viruses or an injury. White blood cells release chemicals and substances at the site of the problem that fight the infection and help with healing, but can also cause pain, redness and swelling.

Inflammation is an important part of the immune response, but if it happens when or where there is no infection, such as in auto-immune diseases like multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis, it can damage the body itself.

NSAIDs relieve inflammation. Some NSAIDs, such as Aspirin and ibuprofen, are frequently used to treat headaches, pain and fever, while others are used to treat conditions like arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.

A number of years ago, researchers found that Aspirin could help protect people from heart attacks, especially people at high risk. In addition to its pain-relieving and fever-reducing properties, Aspirin prevents the formation of platelets, the parts of blood that are responsible for clotting. With fewer platelets, the blood stays thin and the risks of a blood clot or heart attack go down.

As a result, doctors may recommend a daily low dose of Aspirin for older adults who are at high risk of heart attack. But large studies suggest that, on top of its heart-protective properties, Aspirin may also protect against cancer.

How might NSAIDs work in cancer?

Aspirin, even at low doses, interferes with many different biochemical chain reactions or pathways in the body. To prevent a complex disease like cancer, several different pathways are likely interacting and working together, rather than one single process being responsible.

Anti-inflammation pathway

One common hypothesis about how Aspirin may prevent cancer is through its anti-inflammation activity. Chronic inflammation is known to increase the risk of certain types of cancer, including colorectal and ovarian cancers, so it makes sense that an anti-inflammatory drug such as Aspirin could have a protective effect.

A protein called COX2 has an important role in promoting inflammation. This protein jumpstarts a biochemical pathway, helping to change one molecule called arachidonic acid into another type of molecule called a prostaglandin, which plays an important role in promoting inflammation. Prostaglandins also promote cell growth, increase blood vessel development and reduce cell death, all of which are important contributors to early tumour growth.

Aspirin shuts down the COX2 protein, essentially cutting off this inflammation pathway at the root. This is how it works to stop inflammation and may also be how it stops the early stages of cancer growth.

Anti-platelet pathway

Another hypothesis is that the same mechanism that gives Aspirin its heart-protective properties may also help to prevent cancer. Platelets, the parts of blood responsible for clotting, may also be involved in cancer growth and spread. They can travel to a part of the body experiencing inflammation and actually make it worse by turning on pathways, like the COX2 pathway, that create even more inflammation and increase the risk of cancer development.

A protein called COX1 is an important part of the biochemical reaction that creates and activates platelets. As with COX2, Aspirin blocks COX1, stopping this pathway at the source and reducing the number of platelets in the blood to levels that help thin the blood and reduce inflammation. Evidence suggests that this indirect way to stop inflammation, with fewer platelets to trigger the COX2 inflammation pathway, may be the main mechanism at work in preventing cancer growth, particularly at low doses of Aspirin.

Other molecular pathways

A lot of different mechanisms work together to turn healthy cells into cancer cells, so it’s likely that many different molecular processes are also involved in preventing cancer.

On top of its anti-inflammation and anti-platelet activities, Aspirin may also block another molecular pathway called the Wnt pathway, which promotes normal tissue development and growth. As with inflammation, if this pathway is activated when or where it shouldn’t be, cells can grow out of control, leading to cancer. Some evidence suggests that Aspirin blocks the Wnt pathway possibly by decreasing the same prostaglandin molecules that are part of the COX2 inflammation pathway, ultimately reducing cell growth.

Exactly how Aspirin may be having an effect is still unclear, and researchers are still working to uncover the precise mechanisms involved. “Aspirin’s effects on cancer is still a relatively young area of research, despite the fact that it is an old drug,” says Dr Lheureux.

NSAIDs and Cancer

While researchers can use cell models to see how Aspirin works in the body, to actually find out whether it is effective in people, they need to do large clinical trials. Cancer prevention trials need to follow a large number of people for a long period of time, making them very expensive and difficult to coordinate. As a result, much of the research on Aspirin’s effectiveness come from analyzing data from many smaller studies together and from large population health studies that collected detailed health data from large groups of people over many years.

These studies are important and provide initial information, but they do have limitations. Since they weren’t set up to answer specific questions about Aspirin and cancer, participants may have used different doses or different schedules for different lengths of time. “Population data is important, and for Aspirin, large datasets are consistently showing that it has an impact, even with their limitations,” says Dr Lheureux. “But to change practice, we need objective data from rigorous clinical trials and selected populations.”

Still, a growing body of evidence shows that frequent Aspirin use can help reduce people’s risk of cancer, particularly colorectal cancer.

NSAIDs and colorectal cancer

The strongest evidence of Aspirin’s effects on cancer prevention is related to cancers of the digestive tract, especially colorectal cancer.

Some analyses of clinical trials and smaller studies have found that people who took Aspirin almost daily for at least 5 years had a nearly 40% lower risk of colorectal cancer than people who did not. Other studies haven’t shown quite that much of an effect, but still show an approximately 20% reduction in risk. These positive studies suggest that Aspirin needs to be taken for at least 5 years to be effective, and a reduction in risk isn’t seen until about a decade after the start of treatment.

However, other large population studies did not show any reduced risk of colorectal cancer with frequent Aspirin use, though this may be due to a different dosing schedule. Nevertheless, many studies have found that people who took Aspirin frequently were less likely to develop colorectal cancer, and the overall body of evidence is strong.

Aspirin also seems to help prevent other cancers of the digestive tract, such as esophageal and stomach cancers, though not to the same degree as colorectal cancer.

Researchers have some hypotheses about why Aspirin appears to be most effective at preventing colorectal cancer. Inflammation increases the risk of colorectal cancer, and the COX2 pathway is especially active in this disease. Researchers have found that Aspirin is better at preventing colorectal tumours with high levels of COX2 than tumours with low COX2. They have also found that the Wnt pathway, which promotes cell growth, is also highly active in colorectal cancer. Since Aspirin blocks both of these pathways, it could have a greater impact in colorectal cancer than in cancers where these pathways are not as important in development.

Could Aspirin prevent other cancers?

Colorectal cancer isn’t the only type of cancer where inflammation and COX2 proteins are involved, and Aspirin may be able to prevent these other cancers as well.

In various studies, researchers have seen that frequent low-dose Aspirin use reduces overall cancer risk, not all of which can be attributed to colorectal cancer. In one large analysis of 51 different studies, researchers found that people who frequently took Aspirin had a 12% lower risk of cancer diagnosis and a 21% lower risk of cancer death. But other studies have been inconsistent – some show an effect, others don’t.

Still, researchers are interested in a few different cancers, including breast, liver, ovarian and prostate cancers, that Aspirin has the potential to prevent.

In recent years, researchers have become more interested in ovarian cancer, with several studies published in the last few years suggesting that regular Aspirin use modestly reduces ovarian cancer risk. But more research needs to be done to understand and untangle these results.

Dr Lheureux is one of the leaders of a CCS-funded clinical trial testing whether Aspirin may prevent ovarian cancer in women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations, which put them at a much higher risk of developing the disease. The women in the study will have already decided to have preventive surgery to remove their ovaries and fallopian tubes, and the researchers will test whether a low or standard dose of Aspirin before the surgery reduces the incidence of pre- or early cancerous tissue damage in the ovaries and fallopian tubes. If they find that Aspirin helps to prevent or reduce these lesions, they will be able to study how it might work.

“This trial is the first of its kind,” says Dr Lheureux. “We’re comparing Aspirin use with a placebo, so we’ll really be able to see whether any difference is attributable to Aspirin, and we’ll have access to the tissue to see the biological mechanisms involved.” Dr Lheureux adds that ovarian cancer presents a unique opportunity for this type of trial, since some women are known to be at high risk and develop pre-cancerous damage before a tumour develops. They hope that their results might be applied more broadly to different types of cancers where a similar trial might not be possible.

Need to identify people who will benefit

While Aspirin is safe, especially when used infrequently, it does have side effects that need to be considered, particularly bleeding in the digestive tract which can sometimes be severe and impact quality of life.

As a result, researchers are actively trying to find ways to identify people who would benefit the most from Aspirin by looking for genetic or molecular signals that would identify them. For example, a signal that indicates that someone has high levels of COX2 activity might suggest that they have a higher-than-average risk of colorectal cancer and may benefit from preventive Aspirin treatment.

Reliable ways to identify people who would benefit most from Aspirin use would allow its use to be targeted, and people unlikely to benefit could be spared from the side effects. It’s the same personalized medicine approach that researchers are taking for a variety of other medications and treatments in cancer.

Future Directions

Many Canadians have Aspirin at home, whether they use it every day for heart health or infrequently to treat a headache. It’s easy to find at every pharmacy, and it’s cheap. If there’s a role for Aspirin in preventing cancer, the potential impact could be substantial.

A lot of research remains to be done before Aspirin is commonly prescribed as a cancer prevention drug. Researchers aim to get a better understanding of how Aspirin works to prevent cancer in order to understand which cancers might be sensitive to Aspirin’s activity and how it can be used more effectively.

It’s also important to understand how much Aspirin is needed and how often and for how long to take it to prevent cancer. To avoid unnecessary side effects, we need to find ways to identify people who will benefit the most from Aspirin.

With more research, we’ll get closer to answering these questions.

“Aspirin is such an old drug, but there’s all this new data about its effects that we can’t ignore anymore,” says Dr Lheureux.

Eileen Hoftyzer, BSc

Reference: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190830-the-hidden-tactic-overloaded-workers-are-using-to-catch-up

Pallavi Varma often works six or seven days a week on call as part of her job working for a travel company. The 24-year-old Indian content creator works hard while juggling her studies at a local university.

And sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

“I sometimes find the need to catch up with work on Sundays or on public holidays in order to make up for lost time,” she says.

She doesn’t feel too bad about doing so – it allows her to work more efficiently, she reckons, because she feels less pressure when she’s not working in an office environment. “My results are vastly improved when I work on my downtime,” Varma says.

She’s not the only one. Nutrition and fitness expert Tom Jenane, who lives in Brighton in the UK, took his first holiday to catch up on work last year. He was juggling other duties alongside writing descriptions of the products sold at the company he works for, and found he just wasn’t getting it all done during his working day.

“I took the day off to sit at home and write up the product descriptions,” he says. “I woke up naturally, made myself a coffee and set myself up on the sofa with the laptop, playing music in the background.”

Away from the distractions of a pinging inbox, watercooler chat with colleagues and the stresses of office life, the work Jenane, 31, had been struggling with for ages took him a day to complete.

But it required him to use up a precious day’s annual leave.

Jenane and Varma exemplify leaveism - where employees feel compelled to take use their time off to catch up on their workload, free from the distractions of the office.

From credit crunch to workload crisis

“I suspect it’s always existed in some shape or form for salaried, professional workers,” says James Richards, associate professor in human resource management at Heriot-Watt University, who is undertaking a widescale survey on the proliferation of leaveism. “You have a notional contract but there’s an expectation to meet fluctuating deadlines and demand.”

Nearly two-thirds of human resource professionals at UK businesses have seen examples of leaveism in the last year, according to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). And the numbers are rising.

“We’re seeing more of this, because since the [last] recession most organisations got mean and lean,” explains Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology at Manchester Business School and president of the CIPD. “We’re only beginning to realise how big an issue this is.”

Cooper estimates that around a third of employees worldwide have taken time off work to catch up with their backlog, and worries that it becomes more likely in the event of another recession.

The number of people without a job increased from 178 million in 2007 ( pre-financial crisis) to 205 million in 2009, according to the United Nations. With it, attitudes to work changed.

“Less is more” became the motto of the post-recession world. But with fewer people covering the same volume of work, workloads can quickly become untenable.

“It’s simply the reality of knowing how much could be achieved and battling to fit it all into the day,” says Jenane. “We could have a team of 100 and there would still be more work to be completed.”

However, all sides in the employment equation continue to try and muddle through.

‘I would like to make a good impression’

“If you’re feeling insecure, you’re going to make sure you’re working all the time and you’re indispensable,” says Cooper. “You’re going to send emails at night, working at night. You’re not going to take as much holiday time or if you do take a holiday, the family go on the holiday but the parents, both men and women, are working by the pool.”

More importantly, workers aren’t going to mention they’re doing it.

“I would like to make a good impression on the company and my clients, as long as the load is not negatively affecting my results,” Varma explains. That’s despite the fact that she believes her employers “are very understanding and empathetic”. “If anything, they insist I take more breaks - but I have a perfectionism issue,” she says.

Admitting that your workload is too great could mark you out as not up to the job – singling you out for sacking in a precarious workforce.

The problem is growing – and businesses show little interest in tackling it. While 63% of UK businesses surveyed by the CIPD have seen leaveism, more than half of them haven’t tried to tackle the problem.

“This is all about line managers,” says Cooper. “One solution to this problem of people doing leaveism is having more socially sensitive, more empathic line managers.”

Training on how to deal with employees struggling with their workload, and how to foster a supportive workplace that encourages workers to raise concerns about their volume of labour, is vital.

"Managers should be helping to alleviate stress among their staff, not contributing to it,” says Rachel Suff, senior employment relations adviser at the CIPD. “But too many managers are being set up to fail because they haven’t received adequate training, despite them often being the first person employees will turn to when they have a problem.”

A quarter of businesses that have experienced leaveism told the CIPD they were taking steps to discourage it – often by providing better support for employees.

Managing work-life balance

Still, some employers understand the risk of leaveism among their workers. Varma discussed her workload with her boss and the company itself expanded, allowing additional hiring.

Her workload has since been split with a colleague. “My employer recognises that I have a lot of workload, allows me to set my own pace, and has also allowed me to hire a paid intern to reduce my work,” she says.

When Jenane returned to work after his day of leaveism, the reason he took the holiday came up in conversation with his manager. “He was obviously really upset to hear I had spent my time working rather than relaxing,” Jenane explains. “I understand what he means, it’s important you don’t push yourself too hard, as you don’t want to suffer burn out and your work-life balance is important.”

That’s vital, says Cooper. “I think leaveism is a problem we can overcome,” he says.

“We need to convince senior people that actually our productivity will be improved if we get better balance,” Cooper adds. “If we work people to death, not only will they burn out, but there is no evidence that it produces higher productivity.”

Jenane’s boss told him not to take leave to catch up on work again, and to come and talk to him if he had issues with his workload.

Jenane listened – but didn’t learn. He’s since taken another day’s holiday to catch up on more write-ups for the company’s website. “[My boss] doesn’t know,” he says. “But that might change with this article.”

Reference: https://www.businessinsider.com/retirement-advice-from-my-dad-who-retired-early?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Business_Insider_select&pt=385758&ct=Sailthru_BI_Newsletters&mt=8&utm_campaign=Business%20Insider%20Select%202019-12-29&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select

As a child, there's no joy quite like opening a birthday card and seeing crisp dollar bills fall out.

Growing up, my Dad tried to convince me that this cash, when saved, symbolized opportunity for my future self. I'd hold my birthday money up to the light to see the watermark and try to picture my future self enjoying this money, but all I could see was my current self enjoying 7/11 Slurpees, top-ups for my pre-paid cell phone, and band tee shirts.

When I got my first job in high school, my Dad printed out an article about the power of compound interest and put it in my purse with a note: "Start investing early Lizzie." My money left my bank account almost as soon as it entered that summer, and not because it was being funneled into a retirement account.

Even after I graduated college and got "grown up jobs," I didn't start saving. I contributed to my 401(k) for a while, only to empty it when I quit my job and use the money to road trip around the US.

I just never quite understood the point of letting my money sit around in someone else's pocket for decades until, hopefully, I could one day spend it — not when there were so many things I could spend it on now.

Then I watched my Dad retire at least a decade before many of his peers, and my entire perspective changed. My stepmom retired even younger, after my Dad convinced her to join him in his plan for early retirement.

Hoping it wasn't too late for me to get my finances on track, I asked them how they did it.

How my parents retired early

My Dad had always planned to retire early. He was frugal and highly practical growing up⁠ — my sister and I ate a lot of $0.50 frozen pot pies and didn't get new sneakers until there were holes in our current ones. He was generous with stuff that mattered, though, like educational opportunities that could set us up for a better future. But education is an investment; shoes are not. He understood that money invested usually provides more value to your life, in the long-run, than money spent. You invest first, then you spend.

My stepmom, on the other hand, never had plans to retire early until she started dating my Dad. When he told her he wanted to retire by 50, she looked at him incredulously. "I told him, there's no freaking way," she recalled to me.

She played along anyway. As it turns out, his goal wasn't so unrealistic.

My Dad would have been on track to retire by 50, which was a stretch goal, if it weren't for the 2008 recession, which decimated his retirement accounts. However, he was able to eventually recover and retire at 55. My stepmom retired at 49.

Both my Dad and stepmom worked in sales and marketing for a high tech company by way of degrees in electrical engineering, so it's worth stating up-front that they both earned salaries that most would consider more than comfortable.

Regardless, most people — my non-engineer self included — can apply the advice they gave me.

1. Set a goal, create a budget, and track your progress

Setting clear goals and tracking your progress will make all the difference. It wasn't until my stepmom checked in on their progress and saw their money growing according to plan that she started to believe they could retire early.

"I realized it was real," she told me. "When you make saving a priority, retirement becomes possible. Money makes more money, and it makes it surprisingly quick."

The first thing they did was figure out exactly how much money they'd need to comfortably retire when my dad hit 50 and live off that money well into their 90s. Their retirement budget included a salary equal to their pre-retirement pay and line-item expenses for things like healthcare.

After creating a retirement budget, they worked backward to figure out how much money they'd need to save each year to get there by age 50, taking into account the expected rate of return on their investments. Then, they cut spending and invested all of their extra earnings to meet that goal.

They checked in with their budget regularly and did a full progress assessment every six months. Eventually, they started meeting with a financial adviser for these biannual check-ins, and they've continued them in retirement to make sure they're still where they need to be.

2. Avoid lifestyle inflation

Lifestyle inflation, or increasing your cost of living every time your income increases, is one of the most insidious ways to destroy a retirement plan. It often lands folks in debt.

For my parents, living below their means was essential to retiring early. They invested at least half of any raise. My Dad's bonuses at work were invested in rental properties that could generate income. When they got married, my parents bought a house that was priced at half of what they could actually afford.

They also didn't go overboard on cars. Our whole family has always driven Hondas, and my parents drive a car until it stops running. They did get all of us kids cars, but we got old, used cars for a couple grand — mine was a 1990 Acura Integra — and paid for them in cash.

3. Invest aggressively ... and diversify

Like most people, a 401(k) was central to my parents' retirement plan. They took full advantage of employer matching from the start and worked up to maxing their 401(k)s as early as possible. My stepmom also runs a consulting business, so she opened a SEP-IRA, which is an option for folks who are self-employed.

Because they wanted to retire early, my parents had to have other investments they could rely on for retirement income. Retirement accounts, like a 401(k) or SEP IRA, shouldn't be touched until you've actually reached retirement age (59 ½). If you withdraw funds early, you'll incur a hefty penalty.

So, my parents also invested in stocks, bonds, and rental properties to provide income until they turn 59 ½.

After the recession, my parents bought foreclosed houses in cash at extremely low prices. They renovated the houses, doing all the work themselves to save money, and then rented them out.

These properties now serve as income generators for the early years of their retirement as well as a safety net, as they can be sold off one by one. My parents know that they could weather a 30% cut on what they live off of, thanks to the properties, and still be fine.

In addition to rental income, they've set up a bond ladder to live off of in the short-term. Each year for the next four or five years, they have bonds maturing that provide them with income.

4. Consider a part-time back-up plan for income

My stepmom is younger than my Dad, so she planned to work a little longer. However, rather than continue with the company where they'd both worked, she decided to start her own consulting business online that would help her transition to full-time retirement.

My stepmom still does consulting work on the side for "fun money." They've used this consulting income to go on a safari in South Africa, take their parents to Germany, and throw a big anniversary celebration with the whole family in St. Thomas, where they now live part of the year.

If anything ever happened to one of their income sources, they could always lean on my stepmom's consulting.

Why early retirement was important to my parents

A lot of people my age (20s and early 30s) can't envision retiring at all, let alone early, so it surprised me that my Dad had been planning early retirement since he was my age. I asked if any life experiences or lessons had helped him gain that foresight at such a young age.

"I think it was your Dad's mom dying young and Alzheimer's running in the family," my stepmom offered. "He felt like he really wanted, while he was in good health, to have his own life."

My Dad agreed. "That was part of it," he said. He also brought up my aunt, his sister, who died of cancer. When he saw how quickly she went from perfectly healthy to very sick, they doubled down on their plan to retire. "I could've kept working, but when your aunt passed within six months of being diagnosed I said, 'Why are we waiting?' I just wanted the freedom to do what we wanted when we wanted."

"We enjoyed [our work] but it was like, this isn't what I am," my stepmom added. "This isn't what I want my whole life to be."

Now, they spend almost half the year in the Caribbean, learning how to play guitar, going on sailing trips, and doing volunteer work. They've traveled all over the globe, spending several months road tripping to the best US national parks, exploring Europe, spotting wildlife in South Africa, cruising the Panama Canal, and visiting relatives.

Watching them, I've learned that saving money is the opposite of letting it sit around collecting dust. If invested properly, that money grows indefinitely, and it will probably do a lot more for me in the long-run than spending it would.

My stepmom framed it in a way that really resonated with me. "It's not your money, it's your future self's money," she said. Think of saving and investing as a form of self-care for your future self. Your future self will thank you.

Read the 100 List

Below is the list of America’s 100 most-loved books brought to you by The Great American Read. Explore the book list and visit the book pages to learn more. You can also print a checklist of the books

Reference : https://www.spokenenglishpractice.com/how-to-speak-english-more-eloquently/

8 Books That Will Help You Speak English Eloquently

Reference : BBC.com  Why Brazilians are always late

cringe

engross

gaudy

flit

trickle

awkward

thorny

succinctly

allure

dap hand

Reference: CNN travel

Reference:  fedna.com

Here is a man who chose a different path. He didn’t go for the typical black or whiteboard and stand in front of it to teach. Instead, he chose a smarter way to deliver his lectures, the online way. Yes, we are talking about Salman Khan, the man behind Khan Academy, a non-profit organization with a mission to provide ‘free world-class education for anyone anywhere’. To fulfill this, Khan Academy offer its resources to everyone free of charge. Some 4500 tutorials covering a wide range of academic fields including Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, Finance, Mathematics, Astronomy, Cosmology, Physics, Healthcare, Organic Chemistry, History, Economics, Macroeconomics, American civics, Microeconomics, Computer Science and Art history are available in the organization’s website.

The birth of this unique concept took place when Salman Khan, A Harvard Business School, and MIT graduate began using the Doodle notepad by Yahoo to teach mathematics to his cousin and soon, the idea became a big hit when his other relatives also asked for the same kind of assistance. He decided to post tutorials on YouTube which became much sought after by students and soon Mr. Khan quit his job to start his Khan Academy. This online organization runs on donations that have come from all sections of the society and the organization already has 283 million total views on YouTube with 1,233,000 subscribers.