Thursday, November 24, 2011
Dyslexic adults have more trouble if background noise levels are high
Dyslexia affects up to 17.5% of the population, but its cause remains somewhat unknown. A report published in the Nov. 23 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE supports the hypothesis that the symptoms of dyslexia, including difficulties in reading, are at least partly due to difficulty excluding excess background information like noise.
In the study of 37 undergraduate students, the researchers, led by Rachel Beattie of the University of Southern California, found that the poor readers performed significantly worse than the control group only when there were high levels of background noise.
The two groups performed comparably at the prescribed task when there was no background noise and when the stimulus set size was varied, either a large or a small set size.
According to Dr. Beattie, "these findings support a relatively new theory, namely that dyslexic individuals do not completely filter out irrelevant information when attending to letters and sounds. This external noise exclusion deficit could lead to the creation of inaccurate representations of words and phonemes and ultimately, to the characteristic reading and phonological awareness impairments observed in dyslexia."
More information: Beattie RL, Lu Z-L, Manis FR (2011) Dyslexic Adults Can Learn from Repeated Stimulus Presentation but Have Difficulties in Excluding External Noise. PLoS ONE 6(11): e27893. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027893
Provided by Public Library of Science
"Dyslexic adults have more trouble if background noise levels are high." November 23rd, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-dyslexic-adults-background-noise-high.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
A study looks at the nature of change in our aging, changing brains
(Medical Xpress) -- As we get older, our cognitive abilities change, improving when we’re younger and declining as we age. Scientists posit a hierarchical structure within which these abilities are organized. There’s the “lowest” level— measured by specific tests, such as story memory or word memory; the second level, which groups various skills involved in a category of cognitive ability, such as memory, perceptual speed, or reasoning; and finally, the “general,” or G, factor, a sort of statistical aggregate of all the thinking abilities.
What happens to this structure as we age? That was the question Timothy A. Salthouse, Brown-Forman professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, investigated in a new study appearing in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. His findings advance psychologists’ understanding of the complexities of the aging brain.
“There are three hypotheses about how this works,” says Salthouse. “One is that abilities become more strongly integrated with one another as we age.” That theory suggests the general factor influences cognitive aging the most. The second—based on the idea that connectivity among different brain regions lessens with age—“is almost the opposite: that the changes in cognitive abilities become more rather than less independent with age.” The third was Salthouse’s hypothesis: The structure remains constant throughout the aging process.
Using a sample of 1,490 healthy adults ages 18 to 89, Salthouse performed analyses of the scores on 16 tests of five cognitive abilities—vocabulary, reasoning, spatial relations, memory, and perceptual speed. The primary analyses were on the changes in the test scores across an interval of about two and a half years.
The findings confirmed Salthouse’s hunch: “The effects of aging on memory, on reasoning, on spatial relations, and so on are not necessarily constant. But the structure within which these changes are occurring does not seem to change as a function of age.” In normal, healthy people, “the direction and magnitude of change may be different” when we’re 18 or 88, he says. “But it appears that the qualitative nature of cognitive change remains the same throughout adulthood.”
The study could inform other research investigating “what allows some people to age more gracefully than others,” says Salthouse. That is, do people who stay mentally sharper maintain their ability structures better than those who become more forgetful or less agile at reasoning? And in the future, applying what we know about the structures of change could enhance “interventions that we think will improve cognitive functioning” at any age or stage of life.
Provided by Association for Psychological Science
"A study looks at the nature of change in our aging, changing brains." November 23rd, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-nature-aging-brains.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Scientists point to link between missing synapse protein and abnormal behaviors
(Medical Xpress) -- Although many mental illnesses are uniquely human, animals sometimes exhibit abnormal behaviors similar to those seen in humans with psychological disorders. Such behaviors are called endophenotypes. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found that mice lacking a gene that encodes a particular protein found in the synapses of the brain display a number of endophenotypes associated with schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders.
The new findings appear in a recent issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, with Mary Kennedy, the Allen and Lenabelle Davis Professor of Biology at Caltech, as the senior author.
The team created mutations in mice so that they were missing the gene for a protein called densin-180, which is abundant in the synapses of the brain, those electro-chemical connections between one neuron and another that enable the formation of networks between the brain's neurons. This protein sticks to and binds together several other proteins in a part of the neuron that's at the receiving end of a synapse and is called the postsynapse. "Our work indicates that densin-180 helps to hold together a key piece of regulatory machinery in the postsynaptic part of excitatory brain synapses," says Kennedy.
In mice lacking densin-180, the researchers found decreased amounts of some of the other regulatory proteins normally located in the postsynapse. Kennedy and her colleagues were especially intrigued by a marked decrease in the amount of a protein called DISC1. "A mutation that leads to loss of DISC1 function has been shown to predispose humans to development of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder," Kennedy says.
In the study, the researchers compared the behavior of typical mice with that of mice lacking densin. Those without densin displayed impaired short-term memory, hyperactivity in response to novel or stressful situations, a deficit of normal nest-building activity, and higher levels of anxiety. "Studies of mice with schizophrenia and autism-like features have reported similar behaviors," Kennedy notes.
"We do not know precisely how the molecular defect leads to the behavioral endophenotypes. That will be our work going forward," Kennedy says. "The molecular mechanistic links between a gene defect and defective behavior are complicated and, as yet, mostly unknown. Understanding them goes to the very heart of understanding brain function."
Indeed, she adds, the findings point to the need for a better understanding of the interactions that occur between proteins at synapses. Studies of these interactions could provide information needed to screen for new and better pharmaceuticals for the treatment of mental illnesses. "This study really reinforces the idea that small changes in the molecular structures at synapses are linked to major problems with behavior," Kennedy says.
More information: "Deletion of Densin-180 Results in Abnormal Behaviors Associated with Mental Illness and Reduces mGluR5 and DISC1 in the Postsynaptic Density Fraction," The Journal of Neuroscience (2011).
Provided by California Institute of Technology
"Scientists point to link between missing synapse protein and abnormal behaviors." November 23rd, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-scientists-link-synapse-protein-abnormal.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Seeing Sound
Researchers ask: Is there an advantage to getting emotional when touching certain textures, or seeing colors change when you listen to music?
By Edyta Zielinska |
wikimedia commons, Jennifer RenselWhat if every time you listened to Mozart or the Wu-Tang Clan your world began to change color. What if every time you touched a rough sandy surface, you felt an irrepressible jealousy. Synesthetes, or people who connect the perception of one sense with another unrelated sense or processing center, will commonly have strong associations such as these throughout their lives, often without realizing that their experiences are different.
Researchers have shown that this ability—or disorder, depending on how you look at it—may have a genetic basis. Around 50 percent of parents pass the trait onto their children, although it’s still unclear what genes are involved. With 2 to 4 percent of the population estimated to have this trait, David Brang and V.S. Ramachandran from the University of California, San Diego, wondered whether synesthesia might confer a selective advantage. The pair published their musings in an article published in PLoS Biology today
The Scientist: How did you get into this area of study?
David Brang: I think the first time that I discovered it was through a friend of mine. I had just learned about synesthesia in class, I was telling a few friends about it, and all of a sudden he sort of looks over and he asks, “What do you mean you don’t see colors when you think of numbers and letters?” This was the first time I had seen a synesthete, and it tends to be the way most synesthetes “out” themselves.
TS: Why do you suspect it could be good to have synesthesia?
DB: Synesthesia is an interesting phenomenon in itself, but a secondary question is what good is it? Why would this have survived any type of evolutionary pressure? It’s possible that it was just by chance—that it co-evolved with some other process that was itself useful; it just tagged along. Another possibility is that it’s just the tail end of the distribution of how senses are perceived in the normal population. It’s not special in itself, it’s just the extremes of normal experiences.
SynesthesiaFlickr, twitchcraft
But one thing we do find is that there are specific enhancements from synesthesia. For example, synesthesia is more common in artists, poets, novelists, and these people say that it helps their art-form. There have been a number of well documented cases over time—Kandinsky was always thought to be a synesthete, possibly also Van Gogh. One of the other interesting things is that synesthesia doesn’t just affect communication between the senses but it seems to actually enhance the sensitivity of the individual sensory systems as well. So when people see colors in numbers, they have better discrimination ability for just colors in themselves.
One of the other findings is that synesthetes report that these secondary associations aid in their memory, including anything from remembering phone numbers to license plates to remembering equations. If they need to remember “56249,” they can think in numbers, or they can think ‘well I know I saw a red color first and then there was a green and then a blue color, and so it just adds this perceptual anchor to give weight to some of these primary sensory processes.
TS: If there is a genetic basis, what might these genes be doing on the cellular level?
DB: There may be enhanced connectivity between separate brain regions. Typically the sensory systems—such as sight, hearing, taste—are usually pretty distinct. But in synesthetes we think there is actually increased communication between the senses such that there is increased white matter connectivity between each of the sensory modalities.
During development you have a huge excess of connections. Most of the regions of the brain are connected to most of the other regions and then you have this steady process of pruning through development where connections that are not efficient get pruned back so you get these efficient hubs. One possibility is that synesthesia may just be the outgrowth of what happens when pruning isn’t as successful as development may have wanted it to be, and then it has this secondary consequence.
TS: Does working on this research change how you perceive the world?
DB: I don’t have synesthesia myself, but I have definitely, over the years, developed preferences for associations. I definitely have a preference that “2” should be blue, that “b” should be yellow and that “a” should be red. I started building my own associations, but I don’t see them to any degree.
Studying synesthesia, in general, has made me more aware of the fact that our own experiences may not be universal. We can only see inside our own head.
Source: The Scientist
http://the-scientist.com/2011/11/22/seeing-sound-2/
http://the-scientist.com/2011/11/22/seeing-sound-2/
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Dreaming takes the sting out of painful memories
They say time heals all wounds, and new research from the University of California, Berkeley, indicates that time spent in dream sleep can help.
UC Berkeley researchers have found that during the dream phase of sleep, also known as REM sleep, our stress chemistry shuts down and the brain processes emotional experiences and takes the painful edge off difficult memories.
The findings offer a compelling explanation for why people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as war veterans, have a hard time recovering from painful experiences and suffer reoccurring nightmares.They also offer clues into why we dream.
"The dream stage of sleep, based on its unique neurochemical composition, provides us with a form of overnight therapy, a soothing balm that removes the sharp edges from the prior day's emotional experiences," said Matthew Walker, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study to be published this Wednesday, Nov. 23, in the journal Current Biology.
For people with PTSD, Walker said, this overnight therapy may not be working effectively, so when a "flashback is triggered by, say, a car backfiring, they relive the whole visceral experience once again because the emotion has not been properly stripped away from the memory during sleep."
The results offer some of the first insights into the emotional function of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which typically takes up 20 percent of a healthy human's sleeping hours. Previous brain studies indicate that sleep patterns are disrupted in people with mood disorders such as PTSD and depression.
While humans spend one-third of their lives sleeping, there is no scientific consensus on the function of sleep. However, Walker and his research team have unlocked many of these mysteries linking sleep to learning, memory and mood regulation. The latest study shows the importance of the REM dream state.
"During REM sleep, memories are being reactivated, put in perspective and connected and integrated, but in a state where stress neurochemicals are beneficially suppressed," said Els van der Helm, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the study.
Thirty–five healthy young adults participated in the study. They were divided into two groups, each of whose members viewed 150 emotional images, twice and 12 hours apart, while an MRI scanner measured their brain activity.
Half of the participants viewed the images in the morning and again in the evening, staying awake between the two viewings. The remaining half viewed the images in the evening and again the next morning after a full night of sleep.
Those who slept in between image viewings reported a significant decrease in their emotional reaction to the images. In addition, MRI scans showed a dramatic reduction in reactivity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions, allowing the brain's "rational" prefrontal cortex to regain control of the participants' emotional reactions.
In addition, the researchers recorded the electrical brain activity of the participants while they slept, using electroencephalograms. They found that during REM dream sleep, certain electrical activity patterns decreased, showing that reduced levels of stress neurochemicals in the brain soothed emotional reactions to the previous day's experiences.
"We know that during REM sleep there is a sharp decrease in levels of norepinephrine, a brain chemical associated with stress," Walker said. "By reprocessing previous emotional experiences in this neuro-chemically safe environment of low norepinephrine during REM sleep, we wake up the next day, and those experiences have been softened in their emotional strength. We feel better about them, we feel we can cope."
Walker said he was tipped off to the possible beneficial effects of REM sleep on PTSD patients when a physician at a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in the Seattle area told him of a blood pressure drug that was inadvertently preventing reoccurring nightmares in PTSD patients.
It turns out that the generic blood pressure drug had a side effect of suppressing norepinephrine in the brain, thereby creating a more stress-free brain during REM, reducing nightmares and promoting a better quality of sleep. This suggested a link between PTSD and REM sleep, Walker said.
"This study can help explain the mysteries of why these medications help some PTSD patients and their symptoms as well as their sleep," Walker said. "It may also unlock new treatment avenues regarding sleep and mental illness."
Provided by University of California - Berkeley
"Dreaming takes the sting out of painful memories." November 23rd, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-painful-memories.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
SUCCESS AND FAILURE: WHAT BOTH TRULY MEAN
THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT HOW SUCCESS REALLY WORKS
Here’s what’s getting in your way when you attempt (and fail) to hit those “reach” goals.
Many people fall prey to, “Yeah, but…” thinking.
I have a friend who absolutely hates how successful his brother-in-law has become. “Oh yeah, I’d like to be doing that well,” he’ll say, “but he has very little downtime.”
Another is bitter because one of his friends is extremely fit. “Oh yeah, I’d like to be in that kind of shape,” he’ll say, “but he has to run like 30 miles a week.”
Sound familiar? It’s easy to look at people who are successful and begrudge their success. So we say, “Yeah, but he constantly watches what he eats,” about a thin friend, or, “Yeah, but he’s a slave to his schedule,” about a friend who achieves multiple goals, or even, “Yeah, but he took on way too much risk when he started his company,” about another entrepreneur.
But that’s how success works. Fit people are fit because they work out a lot. Successful people are successful because they work incredibly hard. People whose family relationships are close-knit have put time and effort into building those relationships.
Nothing worth achieving comes without a price. To begrudge those who pay the price is unfair. To be unwilling to pay the price will always result in failure.
The next time you consider a goal you want to achieve, decide if you really want to pursue that goal. If the answer is yes, the rest isn’t easy but it is simple.
Look around: No matter what your pursuit, plenty of people have already succeeded. Great blueprints and easy-to-follow road maps are everywhere.
Continue reading this article at INC.com
How the brain works with feelings
In the inaugural College of Science Colloquium Series lecture, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett explored how emotions function in the mind. Photo by Mary Knox Merrill.(Medical Xpress) -- People who claim to recognize a burned imprint of Jesus on a piece of toast are channeling what Northeastern University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Lisa Feldman Barrett calls a self-interested perception of the world.
“We take sensory information and match it up to something we have seen before,” Barrett told more than 200 students, faculty and staff in the Raytheon Amphitheater last Thursday for the inaugural lecture in the College of Science Colloquium Series. “This is not a failure of science but rather a natural consequence of how the human brain works.”
Barrett based her lecture on research conducted in the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern, which studies how emotions function in the mind by using experiential, behavioral, psychophysiological and brain-imaging methods. The lab’s working hypothesis is that words for emotion, such as “fear,” “anger” and “sadness,” correspond to mental states that can be described as the combination of more basic psychological processes.
On Dec. 1, Barrett, along with associate professor David DeSteno and other Northeastern researchers, will lead an interdisciplinary conference that will serve as the first sponsored event of the newly created Affective Science Institute (ASI). ASI will be a nexus for collaboration, training and the exchange of ideas between researchers and scholars who study emotion and related topics in the New England area. The meet-and-greet event will also feature a poster session and a keynote address from neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux.
As part of her lecture, Barrett described how a technique called semantic satiation could shed light on how language affects our ability to recognize emotions.
Say the word "anger" over and over again and you won’t know the meaning of the furious scowl on the face of the person sitting next to you on the subway. Repeat the word "smile" over and over, and you won’t be able to tell whether two happy kids with ear-to-ear grins are conveying the same emotion.
“This principle is useful for deactivating the meaning of a word for a split second,” Barrett explained. “Perceptual accuracy can drop significantly and influence how you take in information from someone’s face.”
Barrett said the brain is constantly processing sensory input from both the body and the world and using experience to make sense of images, phrases, sounds and smells. “At any given moment, the brain is doing these things, whether you are experiencing an emotion, cognition or perception,” she said.
Half of our waking lives, however, are spent in reverie — lost in daydream. As Barrett put it, “Fifty percent of the time we’re not paying too much attention to what’s going on the world.”
Provided by Northeastern University
"How the brain works with feelings." November 23rd, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-brain.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
HOW TO MOONLIGHT AS AN ENTREPRENEUR BEFORE YOU GO FULL TIME
How to Bootstrap Your Business
Erica Zidel knew trying to raise funds for her startup would be a full-time job. She worried that chasing after capital would distract her from building the best product she could. So, rather than sweat the investment game, she has spent two years holding down a day job while bootstrapping her new company.
During business hours, the Boston resident works as a management consultant. On evenings and weekends, she wears her startup hat.
“I’ve basically been working two full-time jobs,” says Zidel, founder and CEO of Sitting Around. This online community makes it easy for parents to find and coordinate babysitting co-ops in their neighbourhoods. It’s a hectic schedule–schizophrenic, even–but it’s also thrilling. “When I woke up this morning, I realised that it was Monday, and I got excited,” Zidel says.
Perhaps more thrilling is that she’s been able to self-fund Sitting Around with the money she earns from her consulting work. Besides not getting sidetracked with fundraising, Zidel and her business partner, CTO Ted Tieken, have retained 100 per cent ownership of the babysitting venture.
“Bootstrapping early on means I have complete control over the vision and the product at a time when even small changes can lead to big consequences down the road,” Zidel says. “I wanted the flexibility to make the right decisions, free from a board or an investor’s influence. When just the founders make decisions, you can innovate much faster.”
That focus on innovation has paid off. Sitting Around serves families in 48 states, as well as in Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and the U.K. Since the site launched in June, its user base has doubled every month; the company is on track to have 5,000 users by year’s end. Sitting Around also was one of 125 finalists in this year’s MassChallenge, a Boston-based startup competition and accelerator program. Perhaps most exciting of all? Shortly after launching the company, Zidel was honored at the White House as a champion of change for her contributions to child care.
Money vs. Time
The beauty of moonlighting with a startup is that it lets you test a business idea without jeopardising your financial well-being, says Pamela Slim, business consultant and author of escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur.
“When you don’t know where your monthly income is coming from, it often sets up a fight-or-flight response in your brain,” Slim says. “And that’s not a good place to be when you’re trying to be creative. So having that psychological cushion is often very important for developing business ideas.”
Zidel will attest to that. Thanks to her day job, she’s poured $15,000 to $20,000 of her own money into her business. Not having to take on debt or live like a monk has been a point of pride–but it has also been a necessity. “Since I’m a mother, I have to maintain an adequate standard of living for my son,” Zidel explains. “While I’m definitely frugal and very conscious that a dollar spent on lifestyle is a dollar not spent on Sitting Around, I’d rather work two jobs than feed my son ramen.”
But as anyone bootstrapping a business on top of a day job will tell you, seed capital isn’t the only ingredient in the recipe.
“When I started my journey as an entrepreneur, I thought the most precious resource was money, but it’s time,” says Aaron Franklin, co-founder of LazyMeter.com. This web-based productivity tool was launched in August.
Franklin and LazyMeter co-founder Joshua Runge began “messing around” with their idea nights and weekends while working full time at Microsoft. After four months of brainstorming and development, the two felt they could no longer do their day jobs justice. With LazyMeter still in the product development stage, they resigned from Microsoft at the end of 2009, trading in their steady paychecks for a more flexible web-consulting client.
“We needed a source of revenue to buy us the time to build the right product. Consulting was really the perfect way to ease this transition,” says Franklin, who is based in San Francisco.
Taking project-based work did more than just allow Franklin and Runge to bootstrap the startup. Because they performed their consulting work under their business entity, they could stretch their income further by putting their pre-tax earnings back into their new company.
Today, LazyMeter has more than 10,000 users. Although a free service, the founders plan to introduce premium subscription features as soon as the first quarter of 2012.
Juggling Act
Bootstrapping a business has its challenges. Besides the long hours and strain on personal relationships, splitting one’s creative juices between two professional pursuits can be tricky.
“Being pulled in multiple directions is the hardest,” says Sitting Around’s Zidel. “It takes a while for your brain to switch gears. And when things collide, it can be hard to say [what] you should be working on.”
To stay productive and sane, Zidel schedules her workdays down to the hour and sticks to a list of non-negotiable items to accomplish each day. Still, she admits, “it’s hard to stop working. I really have to force myself to carve out some personal time.”
Bootstrapping with income earned from not a single employer but a cadre of consulting clients comes with its own set of obstacles.
“Sometimes customers require a lot of attention, making it difficult to carve out time for your startup,” LazyMeter’s Franklin says. Likewise, he adds, “When you start consulting, it can be tempting to work as many hours as they can pay you.”
Either way, your startup loses–which is why it’s important to make an exit plan and stick to it. “If you make enough revenue to last another month but slow down your startup by a month, you’re not getting ahead,” Franklin says. “Make sure your efforts are moving you forward, not backward.”
Continue reading this article at Entrepreneur.com
JUST TO REMIND YOU TO BE MORE CAREFUL
Do not take pills with COOL water
Do not have HUGE meals after 5pm
Reduce the amount of TEA you consume
Reduce the amount of OILY food you consume
Drink more WATER in the morning, less at night
Keep your distance from hand phone CHARGERS
Do not use headphones/earphone for LONG period of time
Best sleeping time is from 10pm at night to 6am in the morning
Do not lie down immediately after taking medicine before sleeping
When battery is down to the LAST grid/bar, do not answer the phone as the radiation is 1000 times
ˆ
Forward this to those whom you CARE about
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
FIVE MOST STRESSFUL JOBS AND THEIR SALARIES
Any job in this economy is a good job. However, if at all possible steering clear of stressful jobs might be to your benefit. Get the facts on the most stressful jobs out there here!Payscale shares…
1. Financial Aid Counselor
Median annual salary: $38,000
People in this job reporting high stress: 75%
Median annual salary: $38,000
People in this job reporting high stress: 75%
Not only does Financial Aid Counselor top PayScale’s list of most stressful jobs, it doesn’t pay that well, which can be stressful enough. As college tuition costs climb and U.S. wages remain relatively flat overall (see The PayScale Index for U.S. compensation trends), it can’t be easy to help prospective students and their parents find ways to pay for school.
Account managers in sales are typically held to a sales quota by day/week/month/quarter, depending on the company. If you’re routinely not meeting that quota, not only will you likely be stressed, you could be out of a job. Job performance is measured by a number of factors, but when you’re in sales, your future at the company is pretty closely tied to how much money you’re bringing in the door.
3. Restaurant Assistant Manager
Median annual salary: $33,000
People in this job reporting high stress: 72%
Median annual salary: $33,000
People in this job reporting high stress: 72%
Managing a busy restaurant can be rewarding, but it’s also most certainly stressful. There are employees, vendors and customers all demanding your attention. And, the long hours and low pay don’t help. The most difficult tasks for this job “may be dealing with irate customers and motivating employees,” according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The specialties and work settings for registered nurses vary greatly, but regardless of what type of registered nurse you are, the job requires that you provide both medical and emotional support for patients and their families. That’s a big responsibility. If you can handle the stress, there are plenty of jobs to go around. “Employment of registered nurses is expected to grow by 22 percent from 2008 to 2018, much faster than the average for all occupations,” according to the BLS.
Probation officers work closely with convicted criminals sentenced to probation, their families and the courts. They often have very heavy workloads, due to court-imposed deadlines, according to BLS. Some additional requirements include extensive travel, carrying a firearm or other weapon for protection and collecting and transporting urine samples for drug testing. “All of these factors make for a stressful work environment,” according to the BLS. “Although the high stress levels can make these jobs very difficult at times, this work also can be very rewarding. Many workers obtain personal satisfaction from counseling members of their community and helping them become productive citizens.”
Get the entire story at Payscale!
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