Here are our eight favorite tips for staying positive throughout the dark, cold months.

1. Travel. If you can afford it, this might be the time to take a mini-vacation to sunnier climates. Keep an eye out on priceline.com and hotwire.com for deals. For some of us, even a six-hour drive can land us in warmer weather.
2. Dream of travel. If you can’t afford it now, maybe you’ll be able to in the future. And interestingly enough, sometimes imagining you’re warm can actually heat you up. Flip through magazines or websites like lonelyplanet.com to get inspired for your next jaunt.
3. Hot tub.  Or sauna, or steam room. ‘Tis the season to lounge around and let the warmth seep into your skin.  If you can’t access any of these facilities, a hot shower or bath can serve the same purpose.
4. Hot drinks and food. Drinking cold water and eating salads in winter will make you feel like an icicle. On the flip side,  tea and soup will warm you from the inside out.
5. Light. The short days and long nights can start to feel depressing. Make sure you’re getting some sunshine – a mid-day walk can do a great deal for mild winter depression – and consider investing in a full-spectrum lamp if it’s more serious.
6. Bright colors. Ditch the blacks and greys if your spirit needs uplifting. There’s something to be said for color therapy. Try yellows, light greens, and even orange or red if you’re so inclined.
7. Exercise. When you’re feeling down in the dumps, it can be tough to get motivated, but exercise releases feel-good neurotransmitters. Plus, it’s a great way to stay warm.
8. Cuddle buddy. When all else fails, find yourself someone to curl up with. It’ll keep you warm and make you happy. If you don’t have a partner, a dog or cat can serve as a great substitute. A water bottle works too.

Basically, parts of the world including the United States want so get rid of the leap second. They contend that the leap second “could lead to major foul-ups if electronic systems that depend on the precise time” are not in agreement. So computers, Wall Street, and air traffic control could be affected.

Canada, China, and Britain want to ensure that the current system remains in place and that the leap second is inserted when need be. They make the case that the leap second has yet to foul anything up and this system of leap second insertion has been going on for the last forty years. Why mess with success? Plus, if the leap second is abolished, what will happen as those missed seconds add up in the future?

Here’s where it can get tricky:  the world operates on two clock sets. One set is comprised of atomic clocks that are “defined by the precise frequency that electrons jump around in atoms.” The other set is defined by the spinning of our planet Earth. Since our lovely planet does not spin at the same rate each year and has been slowing down, the atomic clocks have been ahead and that’s why the leap seconds have been added.

Should the leap second be abolished, one method of how we tell time, the astronomical way, will differ from the atomic clocks and atomic time could jump ahead of solar time. So what? Well, time has historically been determined by the rising and the setting of the sun. Before globalization, people in one town set their town square clock according to when the sun rose and set. People neighboring towns, determined the time that was set on their clocks in their squares. If the town clocks were slightly off, it really didn’t matter since people weren’t communicating cross-country.

Of course, society has changed from the way it was centuries ago and now it appears to be much more important to be as accurate as possible. Britain and the U.S. continue to talk and there is hope that an agreement may be reached. If not, the proposal to get rid of the leap second will go to a vote before the United Nations. Delegates from around the world will decide the outcome. If the leap second is done away with, the change won’t occur until the year 2018 so we have a little more time. What will you do with your extra second?

A recent survey of over 200,000 college freshmen reveals that only 58% of those surveyed were enrolled at their first choice school. In a related statistic, nearly 1 in 5 freshmen declined their acceptance to their first choice school when it was offered. According to John H. Pryor, the director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program that administered the survey, that is likely largely due to higher college costs and lower financial aid. “These students who were accepted and are not attending are much more likely to say they are not going because they did not get the financial aid they wanted.”

The survey of freshmen has been conducted since 1966, and plainly shows that over time financial aid has dropped. In 2010, 74% of students were receiving financial aid in grant or scholarship money. In 2011, only 70% received financial assistance through grants or scholarships. Additionally, the actual dollar value of the grants or scholarships also shrank.

More than half of the surveyed students said that they had “some concerns” about financing, but nearly 12% of students surveyed said they had “major concerns” about financing their educations.

It also seems that college freshmen are taking their studies more seriously than students surveyed in previous years. Students reported themselves as being more “academically oriented” than students in previous surveys. The research also showed that this group of students studied longer and took more AP classes than students in earlier years. They also were less likely to drink alcoholic beverages.

Interestingly, the survey also showed that the surveyed students had more liberal views on some social issues. Regarding same sex marriage, 71% of students said, “same-sex couples should have the right to marry legally.” Fewer freshmen agreed that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to have access to public education, with only 43% agreeing, down 4 points from 2010.

Some of us really envy those students, and feel a lot of anxiety about our indecision.

But if you’re one of the undecided – or a high school student thinking you need to have it all figured out – you can relax. Selecting a major seems like a huge deal, and in some ways it is. The reality, though, is that there’s no wrong choice. You can almost never paint yourself into a corner. Math majors may develop an artistic yearning later in life, and at age 35, take prerequisites for an MFA. English majors may decide that they have latent business talents, and apply to MBA programs a few years down the road. French majors can end up running restaurants, or enrolled in Sociology Ph.D. programs.

Given the fact that there’s not necessarily a strong correlation between what you major in and what you end up actually doing as a career, what should you consider when selecting a major? Here are three things to keep in mind. Remember, it’s normal to change your major. Some students do it three or four times.

1. Explore. In high school you may not have had an opportunity to take philosophy, or anthropology, or engineering. If your college offers courses that you’d like to explore, by all means go for it. And ideally, go for it freshman or sophomore year. College is a time to explore! These courses may end up being a one-shot deal, or you may find a new passionand a new major.
2. What makes the most sense? Let’s say you’ve explored and you haven’t hit on anything you feel drawn to. Well, you probably already know where your skills and talents lie. The practical student selects a major that they are familiar with, enjoy, and know that they can experience a degree of success in, both academically and financially.
3. What do you love? But not all of us are practical. Sure, the acting world is brutal. But if that’s your dream and you can’t picture yourself doing anything else, there’s your major. Not everyone fits into the box of traditional fields of study, either. Your passion may lie – if your school allows this – in some kind of interdisciplinary fusion major. It may sound random to others, but you can’t get enough of it.

Hopefully, your heart and your head align, and you’ll naturally decide on a major that you love and that also makes sense. But like we said earlier, your major is by no means a predictor of your future.

All that pressure may sometimes feel like it takes the creative edge off, and that’s never a good thing, especially when you’re trying to come up with creative solutions to research problems or to make your assignments stand out from the crowd with creativity. There’s good, and surprising news for students who need a boost of creativity, and it’s actually pretty counterintuitive.

Work Creative Problems When You are Sleepy

According to new research recently reported in The Research Digest, people are at their most creative when they are groggy. That means early birds are at their “creative peak” when their circadian rhythm is at its lowest in the evening, and night owls are at their creative peaks in the morning. The digest says that the reason for the creative surge at that time is because “inhibitory brain processes are at their weakest and your thoughts are meandering.”

What Does this Mean for Students?

What it means for students at both the graduate and undergraduate level is a little unclear. Research has shown that students tend to do better when they take classes that are in line with their circadian rhythm – that may be one reason why late classes are much more popular than early morning classes among undergraduate (and younger) students. However, students who are taking classes that deal in creative information, like art or creative writing, may want to take those particular classes on an opposite schedule than their circadian rhythm might lead them to think.

Students might want to take into consideration their circadian rhythm when they are working on a particularly thorny problem in their research writing. Although more investigation is needed to understand the relationship between time of day and creativity, it’s worth a try to wake up early (or stay up late) when you’ve got a creative problem to solve.

According to a recent article in Inside Higher Ed, being an educated person means being able to understand how the tools you use work. The author, Audrey Watters, likens our use of computers to our use of cars.

You’ve got to have a basic understanding of what makes the wheels go ‘round. Watters argues that if you use a computer, no matter what your major is, you should at least have a basic understanding of how search engines work, a basic understanding of HTML (mark-up only), CSS (cascading style sheets), and JavaScript.

Her argument is pretty spot-on. There’s probably not a single college graduate out there that won’t use computers at some point or another in their work. Even musicians, artists, and dancers need to use the computer to move ahead professionally (and actually musicians and visual artists probably use computers much more than a lot of other majors because those two industries have embraced technology as an important facet of each respective field).

According to Douglas Rushkoff, author and technology expert, all students should be learning code. “It’s time Americans begin treating computer code the way we do the alphabet or arithmetic … Program or be programmed.” He goes on to say “So few Americans know how to code that firms like Google and Facebook are actually buying whole companies just for their code literate employees.”

One of the easiest ways to start learning code is by enrolling in a coding class. Here’s the best part: you don’t even have to pay. The Codeacademy is a new startup that is offering a coding tutorial online for free to anyone who signs up at codeyear.com, with a new tutorial every Monday.

Not only will you be more employable if you know how to code, you will be bringing your skill level up higher than many other people who may be vying for the same jobs you are. It can really put a prospective employee at the top of the employment pile, because so few people actually know how to code (in the US that is.)

According to Rushkoff, China and India teach their students how to code from early on. Says Rushkoff, “If you know how to code, you can likely get a high paying job right now, or – better – make valuable stuff right now.”

The two planets called Kepler 20e and Kepler 20f are “way too hot to be anything like our own earth” according to Sara Seager, a member of the discovery team and a planet hunter. However, scientists are excited that Kepler 20e and Kepler 20f are rocky like our planet Earth and not comprised of gases like Jupiter. They also whiz around a star not unlike our sun.

No life has been detected or can be supported on these planets because of their temperatures. Kepler 20f is 800 degrees Fahrenheit and hotter than a wood burning pizza oven. It completes a full orbit every 20 days while Kepler 20e, about the size of Venus, zips around the star every six days. Planet Earth, as we know, takes 365 days to complete its orbit.

These two planets are snuggled in with three, larger Neptune-like planets that circle the star, Kepler 20. “In our solar system, the two different types of planets don’t mingle,” says David Charbonneau from Harvard University. It’s the first time scientists have witnessed this phenomenon.

The bottom line: planets are everywhere and scientists believe that “every star has planets.” Since 1995, numerous space teams utilizing space and ground telescopes “have found more than 700 planets orbiting other stars.” The telescopes identify planets by viewing 150,000 stars near the Cygnus constellation. When a star winks, it means a planet is orbiting past. Three winks indicate a planet. An orbital year is determined by the amount of time that passes between winks.

The largest and costly $600 million dollar space telescope, Kepler, was launched in 2009 to track down other Earth-like planets. Kepler’s next mission is to find an Earth-sized world with a temperature appropriate for hosting life as we know it. Kepler scientists are sure that within a couple of years Kepler will “confirm a true Earth analog.” This discovery will “be a historic moment” and one that we will be intrigued to hear about. Many of us will be happy if, in the future of space exploration, we get opportunities to hop into space shuttles and take galactic vacays. That day could be sooner than we realize.

• Students at the Lightning Research Lab at the University of Florida spend their summer “catching” lightning and studying it in order to create lightning-resistant structures
• Those who enjoy water and weaving have the opportunity to bring together their interests in the Underwater Basket Weaving class at Reed, which has been in existence since 1980.
• Agile students who are not afraid of heights can take Tree Climbing at Cornell, where you’ll learn not only to climb trees but to move from tree to tree.
• Tree lovers can also indulge their passion in the Peruvian Amazon Field Course at New College Florida, during which they’ll climb up rainforest trees in order to study the life there.
• Students studying at the Barton Lab at Northern Kentucky University have the opportunity to take a field trip to a Venezuelan cave that might provide clues to life on Mars.
• Fans of jellyfish should consider studying at the Dawson Lab at University of CA Merced. They’ll take trips to snorkel and dive with jellyfish in order to better understand the oceans.
• If you’re interested in weather, check out the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center at Texas Tech. You’ll be on the scene taking measurements in hurricanes and tornadoes. If no wind is forthcoming, you’ll hurl planks at brick walls in order to imitate same.

Earlier in the year, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers birthed xxx domain names in an attempt to keep adult entertainment and pornography in their own erotica Internet space. Universities and colleges had their PR employees brainstorm to come up with possible porn sites that could be created using their schools’ names. Then, they purchased these sites for a one time blocking fee of $220 per address so that their schools’ names wouldn’t be as easily affiliated with unwanted porn.

No, students won’t be able to take a dirty version of an online medical course. In fact, the university buyers aren’t planning on doing anything with these acquired sites. Valerie Gill, Indiana University’s director of trademarks and licensing, stated, “The majority of us are just trying to hit our main trademarks and use that as a means for fighting uses we can’t even dream up at this point.” Many celebrities were included as owners of registered trademarks so they were shelling out big bucks for these xxx sites, too.

This situation could have made for an interesting project for public relations degree majors. The  universities wouldn’t have needed to shell out thousands of dollars in employees’ salaries in addition to the money spent on the xxx domains. They could have tapped into their schools’ number one resource, their students. These schools would have been handed a list so long that they would have had to act like Santa himself in order to selectively sort through the naughty addresses and come up with the best ones to buy.

In any case, the majority of schools bought only the basics. Penn State University bought four .xxx domains:  PSU, Nittany Lions, Penn State, and The Pennsylvania State University. Indiana University dropped $2,200 on eleven domains like Hoosiers.xxx and Indianauniversity.xxx. The University of Kansas, however, got really creative and spent almost $3,000 on a variety of sites such as KUnurses.xxx and KUgirls.xxx.

Still, today not all college students fit the traditional mold of young high school graduates going off to college; in fact a great many college students are working adults who have families and who are squeezing in the time to further their education in order to increase their earning potential.

Often, these types of students are returning to school with years of relevant work or life experience under their belts. They may wonder why they have to take a particular class, for example, in accounting, especially if they have been working as a bookkeeper for years. Today, more colleges are recognizing that work and life experience may be an important part of a student’s education, and are more willing to offer credits toward graduation for that experience.

Credit for Life Experience Not Necessarily the Easiest Path

However, that’s not to say that getting college credit for your life experience is as simple as walking into the advisor’s office, filling out a form, and being approved for credit. As a general rule, schools that offer credit for life experience have rigorous programs for vetting approved life experience.

In fact, if a school doesn’t vet your life experience and is willing to offer credit with no background information, you may be dealing with a diploma mill instead of an accredited institution, according to a recent article in the New York Times.

There are standards for life experience credit that are set forth by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, which “nearly all colleges adhere to,” that do offer credit for life experience. The published standards state that credits should only be awarded for actual learning and not merely for experience, and never for routine experiences like driving or regular home maintenance.

In practical terms, that means life experience learning credits need to be geared toward a culmination of not only practical knowledge, but also theoretical knowledge of the kind that students are exposed to in an academic setting.

Students will need to demonstrate to the academic advisors that the learning they accomplished fits the established criteria by submitting a portfolio of their experiences, with well-written essays elaborating on the educational aspects of that experience. Some schools, like DePaul University of Chicago, require students to complete a six-credit course that helps them put together their portfolio of experience and essays.

According to the former associate dean of curriculum, Ann Folwell Stanford, students must be able to “illustrate in writing how they find meaning in it.” She says the process is fairly rigorous: “It’s not a quick and dirty way to get credit.”

Often, students must meet with advisors multiple times during the preparation of their portfolio, and there are no guarantees that a student’s portfolio will be approved once it is submitted.

At City University of New York, about ten percent of each class of students who receive a bachelor’s degree will receive credit for life experience. Says Kim J. Hartswick, the academic director of the Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies, “People don’t realize how much they’ve learned until they really begin reviewing their lives.”