Conversation On Love Pdf Free Download

[Ramya Bradbury]

Ina fascinating study, Professor Aron attempted to escalate the intimacy between strangers. He paired participants and gave each couple a series of 36 questions to discuss, designed to facilitate self-disclosure. The questions escalated in intensity, based on the finding that one of the keys to establishing a close relationships is self-disclosure that is sustained, escalating and mutual.

My wife and I have been thinking about enhancing our relationship so that it is more fun. Thanks for your tips about how we should try to be more vulnerable, kind, and warm with each other. Being able to communicate more effectively in every aspect of our relationship could help us treat each other better.

Wonderful and the truth. Being real involves exposing ourselves and reciprocal vulnerability.

I loved the advice of sharing with the thought of being accepted.

Anything less is false and will never

evolve beyond superficial.

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we must thank Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and of Earth, and by my own reckoning to include classical music, for the natural continuation by His divine will for classical music. Through Him, with Him and in Him we have Gregorian Chant, Great Composers: Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky. and hopefully more to come by His will and as announced by Michael Kurek.

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Watching my painted hover wasps gave me a unique invitation into the plot of an evolutionary soap opera: there were dominations, submissions, enforced celibacy, births, deaths. The characters were woven together by a matrix of genetic relatedness and pulled apart by temptations outside the family home. Evolution had already decided how the genetic fitness books would be balanced, and the social interactions were my clues to deciphering it. I was hooked.

As expected, bees and butterflies were very much loved, and both were recognised for their importance as pollinators. Flies and wasps were very much loathed, but wasps elicited stronger negative feelings of hatred and fear, while flies were merely bothersome, noisy and dirty. No real surprises there.

The problem is not a lack of acknowledgement of the possible importance of wasps nor a shortage of talented entomologists. Rather, it is likely to be the ingrained cultural prejudice we have against wasps. Even entomologists shun wasp research in favour working on bees or butterflies.

Solitary wasps tend to be fussy about their prey, focusing their efforts on a single order, or even a single genus. For example, the Pompylidae only hunt spiders and the Eumeninae hunt mostly Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). But collectively, the solitary wasps (from across 15 families) were found to hunt prey from across 14 different arthropod orders, indicating that as a group, solitary wasps are important in maintaining balanced ecosystems.

Conversely, social wasps are generalists, who opportunistically cease a diverse range of prey. For example, the yellow-jacket wasps (genus Vespula) alone catch prey from at least 15 different orders to feed to hungry sibling larvae in their colony.

There is now no doubt that the chemicals we use to keep our crops free of insect pests are detrimental to wildlife and ecosystems. Although pesticides are designed to kill specific insect species, a wealth of research now reveals the non-lethal effects that pesticides have on non-target insects. We need to be looking for more sustainable approaches to agriculture.

Employing the services of natural enemies, like predatory wasps, is one such solution. Insects have a long economic history in their use as biocontrol agents of crop pests: this is valued at an estimated US$417 billion, and parasitoid wasps (which lay their eggs in or on insect hosts in situ, rather than moving them to a nest) feature heavily in this. But this figure almost completely overlooks the potential contributions of the hunting wasps.

As specialist predators, solitary wasps have great potential as biocontrol agents. Surprisingly, only four species of solitary wasps are commercially available for biological control (the most well-known is the Emerald jewel wasp, Ampulex compressa, which is famous for zombiefying cockroaches). Introductions of solitary wasps to non-native regions have not been very successful, possibly because their life histories are not understood well enough.

A more successful approach may be to exploit local species, and especially social species. Over 100 years ago, colonists in the West Indies toyed with the idea of using social wasps on plantations, reporting anecdotally that crops appeared to be less plagued by pests and there was less need for pesticides when wasp populations were encouraged. But apart from a handful of mid-20th century studies and some encouraging opinion articles, the suggestive potential for using social wasps in biocontrol has largely been forgotten.

Together with some enterprising Brazilians, we provided some tantalising evidence for the biocontrol promise of social wasps a couple of years ago. We showed that levels of crop damage and pest populations of the fall army worm (a pest of maize, which causes billions of dollars in crop yield losses every year) were significantly reduced when wasps were allowed to access them.

The vast majority of wasp-plant interactions are, however, non-specific. We identified 798 plant species across 106 families that were visited by wasps. The social wasps in particular appear to be extremely unfussy about what flower they will visit, so long as they can reach the nectar.

To date, there are no studies that allow even a rough estimate of the value of wasps as pollinators. But, given the importance of natural pollinators to our food security and the apparent declines of well-recognised pollinators like bees and hover flies, now would be a good time to start taking wasp pollination a bit more seriously.

This is especially true given that some species of social wasp appear to be relatively resilient to anthropogenic change. In a recent analysis of museum and contemporary biological records, we showed that populations of social wasp species had changed very little over the last 100 years. The yellowjacket wasps in particular appear to be resilient to anthropogenic challenges, like urbanisation and agriculture. Other species, like the hornet, may be more affected by pollutants and loss of habitat.

Wasp larvae have an exceptional dry protein mass (46%-81%) and provide around 70% of our required amino acids, with a low-fat content. The Japanese are especially appreciative of wasp larvae or pupae. With a market price of US$100/kg, demand is so great that sellers have to supplement their supplies with wasp nest imports from abroad.

Many of these antimicrobials have potential benefits for human health. They are effective against disease-causing bacteria, and some take specific action against Mycobacterium abscessuss, an important multi-drug-resistant bacterium.

But perhaps the most exciting medical potential of wasps are the cancer-cell killing properties of mastoparan found in the venom of social wasps. These are a family of amphipathic peptides which preferentially target cancerous cells over healthy cells. But this too is still far from practical application.

These are persuasive reasons to appreciate the wasp, but are just the tip of the iceberg. For example, wasps also disperse seeds, clean up rotting flesh, and hold promise as environmental monitoring tools.

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I must admit when I first read the above quote from Seneca I was intrigued as to how such beautiful use of language could have been created some 2000+ years ago when the known world was so preoccupied with war and the average human life span was 22-33 years. We have barbary and beauty mixed together.

Simply listen to allow the other person to articulate their thoughts to either validate what they are thinking or planning to do. They may or may not want your opinion and if unsure clarify that but offer it sparingly.

This conversation has a specific purpose and that is to solve a problem. How well that is achieved will be largely due to how well the problem is clarified and framed, including its level of complexity.

This is where the conversation may not have a specified outcome in mind. One party makes a start on nothing particular, and the conversation may ebb and flow across various subject matter. This can often have a secondary purpose of building and cementing relationships.

The first session starts October 14. The numbers will be limited to six participants per group to enable maximum participation, enhance the learning experience, and support individualised training needs.

We recently had a difficult family meeting. Our kids had been acting disrespectfully, so we sat down in the living room to talk it out. Hard words were shared; tears were shed. Though it was not a comfortable confrontation, the kids knew we shared our hard words in love. How? Because that same living room is normally where we play games, wrestle, read Scripture, sing songs, dance, and tell stories. That room is known mostly for enjoyable love. So when we sit down to have unenjoyable conversations, they may not like it, but they never doubt our love for them.

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