Our work, taking care of the kids, the endless errands, exercise, social events, and the daily stresses of life can invade our days so much that the last thing we think about is this: am I getting enough sleep, and is it the right kind of sleep I need? Its astonishing that 40% of adults do not get the sleep they need to function to their optimum potential. A lack of sleep is vital to our well-being and can have serious repercussions if neglected.
What Id like to do today is do a fly-by into the sleep world: Youll find out what it is, how it works, why we need it, and the amount we need to be healthy.
So, off we go into the mysterious world of sleep. Sleep: What is it?Sleep can be defined as a state of unconsciousness. During sleep, the brain is more responsive to internal stimuli rather than external stimuli. How Do We Sleep? Researchers of human sleep have discovered five defined stages of sleep using EEG recordings and polysomnography.
Their findings are as follows: Non-Rem (NREM) sleep: Occupies 75-80% of total sleep time Stage 1: This stage is sometimes referred to as drowsy sleep. It appears at the onset of sleep and acts as a transition stage into Stage 2: This stage can be associated with hypnagogic hallucinations (dreamlike images, sounds or sometimes smells before falling asleep or waking up), a loss of muscle tone, and a conscious awareness of the external environment.
This stage can be thought of as a gateway between wake and sleep, also be defined as sleep spindles. Conscious awareness of the environment disappears. This occupies 45-55% of your total sleep. Stage 3: This stage is primarily a transition into stage four. This stage occupies 3-8% of total sleep time.
Stage 4: This stage is true delta sleep. It predominates the first third of the night, occupying 10-15% of total sleep time.
This is the deepest stage of sleep, and is difficult to wake up a person while they are in Stage 4. Night terrors and sleepwalking occur in this stage.
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleepStage 5: This stage is associated with dreaming, including strange visual and random dreams. Rem sleep is largely found in the final third of sleep, linking it to our circadian rhythm (aids in coordinating the timing of our internal bodily functions, including sleep, as well as our interactions with the external world) and body temperature.
In an EEG, his period is active in the mind and appears similar to that of Stage 1. Why Do We Need Sleep? For our health. Sleep plays a vital role in our daily regimen. As we sleep, our body is able to recharge and rejuvenate tired body organs and tissues while restoring the body to an alert state.
This is also when your brain commits new information to memory through a process called memory consolidation. For our waistlines. Chronic sleep deprivation may cause weight gain by affecting the way your body processes and stores carbohydrates and by altering levels of hormones that control appetite.
For safety.
If you do not get enough sleep, you are more likely to feel sleepy during the day.
This sleepiness increases your risk of falls and mistakes such as traffic accidents and work errors. For happiness. A lack of sleep can result in irritability, impatience, problems with concentration, and moodiness. Sleep loss can also make you too tired to do activities you enjoy.
For a healthy heart.
Research has found a link between serious sleep disorders and hypertension, increased stress hormone levels, and irregular heartbeat.
To stay strong.
A lack of sleep weakens your immune system. How Much Sleep is Needed?The amount of sleep an individual requires varies from person to person due to lifestyle and health issues. But as a basic rule of thumb, most adults require an average of eight hours of sleep. Children and teenagers, because they are still growing and developing, require approximately nine to ten hours of sleep. So as you can see, sleep is essential to our health and well-being.
Make sleeping important to you and schedule it if necessary.
You will notice that with enough sleep, you will be happier, more at peace, and have a sharper mind to make it through your sometimes chaotic day.
I wish you a wonderful slumber and many happy dreams!
Many know that hashes are encoded passwords. Using hashes greatly increases safety of passwords storage, for example, in the forums, databases, etc. Let's assume, forum administrator has password "admin12345" which is certainly stored in the forum database. What is to be done to authenticate user on the forum? Input password shall be compared with "admin12345". If they match, administrator may enter the forum. It seems working great, but what if someone unautorized gets access to database and sees open password and can easily log in as administrator. Here hashes come to rescue. For instance, MD5-hash for "admin12345" password will look like "7488e331b8b64e5794da3fa4eb10ad5d" and it's exactly what we store in our database, not a password itself. During user authentication input password is converted to hash to compare with the hash stored in the database - if these two match that means input password is correct and logging on is successful.
But what if we need to perform reverse action - to try to restore password from hash? It's impossible to do that directly, as any hashing algorithm is password's checksum calculation. This process involves irreversible mathematical operations like logical operation AND, etc. For example, even knowing Y and Z we can never find exact X from "X AND Y = Z" equation (all we can do is calculation of range of possible X values satisfying the equation).
So if we need to find password for certain hash there's the only way to generate hashes for different passwords and then compare hashes we got with source one. If they match, it means exactly the source password is found as possibility of collision (i.e. another password which has hash matching our source hash) is very low - for example, it is (1 / 2128) in case of MD5-hashing.
Here comes in handy - it is a professional tool for passwords check and recovery of passwords for hashes. It's main purpose is to recover your forgotten password when you have only one hash, or check passwords for crack-resistance.
This unique program supports about 40 types of hashes, and any new type can easily be added through writing your own DLL-hashing module.
Built-in types of hashes:
Supported types of hashes: MySQL, MySQL5, DES(Unix), MD4, MD4(HMAC), MD5, MD5(HMAC), MD5(Unix), MD5(APR), SHA-1, SHA-1(HMAC), SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, Domain Cached Credentials, Haval-128, Haval-160, Haval-192, Haval-224, Haval-256 and others. The program also supports many complex hashes like md5($pass.$salt), md5($salt.$pass), md5(md5($pass)), etc. Third-party developers had already written modules for for such types of hashes as MD2, Oracle DES, MS SQL and many others, including hashes no one else program in the world works but !
Program uses the following methods to recover passwords:
Recovery of the passwords up to 127-symbol length;
Recovery of the passwords for incomplete hashes of any type;
Editing of users' hashes;
Search of users' list for required data;
Quick addition of hash through dialog box;
Quick check of current password for all hashes in the list;
Unlimited number of dictionaries used for dictionary attack;
Unlimited number of tables used for Rainbow-table attack.
Important feature of it is friendly interface - all hash manipulations are made with literally couple clicks, what makes passwords check very convenient, pictorial and effective.
Another significant advantage of the program is work with Rainbow-tables for any hashing algorithms. These tables can be generated with RTGEN utility of version 1.2. or later. I.e. you can generate tables for SHA-512 algorithm, and will immediately start working with them.
If you still couldn't find password for your hash, you can always get help at PasswordsPro .
Program has Shareware status and is distributed as Demo-version which has the only limitation - number of hashes to import for check is 1, while licensed version doesn't limit this number.
Both Harwood E Woodpecker & Alexander Poluektov are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.