Movies can teach us as much about life as life itself because at the end of the day movies are nothing but someone’s life — fictional or otherwise — shown on-screen. And movies do have a lot to offer – a narration that can leave us in a state where we are all charged up to get back on track. Here are some of the best films that carry strong life lessons and some takeaways. Read on:

1. ‘THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION’

Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) a young investment banker faces life imprisonment for the murder of his wife and her lover. It is about a bond of friendship between Red (played by Morgan Freeman) inside a prison. A story line spread over 40 years revolves around hope.

Life Lesson: Do not let those who love you, drift away from you. And never let your hope die. As long as hope lives inside you, it will keep you inspired to live.

Andy Dufresne: “She was beautiful. God I loved her. I just didn’t know how to show it, that’s all. I killed her, Red. I didn’t pull the trigger, but I drove her away. And that’s why she died, because of me.”

2. ‘DEAD POETS SOCIETY’

John Keating (played by Robin Williams), a literature teacher pushes his students to seize the day, make life extraordinary, find a voice, challenge status quo, dream on…. The magic of a movie is when the audience become the part of a classroom and the narration of these purists in Dead Poets Society is beyond explanation in words.

Life Lesson: Seize the moment. Take control of your life. Laziness will not get you anywhere !

“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”

3. ‘THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS’

It is a biographical drama based on Christopher Paul (Chris) Gardner, an American entrepreneur, investor, stockbroker, motivational speaker, author, and philanthropist. It is a story of Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith) a struggling salesman reaching for a life-changing professional endeavor. He never gives up on his dreams, even if, those dreams were surrounded with uncertainty.

Life Lesson: If you want something from life, go get it. Period.

Christ Gardner: Hey. Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. All right?Christopher: All right.Christ Gardner: You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.

4. ‘GOOD WILL HUNTING’

One is capable of solving all the problems in one’s life, except the one that is cornered in the tiny space in one’s mind. ‘Dead Poets Society’ happened because a gifted mathematician should not be wasted. A young man named Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon) is forced to find an aim of his life and gets acquainted to Sean Maguire (played by Robin Williams) who plays the part of a psychologist.

Life Lesson: Knowledge, education, enlightenment can come from anywhere. We are all trying to find our purpose (passion) in life, while some take longer –  it is a lifelong process, so do not give up on finding it.

Sean: I just slid my ticket across the table, and I said, “Sorry, guys; I gotta see about a girl.”Will: I gotta go see about a girl?Sean: Yeah.Will: That’s what you said? And they let you get away with that?Sean: Oh, yeah. They saw in my eyes that I meant it.

5. ‘ERIN BROCKOVICH’

A biographical film based on the true story of Erin Brockovich (portrayed by Julia Roberts) that spreads across corporate, personal life and ethics (in business). An unemployed single mother of three without any formal education gets employed with a Law firm and sought justice backed with daring investigation of environmental poisoning caused by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). While it ends with a hefty monetary cheque, through the course, the protagonist demands to be treated fair in not-so-fair (impression-based) corporate world.

Life Lesson: Selflessly chase the truth because ultimately, it is the truth that is going to win.

“If you follow your heart, if you listen to your gut, and if you extend your hand to help another, not for any agenda, but for the sake of humanity, you are going to find the truth.”

(Click here to check out the winners of the 2014 Cinemaholic Movie Awards)

Let us know, below in the comments, what movies influenced you ? Which movies, you think, imparted a life lesson to you ?

Meet the toughest animal on the planet: The water bear that can survive being frozen or boiled, float around in space and live for 200 years (shame it isn't much to look at)

It's often said cockroaches could withstand a nuclear explosion.
But another creature, dubbed 'nature's greatest survivor,' is even more invincible, and you've probably never even heard of it.

Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are some of the most fascinating animals in world because they can live happily in the most extreme conditions.
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Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are some of the most fascinating animals in world

The creatures can survive tremendous heat and cold, radiation and vacuum

The animals, pictured, can live happily in the most extreme conditions

This Tardigrade or water bear comes from Roan Mountain, Tennessee

While not the most attractive creatures, the small, segmented animals come in many forms - there are more than 900 species of them - and they're found everywhere in the world, from the highest mountains to the deepest oceans.

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Boil the 1mm creatures, freeze them, dry them, expose them to radiation and they're so resilient they'll still be alive 200 years later.

Water bears can hack temperatures as low as -457 degrees, heat as high as 357 degrees, and 5,700 grays of radiation, when 10-20 grays would kill humans and most other animals.

The animals can also live for a decade without water and even survive in space.

These bears are less than 1mm long and are found in the sea, in fresh water and on land. Some experts have compared their shape with jelly babies or moles

While not the most attractive creatures, the small, segmented animals come in many forms

The water bears are often found in moss

There are more than 900 species of Tardigrade or Water Bear, pictured

They're found everywhere in the world, from the highest mountains to the deepest oceans.

Boil the 1mm creatures, freeze them, dry them, expose them to radiation and they're so resilient they'll still be alive 200 years later

Water bears can be completely dried out for years - and then spring back to life as if nothing had happened

Water bears can hack temperatures as low as -457 degrees and heat as high as 357 degrees

Molting Water Bear or Tardigrade with an egg mass

Water Bear's can surivive 5,700 grays of radiation, when 10-20 grays would kill humans and most other animals

This Tardigrade or Water Bear is infested by fungi

The animals can also live for a decade without water and even survive in space

 VIDEO  Toughest animal on the planet in 200x magnification... 

Toughest animal on the planet in 200x magnification                                     

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No Yolk! Scientists Unboil an Egg Without Defying Physics

Think you can't unboil an egg? Think again, scientists say. Credit: Steve Zylius / UC Irvine View full size image

Scientists have figured out a way to do something that seems impossible: unboil an egg. But strange as it may sound, the feat doesn't defy basic laws of science.

When you boil an egg, the proteins unfold and refold into a more tangled, disordered form. But in a new study, a group of researchers found a way to pull apart the proteins in cooked egg whites, and allow them to refold into their original shape.The finding could dramatically reduce the cost of cancer treatments and food production, the scientists reported yesterday (Jan. 27) in the journal ChemBioChem. [Science You Can Eat: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Food]

"Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg," study co-author Gregory Weiss, a biochemist at the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement.

In their experiment, Weiss and his colleagues started with an egg white that had been boiled for 20 minutes at 194 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius), until its proteins became tangled clumps. Then they added a substance that ate away at the egg white, effectively liquefying it. Next, they used a machine called a vortex fluid device, designed by Weiss' colleagues at Flinders University in Australia, which used the shearing forces  in thin, microfluidic films to shape the egg white proteins back into their untangled form.

Physicists often use cooking eggs as a metaphor to explain the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the degree of disorder, orentropy, in a system of the universe will always increase. For example, once you scramble an egg, it's basically impossible to separate the yolk from the egg white again, because it would be going from a less ordered state to a more ordered one.

At first glance, Weiss' experiment may appear to defy this law, because an unboiled egg is more ordered than a boiled one, so the entropy should be decreasing. But in fact, the process of unboiling the egg produces entropy in the form of heat, offsetting the decrease in entropy, Weiss told Live Science. So the entropy of the universe still increases, he said.

Physics aside, the unboiling technique could be useful in a lot of pharmaceutical and biomedical applications, the researchers said. Proteins often "misfold"into useless shapes when they are formed, but if scientists could refold them again, it could save money for drug development.

Traditional methods of recovering the misfolded proteins are expensive and time-consuming, Weiss said. By contrast, his unboiling technique takes only a few minutes — thousands of times faster than what was possible before.

For example, drug companies often make cancer antibodies in expensive hamster ovary cells, because they don't often create misfolded proteins. If, instead, these companies could use proteins from cheaper yeast or E. coli cells, it could make cancer treatments more affordable, the researchers said.

But the medical industry isn't the only one that stands to gain from the findings. Cheese-making and other industries could also benefit from the unboiling technique, the researchers said. UC Irvine has filed for a patent, and is working with potential commercial partners, they added

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Electric vs. Fuel Cell Vehicles: 'Green' Auto Tech Explained

Battery-powered electric cars and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have both seen advances in their development, and one or both of these technologies may represent the future of "green" automobiles.

Both technologies offer a cleaner alternative to internal combustion engines, and both use electric motors powered by electrochemical devices. But what's the difference between them? For one, electric vehiclesuse energy stored in a battery, whereas fuel cell vehicles have stored fuel that reacts to produce energy.

The two technologies face unique challenges in achieving widespread adoption, but both are promising, experts say. [Hyperloop, Jetpacks & More: 9 Futuristic Transit Ideas]

"They're not necessarily competing technologies — they're similar and complementary," said Lawrence Drzal, a chemical engineer and materials scientist at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Electric vehicles

Whereas conventional vehicles burn fuel in an internal combustion engine, battery-powered electric vehicles don't have an engine. Instead, they use energy stored in batteries to power one or more electric motors.

Electric cars have undergone a surge in popularity in recent years, but electric vehicles were already being made in the late 1800s, according to Huei Peng, a mechanical engineer at the University of Michigan who works on the design and control of clean vehicles, including electric cars. The vehicles remained popular until the early 20th century, when they had to compete with mass-produced internal-combustion-engine vehicles.

"After a couple of decades of competition, the internal combustion engine won, mainly because of the limitations of batteries," Peng told Live Science.

Interest in electric vehicles returned during the oil energy crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, but the cars never achieved mass production. Still, electric vehicles have been making a comeback since 2008, with the introduction of fully electric cars such as the Tesla Motors Roadster (and, subsequently, the Model S), and the Nissan Leaf.

Many of today's electric vehicles run on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries — the same kind found in most laptops. These are replacing the cheaper lead-acid batteries used in most older models of electric vehicles. [5 Ways Your Tech Will Go Green in 2015]

Fuel cell vehicles

Fuel cell vehicles are also driven by an electric motor, but instead of being powered by a battery, they create the electricity in an onboard fuel cell, usually using oxygen from the air and stored hydrogen.

"Batteries and fuel cells are quite similar," said Shawn Litster, a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who works on fuel cell design. The difference is, "with a fuel cell, you're able to decouple energy conversion from energy storage," he said.

Fuel cells use a catalyst to combine two reactants, which generates a flow of electrons (aka electricity). A variety of fuels can be used to support fuel cells, but the most common is hydrogen that is produced from natural gas. When oxygen and hydrogen react, they produce only water and heat, making them "zero-emissions" vehicles (like battery-powered electric vehicles).

"Probably the oldest [commercial] use of fuel cells is in the space program," said Drzal, who works on materials to make vehicles lighter and more fuel-efficient. While NASA could afford to pay virtually any price for them, for consumer vehicles, "you need fuel cells that are not only efficient, but cost-effective," Drzal told Live Science.

Today, two fuel cell vehicles are available on the market: the Hyundai Tucson (ix35 FCEV) and the Toyota Mirai. Currently, there are ten public hydrogen fueling stations in California, one in Connecticut and one in South Carolina, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. And several dozen more are under development in California, Litster said.

Electric vs. fuel cell?

Electric vehicles offer a promising alternative to internal-combustion vehicles because they don't directly burn fossil fuels. They are also capable of producing instant torque and smoother acceleration than conventional cars.

But electric vehicles aren't necessarily more environmentally friendly than conventional combustion vehicles. If the electricity used to charge the electric vehicle comes from a coal power plant, for example, it can be dirtier than even the worst internal-combustion vehicle, Peng said. The same reasoning applies to fuel cells — they're only as clean as the source of the hydrogen they use.

Electric vehicles are also limited by the range they can travel on a single battery charge. For short-distance commuting, this isn't a problem, but longer trips require lengthy periods of recharging. Battery swapping — in which a depleted battery is exchanged for a fully charged one — is one possible solution, and Tesla Motors has begun using this option.

Battery technology has improved dramatically, but "batteries are still too heavy and expensive, and don't have enough energy, which means a shorter range," Peng said. But he added that the price of batteries has come down significantly in the past 10 years.

Fuel cell vehicles don't have the same range limitations as battery-powered vehicles because they can simply store more (hydrogen) fuel. The main disadvantages of today's hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are the lack of sufficient infrastructure for hydrogen refueling, and the cost of the catalysts, Litster said.

Platinum is one of the most commonly used catalysts for fuel cells, but it's very expensive, Litster said. He and his colleagues are working on how to make platinum more efficient, while other researchers are developing catalysts made of lower-cost materials.

While battery-powered electric vehicles may have a head start on fuel cell vehicles, both technologies are advancing rapidly. It will be interesting to see where they are five years from now, Litster said

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