People who work from home suffer from several different problems including isolation and distractions. But here are 5 simple ways to become an effective at-home worker.
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Slashing water waste with smart software could save billions of dollars
“Any industry that mislays 25-30% of its product in the process
of delivering it might reasonably be thought to have a problem.”
Between the water treatment plant and the tap in your kitchen, a lot can happen to water. Old pipes sometimes have slow leaks that are hard to detect, and sometimes there are bigger leaks that can waste a lot of potable water in a short time. According to a World Bank report published a few years ago, these leaks cost at least $14 billion a year.
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Technology is the new smoking
Gotta have a hit of Twitter!
You’re at an outing or a dinner table with friends but itching to check your email or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or whatever digital hit of serotonin you prefer. Have you ever ‘gone to the bathroom’ in order to check email or come up with a socially appropriate excuse to pull out your smartphone just so you can check your @ replies on Twitter?
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Facebook and Twitter help speed up response to national disasters and emergencies
Could social media save you from a natural disaster?
Facebook and Twitter are helping to improve and speed up responses to natural disasters and health emergencies by involving members of the public, it has been claimed.
Social media allowed an ”unprecedented” two-way exchange of information between the public and those given the task of preparing for and responding to major events such as earthquakes, floods and infection pandemics, said researchers…
iPhone 4 and a sensor tattoo creates diabetic blood monitor
Another iPhone medical breakthrough!
Diabetics have a problem dealing with sugar because they don’t produce enough insulin (Type 1) or any insulin that is produced gets no reaction from the person’s cells (Type 2). Treatment is mainly through management of blood sugar levels which if done properly can stop many of the complications.
It’s the monitoring of those blood sugar levels that researchers are working towards making as simple and fast as possible, and the latest idea involves the use of a sensor tattoo and an iPhone 4…
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Honey could help fight MRSA and other Superbugs
Even more health benefits from honey are being identified.
The Guardian reports that Welsh scientists are collecting honey to help identify new anti-bacterial drugs. The idea is not necessarily to use the honey itself, although the article notes that this is a common enough practice, but rather to identify the plants that bees have been feeding on, and then isolate compounds that may be used to develop new drugs. It’s an urgent problem…
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New birth control pill… for dogs
Should dogs be on birth control too?
Both the ASPCA and Humane Society strongly encourage pet owners to spay and neuter their furry friends to prevent overpopulation (and a dearth of homeless puppies, sad face). It shouldn’t really be a surprise, then, that there is a less invasive option in the works. But let’s face it, it’s kind of a crazy idea, right? Not so, according to a group of scientists in Arizona…
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Fatty foods bust a bad mood: study
Fatty foods make you less sad.
Does eating a bowl of ice cream, a giant serving of mac ‘n’ cheese or a plate of chocolate chip cookies put you in a good mood? We already know that fatty, comfort foods can help bust a bad mood — but new research from Belgian researchers gives new insight into why.
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SuperBetter – online game promotes self-improvement
Jane McGonigal
Game designer Jane McGonigal, came up with the idea for “SuperBetter”, after she got a concussion. In interviews with Jane, she has described how she struggled to retrieve her focus until she decided to treat her recovery like a game: setting a series of progressive challenges, levels of achievement, with small prizes along the way. Users will be able to pick from a list of challenges—quit smoking, lose weight, recover from heartbreak—and try to accomplish them. Friends or family who have also signed up can act like Toad in the classic game “Super Mario Brothers 3”, and nudge you along.
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Akshat Saxena has most fingers and toes: Guinness World Records
Who’s got the most digits?
Count’em up. This young man born with 34 fingers and toes set a Guinness World Record for most digits.
Akshat Saxena had seven fingers on each hand and 10 toes on each foot when he was born in India in 2010, a Guinness spokeswoman told The Huffington Post.
“I was so happy to see my baby as it was our first child,” his mother Amrita Saxena told NDTV. “But later, when I saw his fingers, I was shocked and surprised.”
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Tattoo body modification gets futuristically functional
Doctors will be utilizing special nano-tattoos for heath markers in the near future.
One day, in the not so distant future because it’s actually being used in a testing environment today, people will use invisible nano-tattoos to give doctors an instant snapshot of their body’s inner workings.
The prototype, developed by Heather Clark of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Northeastern University, consists of a special nanoparticle solution injected into the skin…
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Yoga paddle boarding becomes new craze
There’s a new exercise craze in the Texas capital. It’s called SUP ATX Yoga. Every day a group meets down on the shores of Lady Bird Lake in Austin just behind the Hyatt Hotel to grab a paddle board.
“The paddle boards have been blowing up everywhere really,” said Blake Hall, yoga instructor. But instead of just paddling down the river this group has decided to change it up a bit by doing yoga on the paddle board.
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