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  1. #91
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    Here's a surprising piece of potential good news:

    Flu vaccine could protect against serious heart and stroke complications

    Research Highlights:

    The rate of seasonal flu vaccinations among people over age 50 and nursing home residents is extremely low, and those who do get the flu vaccine can significantly lower their risk of heart attack, TIA (transient ischemic attack), death and cardiac arrest.

    Flu vaccination in high-risk patients was associated with a 28% reduced risk of heart attack, a 47% reduced risk of TIA and a 73% reduced risk of death.
    caveat: "The stress the influenza infection puts on the body may increase the risk of having a heart attack or stroke, which researchers note is well-known."

    Of more than 7 million high-risk patients hospitalized, researchers found:

    only 168,325 received the flu vaccine;

    adults age 50 and over were significantly less likely to be vaccinated compared to the general population (1.8% versus 15.3%);

    however, the adults age 50 and over who were vaccinated had better outcomes in the year following vaccination, with a 28% lower risk of heart attack, a 73% lower risk of death, a 47% lower risk of TIA and an 85% lower risk of cardiac arrest;

    the vaccination rate for patients with HIV/AIDS was 2.21%, compared to 8.2% who were free from this disease;

    the vaccination rate for nursing home residents was 1.8%, versus 9.5% for those who live independently;

    among obese patients, 2.4% were vaccinated, compared to 9% with a healthy weight;

    cardiovascular outcomes were similar to adults over age 50 across the high-risk groups.

    “The results we found are staggering. It’s hard to ignore the positive effect the flu vaccine can have on serious cardiac complications,” Mandania said. “Some people don’t view flu vaccinations as necessary or important, and many may face barriers accessing health care including receiving the flu vaccine.”

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  3. #92
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    Do you remember Elora who builds houses from bamboo? (treated to resist bugs and decay)

    Well Bernice Dapaah makes bicycles from it. For real! The presentation was in February, thus no masks or social distancing yet.

    Last edited by Dreamtimer, 7th August 2020 at 13:20. Reason: linked to Elora post

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  5. #93
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    Which begs the question, Is bamboo stronger than steel?

    Before we started using steel to reinforce structures, bamboo remained the core component in the construction of buildings. Even today, you’ll see the use of bamboo in building houses and other structures in underdeveloped areas.
    Yes, bamboo is stronger than steel in regards to the tensile strength. Steel has a tensile strength of 23,000 pounds per square inch.

    But bamboo surpasses steel with a noticeable lead at 28,000 pounds.
    The great thing about bamboo is that we can utilize all the parts of the plant for a variety of purposes ranging from construction to deodorants and medicines.

    There are over 490 species of bamboo available across the US and Canada. Certain bamboo species also hold a record of the fastest growing plant.

    It can grow above 3 feet in a day and can reach full maturity within 3 to 5 years, depending on the species.
    One unknown fact about bamboo plants is that they release 30% more oxygen to the atmosphere compared to other plants, which alone is a good enough reason to grow these when our world is facing increasing air pollution and ozone depletion. The plant also helps prevent soil erosion.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    Which begs the question, Is bamboo stronger than steel?








    WTG that's a amazing possibility for the future of construction!

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    Planting Handful of Seeds in a Bare Yard Could Reduce Stress Levels As Much As 8 Mindfulness Sessions

    By Good News Network - Oct 8, 2020

    These are the findings from new research by the Department of Landscape Architecture in collaboration with the UK’s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).

    The researchers, at the Universities of Sheffield, Westminster, and Virginia, found that a greener front yard can also make you feel happier, more relaxed, and closer to nature.

    The four-year scientific research project added ornamental plants to previously bare front gardens in economically deprived streets of Greater Manchester, England.



    By measuring the residents’ concentrations of cortisol hormone before and after the plants were added, the research team were able to see if the greenery had any impact on stress levels.

    Cortisol levels change across the day. In healthy diurnal patterns, levels peak in the early morning shortly after awakening and drop to the lowest concentration at night.

    Steeper daily declines indicate more effective regulation of circadian and hormonal mechanisms, which is a likely consequence of reduced stress.

    Before the experiment, only 24% of residents had healthy cortisol patterns. Over the course of the year following the plantings, this increased to 53% of residents having healthy cortisol patterns.

    Perceived stress levels decreased by 6% after the introduction of the plants.

    Over half (52%) of the residents said their front yard helped them be happier, 40% said it helped them be more relaxed, and over one in four (26%) said it helped them be closer to nature.
    Last edited by Elen, 10th October 2020 at 05:15. Reason: Double post

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    Scientists Discover a New Way to Save Endangered Baby Sea Turtles Using GPS

    By placing 3D-printed and GPS-enabled decoy sea turtle eggs into nests on the beach, it could be possible to gather key evidence needed to expose illegal trade of the eggs.


    “Our research showed that placing a decoy into a turtle nest did not damage the incubating embryos and that the decoys work,” says lead author Helen Pheasey of the University of Kent. “We showed that it was possible to track illegally removed eggs from beach to end consumer as shown by our longest track, which identified the entire trade chain covering 137 kilometers.”

    The egg decoys, dubbed InvestEggator, were developed by the conservation organization Paso Pacifico to address the illegal trade of endangered sea turtles in Central America, where the eggs are smuggled from beaches and sold to restaurants and bars as a delicacy.

    It immediately brought to mind two of her favorite TV shows, “Breaking Bad” and “The Wire,” which both happened to deal with illegal drug trafficking.

    “In ‘Breaking Bad’, the DEA places a GPS tracking device on a tank of chemicals to see who receives the chemicals,” she said. “In one episode of ‘The Wire’, two police officers plant an audio device in a tennis ball to surreptitiously record a suspected drug dealer.

    “Turtle eggs basically look like ping pong balls, and we wanted to know where they were going–put those two ideas together and you have the InvestEGGator.”


    I think they should award themselves a big breakfast at Eggspectations.

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  13. #97
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    as long as the GPS isn't mistaken for a random number generator, I implemented one of those (it acted insane around me). This was on a project at Dell Corporation. My co-worker manager saw this behavior and cracked the joke. Funniest damn thing I ever heard.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    Cross stitchers use random number generators to help them decide which project to work on. No joke.

    They have so many ongoing ones they cannot decide or even recall all of them. There is one woman who has set a goal of having less than 40 ongoing projects by the time she turns 40 in a year and a half.

    She currently has over 90 ongoing projects.

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    I see more and more bamboo growing around in stands which started out small but get larger and spread. It swallows stands of trees. I wonder if there was no intervention how long it would take to reach vast swaths of bamboo forest. I wonder if it would actually choke out the trees. That would be amazing. And tragic.

    It's small bamboo. I don't know it's potential uses.

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    Could Electromagnetic Fields Treat Diabetes? These Scientists Think So

    The unexpected and surprising discovery raises the possibility of using electromagnetic fields (EMFs) as a remote control to manage type 2 diabetes.

    According to a statement from the university, the effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in diabetic mice have been “long-lasting, opening the possibility of an EMF therapy that can be applied during sleep to manage diabetes all day.”

    EMFs, it’s been indicated by the new study, alter the balance of oxidants and antioxidants in the liver, improving the body’s response to insulin. This effect is mediated by small reactive molecules that seem to function as “magnetic antennae.”
    The initial finding–published in Cell Metabolism on October 6–was pure serendipity. Sunny Huang, Calvin Carter’s co-lead author and an MD/PhD student interested in metabolism and diabetes, needed to practice taking blood from mice and measuring blood sugar levels.

    Carter offered to let her borrow some of the mice he was using to study the effect of EMFs on brain and behavior in the animals.

    “It was really odd because normally these animals have high blood sugar and type 2 diabetes, but all of the animals exposed to EMFs showed normal blood sugar levels,” Huang says. “I told Calvin, ‘There’s something weird going on here.'”

    The finding that these mice had normal blood sugar levels after EMF exposure was doubly strange because the mice had a genetic modification which made them diabetic.
    The phrase 'pure serendipity' is indicative of what happens in science all the time. Many wondrous discoveries happen by accident.

    In addition to the mouse studies, the researchers also treated human liver cells with EMFs for six hours and showed that a surrogate marker for insulin sensitivity improved significantly, suggesting that the EMFs may also produce the same anti-diabetic effect in humans.

    Carter and Huang are energized by the possibility of translating the findings to human patients with type 2 diabetes.

    In terms of safety, the World Health Organization considers low energy EMFs safe for human health. The UI study also found no evidence of any adverse side effects in mice.

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  21. #101
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    The Kids are Alright

    Nigerian-Irish Teens Develop a Dementia App for Sufferers Coping With Lockdown–and It’s Won Awards


    While STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) have long been considered a traditional boys’ club, with brilliant minds like those of Joy Njekwe, 17, Rachael Akano, 15, and Margaret Akano, 17–whose innovative app Memory Haven recently bested a field of 1,500 entrants from 62 countries to take first prize in the Technovation Girls competition at the 2020 Technovation World Summit–persistent gender barriers and glass ceilings will continue to crumble.

    The Nigerian-Irish teens live in Drogheda on the east coast of Ireland. Their mentor, Evelyn Nomayo is currently perusing her Ph.D. in computer science and statistics.
    (We've been to Drogheda a handful of times, when we stayed in Bettystown)

    When Nomayo realized she was often the only female or person of color in her classes, the obvious imbalance troubled her. So with the goal of bringing more girls and people of color into that space, she founded Phase Innovate, whose mission is to mentor and train underrepresented minorities in the fields of tech and business.

    Inspired by Nomayo’s recollection of her own mother’s battle with dementia, and worried about how people with the condition might be struggling with lockdown, the trio brainstormed, coded, and created Memory Haven over the course of the 12-week Technovation challenge.
    Memory Haven is geared to address the three most common difficulties associated with dementia: speech impairment, loss of memory, and a diminished capacity for recognition.

    The app features a music playlist with a built-in facial and vocal recognition that tailors tunes to the user’s specific moods and a reach out function to summon help in emergency situations.

    Other functions include a photo wallet that lets users scan through tagged pictures of the important people in their lives; memory games to improve cognitive function, and health alerts that offer both patients and caregivers reminders of appointments or when it’s time to take medications.

    “Our main aim is just to help as many people as possible,” project manager Akano told the BBC. “We hope that our app can go global one day and reach millions of people who are affected by dementia and just make their lives somewhat easier.”
    Source

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    What if paint could cool off a building enough to not need air conditioning?

    Purdue University engineers have created white paint that can keep surfaces up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their ambient surroundings – almost like a refrigerator does, but without consuming energy.

    According to the researchers, the paint would replace the need for air conditioning by absorbing nearly no solar energy and sending heat away from the building. Without the building heating up, air conditioning wouldn't have to kick on.

    "It's very counterintuitive for a surface in direct sunlight to be cooler than the temperature your local weather station reports for that area, but we've shown this to be possible," said Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering.

    The paint would not only send heat away from a surface, but also away from Earth into deep space where heat travels indefinitely at the speed of light. This way, heat doesn't get trapped within the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. A video about this project is available on YouTube.

    "We're not moving heat from the surface to the atmosphere. We're just dumping it all out into the universe, which is an infinite heat sink," said Xiangyu Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked on this project as a Ph.D. student in Ruan's lab.

    Earth's surface would actually get cooler with this technology if the paint were applied to a variety of surfaces including roads, rooftops and cars all over the world, the researchers said.





    Developing this paint formulation wasn't easy. The six-year study builds on attempts going back to the 1970s to develop radiative cooling paint as a feasible alternative to traditional air conditioners.

    The researchers considered over 100 different material combinations, narrowed them down to 10 and tested about 50 different formulations for each material. They landed on a formulation made of calcium carbonate, an earth-abundant compound commonly found in rocks and seashells.

    This compound, used as the paint's filler, allowed the formulation to behave essentially the same as commercial white paint but with greatly enhanced cooling properties. These calcium carbonate fillers absorb almost no ultraviolet rays due to a so-called large "band gap," a result of their atomic structure. They also have a high concentration of particles that are different sizes, allowing the paint to scatter a wider range of wavelengths.

    EcoWatch

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  25. #103
    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    that sounds crazy, but i guess it could work if it 'focuses' the radiant energy enough to stream it through the atmosphere... pretty remarkable really.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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  27. #104
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    These Sunglasses Are Made From the First Ever Batch of Plastic Waste Recovered by the Ocean Cleanup Project

    When last we saw Boyan Slat he was talking with Joe Rogan and discussing designing products to make from he plastics gathered from the ocean. Here they are.


    It has now been one year since The Ocean Cleanup made history by cleaning up the first of the plastic from the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch—and now, its researchers are turning the trash into designer sunglasses.

    Not only are the stylish shades made from the plastic collected, but the earnings go toward helping support the nonprofit so they can continue cleaning up the ocean.

    The new glasses are the first product to be created from the recovered ocean debris—but The Ocean Cleanup website says it will not be the last.

    The new sunglass lenses are polarized with full UV protection, while the frames are made from the recovered ocean pollution. Because the hinges have also been specially designed for easy disassembly, they can very quickly be taken apart for recycling, should the need ever arise.

    “Together with renowned designer Yves Béhar, and Safilo, one of the leading companies in the eyewear industry, we worked to create sunglasses that you will want to use for the rest of your life (or a very long time),” reads the nonprofit’s website. “We wanted the look and feel of the sunglasses to be evocative of the ocean—reminding us where they came from and what they are protecting.”
    Although the shades cost $199 a pop, all of the proceeds generated by the sunglasses go to funding the nonprofit’s operations.

    For every pair sold, the organization will be able to clean 24 football-fields-worth of ocean garbage—and since the glasses went on sale earlier this last week, supporters have already funded more than 133,100 football fields of trash.

    “When every pair is claimed from this first batch of sunglasses, we can then clean 500,000 football fields worth of plastic,” continues the website. “That means we can use this trash to clean more trash: going full circle, over and over, until we have achieved our mission of clean oceans.”
    Good News Network

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  29. #105
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    I don't like playing good cop, bad cop. I'd rather just play good cop.

    Selfless Cop Picks Up Smelly Hitchhikers, Drives Them 40 Miles – And Stops For BBQ

    Dave Jones and his girlfriend, from Umbria, Italy, were hiking in the California mountains of the John Muir Trail, when they ran out of food and needed to re-supply.

    They were near Independence and wanted to try to hitch a ride to the larger town of Bishop, 42 miles away.

    Unsure of the laws, they walked to the edge of town and their hearts immediately sank, believing they were in trouble for thumbing a ride, when immediately “along came a police cruiser.”

    Out stepped Adam Otten, of the highway patrol in Bishop, but instead of writing them a ticket, he offered them, “and one other smelly hiker”, a ride.

    “Not only did I get to ride up front, with the girls prisoner in the back, Adam offered to stop at his dad’s BBQ place for lunch,” Jones told GNN
    They were starving after having eating nothing but dried vegan hiking food and chia-breakfasts for a week. Once at the Copper Top grill, Dave feasted on a pulled pork sandwich, while his girlfriend enjoyed a mound of potato salad.

    Adam then proceeded to drive the trio the rest of the way, dropping the hikers safely in Bishop.

    “He was a true gent and explained that his job was to ‘Protect and Serve’: “When I’m not protecting, I’m serving’.”
    God bless Adam. May there be more like him.

    Good News Network

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