Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Why the sedentary life is killing us
by ANDRÉ PICARD
Sitting is the new smoking.
Get used to that expression because you’re going to be hearing it a lot. Inactivity has become public enemy No. 1.
The reason sedentary behaviour is so worrisome is well-illustrated by a new study, published on Monday.
The research, led by Dr. Emma Wilmot of the diabetes research group at the University of Leicester in Britain, analyzed 18 existing studies involving almost 800,000 people. The paper, published in the medical journal Diabetologia, compared disease rates between the most active and least active among a broad cross-section of adults.
The researchers found that the least active, essentially those who sit all day, had a:
Those are sobering numbers, especially when you consider that the average Canadian adult spends 50 to 70 per cent of their daily lives sitting, and roughly another 30 per cent sleeping.
Do the math and you quickly realize that between sitting in our cars, sitting at our desks at work, sitting in front of the TV, sitting in front of our games consoles, sitting to eat, sitting in school, we hardly move any more.
And there is good evidence that inactivity now kills more people than smoking each year.
We have engineered activity out of our daily lives and it’s taking a real toll on our health, individually and collectively.
In recent years, the focus has been on the staggering increase in the number of people who are overweight and obese. That discussion was refined a bit with an emphasis on belly size and waist-to-hip ratio – recognition of where we put on weight matters.
But weight is only part of the story. You can be fat and fit, and you can be thin and unfit.
What is highly unlikely is, regardless of your body shape, that you are sedentary and healthy.
Activity really matters – to your heart, to your brain, to your bones and to your sexual health.
It’s important too to recognize what activity means. It’s about moving. You don’t have to run a marathon every day to derive health benefits.
Ideally, you should be moderately active – the equivalent of a brisk walk – 30 to 60 minutes a day, every day.
Very few people are meeting that minimal standard. According to Statistics Canada, only 15 per cent of adults and 7 per cent of children meet the minimum recommended physical activity guidelines every day.
Those are the most active people in modern society, and they’re not that active.
What is even more important than this planned activity is what researchers call “light ambulation” – moving around at regular intervals instead of remaining on your duff.
Exercising like a maniac for an hour a day isn’t going to offset 23 hours of being sedentary. But breaking up your sitting with activity, even very light activity, can have a significant impact.
Take this example, from Dr. Wilmot’s paper: Prolonged sitting sharply reduces glucose and insulin secretion, key factors in developing diabetes. But these changes can be offset by standing up and walking two minutes for every 20 minutes of sitting. This is true even in obese people.
What this means, practically speaking, is that even if you watch TV for hours at a time, if you get up and walk during the commercials, you will be doing your heart a big favour. Sure, it’s even better if you switch off the TV and take the dog for a walk but a little effort matters.
Similarly, office workers, can offset much of their risk by taking a short walk every half-hour, or by having a standing desk, or even by sitting on an exercise ball. (Research shows they will also be more productive.)
There are four main components in activity: domestic physical activity, work-related activity, transportation-related activity and exercise. In the past generation or two, levels of activity in each of these areas have fallen sharply – except exercise.
From time immemorial until a decade or two ago, almost all physical activity occurred on the job. The number of people doing manual labour has plummeted, while the number of people in white-collar jobs has soared.
Manual tasks in the home have also largely disappeared. We vacuum instead of sweep; we have dishwashers instead of washing dishes by hand; we have tractors to cut the lawn. And so on.
Almost all our transport is now by car. Fewer than 10 per cent of people walk or take public transport to work. The same is true of kids – 90 per cent are transported to school; they don’t walk or bike.
There is a small – but growing – minority of the population that exercise. They run, they swim, they do CrossFit or spinning or whatever the latest fad exercise is.
But we are not going to exercise our way out of the real health crisis – sedentary behaviour or, more accurately, sitting disease.
The solution is simple movement, a little bit at a time, incorporated into our daily lives.
In short, we need to re-introduce a dose of inconvenience into our lives. But we need to think of it not as inconvenience but as a few steps to a better life.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/why-the-sedentary-life-is-killing-us/article4613704/
Sitting is the new smoking.
Get used to that expression because you’re going to be hearing it a lot. Inactivity has become public enemy No. 1.
The reason sedentary behaviour is so worrisome is well-illustrated by a new study, published on Monday.
The research, led by Dr. Emma Wilmot of the diabetes research group at the University of Leicester in Britain, analyzed 18 existing studies involving almost 800,000 people. The paper, published in the medical journal Diabetologia, compared disease rates between the most active and least active among a broad cross-section of adults.
The researchers found that the least active, essentially those who sit all day, had a:
- 147-per-cent increased risk of heart attack or stroke;
- 112-per-cent increase in the risk of developing diabetes;
- 90-per-cent greater risk of dying from a cardiac event;
- 49-per-cent greater risk of premature mortality.
Those are sobering numbers, especially when you consider that the average Canadian adult spends 50 to 70 per cent of their daily lives sitting, and roughly another 30 per cent sleeping.
Do the math and you quickly realize that between sitting in our cars, sitting at our desks at work, sitting in front of the TV, sitting in front of our games consoles, sitting to eat, sitting in school, we hardly move any more.
And there is good evidence that inactivity now kills more people than smoking each year.
We have engineered activity out of our daily lives and it’s taking a real toll on our health, individually and collectively.
In recent years, the focus has been on the staggering increase in the number of people who are overweight and obese. That discussion was refined a bit with an emphasis on belly size and waist-to-hip ratio – recognition of where we put on weight matters.
But weight is only part of the story. You can be fat and fit, and you can be thin and unfit.
What is highly unlikely is, regardless of your body shape, that you are sedentary and healthy.
Activity really matters – to your heart, to your brain, to your bones and to your sexual health.
It’s important too to recognize what activity means. It’s about moving. You don’t have to run a marathon every day to derive health benefits.
Ideally, you should be moderately active – the equivalent of a brisk walk – 30 to 60 minutes a day, every day.
Very few people are meeting that minimal standard. According to Statistics Canada, only 15 per cent of adults and 7 per cent of children meet the minimum recommended physical activity guidelines every day.
Those are the most active people in modern society, and they’re not that active.
What is even more important than this planned activity is what researchers call “light ambulation” – moving around at regular intervals instead of remaining on your duff.
Exercising like a maniac for an hour a day isn’t going to offset 23 hours of being sedentary. But breaking up your sitting with activity, even very light activity, can have a significant impact.
Take this example, from Dr. Wilmot’s paper: Prolonged sitting sharply reduces glucose and insulin secretion, key factors in developing diabetes. But these changes can be offset by standing up and walking two minutes for every 20 minutes of sitting. This is true even in obese people.
What this means, practically speaking, is that even if you watch TV for hours at a time, if you get up and walk during the commercials, you will be doing your heart a big favour. Sure, it’s even better if you switch off the TV and take the dog for a walk but a little effort matters.
Similarly, office workers, can offset much of their risk by taking a short walk every half-hour, or by having a standing desk, or even by sitting on an exercise ball. (Research shows they will also be more productive.)
There are four main components in activity: domestic physical activity, work-related activity, transportation-related activity and exercise. In the past generation or two, levels of activity in each of these areas have fallen sharply – except exercise.
From time immemorial until a decade or two ago, almost all physical activity occurred on the job. The number of people doing manual labour has plummeted, while the number of people in white-collar jobs has soared.
Manual tasks in the home have also largely disappeared. We vacuum instead of sweep; we have dishwashers instead of washing dishes by hand; we have tractors to cut the lawn. And so on.
Almost all our transport is now by car. Fewer than 10 per cent of people walk or take public transport to work. The same is true of kids – 90 per cent are transported to school; they don’t walk or bike.
There is a small – but growing – minority of the population that exercise. They run, they swim, they do CrossFit or spinning or whatever the latest fad exercise is.
But we are not going to exercise our way out of the real health crisis – sedentary behaviour or, more accurately, sitting disease.
The solution is simple movement, a little bit at a time, incorporated into our daily lives.
In short, we need to re-introduce a dose of inconvenience into our lives. But we need to think of it not as inconvenience but as a few steps to a better life.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/why-the-sedentary-life-is-killing-us/article4613704/
Friday, October 12, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Open Innovation: Crowdsourcing
- Innocentive (http://www.innocentive.com): one of today’s best online platform for open innovation, crowdsourcing and innovation contests. This is where organizations access the world’s brightest problem solvers.
- X-PRIZE Foundation (http://www.xprize.org): The X PRIZE focuses on designing and running incentive competitions in the $1M – $30M arena focused on solving grand challenges.
- Genius Rocket (http://geniusrocket.com): solid crowdsourced creative design agency composed solely of vetted video production professionals producing content as a fraction of the cost of a traditional ad agency.
- IdeaConnection (http://www.ideaconnection.com): open innovation challenge site for new inventions, innovations and products.
- NineSigma (http://www.ninesigma.com): open innovation service provider, connecting clients with a global innovation network of experts.
- Ennovent (http://www.ennovent.com): worldwide expert platform seeking solutions for sustainable development in energy, food, water, health and education in rural India.
Monday, April 16, 2012
How SEO software is changing the way we read and write
by Annalee Newitz
Flustered pundits claim that blogging has changed writing forever, but they're wrong. You know what has really changed writing? Google search. Thousands of internet puppies are writing "content" that is perfectly optimized to rise to the top of search rankings. Search engine optimization (SEO) has become its own art, a genre designed to make writing algorithm-friendly and human-clickable. What has SEO done to our writing? Now Sean Gallagher over at Ars Technica has a smart, funny article about a new piece of consumer software, InboundWriter, which helps you turn any piece of writing into something that's optimized for search. The best part is that Gallagher actually ran his own article through InboundWriter, so his analysis of SEO is actually designed to be 99% optimized for SEO.
MORE HERE >>>
Flustered pundits claim that blogging has changed writing forever, but they're wrong. You know what has really changed writing? Google search. Thousands of internet puppies are writing "content" that is perfectly optimized to rise to the top of search rankings. Search engine optimization (SEO) has become its own art, a genre designed to make writing algorithm-friendly and human-clickable. What has SEO done to our writing? Now Sean Gallagher over at Ars Technica has a smart, funny article about a new piece of consumer software, InboundWriter, which helps you turn any piece of writing into something that's optimized for search. The best part is that Gallagher actually ran his own article through InboundWriter, so his analysis of SEO is actually designed to be 99% optimized for SEO.
MORE HERE >>>
Prototyping/Wireframe/Mockup Tools
Pencil Project
http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx
Verify
http://verifyapp.com/
Web Site Wireframe Tool
http://wireframe.talltree.us/default.asp
Mockingbird
https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/
fluidA
http://stage.fluidia.org/
fluidUI
https://fluidui.com/
Cacoo
https://cacoo.com/
Lumzy
http://lumzy.com/app/
iPhone Mockup
http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/
Google SketchUp
http://www.sketchup.com/product/newin7.html
http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx
Verify
http://verifyapp.com/
Web Site Wireframe Tool
http://wireframe.talltree.us/default.asp
Mockingbird
https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/
fluidA
http://stage.fluidia.org/
fluidUI
https://fluidui.com/
Cacoo
https://cacoo.com/
Lumzy
http://lumzy.com/app/
iPhone Mockup
http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/
Google SketchUp
http://www.sketchup.com/product/newin7.html
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
The World Now Buys More Smartphones than Computers
In 2011, manufacturers shipped 487.7 million smartphones and only 414.6 million computers—that's desktops, laptops and tablets. Combined. We'd heard prophecy of this day, and now it may have arrived.
The study by Canalys has troves of data about global smartphone sales, which seem to lend credence to the theory that smartphones are becoming the main computing devices of the masses. Creation and productivity tasks aside, the vast majority of what we need to do or obtain from the internet can be accomplished on a $100 device that fits in our hand. And they're becoming near-ubiquitous.
http://io9.com/5882172/the-world-now-buys-more-smartphones-than-computers?tag=computers
The study by Canalys has troves of data about global smartphone sales, which seem to lend credence to the theory that smartphones are becoming the main computing devices of the masses. Creation and productivity tasks aside, the vast majority of what we need to do or obtain from the internet can be accomplished on a $100 device that fits in our hand. And they're becoming near-ubiquitous.
http://io9.com/5882172/the-world-now-buys-more-smartphones-than-computers?tag=computers
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Second Mona Lisa may have been painted at the same time as the original
She is not the Mona Lisa, but you might think of her as Mona Lisa’s sister, who – after more than 500 years – is finally having her debutante party.
The Art Newspaper has reported that conservators at the Prado in Madrid now believe that a copy of the Mona Lisa in the museum’s collection that was long thought to have been executed much later than the original may have been made by a student of Leonardo as Leonardo was creating the masterpiece.
Conservators compared infrared images of the Prado’s copy with ones taken in 2004 from the original in the Louvre and found that the under-drawing of the replica closely resembled that of the original before it was finished, suggesting that the copy may have been made at the same time and that the two works were painted next to each other, as the work evolved in the early years of the 16th century.
The discovery, which was announced at a conference in January in London, was made after conservators removed black over-painting from the copy to reveal a landscape background similar to the one in the original.
The replica is scheduled to go on view at the Prado by the middle of February. Officials at the museum said the discovery was important chiefly for what the copy might say about the original, whose surface has been somewhat obscured since its creation. The Art Newspaper reported that the restored copy shows more detail of the spindles of the chair in the painting, the frill on the edge of the fabric on Mona Lisa’s chest and the semi-transparent veil around her left shoulder, arm and elbows.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/prados-mona-lisa-copy-may-have-been-made-in-tandem-with-original/
Thursday, January 26, 2012
A computer program "painted" this artwork from its own imagination
This landscape may not look like that much - it's a solid B+ in middle school art, I'd say - but this might just be proof that its creator, a computer program named the Painting Fool, is a creative being.
The program is the brainchild of Dr. Simon Colton, a computer scientist at Imperial College London. This is one of dozens of paintings by the Painting Fool, and it's particularly exciting because the program wasn't working from an existing digital image, as it usually does. Instead, this is actually a set of images that sprang from the AI equivalent of imagination. And when the program does work from a preexisting image, the results are even more impressive in more traditional aesthetic terms, as you can see in this video and at its website
MORE HERE >>
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)