🍪 W35 - 🏋️ How much exercise do you need to “undo” a day of sitting? - 🎧 Apple AirPods Max headphones giveaway
How much exercise do you need to undo a day of sitting, using seawater & renewable energy to decrease CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions and tiny lasers for AR glasses.
Hi,
We’re already at the 4th edition of this newsletter, and today also marks the first month of using Refind as my main source of information for all research and topics I cover in this newsletter. To celebrate this milestone, or actually by coincidence let’s say, Refind is organising a 🎧 Apple AirPods Max headphones ($549.00) giveaway. Read on how to enter the giveaway (which will only take 1min).
In this edition:
How much exercise do you need to “offset” a day of sitting?
Using seawater and renewable energy to decrease CO2 levels and greenhouse gas emissions
Tiny lasers could bring us smart AR glasses
And some additional 🍞 Crumbs & 🧠 Brain game
Get a chance to win 🎧 Apple AirPods Max headphones
Happy reading.
Regards,
Steven
Btw, building an audience for this newsletter requires effort, so by sharing this newsletter you can enlighten others and help me grow. Thanks in advance for your help.
Grab a coffee, take a bite.
5 min to chew through this one.
① 🏋️ How much exercise do you need to “undo” a day of sitting?
We all spend way too much time at our desks, especially as we are commuting less and often use that “extra” time to remain sedentary and work. I know I do. So how much exercise should you need to be doing to “undo” this time spent at our desk?
Well, according to a study, 30-40 minutes per day of building up a sweat should do it.
Up to 40 minutes of "moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity" every day would cancel out 10 hours of sitting.
That's based on an analysis of nine previous studies, involving a total of 44,370 people in four different countries who were wearing some form of fitness tracker. This analysis showed that by being more sedentary the risk of death increases, while by doing physical activity, this risk went down.
By sitting all day and not doing any activity, the mortality rate increases by 71%.
In other words, putting in some reasonably intensive activities – cycling, brisk walking, gardening – can lower your risk of an earlier death.
This research is in line with the new WHO guidelines, recommending 150-300 mins of moderate-intensity or 75-150 mins of vigorous-intensity physical activity every week to counter sedentary behaviour.
So what can you do?
Walk up the stairs instead of taking the lift, go out and play with your children and pets, take part in yoga or dancing, do household chores, go for a morning, lunch or evening walk, cycle,…
And if you can't manage the 30-40 minutes right away, start small! Doing something is better than doing nothing.
Additional benefits
During exercise, a hormone called Irisin is produced, which can enter the brain and improve cognition. Do note that a study on this was only performed on mice.
The hormone being produced during exercise can enter the brain enhancing health and neurons function, improving thinking and memory, both in healthy mice and those with Alzheimer’s disease.
Earlier studies have already indicated that people also produce this hormone during exercise, so merging this with the experiment on mice would suggest you can keep your memory sharp by exercising.
Source: Science alert - 2min read
Source: The New York Times - 5min read
② 🌊 Using seawater and renewable energy to decrease CO2 levels and greenhouse gas emissions
CO2 levels are rising, not only in our atmosphere but also in the oceans, harming wildlife and changing ecosystems.
Globally, mass producers of greenhouse gases can be categorized into, give or take, 6 categories:
25% electricity production
25% food and algriculture
20% general industry
15% transportation
10% extraction, processing and transport of fossil fuels
5% building infrastructure
If you look at the emissions produced by the general industry (20%), 40% is coming from concrete manufacturing (accounting for 8% on global level).
Two master's students in engineering at Oxford University (Erik Millar and Marcus Lima) envisioned a process that takes nothing but electricity and CO2-heavy seawater to produce hydrogen and chlorine gas, different carbonates, and in the process sequester a great deal of dissolved CO2 and reduce the carbon-heavy footprint of cement.
For every kiloton of seawater, one ton of CO2 is isolated, and two tons of carbonates are created. Magnesium carbonate and sodium carbonate are used in, among other things, glass manufacturing, but it’s calcium carbonate, or limestone, that has the biggest potential impact.
Currently, limestone is mined at a great scale as it is in high demand for the cement-making process.
Erik Millar and Marcus Lima, created Heimdal to put their plans in motion and to create “synthetic limestone”.
“Using mined limestone to make cement is a bit like burning oil. The world is addicted to concrete, so this problem is not going away.”
Heimdal is also looking to work with desalination plants, which are common around the world where freshwater is scarce but seawater and energy are abundant. Doing so, they benefit from more minerals per ton of water, and the desalination plants have an effective way of handling its salty byproduct.
“Heimdal’s ability to use salt water to produce carbon-neutral cement solves two problems at once. It creates a scalable source of carbon-neutral cement and converts the salty byproduct of desalination into a useful economic product. Being able to scale this together is game-changing on multiple levels.”
Heimdal has not yet made its public debut, but they already attracted $6.4 million in funding allowing it to go for its first pilot facility at a U.S. desalination plant.
They plan to enter commercial production in 2023.
Source: TechCrunch - 5min read
Source: Gimlet podcast - 44min listening
③ 👓 Tiny lasers could bring us smart AR glasses
Do you still remember Google Glass?
Presented in 2012 as the smart glasses that would make your life easier, showing you all sorts of information without the need to take out your phone.
In 2015, these glasses were cancelled due to unattractive design, too many software glitches, and short battery life.
"The technology Google Glass needed was not mature enough at that time to meet all the requirements of design, performance, and use. For smart glasses to become more popular, they must be lightweight, low-power devices that are fashionable. "
A step towards being lightweight and low-power is laser-beam scanning where tiny MEMS mirrors are used to create images by deflecting the laser beams emitted from compact diodes onto combiner optics (like glass lenses). And laser-beam scanning fits the bill on size, weight, power, performance, and image fidelity.
One of the companies behind this technology, STMicroelectronics was able to create a proof of concept, a laser-scanning system for AR smart glasses making it small enough to house the optical engine and an electronics module. They are still refining their techniques but they are headed in the right direction.
A common approach
STMicroelectronics also launched the IEEE Laser Scanning for Augmented Reality Alliance for all companies to share information about laser-scanning technology and collaborate on the development of components, devices, and techniques.
“Everybody was doing things on their own. There were no common approaches to building systems or even a common language.”
AR smart glasses are still a nascent market so by creating the alliance, all players would be working towards a common goal which might help the AR smart glasses business finally take off.
Source: IEEE Spectrum - 5 min read
🍞 Crumbs
🧒 Apple delays controversial child protection features after privacy outcry
🚅 Paris to Berlin in an hour: Welcome to the future of high-speed rail travel in Europe
🍕 The Best Way to Reheat Pizza (and Some Things You Should Never Do)
👮 The Pentagon Is Experimenting With AI That Can Predict Events 'Days in Advance'
🐛 This Singapore startup is using insects to turn trash into treasure
👨🦽 Paralympic Gold Medal Winner Claims Wheelchair Was 'Sabotaged' Before Race
🧠 Brain game
Can you guess the correct movie for each of the AI-generated posters? Like the below one. I got 4 out of 44, can you do better?
https://noahveltman.com/aimovies/
🎧 Apple AirPods Max headphones giveaway
Refind claims to be the fourth source of information, being “relevance”, next to news, social media, and search, creating a calm, quiet place where you take a step back to focus on what’s most relevant to you.
I couldn’t agree more with this statement as I’ve been using Refind for the past month as my main source of information, inspiration,…
To enter the giveaway contest they’ve set up, follow my “enter giveaway” link*, register your email address and activate your account.
Entering the giveaway is possible until 2021-09-13 13:34.
* you can only enter the giveaway with the above link (button). If you don’t use my unique link your registration will not count towards the giveaway.
Did you like this newsletter? Questions? Leave a comment 😉