Getting Back At It – General
Written on May 18, 2012 at 9:00 am, by 2Health
Winter is finally winding down here in San Diego and I find myself wanting to wander outside more to experience this amazing weather. Unfortunately, I spent most of my winter indoors which left me with little content to add here other then my boring gym routine. I stayed in shape by going to the gym, for some “scheduled movement”, instead of getting outside to take part in Surfing, Skating, Land Paddling, etc…
I definitely feel like I hit a wall when it comes to motivation due to the lack of variety with my physical activity choices. My choices at the gym are limited to the basic cardio equipment you would find at your local gym. I used the stair master mostly because I find that machine leaves me drained after a 20 to 40 minute session. While these machines do get the job done, they leave something to be desired when it comes to the fun aspect of staying in shape. For me, spending 30 minutes on a stair master is not fun!
I am using this winter as a learning experience. I need to look at more options for outdoor activities that can be performed during the winter without freezing my butt off. I purchased a mountain bike a few months ago that will probably fill that gap nicely. There are quite a few trails I can ride around here. Either way, it’s good to be back! I started off the summer by skating around a park yesterday and then played a little basketball at the court located at the same park. I probably spent about an hour and a half moving around instead of sitting inside just watching TV or playing video games and it didn’t even feel like workout, it was fun.
Sampar Age-Antidote Eye Rule: Rule in Favor
Written on May 18, 2012 at 9:00 am, by 2Health
There are factors that inevitably age the skin around the eye. Too many factors, in fact: Dermo-contractions, skin-slackening, dehydration, microcirculation, and urban pollution. Eye Rule by Sampar works to fight all these, with enriched formulation with the double-whammy power of swiveling roller-ball action. It increases circulation, and enhances the effectiveness of the anti-aging agents by penetrating deep into the dermis. This rolling action irons out wrinkles; in time, it will lift the eyes. And for immediate effect, there’s a cooling agent to offer freshness, which is especially good when you are tired (hungover and need to look good?).
Sampar’s roller has oils and peptides we’re all familiar with, but it’s also got Adenosine which reduces Dermo-contraction, so you don’t wrinkle as much when you smile and make faces. It’s like a mini-Botox treatment! The formula’s antioxidant shield is a complex of three ingredients: Shea Butter serum, mint endorphin, and pro-biotic sugar. Sounds crazy, but it’s all good for looking awake and energized.
Thankfully, there’s button at the end that releases the right amount of product onto the roller-ball. Just use circular motions to massage it all in, moving from the inner-eye to under the eye, then make a complete circle all the way around the lids. Be sure to give extra love to those wrinkles and prone-to-wrinkle areas. Finish the process off by tapping the stick lightly with your fingers to make sure everything is being absorbed.
I especially recommend storing in fridge – it’s great for waking up tired eyes at a moment’s notice. On Amazon
Why is Nursing Theory Important to Your Practice?
Written on May 18, 2012 at 9:00 am, by 2Health
Although many of us rolled our eyes and otherwise resisted learning about nursing theories when we were in school, nursing theories can be very useful structures from which we can draw inspiration and direction related to our professional practice of nursing.
Nursing theories offer conceptual bases for nursing practice, and individual theories often serve as a framework for specific schools of nursing. Some health care facilities will adopt a nursing theory for its nursing staff, and in such a case all clinical nursing decisions are ostensibly made through the “lens” of this particular theory.
Nursing theories utilize a logical structure of ideas, hypotheses and assumptions that can be applied to a variety of situations. These theoretical structures can serve as a basis for nursing practice, patient care, professional development, education, nursing research, or administrative decision-making.
As a body of knowledge, nursing theories provide a wide array of conceptual structures on which nurses or organizations can hang their metaphorical hats.
Some well-known nursing theories and theorists include:
Dr. Jean Watson, whose “caring model” emphasizes the humanistic aspects of nursing in combination with scientific knowledge. This theory sees the patient as a holistic being (body, mind and spirit), and recommends treating the patient with positive regard and unconditional acceptance.
Dorothea Orem popularized a theory of centered on the notion that nursing interventions are geared towards assisting patients in re-establishing their ability to provide their own self-care and recover their health from a place of deficit.
Callista Roy propagated the adaptation theory of nursing in which the patient is seen as a “biopsychosocial being” who is constantly adapting to a changing environment.
Although these theories can seem abstract and a far cry from the nuts and bolts of daily nursing practice, theories can provide a very useful framework for your individual practice or your facility’s approach to patient care. If your facility or unit does not adhere to a specific nursing theory, perhaps the exploration of various theories may yield a theory that speaks to your facility’s goals and norms of practice.
Nursing theories are often useful and inspiring. If you avoided them during school, consider how they may positively influence your practice, and find a theory that feels like a good “fit” for your individual way of nursing.
Sleep Study: Apps That Track Your Slumber #30DaysofGOOD
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
Things are easier said than done, or so the old adage goes, and we couldn't agree more. That's why we do The GOOD 30-Day Challenge (#30DaysofGOOD), a monthly attempt to live better. Our challenge for May? Sleep better.
If you use apps to measure things like your exercise and eating habits, you know how self-quantifying can help inform your daily decisions and contribute to better quality of life. Consider adding one of these sleep-tracking apps to your regimen. They examine your sleep patterns, offer visualizations of your sleep data, and even offer personalized suggestions for getting a better night's rest.
A Public Art Project Symbolically Reverses Detroit’s ‘White Flight’
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
The late artist Mike Kelley spent most of his career working in Los Angeles, but his origins lie in Westland, Michigan, a working-class town 16 miles outside Detroit. One of his final works before his suicide in January reconnects with those roots using a replica of the classic ranch-style home he grew up in in the 1950s. The public art piece, called "Mobile Homestead," toured through Detroit and surrounding towns on a flatbed truck to demonstrate a symbolic reversal of the "white flight" from a struggling city to its suburbs.
The project began in 2005 when Artangel, a British organization that produces site-specific art, asked Kelley to create its first project in the United States. Kelley responded with the idea of transporting a model of his childhood home from downtown Detroit to his real-life home in the suburbs, then back again. A trilogy of films about the journey emphasize the extreme inequality between communities within the city and outside it, interviewing everyone from strippers to church officials to Ford employees along the route.
The house made stops at locations relevant to Detroit's history as well as Kelley's childhood: Corktown, the city's historically Irish neighborhood; Dearborn, where Ford was founded; Wayne, where Kelley went to school; and finally Westland, where he grew up.
Now the project is about to find its final resting place. Beginning next month "Mobile Homestead" will be installed on a parcel of land behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, to be completed next year. The ground floor of the house will serve as a functional community space with free classes and a barbershop, while a basement designed by Kelley will provide studio space for artists and room "for more covert activities—what he called 'private rites of an aesthetic nature,'" according to Artangel. (Sounds fun either way.) The film trilogy premieres today at the Whitney Biennale in New York City.
The Past 12 Months Were the Warmest Ever Recorded
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
Data released yesterday shows that the last 12 months were the hottest ever recorded in the United States. In Texas, the droughts were so bad that some towns ran out of water. Wildfires burned millions of acres of dried-out land. In the Northeast, winter never really came. February felt like spring.
Some of this warm weather can be traced to a weather pattern called La Niña. And most climate scientists are still reluctant to blame climate change for causing any particular weather event. But consider the context: This is the 326th month in a row that temperatures across the nation have been above average. The last time a month's temperatures fell below global averages was February 1985.
Averages are tricky, of course. They don’t reflect our day-to-day experiences of basking in the sun, shivering in the wind, or staring at the window at freak snow storms. And these experiences—our decisions about how many layers to wear and whether to bike or take the bus to work—have a strong influence on our beliefs about climate change. It probably won’t be quite as warm over the next 12 months as it was in the last 12, although the temperatures from January through April are the highest on record again. And if the coming summer happens to be mild, if snow falls in massive quantities next winter, some of the people who are starting to worry about climate change will breath a sigh of relief and stop worrying quite so much.
But variation from day to day or even year to year masks the longer trend: the planet is steadily getting warmer. Climate scientist James Hansen, who began calling attention to the dangers of climate change before anyone even knew to think about it, is confident that there’s a connection between some of the heat waves we’re seeing now and global climate change. As he and a couple of colleagues wrote in a recent paper, “There is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010… it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming.” And that means that hottest year ever won't be the hottest ever for very long.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user black18shirts
Companies Value Internships, So Why Don’t They Hire Interns?
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
As recently as the 1980s, internships were uncommon and certainly not required for entry-level jobs. Nowadays, they represent a rite of passage for three-quarters of the 10 million students enrolled in America’s four-year colleges and universities. And according to a recent study by Millennial Branding, Inc., the lion's share of employers expect students to have internships on their résumés; 91 percent of the 225 employers surveyed think students should have between one and two internships before they graduate.
Yet the study found that half of those employers haven't hired any interns in the past six months, revealing a fundamental disconnect between internship theory and practice. A couple decades ago, interns may have expected to at least get hired by the same company for whom they gave up their summers. But today, some companies apparently only want interns in the abstract.
The study's methods aren't exactly air-tight; the companies who answered the survey are the only ones of the 100,000-plus companies in Millennial Branding's database that chose to respond to the survey. And not all employers—nor all internships—are created equal. It would be helpful to parse out the industries or companies most likely to hire interns, or the ones who offer a stipend rather than demand students to work for free. (There have been efforts, like this 2010 CollegeGrad.com survey, to spotlight companies who routinely offer full-time jobs to interns.) There has been very little research done on interns, save Ross Perlin's 2011 book, Intern Nation and a few sketchy surveys like this one. But college career centers, especially the ones requiring their students to complete internships for credit, should be actively tracking the companies who reward their interns for their time.
Image courtesy of Millennial Branding.
What’s Killing the Electric Car? The Price of Batteries
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
At last week's Electric Vehicle Symposium in Los Angeles, a consortium of automakers from the United States and Europe unveiled a speedy new standardized charger for electric vehicles.
Under the old system, a full charge would take two to three hours; with the new system, put together by Big Three American automakers Ford, GM and Chrysler and their German counterparts—Audi, BMW, Daimler, Porsche and Volkswagen—a vehicle could charge in as little as 15 or 20 minutes, while you’re in the grocery store or the doctor’s office.
The initiative represents a step toward an electrified automotive future, akin to agreeing on standard-sized railroad tracks to extend rail networks across the country. But there’s still a major obstacle standing in the way of mass adoption of electric cars: battery technology, and the price that comes with it.
Ford, which plans to have 10 to 20 percent of its products “electrified”—either completely electric or hybrid—by 2020, is rolling out its first all-electric vehicle, the Ford Focus EV, this spring, in conjunction with the charger announcement.
The standard Focus, a sporty little hatchback, is being marketed to young people and retails new at $18,300. The electric Focus costs $39,950 before a $7,500 federal tax rebate and, in California, a $2,500 tax credit. Even after the tax incentives and the gas savings, that's’s still a big difference in price for fairly standard car, and that’s reflected in the company’s modest sales expectations—they hope to see about 2,000 roll off the lots this year in California, New Jersey, and New York.
With a 76-mile range on one charge, the Focus EV goes further than its main competitor, the Nissan Leaf. It's fun to drive and comes with a bevvy of unique features, including a heads-up display that turns efficient driving into a game and a mobile app that lets you analyze your driving habits and control your car from afar. But it’s still hard to imagine many people purchasing it at that price.
Mike Tinskey, Ford’s director of global vehicle electrification, says the rollout is something of an experiment for Ford—a chance to figure out what the market wants. Tinskey expects that EV buyers will be regular commuters who seek out the car to save money on gas in the long term, adopt the next wave of auto technology, or just do right by the environment. “Not one technology will fit all customers,” Tinskey says. “We should have everything from a battery electric vehicle to a plug-in hybrid to a hybrid to an advanced gasoline engine, and offer that across all of our products.”
Still, he admits that the price point might prevent people, especially young people, from buying the car. He notes that Ford’s standard offerings include a lot of in-car entertainment technology the company believes will resonate with young buyers, but that demographic also is interested in environmental ethics and populated with early tech adopters. “We really need to focus on getting the cost down, and we almost have a myopic view of continuing to do that,” he says.
While Ford is focused on doing that across a range of fronts, from manufacturing innovation to partnerships with electric utilities, the biggest obstacle Tinskey sees for Ford and other automakers is battery cost. Car battery technology has developed quickly in recent years, but balancing longer-lasting, faster-charging, lighter batteries with price is a tricky process. While part of the problem is technological, Tinskey points to economics as the central challenge. “In my opinion, it’s scale—how do you prime the pump?” he says. “You really need to get scale at these battery plant manufacturing facilities.”
That’s part of the logic behind standardizing public charging infrastructure—priming the pump to get more people on the road in EVs, which in turn will spur further innovation and cost-savings in the industry. “We could have a breakthrough, but we’re not planning for a breakthrough, we’re just assuming that we’re going to continue to be able to get costs out, and the next generation will be more affordable than this generation,” Tinskey says.
There are 1,000 engineers at Ford working on the problem, he says. With many thousands more at other companies and labs around the world, we may get a truly competitive green car yet.
Photo courtesy of Ford
A Grassroots Group Demands Legislators Stop Education Cuts
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
Can a grassroots parent group convince California's state legislators to create a balanced budget without deeper education cuts? That's the goal of the "Stop the Circus" public service announcement produced by Educate Our State, a 3-year-old 40,000-member organization hoping public pressure can force legislators to protect schools from the latest wave of slash-and-burn fiscal policy.
The PSA—which features a little girl getting the run-around from politicians when she demands to know who is responsible for fixing the education system—was created by Greg Bartlett and Brent Jones, both dads of Los Angeles public school students and Educate Our State members. Like many parents across the country, Jones and Bartlett are frustrated with the struggling education system and the political infighting that has hindered any attempts to fix things.
California’s dire budget situation made national headlines this week after Governor Jerry Brown announced that the state’s deficit had ballooned to $16 billion. Deficits are nothing new in California, and schools have long borne the brunt of cuts. Since the 2008-2009 school year, the Golden State has cut $18 billion from education and now ranks 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending. There's nothing left to cut—California already ranks last in the nation in student-to-teacher ratio and student-to-librarian ratio.
"Children shouldn't have to rely on luck for an education," says Jones, who served as the creator and director of the video. "What are we supposed to say to future generations, 'Sorry, we couldn't figure it out?'"
Brown is counting on California voters to pass a tax initiative in November that would bail out schools. "This makes all the numbers in the budget dependent on an election that has not happened yet," Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent John Deasy, whose district has weathered $2.7 billion in cuts over the past few years and is facing a $390 million deficit for the coming school year, said in a statement. "If voters do not pass the initiative, the results are so catastrophic it is simply untenable."
Educate Our State hopes the PSA will inspire people to write their legislators to demand that they pass a budget that fully funds education. Given that California's economy is the ninth-largest in the world, our nation's long-term economic recovery depends on how well the state's kids are educated. Let's hope the campaign works.
Florida Teen Starts ‘Giving Library’ for Homeless Kids
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
There’s nothing like curling up in bed with a good book before you go to sleep, but far too many low-income kids don’t know what that’s like. Two-thirds of poor children have no age-appropriate books at home, and the nation's 1.6 million homeless children have even fewer options.
Fifteen-year-old Florida resident Lilli Leight wanted to help provide homeless kids in her community with access to books, so she created a "giving library" at a Miami homeless shelter. To staff the library, she formed a teen book club to encourage her classmates to volunteer. Her effort won her the National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading prize, which recognizes individuals and institutions for developing ways of instilling a lifelong love of reading.
Leight began volunteering three years ago at the nonprofit Chapman Partnership shelter, and she quickly noticed that after students there finished their homework, they'd turn on the shelter's television instead of cracking a book like she did at home. The kids didn’t even think to ask for a book, she found, because they were so used to not having any around.
A lack of access to books has long-term effects on kids, research shows—several studies indicate that availability of reading materials is a stronger predictor of future academic achievement than socioeconomic status. In Leight's home state, less than 25 percent of homeless children graduate from high school.
To build the library, Leight began collecting donated new and used books from friends, schools, community organizations, and local bookstores. The effort was so successful that the shelter’s library now has multiple books for every child. And when families are back on their feet and able to leave the shelter, they're invited take as many books with them as they want. Leight's book club, called iRead, provides a place for teens from area high schools to get together to discuss books, meet authors, and volunteer at Chapman as homework helpers.
Leight told the National Book Foundation that her project has made her "feel empowered to help change the world―even if it is just one child at a time." Thanks to her, more kids in tough economic situations have the opportunity to fall in love with a book.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Hermionish
In Conservative Cultures, Social Media Opens the Door to Condoms
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
Promoting condoms as a tool for family planning and HIV prevention in conservative, traditional societies like Mozambique and Indonesia should be a hard sell.
But social media and internet platforms have made it easier for young people around the world to access information, overcome cultural barriers, and engage in discussions that often sell condoms more as a lifestyle accoutrement than a prophylactic device. This was driven home to me one day when I sat down at a restaurant in Jakarta and was amazed to see a teenage girl sitting with her parents and wearing a DKT “Fiesta” condom foil strung on a necklace.
I’ve been selling condoms overseas since 1996 with DKT International, a nonprofit that uses commercial techniques to deliver health products—primarily for family planning and HIV prevention. During my early days working in Ethiopia, a country that had and has a serious HIV problem, we struggled to reach young people.
Ethiopia is a conservative society with strong religious cultures, but also is home to a young population that was increasingly exposed to outside influences. TV and radio were popular among youth but also watched by adults, who invariably squirmed (and complained) when colorful condom ads were aired. Because we needed to accommodate the concerns of these older media consumers, the ads ended up focusing generally on HIV protection, safe sex, and condom quality.
Today, such promotion is easier. Ethiopian university students can sign up online to learn about contraceptives, chat with each other about sensitive subjects, and access educational information. Messaging can be more hard-hitting and edgy because social media typically targets a younger audience. Through YouTube, DKT runs condom ads for ‘Sensation’ condoms, showing young people posing with condoms while celebrating Ethiopia’s diverse cultures.
Similarly, in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country of 230 million, the DKT ‘Fiesta’ condom brand now has pages on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that talk about safe sex and condom use in a ways that might make some Americans blush. Young Indonesians, like their counterparts globally, are spending more and more time on the internet and less time on traditional media. Condom education and outreach have adjusted to these new media use patterns accordingly.
The explosion in social media use for condom promotion is global. From Facebook pages in Mozambique to Twitter accounts in Brazil, young people are finding important new ways to get the information they need and voice their concerns and ideas.
This is partly because of existing synergies between the internet and condoms. Sexual material is plentiful on the internet; people are already looking for sexual stimulation through digital platforms, so reaching them when they are in that state of mind is a natural link. Additionally, the internet is generally anonymous, which is important for young people asking potentially embarrassing questions.
Is social media a cost-effective investment for condom promotion? I think so. Last year, DKT sold more than 650 million condoms globally, somewhere between 5 and 7 percent of the world's total sales. While it’s difficult to attribute those sales directly to the role of social media, there is no question that it has helped to expand markets, draw in new users, and strengthen brand positioning. Investment costs have been fairly low because many of these platforms are essentially free, and expanding the user base has been relatively fast and organic, drawing on a large pool of interested young people who naturally thirst for more information on these issues.
The digital world plays an increasingly important role in how young people learn, interact, and take up new behaviors; those of us who grew up during a different communications paradigm would be wise to ascertain how best to capitalize on these technologies to ensure we are not left behind.
Image courtesy of DKT
How to Make Public Transportation Safer on a Shoestring Budget
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
For the past five years, I've ridden trains and buses in Los Angeles at least three times a week. But many of my female friends won't join me because of very real concerns about safety.
Such fears are common in every city, but especially sprawling ones like Los Angeles, where riders must walk further distances to our stops, and often through less populated environments. For women who have a choice about whether to drive or take the subway, the thought of a crowded platform or dark sidewalk is enough to keep them in their cozy cars. So how can a city like Los Angeles make its streets and transit more comfortable for women—and for everyone?
Last year, after a fatal stabbing at a Red Line station (the only fatality since the system opened in 1993), Metro released comprehensive crime statistics that showed 1,216 "part one crimes" reported on Metro buses and trains in 2010. Most were thefts, but that category also includes rape or attempted rape, assault, robbery, and burglary. That adds up to about 2.77 crimes for every million passengers, which is more than Boston (2.63) but far less than DC (6.68) or Dallas (11.03).
A British study showed that men and women have different fears about riding public transit.
But vague statistics do very little to assuage one's concerns while standing at a dark and deserted bus stop, waiting nervously for a bus that's already 20 minutes late. An unwelcoming physical environment and unpredictable schedules are the greatest fears for female transit riders, according to Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, an urban planning professor at UCLA's School of Public Affairs. In 2009, she co-authored a study on how to improve transit safety, but since then, she's been disappointed at the lack of response from U.S. transit agencies. "I have not seen much in terms of outcomes, as far as agencies acting differently," she says.
While budgetary shortfalls might be to blame for the lack of safety innovations, Loukaitou-Sideris says there are low-cost solutions. Sometimes it's as simple as relocating the bus stop. "You can put the stop half a block away, but by a business that's open late and that has pedestrian traffic," Loukaitou-Sideris, she suggests, adding that many women reported walking farther to a different stop that was better lit or had more people around.
Training transit personnel to help make women feel at ease is another key to creating a positive transit experience, she says. This could include teaching drivers to be more accommodating to strollers (which are most often carried by women), as well as policy changes like allowing bus drivers to stop anywhere along their route late at night.
"The issue that came up again and again is that it's about feeling alone and intimidated," Loukaitou-Sideris says. Asking transit authorities to audit station design and employee policies and report on the changes they're making will not only encourage more women to try transit, it will improve the experiences of what she calls "captive riders"—the mostly lower-income women who don't have a choice.
An example of an improved streetscape and bus stop from the My Figueroa project
Transit safety also requires improving the path to stations, says Jessica Meaney, an organizer for Safe Routes to School who works to identify and solve the problems keeping students and families from walking and biking to school. "In some communities it's hostile traffic conditions," she says, "but in others it's issues of personal safety—[including] gang presence, loitering, intimidating unleashed dogs, and other factors which can be scary and overwhelming."
Something as simple as overflowing trash cans can make transit riders feel uneasy, Meaney says. "What I'd like to see more are places to wait that are enjoyable, and that provide shade and dignity." Steps like beefing up crosswalks, reducing speed limits, and adding more shade can make a big difference, she says. And such measures not only improve the experience for riders, but also for walkers and drivers that who want safe streets too.
What do you think makes the best car-free day in L.A.? Vote for your favorite submission and help it win $500 to make it happen at the LA/2B GOOD Maker Challenge. Voting is open until May 31 at midnight PST.
This post is the second in a series exploring transportation issues in Los Angeles sponsored by LA/2B, an ongoing collaboration between the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LA DOT) and GOOD/Corps, an affiliate of GOOD, that provides an opportunity for people in Los Angeles to discuss the future of our streets and transportation.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user ciocci
A Geodesic Dome Promises Fish from the Sky
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
Ever since R. Buckminster Fuller popularized the design in the mid-20th century, there's been something captivating about the geodesic dome. While the structure typically makes architecture lovers salivate, now it's conquering the heart of another type of urbanist: the city farmer. A new dome-based prototype promises an affordable method of rooftop aquaculture for apartment and commercial buildings—as the website calls it, getting "fish from the sky."
The Globe / Hedron bamboo dome would house an aquaponics system—a mini-ecosystem in which plants clean the water where fish swim and fish waste fertilizes the plants—capable of feeding 16 people year-round. The unique structure of the dome, designed by Conceptual Devices, would support the weight of the fish tank, enabling installation on flat roofs without adapting the structure of the building. The design firm is partnering with Zurich-based group UrbanFarmers, which developed the aqauponic technology, and they're currently fundraising on indiegogo to get the project off the ground.
The project's creators promise a harvest of 400 kilograms (about 880 pounds) worth of vegetables and 100 kilograms (about 220 pounds) of fish each year, including everything from tomatoes to spinach to trout. Panels on the dome's exterior would provide both shade and insulation, allowing the the structure to adapt to local environments, while the compact size and easy assembly would enable it to be shipped around the world.
Sleep Study: Apps That Track Your Slumber #30DaysofGOOD
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
Things are easier said than done, or so the old adage goes, and we couldn't agree more. That's why we do The GOOD 30-Day Challenge (#30DaysofGOOD), a monthly attempt to live better. Our challenge for May? Sleep better.
If you use apps to measure things like your exercise and eating habits, you know how self-quantifying can help inform your daily decisions and contribute to better quality of life. Consider adding one of these sleep-tracking apps to your regimen. They examine your sleep patterns, offer visualizations of your sleep data, and even offer personalized suggestions for getting a better night's rest.
A Public Art Project Symbolically Reverses Detroit’s ‘White Flight’
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
The late artist Mike Kelley spent most of his career working in Los Angeles, but his origins lie in Westland, Michigan, a working-class town 16 miles outside Detroit. One of his final works before his suicide in January reconnects with those roots using a replica of the classic ranch-style home he grew up in in the 1950s. The public art piece, called "Mobile Homestead," toured through Detroit and surrounding towns on a flatbed truck to demonstrate a symbolic reversal of the "white flight" from a struggling city to its suburbs.
The project began in 2005 when Artangel, a British organization that produces site-specific art, asked Kelley to create its first project in the United States. Kelley responded with the idea of transporting a model of his childhood home from downtown Detroit to his real-life home in the suburbs, then back again. A trilogy of films about the journey emphasize the extreme inequality between communities within the city and outside it, interviewing everyone from strippers to church officials to Ford employees along the route.
The house made stops at locations relevant to Detroit's history as well as Kelley's childhood: Corktown, the city's historically Irish neighborhood; Dearborn, where Ford was founded; Wayne, where Kelley went to school; and finally Westland, where he grew up.
Now the project is about to find its final resting place. Beginning next month "Mobile Homestead" will be installed on a parcel of land behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, to be completed next year. The ground floor of the house will serve as a functional community space with free classes and a barbershop, while a basement designed by Kelley will provide studio space for artists and room "for more covert activities—what he called 'private rites of an aesthetic nature,'" according to Artangel. (Sounds fun either way.) The film trilogy premieres today at the Whitney Biennale in New York City.
The Past 12 Months Were the Warmest Ever Recorded
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
Data released yesterday shows that the last 12 months were the hottest ever recorded in the United States. In Texas, the droughts were so bad that some towns ran out of water. Wildfires burned millions of acres of dried-out land. In the Northeast, winter never really came. February felt like spring.
Some of this warm weather can be traced to a weather pattern called La Niña. And most climate scientists are still reluctant to blame climate change for causing any particular weather event. But consider the context: This is the 326th month in a row that temperatures across the nation have been above average. The last time a month's temperatures fell below global averages was February 1985.
Averages are tricky, of course. They don’t reflect our day-to-day experiences of basking in the sun, shivering in the wind, or staring at the window at freak snow storms. And these experiences—our decisions about how many layers to wear and whether to bike or take the bus to work—have a strong influence on our beliefs about climate change. It probably won’t be quite as warm over the next 12 months as it was in the last 12, although the temperatures from January through April are the highest on record again. And if the coming summer happens to be mild, if snow falls in massive quantities next winter, some of the people who are starting to worry about climate change will breath a sigh of relief and stop worrying quite so much.
But variation from day to day or even year to year masks the longer trend: the planet is steadily getting warmer. Climate scientist James Hansen, who began calling attention to the dangers of climate change before anyone even knew to think about it, is confident that there’s a connection between some of the heat waves we’re seeing now and global climate change. As he and a couple of colleagues wrote in a recent paper, “There is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010… it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming.” And that means that hottest year ever won't be the hottest ever for very long.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user black18shirts
Companies Value Internships, So Why Don’t They Hire Interns?
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
As recently as the 1980s, internships were uncommon and certainly not required for entry-level jobs. Nowadays, they represent a rite of passage for three-quarters of the 10 million students enrolled in America’s four-year colleges and universities. And according to a recent study by Millennial Branding, Inc., the lion's share of employers expect students to have internships on their résumés; 91 percent of the 225 employers surveyed think students should have between one and two internships before they graduate.
Yet the study found that half of those employers haven't hired any interns in the past six months, revealing a fundamental disconnect between internship theory and practice. A couple decades ago, interns may have expected to at least get hired by the same company for whom they gave up their summers. But today, some companies apparently only want interns in the abstract.
The study's methods aren't exactly air-tight; the companies who answered the survey are the only ones of the 100,000-plus companies in Millennial Branding's database that chose to respond to the survey. And not all employers—nor all internships—are created equal. It would be helpful to parse out the industries or companies most likely to hire interns, or the ones who offer a stipend rather than demand students to work for free. (There have been efforts, like this 2010 CollegeGrad.com survey, to spotlight companies who routinely offer full-time jobs to interns.) There has been very little research done on interns, save Ross Perlin's 2011 book, Intern Nation and a few sketchy surveys like this one. But college career centers, especially the ones requiring their students to complete internships for credit, should be actively tracking the companies who reward their interns for their time.
Image courtesy of Millennial Branding.
What’s Killing the Electric Car? The Price of Batteries
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
At last week's Electric Vehicle Symposium in Los Angeles, a consortium of automakers from the United States and Europe unveiled a speedy new standardized charger for electric vehicles.
Under the old system, a full charge would take two to three hours; with the new system, put together by Big Three American automakers Ford, GM and Chrysler and their German counterparts—Audi, BMW, Daimler, Porsche and Volkswagen—a vehicle could charge in as little as 15 or 20 minutes, while you’re in the grocery store or the doctor’s office.
The initiative represents a step toward an electrified automotive future, akin to agreeing on standard-sized railroad tracks to extend rail networks across the country. But there’s still a major obstacle standing in the way of mass adoption of electric cars: battery technology, and the price that comes with it.
Ford, which plans to have 10 to 20 percent of its products “electrified”—either completely electric or hybrid—by 2020, is rolling out its first all-electric vehicle, the Ford Focus EV, this spring, in conjunction with the charger announcement.
The standard Focus, a sporty little hatchback, is being marketed to young people and retails new at $18,300. The electric Focus costs $39,950 before a $7,500 federal tax rebate and, in California, a $2,500 tax credit. Even after the tax incentives and the gas savings, that's’s still a big difference in price for fairly standard car, and that’s reflected in the company’s modest sales expectations—they hope to see about 2,000 roll off the lots this year in California, New Jersey, and New York.
With a 76-mile range on one charge, the Focus EV goes further than its main competitor, the Nissan Leaf. It's fun to drive and comes with a bevvy of unique features, including a heads-up display that turns efficient driving into a game and a mobile app that lets you analyze your driving habits and control your car from afar. But it’s still hard to imagine many people purchasing it at that price.
Mike Tinskey, Ford’s director of global vehicle electrification, says the rollout is something of an experiment for Ford—a chance to figure out what the market wants. Tinskey expects that EV buyers will be regular commuters who seek out the car to save money on gas in the long term, adopt the next wave of auto technology, or just do right by the environment. “Not one technology will fit all customers,” Tinskey says. “We should have everything from a battery electric vehicle to a plug-in hybrid to a hybrid to an advanced gasoline engine, and offer that across all of our products.”
Still, he admits that the price point might prevent people, especially young people, from buying the car. He notes that Ford’s standard offerings include a lot of in-car entertainment technology the company believes will resonate with young buyers, but that demographic also is interested in environmental ethics and populated with early tech adopters. “We really need to focus on getting the cost down, and we almost have a myopic view of continuing to do that,” he says.
While Ford is focused on doing that across a range of fronts, from manufacturing innovation to partnerships with electric utilities, the biggest obstacle Tinskey sees for Ford and other automakers is battery cost. Car battery technology has developed quickly in recent years, but balancing longer-lasting, faster-charging, lighter batteries with price is a tricky process. While part of the problem is technological, Tinskey points to economics as the central challenge. “In my opinion, it’s scale—how do you prime the pump?” he says. “You really need to get scale at these battery plant manufacturing facilities.”
That’s part of the logic behind standardizing public charging infrastructure—priming the pump to get more people on the road in EVs, which in turn will spur further innovation and cost-savings in the industry. “We could have a breakthrough, but we’re not planning for a breakthrough, we’re just assuming that we’re going to continue to be able to get costs out, and the next generation will be more affordable than this generation,” Tinskey says.
There are 1,000 engineers at Ford working on the problem, he says. With many thousands more at other companies and labs around the world, we may get a truly competitive green car yet.
Photo courtesy of Ford
A Grassroots Group Demands Legislators Stop Education Cuts
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
Can a grassroots parent group convince California's state legislators to create a balanced budget without deeper education cuts? That's the goal of the "Stop the Circus" public service announcement produced by Educate Our State, a 3-year-old 40,000-member organization hoping public pressure can force legislators to protect schools from the latest wave of slash-and-burn fiscal policy.
The PSA—which features a little girl getting the run-around from politicians when she demands to know who is responsible for fixing the education system—was created by Greg Bartlett and Brent Jones, both dads of Los Angeles public school students and Educate Our State members. Like many parents across the country, Jones and Bartlett are frustrated with the struggling education system and the political infighting that has hindered any attempts to fix things.
California’s dire budget situation made national headlines this week after Governor Jerry Brown announced that the state’s deficit had ballooned to $16 billion. Deficits are nothing new in California, and schools have long borne the brunt of cuts. Since the 2008-2009 school year, the Golden State has cut $18 billion from education and now ranks 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending. There's nothing left to cut—California already ranks last in the nation in student-to-teacher ratio and student-to-librarian ratio.
"Children shouldn't have to rely on luck for an education," says Jones, who served as the creator and director of the video. "What are we supposed to say to future generations, 'Sorry, we couldn't figure it out?'"
Brown is counting on California voters to pass a tax initiative in November that would bail out schools. "This makes all the numbers in the budget dependent on an election that has not happened yet," Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent John Deasy, whose district has weathered $2.7 billion in cuts over the past few years and is facing a $390 million deficit for the coming school year, said in a statement. "If voters do not pass the initiative, the results are so catastrophic it is simply untenable."
Educate Our State hopes the PSA will inspire people to write their legislators to demand that they pass a budget that fully funds education. Given that California's economy is the ninth-largest in the world, our nation's long-term economic recovery depends on how well the state's kids are educated. Let's hope the campaign works.
Florida Teen Starts ‘Giving Library’ for Homeless Kids
Written on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 am, by 2Health
There’s nothing like curling up in bed with a good book before you go to sleep, but far too many low-income kids don’t know what that’s like. Two-thirds of poor children have no age-appropriate books at home, and the nation's 1.6 million homeless children have even fewer options.
Fifteen-year-old Florida resident Lilli Leight wanted to help provide homeless kids in her community with access to books, so she created a "giving library" at a Miami homeless shelter. To staff the library, she formed a teen book club to encourage her classmates to volunteer. Her effort won her the National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading prize, which recognizes individuals and institutions for developing ways of instilling a lifelong love of reading.
Leight began volunteering three years ago at the nonprofit Chapman Partnership shelter, and she quickly noticed that after students there finished their homework, they'd turn on the shelter's television instead of cracking a book like she did at home. The kids didn’t even think to ask for a book, she found, because they were so used to not having any around.
A lack of access to books has long-term effects on kids, research shows—several studies indicate that availability of reading materials is a stronger predictor of future academic achievement than socioeconomic status. In Leight's home state, less than 25 percent of homeless children graduate from high school.
To build the library, Leight began collecting donated new and used books from friends, schools, community organizations, and local bookstores. The effort was so successful that the shelter’s library now has multiple books for every child. And when families are back on their feet and able to leave the shelter, they're invited take as many books with them as they want. Leight's book club, called iRead, provides a place for teens from area high schools to get together to discuss books, meet authors, and volunteer at Chapman as homework helpers.
Leight told the National Book Foundation that her project has made her "feel empowered to help change the world―even if it is just one child at a time." Thanks to her, more kids in tough economic situations have the opportunity to fall in love with a book.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Hermionish
