This cool new approach to refrigeration could replace harmful chemicals
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a novel potential means of alternative refrigeration: ionocaloric cooling. The method involves electrically charged atoms or molecules (ions) changing the melting point of a solid material, much like adding salt to roads before a winter storm changes how ice will form. Their proof-of-principle experiment used salt made with iodine and sodium along with an organic solvent to achieve energy-efficient cooling, according to a recent paper published in the journal Science. Continued here |
RIP HDMI Alt Mode, we hardly knew ye
If you're using a USB-C port to connect a computer to a display, you're most likely using DisplayPort Alternate Mode (Alt Mode), and due to non-existent adoption, we can pretty much guarantee you're not using HDMI Alt Mode. According to the HDMI Licensing Administrator (HDMI LA), you never will because the feature is dead. Continued here |
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Fortinet says hackers exploited critical vulnerability to infect VPN customers
An unknown threat actor abused a critical vulnerability in Fortinet’s FortiOS SSL-VPN to infect government and government-related organizations with advanced custom-made malware, the company said in an autopsy report on Wednesday. Continued here |
Apple previews a trio of apps that will finally replace iTunes for Windows
Apple discontinued its iTunes music player for macOS in 2019 when it split the app's functionality between four apps in macOS Catalina. But for Windows users with large local media libraries or who wanted to back up their iDevices or subscribe to Apple Music, iTunes has soldiered on, receiving minor maintenance-mode updates to maintain compatibility with Apple's devices and services. Continued here |
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The true story behind the US' first federal monuments
"Are you sitting down? I have news for you." Gwen Marable's cousin from the US state of Ohio called her at home in Maryland about 27 years ago. "We are descended from the sister of Benjamin Banneker, Jemima." The Banneker family, which numbers over 5,000 known descendants today, only learned about this astonishing connection to their ground-breaking but little-known ancestor through the wonders of DNA testing. As such, no personal stories about him, no artifacts, were handed down through the generations. Continued here |
Biden taking "absolutely wrong approach" to crack down on Big Tech, critics say
As president, Joe Biden has made it clear that he wants to lead the charge to change how Big Tech operates in the US. In a rare op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Biden heavily criticized tech companies while outlining three broad areas of regulatory reform that he says that Congress should be considering this year. Only with bipartisan action, Biden said, can the US do more to protect data privacy, prevent anti-competitive behavior, and “fundamentally reform Section 230,” by reversing course and holding platforms accountable for third-party content. Continued here |
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You're not imagining it--new cars really have gotten much more expensive
The average transaction price of a new vehicle rose by 4.9 percent in 2022, according to Kelly Blue Book. As a result, the average sales price of a new vehicle in December was $49,075, a $2,297 increase over 12 months earlier. (Average sales prices were higher than MSRP thanks to factors like dealer markups.) Some of the rise is a consequence of a lack of inventory, which was at its lowest level ever early in 2022 due to factors like supply chain shortages caused by the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But prices have continued to rise even as more new cars have made their way to dealer lots. Continued here |
Ancient Americans Crossed Back into Siberia in a Two-Way Migration, New Evidence Shows
Scientists have long known that ancient people living in Siberia made their way into what is now North America. Mounting DNA evidence suggests migration also happened in the opposite direction Science has long known that people living in what is now Siberia once walked (and later paddled boats) across the Being Strait into North America. But new evidence now shows that these early migrations weren’t one-way trips: in a study published on Thursday in Current Biology, researchers say they have uncovered traces of Native American ancestry in the DNA of Siberians who lived centuries ago. Continued here |
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Duna de Bolonia: The Spanish sand dune hiding Roman ruins
Near the southern tip of Spain's Cádiz province, where Europe lunges into the Strait of Gibraltar as if reaching out for the North African coast, the Duna de Bolonia is one of the continent's largest sand dunes. Rising more than 30m high and sprawling 200m wide, the white mound spills into the azure sea and appears as if someone has dumped a massive pile of sugar atop the surrounding Estrecho Nature Park's protected green forest. Like all sand dunes, Bolonia is a constantly moving ecosystem that shifts with the winds. But as climate change has intensified the hurricane-force gusts coming from the east, the dune has increasingly migrated inland towards the ecologically important cork and pine forests and scrubland – revealing remnants of the many past cilivilisations who have passed through here in the process. Continued here |
How Brands Can Follow Through on the Values They're Selling
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, companies of all stripes rushed to release statements citing the need for “change” and “solidarity.” A meaningful subset of those companies promised to review internal policies for racial bias, improve hiring practices, or make cash contributions to nonprofits at the forefront of the movement. Nike and Brand Jordan pledged $140 million to support Black communities, Quaker Oats retired Aunt Jemima, and television networks pulled the plug on the shows “Cops” and “Live PD.” Continued here |
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Why we can't look away from Mexico City's gentrification Happy 2023! Or is it still 2022? You can’t tell going by the incessant, and near identical, reporting about the gentrification of Mexico City by digital nomads. You might even remember reading my own thoughts in this newsletter about whether tech was a force for gentrification in Latin America — 11 months ago! Only a few articles have actually moved the story forward, so why are we still talking about this? On the face of it, the gentrification of Mexico City feels like a story that has repeated across many moments in history: class conflict, migration, displacement. And yes, it is fundamentally about those things. More recently, though, I’ve been thinking that this story also reflects something very specific about the time and place we are living in right now. Continued here |
Sedimentation threatens to steal capacity from nearly 50,000 dams
Slowly but surely, the world’s reservoirs are getting gunked up with sediment. In an unblocked river, the flowing water carries bits of sediment along—picked up from river banks or swept into the river from rain. However, rivers whose flow has been interrupted by a dam deposit some of that sediment right behind the dam itself, in the reservoir. “Gradually, [over] years and years, it will be accumulating,” Duminda Perera, a researcher with the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health in Hamilton, Ontario, told Ars. Continued here |
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A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews
In the decades since the Army created the After Action Review (AAR), businesses have embraced the practice as a way of learning from both failure and success. But all too often the practice gets reduced to nothing more than a pro forma exercise. The authors of this article describe the history and philosophy of the original AAR, debunk three myths about the practice that impede its proper use, and finally suggest three improvements that can help business leaders make the most of it. Continued here |
A disturbing 1995 prediction by Carl Sagan accurately describes America today
This article was first published on Big Think in January 2017. It was updated in January 2023. Astronomer Carl Sagan was a great science communicator, widely known for cowriting and hosting the original Cosmos television series. Also a prolific writer, Sagan in 1995 published the book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which touches on a variety of topics, from spirituality to debunking alien abductions, but ultimately serves as a passionate argument for science and the scientific method. Continued here |
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2022 was once again one of the warmest years on record
They say history repeats, but usually they don’t mean it quite this literally. The global average surface temperature in 2021 ended up ranking fifth warmest or sixth warmest, depending on the dataset. We now have the tally for 2022—and it’s the new fifth or sixth warmest, depending on the dataset. Continued here |
Leaked Samsung Galaxy S23 pictures show off new camera design
Samsung is gearing up to launch the Galaxy S23 soon, with an event already officially scheduled for February 1. Prepping for launch means there are plenty of opportunities for things to leak, and official S23 pictures have landed at WinFuture. Continued here |
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Leona Zacharias Helped Solve a Blindness Epidemic among Premature Babies. She Received Little Credit
In the first Lost Women of Science Shorts podcast, host Katie Hafner dives into the life and work of Leona Zacharias—a brilliant researcher who, before reporting this story, Hafner only knew as her grandmother Scientist Leona Zacharias was a rare woman. She graduated from Barnard College in 1927 with a bachelor’s degree in biology, followed by a Ph.D. from Columbia University. But throughout her career, she labored behind men with loftier titles who got the bulk of the credit. In the 1940s, when premature newborns were going blind after being born with perfectly healthy eyes, Zacharias was part of the team that worked to root out the cause. Continued here |
Mexico's subway drivers depend on WhatsApp to keep the trains running “I find unacceptable that train operators are allowed to drive while on their cellphones,” América Gómora, a Mexico City subway rider, tweeted on January 7. Metro drivers’ conduct has come under particular scrutiny after two trains collided that day, leaving one dead and dozens injured. Although there’s no evidence so far to suggest conductors using their phones played a role in the crash, many local subway riders took to social media to express concerns that distracted train operators might be putting commuters’ lives at risk. But one former and four current Metro workers told Rest of World that because the system is poorly maintained, drivers depend on their phones to communicate with each other and keep the trains running. Continued here |
Why Emotionally Intelligent People Embrace the Power of 'Awkward' Thank-You Notes, Backed by Science If you feel uncomfortable--or not very good at--expressing gratitude, research shows you're not alone. And that you shouldn't be. Continued here |
The Introvert's Guide to Work: Our Favorite Reads
But being an introvert hasn’t always been fun. When I started out in my career, I often second-guessed my decision to become a reporter. I had a hard time sharing my ideas in team meetings. The newsroom drained me, and I envied my gregarious colleagues who appeared to navigate the bustle with ease. Continued here |
See the Largest Flower Ever Found Encased in Amber
A rare flower encased in amber is the largest one ever found and dates from around 40 million years ago The fossilization process is an unrelenting slog of decay, compression and erosion that can take millions of years and favors the preservation of tough material such as bones, teeth and shells. But with a little bit of sticky tree resin and a lot of luck, delicate bits of plants and tiny critters can sometimes last for tens of millions of years. As the resin petrifies and turns into amber, it preserves whatever gets stuck inside of it—including insects, slime molds and even pint-sized dinosaurs—in a gold-tinted time capsule. Continued here |
The ancient remains of Great Zimbabwe
Walking up to the towering walls of Great Zimbabwe was a humbling experience. The closer I got, the more they dwarfed me – and yet, there was something inviting about the archaeological site. It didn't feel like an abandoned fortress or castle that one might see in Europe: Great Zimbabwe was a place where people lived and worked, a place where they came to worship – and still do. It felt alive. Great Zimbabwe is the name of the extensive stone remains of an ancient city built between 1100 and 1450 CE near modern-day Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Believed to be the work of the Shona (who today make up the majority of Zimbabwe's population) and possibly other societies that were migrating back and forth across the area, the city was large and powerful, housing a population comparable to London at that time – somewhere around 20,000 people during its peak. Great Zimbabwe was part of a sophisticated trade network (Arab, Indian and Chinese trade goods were all found at the site), and its architectural design was astounding: made of enormous, mortarless stone walls and towers, most of which are still standing. Continued here |
Half of the 250 Kids Expelled from Preschool Each Day Are Black Boys
Racism and overstressed teachers help explain high expulsion rates for Black preschool boys In early October 2022 Jane Stadnik, a family resource specialist at the Parent Education & Advocacy Leadership (PEAL) Center in Pittsburgh, Pa., got a frantic call from the mother of a three-year-old boy who was about to be expelled from preschool. The school was tiring of his disruptive behavior, which, it claimed, included throwing blocks, not following directions, refusing to sit at “circle time” and periodically running from the classroom. Stadnik says that this would normally be seen as “typical developmental preschool behavior,” especially for a child with a speech impediment. Continued here |
How to Ask Someone to Be a Job Reference
A reference check is a standard process most companies follow before they hand you an offer letter. During this time, employers speak with third parties to verify your work experience and speak about your qualifications and character. Although reference checks are usually the final step of the interview process, prospective employers may ask for their contact information up front. Early in your job search you will want to line up a few people who can speak credibly about you and your work. Continued here |
No atmosphere found on JWST’s first Earth-sized exoplanet
For many of us, when we turn our eyes skyward, we imagine much, much more than the stars, galaxies, and the expanse of empty space that separates them. Instead, we turn our thoughts to the worlds that orbit each one of those stars: massive, gas giant planets with their own rich systems of moons, planets with solid surfaces like the Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury, and planets in between those two, like the so-called super-Earths that are almost exclusively more like mini-Neptunes. Each world in the Universe is unique, with its own composition, formation history, and possibilities for what sort of chemical or even biological reactions might occur there. For the very first time, one of those planets within our Universe was discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): LHS 475 b. This planet happens to be almost identical in size to Earth, with its radius determined to be 99% as large as our home planet’s. Although it’s in a fairly close, tight orbit around its parent star, that star is relatively cool: an old, stable, red dwarf star. As the planet — serendipitously aligned with its parent star from our perspective — transited across the face of its star, JWST got a chance to observe it, using the technique of transit spectroscopy to measure its atmospheric contents. But what it found was instead a disappointment, consistent with there being no atmosphere at all. It’s a remarkable step forward for science, but also, one that suggests that JWST’s “nightmare scenario” for exoplanet discovery might come true. Continued here |
Tuscany's mysterious 'cave roads'
Wildflowers grazed my legs as I hiked down from the volcanic-rock hilltop fortress of Pitigliano into the Tuscan valley below. At the base of the hill, I crossed a burbling stream and followed a winding trail as it inclined. All of a sudden, I was walled in. Huge blocks of tuff, a porous rock made from volcanic ash, rose as high as 25m on either side of the trench I found myself in. I felt spooked – and I'm not the only one who's felt that way in vie cave like this. These subterranean trails have been linked with lore of devils and deities for centuries. Continued here |
The city with gold in its sewage lines
"He burned the sari and from it, handed us a thin slice of pure silver," said my mother, describing a moment that had taken place 30 years ago at her home in the city of Firozabad. The man in her story was no magician, but an extractor. Like many similar artisans in my mother's hometown, he'd go door to door collecting old saris to mine them for their precious metals. Until the 1990s, saris were often threaded with pure silver and gold, and I remember digging into my mother's wardrobe, searching for her glittery outfits like treasure. But as she told me, the extractors were looking for something even more valuable than clothing – they were looking for trash, and a kind of trash specific to this city. Continued here |
A Law Firm Finds out the Hard Way that Maternity Leave is Not "Sitting Around on Your Ass" While you might feel angry that you have to pick up the slack while your co-worker is out on maternity leave, it's a bad idea to tell them. Continued here |
Not like Amazon: Why China's Alibaba has stalled after a meteoric rise
The company that would eventually blossom into Alibaba Group Holding Limited was founded on June 28, 1999, by Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma in Hangzhou, the capital city of China’s Zhejiang province. The plan was to launch an online marketplace that could capitalize on and improve upon China’s nascent e-commerce market by connecting manufacturers, sellers, and consumers on a single platform. “Alibaba’s special innovation,” co-founder Ming Zeng wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “was that we were truly building an ecosystem: a community of organisms (businesses and consumers of many types) interacting with one another and the environment (the online platform and the larger off-line physical elements). Our strategic imperative was to make sure that the platform provided all the resources (…) that an online business would need to succeed.” Continued here |
Is Santa Claus buried in Ireland?
Amid green hilly pastures dotted with grazing sheep and a cemetery with graves dating back to the 13th Century, the ruins of St Nicholas Church tower over the family home of Maeve and Joe O'Connell. Among those resting eternally here are early inhabitants of the estate, parishioners of the church and – according to local legend – St Nicholas of Myra. Yes, the St Nick who inspired Santa Claus. Today, the O'Connells are the owners and sole (living) human inhabitants of Jerpoint Park, a 120-acre deserted 12th-Century medieval town located 20km south of the town of Kilkenny, Ireland. Located along the crossing point of the River Nore and Little Arrigle River, the settlement (formerly called Newtown Jerpoint) is thought to have been founded by the Normans, who arrived in Ireland around 1160 CE. According to a conservation plan compiled by Ireland's Heritage Council, the town flourished into the 15th Century, with archaeological evidence revealing homes, a marketplace, a tower, a bridge, streets, a mill, a water management system and nearby Jerpoint Abbey, which still stands today. But by the 17th Century, the town's occupants were gone, likely from a combination of violent attacks and a plague. Continued here |
How an Eldercare Experience Made Rosalind Brewer a Better CEO The head of Walgreens Boots Alliance on finding her deep purpose. Continued here |
How we will use the Sun as a telescope to image alien cities
Exoplanets are the hottest topic in astronomy right now. After the discovery of the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star in 1995, the field exploded, revealing that nearly every star in the sky hosts a family of worlds. Powerful advances in technology are just now starting to give us the capacities to detect biological or even technological markers in the atmospheres of these alien worlds. That is all very exciting, but if we really want to know what is happening on planets many light-years away, we need to image them. High-resolution images of green-pocked continents could reveal the presence of life. High-resolution images of those same continents at night, dotted with the lights of cities, could reveal the presence of civilizations. Unfortunately, we lack the ability to create such images. They have been nothing more than a pipe dream for astronomers. But that is changing now. Continued here |
The Gas Stove Culture Wars Have Begun
A new way to show your political affiliation may be emerging, and it’s close to home. So close, you’ll find it in your kitchen. A debate over gas stoves reignited this week and fell along ideological lines in the US: As researchers, regulators, and Democratic politicians are pointing out the problematic emissions from gas appliances, conservatives are asserting their rights to cook how they choose. Things are, well, heating up quickly, as they do on a gas range: “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!” Congressman Ronny Jackson, from Texas, told Twitter. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York clapped back: “Did you know that ongoing exposure to NO2 from gas stoves is linked to reduced cognitive performance[?]” Continued here |
Trimurti: Meet the "Holy Trinity" of Hinduism
Hinduism is recognized as the world’s oldest living religion, with ancient scriptures dating back more than four thousand years. There is no single set of beliefs and practices that can be considered “correct” or “true” in Hinduism. Its major concern is that people make the journey in the first place, as the cycle of life provides the necessary lessons. There are three principal deities to guide people through that cycle. The Hindu trinity is also known as the Trimūrti, Sanskrit for “three forms,” and it includes Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Since these three gods are responsible for the creation, preservation, and destruction of the Universe, respectively, exploring Hinduism through the Trimūrti can be a key to understanding what makes Hinduism so enduring. Continued here |
Robert Waldinger: The secret to a happy life -- lessons from 8 decades of research
The happiest and healthiest people are those who have warm connections with others, says psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, who leads the Harvard Study of Adult Development -- one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever conducted. Exploring the crucial link between social bonds and quality of life, he shares wisdom and insights into how to identify and strengthen the relationships that impact your well-being most. When it comes to the people in your inner circle, "Turn toward the voices that make you feel more open and more inclusive," he says. (This conversation, hosted by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was part of an exclusive TED Membership event. Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.) Continued here |
So, You Dropped the Ball. How Do You Get Your Credibility Back?
We’ve all made mistakes at work before. If you dropped the ball on an important project, or done something to lose credibility and trust at work, there are steps you can take to build it back. After you’ve done the basics (you apologized, you owned up to your mistakes, and hopefully learned from it), the author suggests taking the following steps: Continued here |
The Competitive Advantage of Nations
A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade. Companies gain advantage against the world’s best competitors because of pressure and challenge. They benefit from having strong domestic rivals, aggressive home-based suppliers, and demanding local customers. Continued here |
Slutty Vegan Founder Pinky Cole in Legal Spat With Former Employees Over Skimped Tips Pinky Cole, founder of the vegan fast food chain Slutty Vegan, is facing a lawsuit from former employees who allege that they were withheld pay. Continued here |
Managers, Stop Distracting Your Employees
The rise of remote work has made corporate leaders paranoid, thinking they must monitor their employees’ every digital move in order to maintain productivity. But while people often zero in on Facebook, TikTok, or Netflix as potential sources of employee distraction, in truth, we’re often more distracted by the ways in which we work today. The author offers four strategies to help managers get to the root causes of what’s distracting their employees: 1) Open a dialogue about distractions; 2) Schedule-sync with your employees; 3) Don’t hold meetings without an agenda; and 4) Set an example. Continued here |
How far can vertical farming go?
When the Pasona Urban Farm opened in the nine-storey office of a Japanese recruitment company in 2010, it promised a future in which food was grown within feet of the people who would eat it. Tomatoes hung down from meeting-room light fittings, a rice paddy filled a large conference space, and mushrooms grew in drawers hidden discreetly under benches. The office looked more like a museum of farming than a place of work. Continued here |
Inflation Eased for the 6th Straight Month, Offering Welcome Relief to Uneasy Business Owners The Consumer Price Index rose by 6.5 percent compared with December 2021. Continued here |
What's the #1 Productivity Tool? For Me, It's Timeboxing.
Do you often find yourself carrying forward tasks that should be done today to tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the day after that? To-do lists gave the author, Neha Kirpalani, a sense of real satisfaction, until she was promoted at work and the array of new responsibilities she eagerly wanted to excel at were throwing her (highly) organized schedule off kilter. She experimented with timeboxing and found it came with great additional benefits, including: Continued here |
These Four Questions the ChatGPT Team Just Shared Are Brilliant. Here's Why Every Company Should Steal Them OpenAI's survey for the professional version of ChatGPT solves one of many companies' greatest problems: how to price your offerings. Continued here |
Could getting rid of old cells turn back the clock on aging?
James Kirkland started his career in 1982 as a geriatrician, treating aging patients. But he found himself dissatisfied with what he could offer them. “I got tired of prescribing wheelchairs, walkers and incontinence devices,” recalls Kirkland, now at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He knew that aging is considered the biggest risk factor for chronic illness, but he was frustrated by his inability to do anything about it. So Kirkland went back to school to learn the skills he’d need to tackle aging head-on, earning a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Toronto. Today, he and his colleague Tamara Tchkonia, a molecular biologist at the Mayo Clinic, are leaders in a growing movement to halt chronic disease by protecting brains and bodies from the biological fallout of aging. Continued here |
Ben Gran: Why nurses are key to medical innovation
Nurses represent the front line of health care -- from first breaths to last moments, and everything in between. But there's a vital place nurses are missing in action, says Ben Gran. He makes a compelling case for integrating their invaluable insights and experience into health tech innovation to help make care (and the process of providing it) better for generations to come. Continued here |
5 biotech trends to watch in 2023
2022 saw some incredible scientific and technological breakthroughs, as well as some major medical breakthroughs — and 2023 is poised to follow up with more paradigm-shifting advances in the making. As the Deputy Director of Communications for Leaps by Bayer, I surveyed a brain trust of scientists, investors, and CEOs to learn which areas of biotech they are most eagerly watching this year. Here’s what they said. Cell and gene therapies encompass a wide range of approaches that attempt to treat disease at the cellular and genetic level. With cell therapy, patients’ cells are extracted, reprogrammed, and then injected back into their bodies, often with the goal of leveraging their own immune system to fight diseases like cancer. Of the approved cell therapies in the U.S., most focus on blood cancers because they have not yet shown success in treating solid tumors. One of the next goals in cell therapy is to improve efficiency by reprogramming patients’ cells in vivo — that is, inside their own bodies. Continued here |
Sardinia's mysterious beehive towers
Expecting not to find much more than a pile of big stones, I followed the sign off the motorway into a little car park and there it was, rising from a flat, green landscape covered in little white flowers, with a few donkeys dotted around: Nuraghe Losa. From a distance, it looked like a big sandcastle with its top crumbling away, but as I walked towards it, I began to realise the colossal size of the monument in front of me. Nuraghi (the plural of nuraghe) are massive conical stone towers that pepper the landscape of the Italian island of Sardinia. Built between 1600 and 1200BCE, these mysterious Bronze Age bastions were constructed by carefully placing huge, roughly worked stones, weighing several tons each, on top of each other in a truncated formation. Continued here |
10 Ways to Boost Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is at its lowest point in the past two decades. Companies must focus on 10 areas of the customer experience to improve satisfaction without sacrificing revenue. The authors base their findings on research at the ACSI — analyzing millions of customer data points — and research that we conducted for The Reign of the Customer: Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction. For three decades, the ACSI has been a leading satisfaction index (cause-and-effect metric) connected to the quality of brands sold by companies with significant market share in the United States. Continued here |
How to Overcome Your Fear of Speaking Up in Meetings
If you find it difficult to speak up during virtual meetings, you’re not alone. You might feel your ideas are still half-baked and won’t be seen as valuable. Or, perhaps, you joined the company remotely and feel reserved around your new teammates or senior colleagues. But you can get better by making certain mindset shifts. Continued here |
Would following the USDA Dietary Guidelines actually make us healthy?
For over 40 years now, the U.S. government has published dietary guidelines to help Americans eat right and stay healthy. Since then, rates of obesity and diabetes have skyrocketed. So at least on those fronts, the guidelines seem to have failed. But why? Some naysayers insist that, for many years, the dietary guidelines have been misleading us, urging diets low in saturated fat and high in carbohydrates, despite accumulating evidence that this combination may not be universally healthful for everyone. Continued here |
Mexico's 1,500-year-old unknown pyramids
From a distance, the grey volcanic rock pyramids and their encircling stonewalls looked like something that Mother Nature had wrought herself. Located in Cañada de La Virgen (The Valley of the Virgin), an area about 30 miles outside the city of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico's central highlands, the stone formations blended into the arid, desiccated landscape like a diminutive mountain range. But as I got closer to the largest of the three structures, there was no doubt it was man-made. A staircase of identical steps, etched into the hard, dark rock, had clearly required a skilled mason's hand. The other two pyramids, smaller and less well-preserved, bore a similarly unmistakable human touch. The timeworn edifices were erected by a civilisation long gone. Continued here |
A secret site for the Knights Templar?
In a hole in the ground beneath the Hertfordshire market town of Royston, dimly illuminated by flickering light, I was looking at a gallery of crudely carved figures, blank-faced and bearing instruments of torture. Cave manager Nicky Paton pointed them out to me one by one. "There's Saint Catherine, with her breaking wheel. She was only 18 when she was martyred," Paton said, cheerfully. "And there's Saint Lawrence. He was burnt to death on a griddle." Amid the grisly Christian scenes were Pagan images: a large carving of a horse, and a fertility symbol known as a sheela na gig, depicting a woman with exaggerated sexual organs. Another portrayed a person holding a skull in their right hand and a candle in their left, theorised to represent an initiation ceremony – a tantalising clue as to the cave's possible purpose. Adding to the carvings' creepiness was their rudimentary, almost childlike, execution. Continued here |
10 Tips For Finding, Fighting, and Winning Key Battles in Your Business Concentrate on finding and winning the right battles, rather than trying to win them all. Continued here |
The truth behind 10 of the biggest health beliefs
Should we really be aiming to walk 10,000 steps a day, or drink two litres of water? Time to sift fact from fiction It's easy to think that science is constantly changing its mind on all things dietary and health-based - if you have never suffered headline whiplash from trying to keep up with whether or not wine is good for you, you probably aren't paying attention. In fact, our collective understanding is getting more nuanced, with ever-emerging longitudinal studies and meta-reviews getting us closer and closer to the truth about what is good for our bodies. Here are some widely held beliefs and what science says now - so you can start making informed health decisions this year. Continued here
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