Month: October 2013

Men: Drink With Your Friends to Stay Healthy

- Adam Clare

Now there’s the perfect excuse to go watch the game with your friends or just chillax in a bar! It turns out that males really benefit when they engage in face to face activities with their friends twice a week regardless of what they actually do.

So go out tonight with your friends and have a round to your health 😉

Professor Robin Dunbar, a leading psychologist at Oxford University, published the report, which shows that whilst speaking to mates is valuable, it is not enough for men.

He said to experience the real benefits of friendship, men must meet up in the flesh at least twice a week and actually ‘do stuff’.

It also demonstrates men who keep strong and well-maintained social groups are healthier, recover from illness more quickly and tend to be more generous.

No word on if going out every night for beers with friends is even more beneficial.

Read more.

Thanks to Shea!

Carbon-Negative Energy Generation

- Adam Clare

All Power Labs sells a device that converts biomass into electric energy. Their machine, which is based on technology over 60 years old, can produce insanely cheap energy while making use of plant matter. They have units that produce 10 kW and 20 kW respectively while the wait for approval for a 100 kW version.

The company even built an experimental unit for a car that ran for quite a distance using only walnut shells. This instantly made me think of the modified Delorean in Back to the Future.

All Power Labs makes machines that use an ancient process called gasification to turn out not only carbon-neutral energy, but also a carbon-rich charcoal by-product that just happens to be a fertilizer so efficient that Tom Price, the company’s director of strategic initiatives, calls it “plant crack.”

Gasification, in which dense biomass smoldering — but not combusting — in a low-oxygen environment is converted to hydrogen gas, is nothing new. Price said that ancient cultures used it to enrich their soils, and during World War II, a million vehicles utilized the technology. But after the war, it more or less vanished from the planet, for reasons unknown. Until Mason needed a way to power his flamethrowers, that is.

All Power Labs has taken gasification and combined it with two of the Bay Area’s most valuable commodities — a rich maker culture and cutting-edge programming skills — to produce what are called PowerPallets. Feed a bunch of walnut shells or wood chips into these $27,000 machines and you get fully clean energy at less than 10 cents a kilowatt hour, a fraction of what other green power sources can cost.

Read more at CNET.

Think Dirty on Your Mobile to Shop Clean

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Think Dirty is an app for your mobile phone (iOS only) designed to help people understand the ingredients in products. It’s focused on cosmetics products as a starting point for how to avoid cancer causing chemicals.

Think Dirty™ app is the easiest way to learn about the potentially toxic ingredients in your cosmetics and personal care products. It’s an independent source that allows you to compare products as you shop. Just scan the product barcode and Think Dirty will give you easy-to-understand info on the product, its ingredients, and cleaner options.

AppStore

How Racing Cars Helps Babies

- Adam Clare

For the most part, Formula 1 is just entertainment, but every now and then something really nifty comes out of it. Using models and algorithms developed to monitor an F1 car’s performance, some engineers figured out how to apply them to hospitals.

During a Formula 1 race, a car sends hundreds of millions of data points to its garage for real-time analysis and feedback. So why not use this detailed and rigorous data system elsewhere, like … at children’s hospitals? Peter van Manen tells us more. (Filmed at TEDxNijmegen.)

A Turkish Hotel Wins Hospitality Innovation Award for Accommodating Protestors

- Adam Clare

During the Taksim Square protests in Turkey earlier this year, Divan Hotels’ flagship property in Istanbul opened their doors to the protestors. Not a bad place to get support after suffering police brutality and tear gassing.

The hotel is adjacent to Gezi Park’s Taksim Square, the site of protests last May and June. During some of the most tense moments, the Divan Hotel’s management took in people protesting against the government of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to the chagrin of officials.
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Adding insult to injury, the hotel staff rebuffed police forces by asking whether they had a reservation at the hotel, according to Han Le, an American who observed the protests. Unsurprisingly, the police did not, and the staff—at least temporarily—prevented them from entering and arresting protesters camping out inside. The Financial Times reports (paywall) that the decision to take in protesters was initially made by the hotel’s management, but supported by the hotel’s parent company.

Read more at Quartz.

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