Adam Clare

Mental Health Tips to Help You Get Through Social Distancing

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Weeks of practicing social distancing can get tiring since we don’t feel as physically connected to our social groups as normal. That’s ok, we all feel that way. So what do we do about it? We can practice good mental health hygiene too.

Over at Discover they have seven tips from a clinical psychologist to help you find ways to mirage any anxiety or stress you’re currently feeling due to the pandemic. You don’t have to take all their advice, but some might be worth considering for you and maybe your entire household.

Routine is your friend
It helps to manage anxiety, and will help you to adapt more quickly to this current reality. Create clear distinctions between work and non-work time, ideally in both your physical workspace and your head space. Find something to do that is not work and is not virus-related that brings you joy. Working in short bursts with clear breaks will help to maintain your clarity of thought.

Be compassionate with yourself and with others
There is much that we cannot control right now, but how we talk to ourselves during these challenging times can either provide a powerful buffer to these difficult circumstances or amplify our distress. Moments of feeling overwhelmed often come with big thoughts, such as â€œI cannot do this,â€ or â€œThis is too hard.â€ This pandemic will cause a lot of stress for many of us, and we cannot be our best selves all the time. But we can ask for help or reach out when help is asked of us.

NASA’s All Electric Airplane Looks Neat

NASA loves researching and their newest aviation project is no exception. The X-57 plane is an all-electric propeller driven design to test and demonstrate that such a plane can exist. They also went a step further by testing new engines and arrangement of them on the wing to try and create the most effect short range plane possible with current technology. Without a doubt it has been a success! Their plane currently has 500% design efficiency over comparable aircraft on the market, these design solutions can be applied to the next generation of airplanes.

According to the space agency, this final configuration with its bespoke skinny wings will boost efficiency by reducing drag in flight. Propulsion for takeoff and landing is provided by the 12 high-lift electric motors on the leading edge of the wing that allow the X-57 to reach cruising altitude. Then the two wingtip propellers take over as the smaller motors deactivate and their propellor blades fold into the nacelles to reduce drag. For landing, the motors reactivate and centrifugal force opens the blades again.

Listen to this Song to Reduce Your Anxiety

Marconi Union – Weightless (Official Video) from Optical Vitamins on Vimeo.

The song Weightless by the Marconi Union has been proven by neuroscientists to reduce people’s anxiety, and in times like a pandemic we can all get too stressed out. Following in the tradition of ambient music artist the group set out to create an aural atmosphere that welcomed and comforted people. Don’t take my word for it, click play on the video above and relax.

According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top song produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date.
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Equally remarkable is the fact the song was actually constructed to do so. The group that created “Weightless”, Marconi Union, did so in collaboration with sound therapists. Its carefully arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines help slow a listener’s heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

Are you Creative? The UN Wants Your Help Fighting COVID-19

If you are a creative individual or work at a company that produces creative content then the United Nations wants your help. The UN has put out a call for creatives to produce engaging content to educate people about how to be safe during this pandemic. They are looking for anything from posters, marketing campaigns, songs, films, anything! This might be your opportunity to pick up painting again or whatever artistic hobby you’ve been neglecting. Submissions are open now and now’s your chance to help the UN help all of us.

Check out my Twitter bot Jam This Game if you’re in need of some creative inspiration.

The United Nations (UN) needs your help in translating critical public health messages, into work that will engage and inform people across different cultures, languages, communities and platforms. The shortlisted work will reach everyone, everywhere.

We need your submissions from day 1. The UN will continually review the submissions, and shortlist the most suitable work to become visible on a microsite, and accessible to everyone – supporting media, brands, influencers etc – around the world, who can download and use the work across their platforms in support of this cause.

It is not too late. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. Together, we can save lives, protect resources and care for each other.

Folding@Home now Faster Than Fastest Supercomputer

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Scientists can use your help folding. In particular they could use your computer to help understand how proteins fold. In order to understand viruses and ways to fight them it helps to run simulations to see how proteins interact with each other. You can get your computer to devote a percentage of it’s computational power to helping that research, and thanks to enough people doing that the Folding@Home network is now more powerful than the fastest supercomputer!

If you have access to multiple computers you can spin them up and get them computing towards helping researchers create more efficient and safer drugs.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has been taxing for a number of computational biology and chemistry projects. IBM recently formed its COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium that pools together major supercomputers run by various research institutions and technology companies in the USA to run research simulations in epidemiology, bioinformatics, and molecular modeling. Cumulative performance of supercomputers participating in IBMâ€™s COVID-19 HPC Consortium is 330 PetaFLOPS.

Folding@home distributed computing project uses compute capabilities to run simulations of protein dynamics in a bid to better understand them and find cures for various diseases. Recently F@H started to run projects simulating theoretically druggable protein targets from SARS-CoV-2, which attracted a lot of attention as SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are clearly the hottest topics these days.