Category: Body & Mind

A Game Designed to Help Solve Eye Problems

Diplopia – A VR Game to Help Strabismus and Amblyopia is exactly what it sounds like. This sounds like a great gaming project! The game is meant to help people who have some eye issues strengthen their weak eye to restore (near) perfect control over their stereo-vision.

You can contribute to the project at IndieGogo (only 6 days left!).

From the developer:

Strabismus, better known as crossed eye, is present in about 4% of children. In those affected both eyes do not line up properly causing diplopia (double vision), amblyopia (lazy eye), and loss of vision in one or both eyes. Since the brain receives conflicting information from the two eyes it often learns to disregard the weaker of the two, suppressing it. This leads to a loss of depth perception and 3D vision.

Contribute now at Indiegogo.
Find out more at the official website.

Bill Gates Shares Some (More) Good News From 2013

Bill Gates is best known for his hyper capitalistic behaviour creating Microsoft, but since he left the company he’s trying to change that perception. Indeed, he has done good things for the planet since he left he company he once founded. Gates and his wife have created the Gates Foundation to improve the world. They have done great work in leading American philanthropy and also contributed greatly in the fight against malaria.

He is optimistic about the future and you should be too! He points out some good news in his 2013 year in reviews.

Child mortality went down—again. One of the yearly reports I keep an eye out for is “Levels and Trends in Child Mortality.” The title doesn’t sound especially uplifting, but the 2013 report shows amazing progress—for example, half as many children died in 2012 as in 1990. That’s the biggest decline ever recorded. And hardly anyone knows about it! If you want to learn more—and I’d urge you to—the report has a good at-a-glance summary on page 3.

Read the Good News Review here.

A Toy Designed to Increase Empathy

Who doesn’t like toys? Nobody! Everybody loves playing and we all can remember the joy that toys bring us when were kids. Now some educators are looking to make a toy that is not only fun but also teaches kids empathy. Empathy is perhaps the most important skill one can acquire in this modern age.

Empathy and play allow us to understand different perspectives and imagine new possibilities. And isn’t that what great education is all about?

The Empathy & Creative Dialogue Toy is a 3D puzzle game that challenges players to place themselves in each other’s shoes. It’s an easy to use game that leads to surprisingly complex insights from its players. Each toy comes with domain-specific resources — including minds-on activities, gameplay scenarios, and discussion topics. It’s been designed with input from educators to help teachers, facilitators, and parents harness the educational power of empathy and play. The toy has garnered so much attention that it’s even been featured in two TEDx talks — one on designing for empathy & communication, the other a rallying cry for play in our school systems.

More on Kickstarter.

Thanks to Mirella!

Stop Procrastination Using Science

Procrastination is the easy act of not doing what you should be doing. For some, like me, it’s an uphill battle trying to get things done and stop procrastinating. I’ll get to the point: here are some scientifically-proven things one can do to stop procrastinating.

Do the “Right” Kind of Fantasizing

Fantasies about the future are generally okay to have and are all in good fun. But excessive fantasizing has been proven to be a goal killer and a huge reason people procrastinate (it tends to tie in with perfectionism). According to this study on motivation and fantasies, when you ‘build castles in the sky’ you may be sabotaging real, obtainable goals. The researchers tested subjects on how commonplace fantasizing about their future was, and followed up on their performance on a number of categories.

Read more at LifeHacker

Changing Car-Based Infrastructure for Walkable Communities

The suburbs are designed for cars as opposed to people and this is a problem that has surprising side effects from personal health issues to an increase in violent deaths. So how do we modify the suburbs to stop these side effects? In this TED talk, Jeff Speck explores what can be done.

How do we solve the problem of the suburbs? Urbanist Jeff Speck shows how we can free ourselves from dependence on the car — which he calls “a gas-belching, time-wasting, life-threatening prosthetic device” — by making our cities more walkable and more pleasant for more people.