Health – Page 6 – Things Are Good

This Cheap Box Helps to Keep COVID at Bay

The desinergs of the Corsi-Rosenthal box wanted to do something to help places deal with COVID-19. As we all know, the virus is airborne and spreads easily in interior environments. With this in mind, Richard Corsi, and air quality expert, and Jim Rosenthal, CEO of a air filter company created a simple box made up of filters and a single box fan. This cheap air cleaning box can be built at very low cost (filters and a fan) by people with no building experience.

Instructions to build the DIY box fan filter can be found here.

Within days, tinkerers and air quality engineers alike were constructing their own Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and sharing the results on social media. A vibrant conversation emerged on Twitter, blending sophisticated technical analysis from engineers with the insight and efforts of nonspecialists.

By December, hundreds of people were making Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, and thousands more had read press coverage in outlets like Wired. In different corners of the world, people tweaked designs based on the availability of supplies and different needs. Their collective improvements and adaptations were documented by dedicated websites and blogs, as well as news reports.

This Library Wants You to Ride a Bicycle

An active group of academics want more people to be fit and have fun. The Urban Cycling Institute has set out to educate the average person on the multitude of benefits that riding a bicycle has for people and the communities they live in. One of the initiatives they launched is the library of bicycling marketing material that anyone is free to use to promote cycling. They also have a collection of bicycle documentaries which are worth viewing.

What are you waiting for? Safe your health and protect the environment by supporting two wheels.

Cycling is a simple means that connects to a wide range of very complex problems and challenges of contemporary cities. It is intertwined with many aspects of urban life in all its richness and complexity.

Academic attention for this has been very limited. A more structured approach is needed to map these complex relations, understand best practices and foster reciprocal learning between research and practice.

Check out the cycling library.

A Special Tomatoes can Help Parkinson’s Patients

Researchers found a way to put a key chemical that helps Parkinson’s patients into tomatoes. The amino acid L-DOPA helps people process dopamine, which in turn, helps alleviate the troubles which Parkinson’s brings. Currently L-DOPA is delivered synthetically (through a pill) and this can cause severe side effects, whereas delivering it “naturally” in an organic vessel reduces the likelihood of side effects. Maybe this will lead to other pills being converted to delicious foods!

The scientists’ research focused on turning tomatoes into a sort of factory to produce Levodopa (L-DOPA), a major Parkinson’s therapeutic. L-DOPA has been the gold standard drug for the management of PD symptoms since 1967, but it is typically obtained from synthetic sources. There are serious concerns about a shortage of the drug as incidences of PD rise. Turning tomato plants into factories to make this natural compound carries several benefits over synthetic versions or having L-DOPA synthesized naturally by other plants.

Thanks to Neva!

People Live Longer in Non-Profits

The COVID pandemic has revealed problems in our society which we will need to fix. Thankfully researchers are identifying what problems are fixable by looking for the cause. Long term care homes (LTCs) are one such area of our society that we can improve, and do so very easily too. It turns out the non-profit LTCs are safer places for people to live and that they will live longer in a place that puts people ahead of profits.

Let’s make all LTCs non-profits. The profit motive and the goal of caring for people don’t always go together.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that for-profit long-term care homes had worse patient outcomes than not-for-profit homes. A new study found that of those for-profit homes, long-term care homes (LTCs) owned by private equity firms and large chains have the highest mortality rates.
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“Financial firms are in seniors’ housing for what they can take from it, not .what they can contribute. This approach – and the prioritization of profits is what guides financial firms,” she said. “It’s at odds with the social and moral imperatives that underline the need to provide good homes, high-quality care and dignified environments for our elderly populations and the workers who care for them.”

We can Save 200,000 Lives a Year Replacing Car Commutes with Bicycles

a couple, bicycles

A simple modification to our cities can save a lot of lives: add more and better bicycling infrastructure. Researchers looked into quantifying how many lives we can save by replacing car journeys with bicycle use and the results aren’t surprising, but will hopefully influence people. The harms vehicular traffic does to our bodies and our communities are well documented so the fact that using car less will save lives isn’t schocking. It’s great to see more evidence and analysis into how getting rid of cars will improve everyone’s well being.

Biking plays a significant role in urban mobility and has been suggested as a tool to promote public health. A recent study has proposed 2050 global biking scenarios based on large shifts from motorized vehicles to bikes. No previous studies have estimated the health impacts of global cycling scenarios, either future car-bike shift substitutions.

We found that, among the urban populations (20–64 y old) of 17 countries, 205,424 annual premature deaths could be prevented if high bike-use scenarios are achieved by 2050 (assuming that 100% of bike trips replace car trips). If only 8% of bike trips replace car trips in a more conservative scenario, 18,589 annual premature deaths could be prevented by 2050 in the same population. In all the countries and scenarios, the mortality benefits related to bike use (rather than car use) outweighed the mortality risks.

Thanks to Mike!