This message will disappear in 24 hours

Scientists at Xerox have developed an ink that will disappear from printed paper in 24 hours, allowing the paper to be reprinted and reused again. The ‘disappearing ink’ is actually not an ink at all, but a temporary discoloration of light sensitive molecules known as photochromes. A sheet of paper is coated with these molecules (on both sides) which change color in response to ultraviolet light. After printing, the ‘ink’ starts to revert back to its natural state due to heat provided by the surrounding air. The paper itself is no more expensive than a regular page, costing about 0.5p per sheet.

The technology, which will not be commercially available for several years, will reduce the amount of energy required to print a single page by a factor of 200 – from just over 200kJ (which would power a 75W light bulb for an hour) to 1kJ (which would power the bulb for just 18 seconds), Mr Smith said. A recycled page uses about 110kJ of energy.

Talking on the Phone is Healthy

A recent study that set out to lower the risk of heart disease and strokes in people predisposed to have them by talking to them over the phone. The patients received health “report cards” letting them know how they’re doing. Based on the report cards a kinesiologist would talk to the patient about their health. The results appear to be positive!

Andrew Lister, one of the study’s authors and chair of the gerontology department at Simon Fraser University, said the study was also meant to act a model for a community-based health-care program that could be implemented at a fairly low cost to lower a population’s heart and stroke risks.

The intervention consisted of a health report card that was sent to the participants and their family doctors. This included a profile of risks such as high cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, diabetes and smoking status. Physical activity, body mass index, waist circumference, nutrition status, stress level and health confidence were also factored in.

The other component of the intervention was a telephone discussion between a lifestyle counsellor — trained as a kinesiologist and well-versed in cardiovascular disease prevention — and the participants. Two kinesiologists performed all 611 interventions.

“Two people did it all, one full-time and one part-time,” Lister told CBCNews.ca on Friday. “You could reach a lot of people if you were doing this on a continual basis.”

Powerful Thinking in 10 Steps

Thinking is something that we do everyday and is something that we should always strive to improve. A good way to encourage thinking in new and exciting ways to is to ensure that you are consistently in new settings or looking at something from a different perspective.

A self improvement blog has created a list of 10 things that can help you become a powerful thinker.

7. Go a Different way

Drive or walk a different way to wherever you go. This little change in routine helps the brain practice special memory and directions. Try different side streets go through stores in a different order anything to change your route.

Webby Connect Thoughts

I’m at the Webby Connect confernce (or summit) for TakingITGlobal and here’s some thoughts that I’m putting up on The Digital Divide Network:

The Webby Connect conference has a lot of smart people attending it, and that’s putting it mildly.

Today’s lineup of events started with looking at commercially generated content to increase brand exposure and ended with Ariannia Hufifington expressing her views on the sad state of American journalism. Don’t worry she has hope for the future – and rightly so!

As far as the digital divide and today went, there was some interesting things said. When discussing online brand strategies there was a lot of talk of using online video. The popularity of YouTube and other video sites has clearly shown that people want to watch streaming videos (particularly user-generated videos). After the talk, I went up to ask a few of the panelists if they ever thought about broadband constraints.
Continue reading “Webby Connect Thoughts”

Walking Towards Health

While I’m at a conference looking at how we can use the internet for the better, in Toronto there’s a conference on how to use public space for the better called Walk 21. The Toronto magazine Spacing has been blogging about it on their site and I particularly like their recent post on how walking improves health and mental well-being.

“I was also particularly struck by their awareness that walking is important for sustaining good mental as well as physical health. It was a message conveyed in a plenary session in the morning by Nova Scotia researcher Catherine O’Brien, but in Canada this concept is still in its initial stages, and public health departments are only just beginning to realize that maintaining good mental health can be as important as maintaining good physical health. Apparently they are way ahead of us in Australia. For example, VicHealth funds public art projects in low-income areas that will draw people into public space, to enhance mental well-being.”