Showing posts with label Thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thoughts. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Health benefits of walking and running barefoot (short summary)

Seems this blog has more visitors, so I am going to repost here an article I wrote and I'd like to have the knowledge about that topic disseminated around as much as possible.

Recently I've gotten interested in the topic of barefeet running and walking in general. So, I made some research and after trying it I empirically confirmed for myself the stated in Wikipedia health benefits. Just to list a few:
1. The natural position of the toes if shoes were never worn is sprayed and this puts the centre of the weight of each feet exactly above the axis between the big toe and the heel and therefore diminishing all unnatural forces that bend and torsion the ankles, knees and hips. This actually leads to diminishing the pain and damage in all these relatively fragile points of the body.
2. Without shoes, the gait tends to be more natural, while running its easier to lend more naturally on the middle part of the feet instead on the heel and thus diminishing the forces and damage suffered by the knees and other parts of the body.
3. Without shoes, we can easily see that big part of the walking actually is how the big toe grips the ground and this makes us much more stable and in general trains and develops the muscles in the feet and therefore decreases the risk and severity of the injuries suffered.
4. Happen that the surface of which we walk stimulates the skin and nerves on the feet and make us feel pleasure, which by itself normally is sign we do something that is good for us.
5. Risk of athlete foot type infections is greatly decreased, because the feet are pretty well aired and dryer
6. Last, but not least, barefeet walking allow our skin to get in contact with the dirt and with this we allow certain number of environmental bacteria and allergens to enter in contact with our immune system and to "train it" and therefore make us healthier.

Comparison of (B) an adult foot that has never worn shoes displaying natural splayed toes and (A, on the Right) cast of boy showing damage and inward-turned toes after wearing shoes for only a few weeks. Image courtesy: Wikipedia
There are also some minimal risks, mostly of injuries like cuts, but my experience says that this risk is so insignificant and so much out-weighted by the benefits, that is not even worth thinking about it.
Other then that, there are problems walking barefeet if the whether is bad and some other issues, about which I'll write in separate post and I'll try to find some solutions.

Sources: Wikipedia

The quest for immortality - statistical approach

For long time I've been thinking how can be achieved health, youth, longevity and maybe immortality. There are several methods, most famous being, replacing the body parts, including the brain with mechanical/cybernetic parts and manipulating genes, cells, chemicals, etc in the body, so it can be made to rejuvenate or at least to stop ageing. For me the first method seems to be too far fetched for the technology available at the moment, but the second one looks pretty credible. So I looked further down in this idea and found that, essentially there are two overlapping approaches. First making or finding and infecting ourselves with genes which will command the body to do the task, or the other somewhat based no Richard Dawkins ideas is to see what changes, how and why and trying to trick with chemicals or something else our systems to start functioning like young/fit ones. Now both lines of work require huge amounts of work, experiments, etc, which will take long time and resources until the results start appearing. However like many other things in the life, there should be one or more ways to shortcut though all this. One idea is to see what the evolution and technology managed to achieve until the moment and applying the statistics to try to find something unnoticed. For example if we compare enough genes across of enough species we'll be bond to find something. Or to compare the enough biochemical information from young/healthy and old we maybe able to find the answers.

Why I am writhing this? Well in the light of the last two articles I have read on the topic seems that this method for finding cues is getting more and more common. One is group of scientists compared the genomes of nematode, zebra fish and mice and the other is the finding that certain drug for diabetes extend the lifespan. In the net there are enough articles on the topic so I am not going to repeat all of them again, but I think it was worth mentioning that these methods are part of new trend which relies on recently made technologies for comparing and working with big amounts of data. And the best part is that we haven't yet even approached the already available capabilities of these technologies. Just imagine what could come from properly brute forcing the genomes and the information from billions of people and creatures (some of which are actually immortal).

Sources:
ScienceDaily
NZHerald

Missing from Internet - Categorised repositories for 3d-printable models

Today's topic is going to be about issue, which is the main gripe and main waste of time and resources in the world of 3d-printing.

The one thing that is missing from Internet are Wiki-type repositories for 3d-printable models. What we have now? For example one of the biggest is Thingiverse, so far so good, but there is catch, most of the models are unfindable or unprintable. So if we can't guess the name that was put on by the creator of the file, the next best thing is to hope that what we are looking for was already found, deemed significant enough and put on some of the more popular list. Once we managed to find what we need (slim chance), we are present with the next problem that there is good chance the model was not optimised for 3d printing and without extensive knowledge how slicers and other programs work is unusable. Other sites are much better organised, but have mostly copyrighted models, which can't be downloaded without paying. And so on, and so on. The lack of properly organised and maintained site means, that the 3d-printing enthusiasts and professionals have to spend on orders of magnitude more time searching then actually working and printing the models.

My vision is to create site for uploading and categorising 3d-printable models similar to Wikipedia. The administrators and volunteers will take care to have all uploaded models categorised and tested for printability. On first thought it may look not very feasible idea, because of the limited number of enthusiast who have enough knowledge on the topic and some other concerns, but I believe that the future will show that such project is going to turn something like Wikipedia of the shapes, free and accessible for all. I picture it in my head as the big repository not only of the shapes of all objects, but in some future where the "Replicator" already exists as place one can find the blueprints for making of all human-created and natural objects.

I believe that the existence of such repository will have the biggest impact on the spreading of the 3d-printing since the creation of the first affordable Reprap style printers.

Soon, once I have a bit more disposable income, I'll start working on the project. Let me know if you have some ideas or are just interested in the topic.

Links:
Thingiverse
Wikipedia

Monday, April 18, 2016

Quantum computers - End of the Work?

I've been reading the last article about the Google's breakthrough in the field of the quantum computing and noticed that among the excited readers there was a common theme, that the advances in the quantum computing will speed up the development of other fields like machine learning, robotics, etc and this on his turn will make the machines much more capable of replacing humans in their job, which eventually will make the humans not really needed in most of the jobs. And when this happen there are two scenarios, either the world will be filled with starving unemployed outcasts or there will come the paradise on the Earth where nobody works and everybody has everything that needs, because the machines will provide for the humanity.

Now I think, these who propose such future development fail to understand the human nature. Lets first look into the so called "paradise on earth". I discovered that power to provide was already achieved by most of the developed world for these members of the society who can't or don't want to work, not only for their basic needs, but also certain number of luxuries (another question is that for historical, psychological and other reasons, this was applied only in few countries). However happen that even with the need to work eliminated about the same percent of people kept working like always. The key to this question is that there are not really such things as fixed level of needs which have to be satisfied, but rather most of the people compare themselves with these around (or in more recent times with what they see in the media) and based on this observation they position themselves on some imaginary scale of the well-being and try to achieve some betterment. The funny thing is that to cover this additional "improvement" often these people need something like 10% more income and because of this small increase they start to work.  Another point is, we know that the process of decreasing the need for human workers actually started long ago and most of the trades from the past centuries are gone or evolved in art and hobbies, but it didn't decrease the number of working people, because we keep inventing new needs, which require people. However I imagine that just like my grandfather couldn't perceive as work many of the professions in the end of 20 century like writing blog about computer games, I am not going to think is real work something even simpler that will arise in future and the new generations will think they need it. Or even simpler example, just look the richer people, they keep working, often even more then these poorer than them. So the answer is that it already happened and we discovered that in the "first world" the need to work is not really tied to the need to cover living costs and is actually dependent of some kind of innate for H. sapiens need to compete and increase the perceived quality of life and therefore the decrease need for human workers will not decrease the number of the them, because the people look for and need every time something more and something better.

So, lets look into the another case, where the world is split between 1% rich owners of robots, computers and technology and 99% jobless poor people living in gethos. This actually make more sense and it may happen, because we see continuous widening of the gap between rich and poor. However the free access of information and technologies somewhat acts as an equalizer and it may be avoided, but is vitally important to keep in check the entities who try to hinder this, like copy-right and patent advocates, censure and other similar. Just been thinking what would've happened if the patents in the 3d printing which expired recently never been in place. Observing the explosion of the 3d printing technologies last couple of years I can imagine that we may have had already printers closing in to the replicator from Star Trek, if there were no patents. Anyway its likely that in that scenario nothing will change much either, some countries will keep being hugely unequal and others will keep being socialist paradises.

Also I recommend the book "Physics of the Future" by Michio Kaku, where he writes about the issue in very entertaining and scientific way.

Links for additional reading:
Last advancement from Google
Basic income