Boston Dynamics BigDog

Here's an amazing advancement in quadraped robotics. Boston Dynamics has created BigDog, a robot weighing 75 kg that walks on rough terrain and ice that can carry 340 pounds. The project is funded by DARPA. This is something that I'm glad my tax dollars are going to. If you like the video below, you'll also love the spoof.

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Make Time for a Flu Shot

Google has just unveiled a new information service, Google Flu Trends, which monitors the number of searches for information on flu and flu symptoms. Historical data as displayed in the chart show that the US may have a huge spike in flu cases shortly as the flu season begins, or we at least can expect flu cases to increase significantly over the next several months. At the Google Flu trends site, you can segment the data by state, as well as viewing the data for the entire US. Currently, Nevada and Texas have the least flu-related activity, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine and Mississippi have moderate activity, and the rest of the states have low flu activity. If you haven't gotten your flu shot, yet, now is a good time to protect yourself before the worst of the flu season hits to reduce your risk of getting flu and make it more likely that you will experience the flu mildly if it does hit you.

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Sleep and Obesity as Children and Adults

Several studies have found that less sleep is associated with higher rates of obesity in Adults. This is thought to occur because leptin production is reduced and grehlin production is increased, keeping energy low and increasing hunger, by the lack of sleep. Sleepy people don't want to exercise and want to eat more. More recent studies have found that children who sleep less also tend to be more obese in childhood and in adulthood. Recommendations for promoting sleep include reducing stimuli by removing telephones, televisions and lights from bedrooms.

In my childhood, I got very little sleep, was tired during the day, liked to eat and hated exercise. I still crave sugar regularly. Although I haven't always been obese, I've never been skinny. However, I didn't have a cell phone or television to keep me awake. I had nightmares almost every night, which conditioned me to not to want to go to sleep until I literally couldn't keep my eyes open, and I used reading to pass the time. I was an excellent student, but very cranky, especially in the morning before breakfast. My mom was relieved when I got my own alarm clock and got myself off to school in the morning.

As an adult I still tend to get too little sleep, less than seven hours on average per night during the week, and I'm not a morning person, but I am more conscious of the effect that it has on me and try to compensate. For example, I avoid caffeine throughout the day and practice meditation to get to sleep. A couple of weeks ago when I was attending a late night class that was from 7 PM to 11 PM, I drank Coca Cola and coffee to stay alert and ended up wired until 4 AM. I often wonder if being on the night shift, at least for a time, would be good for me. It would force me to break my bad habits and provide more time to sleep on my off days. I enjoyed working 6 PM to 3 AM one summer at Disneyland. I may have the opportunity to go on night shift at work soon. It would conflict with my husband who is a morning person, regularly getting up between 4 AM and 6 AM, and tends to sleep too much, but it may help me lose weight.

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NaNoWriMo Begins

I managed to write about 1600 words this weekend, most on Saturday. Sunday I spent a good bit of time figuring out the physical properties of my fictional planet, but it didn't translate into many more words. I have an excellent picture of my universe and social structure, but I need to figure out how that translates into the characters and plot.

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Microsoft Office Live Update 1.2

I worked on my novel today, managing to write 1460 words. Since I want to be able to work on whichever laptop is handy, I saved my Microsoft Word document manuscript to an Office Live Documents workspace. There is a new feature which allows Office Live to be integrated with desktop Office applications. The first time I tried to install it from the Office Live workspace, my firewall blocked it and it stalled, which left the web site thinking that I had installed it when it had not actually installed. So, the link to install the update was no longer available. Checking in the Office Live support forum, they suggested resetting the browser to fix this, but that would remove all of the add ins, not just the Office Live Update. A better fix that worked for me was to go to the Microsoft download site for Microsoft Office Live Update 1.2 and run it from there, which installed the update properly. I was then able to sign in to Office Live from Microsoft Word 2007.

If you use this feature, note that when you open a document saved in the Office Live site from within a desktop Office it takes several steps. First, sign in from the Open from Office Live menu. Then, open the Documents workspace within the File Open dialog. Then, select and open your document.

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Exploring the Local Universe

If you'd like to take a tour of the local universe, download the Octaga VRML player to view the Local Universe in 3D. This provides a macro view of about 2000 galaxies and their clusters near the Milky Way and Local Group. This tour, provided by PBS, is less than one percent of the visible universe, but it's always good to know your neighborhood.

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