Focus the center of the image for 20 seconds.
Explanation: Troxler’s fading.
Troxler, D. (I. P. V.) (1804). Himly, K.; Schmidt, J.A.. eds. “Über das Verschwinden gegebener Gegenstände innerhalb unseres Gesichtskreises. [On the disappearance of given objects from our visual field]” (in German). Ophthalmologische Bibliothek 2 (2): 1–53. OCLC 491712012.
Toronto
It took about 5 hours to get from Ann Arbor to Windsor, and another 5 hours to get from Windsor to Toronto. Windsor is seperated from Detroit by the Detroit River, which is at the same time the border between the US and Canada. Usually, getting from Ann Arbor to Windsor should not take more than 2 hours, and the main reasons for the delay were: (1) the very unreliable US train system AmTrek. After 2 hours of waiting, I took the GreyHound bus to Detroit instead. (2) My cabbie, who was stopped at the border “because, yes Sir, your German documents are all in best order, but your driver is known for bringing illegal immigrants into the country, and we cannot let you continue your journey.”
The weather in Toronto was amazing. It wasn’t particularly warm, but sunny the whole weekend, leading to a complicated pattern of reflections of reflections (of reflections) of sunlight within the network of towers of steel, glass and mirrors. I walked around for three days, sometimes accompanied by my wonderful host (whom I met on couchsurfing. If you still haven’t signed up, you might want to).
Worth living Toronto: Read the rest of this entry »
It is hard to believe that the so far best assessment of the state of the Republican candidates running for presidency I have read within the last months was published by a mediocre German newspaper.
Highly recommended reading:
“The Republicans’ Farcical Candidates: A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses (A Commentary by Marc Pitzke)”
This is madness!
Update, 2 hours later:
Seriously?!
I love the future. As dystopic as things might get, politically, economically, ethically – there will always be things to keep me going.
Like swarm robotics.
“Swarm robotics is a new approach to the coordination of multirobot systems which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment. This approach emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the biological studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm behaviour occurs”.
When I grow up, I want to become a swarm roboticist.
This is actually no fake, I found this issue of the discovery magazine two weeks ago in a bookstore, and decorated my office door with it.
I also started reading it, but I had to stop after a couple of pages. It’s funny what ideas people sometimes have. Also, you wonder where they bought their PhD.
I’m quite excited, so please forgive me if this sounds a bit excited
So, I met a guy who is running a company. They are making smartphones apps. Smartphones apps that increase your physical and mental health significantly.
They’re pretty new. They have several 100.000 people using their apps. They made a couple of apps, which are mainly for meditation (breathing), and consuming healthy food. The guy I met is running this thing, and he’s a medical doctor. He has very good knowledge about the human stress response system (I take a course about stress response at the moment, and read 3-5 very recent papers per week, some of them in press, for a couple of weeks now – he knew most of them), psychiatric disorders (and the massive problems to treat them properly), and some knowledge of mindfulness and meditation.
Their idea is to provide people with very simple meditation techniques, on smartphones. They are a business, and care about money, market share. But they also have the idea that the basic things should be for free (“we didn’t invent meditation, right? So we’re not gonna charge people for it”), so the normal version of their apps doesn’t cost you anything. The advanced levels (which are not required really, you can be totally fine with the normal thing) cost something.
How does meditation help? I personally don’t know much about meditation, but I know people who’re into that research (hard sciency stuff, neuroimaging with buddhist monks etc.), and it does work. Slowing down breathing, focussing on your body. Not only in everyday life, getting up your concentration, enabling you to sleep a bit less (if you want to), sleep deeper and more relaxed. It also helps in anxiety disorders, against panic attacks. In phobias. I am not able to give the big picture here (but there are certainly some review papers out there), but simple breathing techniques work, and some techniques do work above placebo level. Another good thing: no side-effects. And I do know some behavioral-therapy studies (e.g. for phobias) were internet based stuff works pretty well.
They’re not trying to replace psychotherapists. There are also people with brain diseases they cannot help. But I guess for 9 out of 10 people with problems, this will significantly increase their quality of life. it might not be sufficient, but it will definitely be a good support (and for some to many, it might be enough).
And in my opinion mental disorders are heavily overdiagnosed (this is what my PhD is all about, basically). So getting people to use meditation apps is pretty neat, but when you take into account that this might actually stop them from getting medicated when they don’t need medication, this is even cooler.
The first thing I thought was: data! The apps are connected to a database, real time. They know how many people are using the apps; in which frequency; what apps are people’s favourites. They can manipulate apps, get them out there, and after a couple of hours they’ll know which version will be received the best. They try to avoid text, using colours, and use the apps trans-culturally. Apps tell you what to do. He told me that they removed choice as much as possible: the more choice, the lower the compliance rates. Talking about compliance rates: 30% (after one year) for free apps, 60% for payed apps. You might not know this, but even 30% compliance rate is incredibly high, compared to a one year treatment of any sort.
I’m going to meet the guy tomorrow again. Maybe I can take a glimpse at the database …
Now the vision: the company wants to spend 20% of the money they make into projects the users like. There’s a network of users, and they’ll get to make suggestions, and good ideas will rise, and people will vote for them. And the company will support these ideas.
The interesting thing about this: who are the people making these decisions? People who are doing mindfulness training. People who have apps for healthy food. People who do meditation every other day.
Keep thinking in this direction. Where does this lead us?
Also, this is a true story. And it does give some hope, right?
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