All posts tagged: lives

The US Army’s Vision of Soldiers in Exoskeletons Lives On

The US Army’s Vision of Soldiers in Exoskeletons Lives On

Published by skeptic

This newfound push appears to have yielded several fresh experiments with exoskeleton technology in recent years. In 2018, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $6.9 million contract to “enhance” its ONYX exosuit for future Army demonstrations (Accetta, the DEVCOM spokesman, tells WIRED that initiative was ended due to a “number of technical issues” and lack of funding). Similarly, the service has been testing the Dephy ExoBoot for at least the last several years. In August 2022, the Army unveiled an (unpowered) exoskeleton dubbed the Soldier Assistive Bionic Exosuit for Resupply (SABER) to reduce lower back pain and physical stress among service members in the field; according to a 2023 study, 90 percent of soldiers who used the exosuit during field artillery training exercises reported an increased ability to perform their assigned tasks. And the Army isn’t the only branch exploring exoskeletons: Later in 2022, the Air Force announced that the service was testing its own pneumatically powered exosuit developed by ROAM Robotics to help aerial porters load up cargo aircraft like the C-17 Globemaster III. The …

Would our lives be more meaningful if the universe had a purpose

Would our lives be more meaningful if the universe had a purpose

Published by skeptic

History was once commonly understood to be a tale of progress. The idea received its best known, if not most easily understood, expression in the work of W.F. Hegel, who saw in the course of world events a universal “spirit” striving towards self-realization. Today, philosophers are more inclined to see history as Darwinian, the product of blind forces acting on random mutations. Our field thus tends to have little truck not only with progress narratives of history but with grand historical narratives of any sort, insofar as these invariably attempt to impose some shape or order on the historical process. Recently, however, it seems the Hegelian view has been making something of a comeback. Thomas Nagel, in his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos, and now Philip Goff, in his new book Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford 2023), both argue that the standard Darwinian account is inadequate to explain the existence of conscious, rational life forms such as ours. The alternative both leans towards and involves supplementing the laws of physics and biology already discovered by science …

Conservatives are happier, but liberals lead more psychologically rich lives, research finds

Conservatives are happier, but liberals lead more psychologically rich lives, research finds

Published by José

A recent study in the Journal of Personality sheds new light on the connection between political views and well-being. The findings indicate that those with more liberal views tend to experience lives filled with psychological richness, marked by diverse and stimulating experiences. While happiness and meaning are associated with conservative values, psychological richness appears to be more common among those with fewer conservative views. Previous research on well-being and political beliefs has largely focused on two primary aspects of a fulfilling life: happiness and meaning. Happiness is often defined by life satisfaction and positive emotions, while meaning involves a sense of purpose or fulfillment. Studies have consistently found that conservative beliefs are associated with higher levels of both happiness and meaning. This connection may be due to factors such as system justification, the belief that societal structures are fair, which can create a stable foundation for feeling content and purposeful. For example, conservatives are generally more likely to see social systems as just and reliable, which might lead to a greater sense of stability and …

‘Dozens of people saved lives all around here’

‘Dozens of people saved lives all around here’

Published by Sam

José Luiz Cambronero counted aloud. “Four, five, no six, with the lady over there.” These are the dead in his street. His neighbors swept away, crushed, smashed or drowned by the wave of water, mud, wood, metals of all kinds, household appliances, stones, concrete blocks, pieces of tar and cars that swept through the town of Paiporta, Spain, population 25,000, on the night of Tuesday, October 29. It caused immense damage and killed at least 62 people in the town, almost a third of the total number of victims recorded in the Valencia region (155). Cambronero is 66 years old and has never been in such a desperate situation. He himself escaped at the last second. He was with his daughter and two grandchildren, aged 7 and 10. The water rose in a matter of minutes, blocking the doors of the houses from the outside. The adults in the family formed a chain to carry the children out through the window to a neighbor’s slightly higher window. Those with steel security grills on the first …

Smartwatches could transform lives of people with diabetes | Politics | News

Smartwatches could transform lives of people with diabetes | Politics | News

Published by Sam

A high-tech transformation of the NHS means people with diabetes or high blood pressure may be able to monitor their health at home using smart watches or wearable technology instead of making regular trips to a clinic. Radical changes in the way healthcare is delivered in England will be explored as part of a 10-year plan to reboot the NHS. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has pledged to “rebuild the health service around what patients tell us they need”. It wants to turn it “on its head” so it becomes a “neighbourhood health service”. At the heart of the plan are new neighbourhood health centres where people will be able to see family doctors, district nurses, care workers, physiotherapists, health visitors, or mental health specialists “all under the same roof”. It is hoped this will mean people with multiple condition will no longer have to go “from pillar to post”. Also, people will be able to get a scan or treatment for minor injuries such as cuts without having to wait hours in an overstretched hospital. …

Ted Lives!

Ted Lives!

Published by skeptic

Howl had had its say. Now Greenwich Village was expensive. In January 1961 the actor Robert Cordier staged a funeral for the Beat Generation in his apartment. A photograph of the event shows James Baldwin, then finishing Another Country, leaning against Cordier’s wall in midsentence. To his right is a not-yet-bald Shel Silverstein, the folk […] Source link

How racism steals our safe spaces and scars our lives

How racism steals our safe spaces and scars our lives

Published by skeptic

More from this theme Recent articles When I accepted a job in Devon, a favourite picture from my vision board felt a little closer. It’s of a woman at the wheel of a red convertible, roof down and arms in the air in front of a sun setting over the ocean. I’ll never have her skin or her apparent freedom, but moving to the South West felt exciting, fun – liberating, even. So my next step was to find myself the most affordable soft-top on Marketplace – my first car. It’s not fancy, but damn, is she cute. We call her Patty after tucking into a Jamaican vegetable pastry in a Sainsbury’s car park following our first spin. Though it took eight round trips from London to Devon to do it, Patty has brought me closer to my dream. Now, I wake up each day between 05:00 and 05:45 depending on whether snoozing or swimming wins, and I head to work in a better mood because I have Patty to get me around my new …

Video is now the medium of our lives

Video is now the medium of our lives

Published by skeptic

The smartphone, the internet, and social networks like TikTok have rapidly and utterly transformed this situation. It’s now common, when someone wants to hurl an idea into the world, not to pull out a keyboard and type but to turn on a camera and talk. For many young people, video might be the prime way to express ideas. As media thinkers like Marshall McLuhan have intoned, a new medium changes us. It changes the way we learn, the way we think—and what we think about. When mass printing emerged, it helped create a culture of news, mass literacy, and bureaucracy, and—some argue—the very idea of scientific evidence. So how will mass video shift our culture? For starters, I’d argue, it is helping us share knowledge that used to be damnably hard to capture in text. I’m a long-distance cyclist, for example, and if I need to fix my bike, I don’t bother reading a guide. I look for a video explainer. If you’re looking to express—or absorb—knowledge that’s visual, physical, or proprioceptive, the moving image …

The big picture: precarious lives and playfulness in a London square | Photography

The big picture: precarious lives and playfulness in a London square | Photography

Published by skeptic

This picture is the cover image of Dominoes, a new photobook by Roland Ramanan that tells the story of a unique public space in east London, Gillett Square. The square was opened in Hackney, in one of the most deprived wards in the UK, by London mayor Ken Livingstone in 2006, on a site that was previously a car park. Neighbouring derelict factory premises were redeveloped by a local co-operative as a culture centre, and a series of small business units were created around the new space. The ambition was to establish a communal area “with the potential to become something specific – or remain not really anything at all… a place to see, hear, feel, smell, taste and discover wonderful and incredible things”. Since 2012, Ramanan has been documenting how those civic hopes and ambitions turned out. He has watched as life of that square became “an ecosystem in which skateboarders, parents, children, hula-hoopers, domino players, DJs, drinkers and addicts all intermingle”. His book is a microcosm of urban life through the years of …

Secular Rescue: Still Fighting to Save Lives in Afghanistan

Secular Rescue: Still Fighting to Save Lives in Afghanistan

Published by skeptic

[ Adobe Stock | Karl Allen Lugmayer ] Matthew Cravatta The Center for Inquiry (CFI) was one of the first secular organizations to come to the aid of vulnerable Afghans, both ex-Muslims and progressive Muslims, on humanitarian grounds. On September 10, 2021, CFI announced its intention to save as many lives as possible by establishing the Afghan Rescue Fund. Since then, most nations have quietly backed away from earlier commitments. A phenomenon I have previously labeled “empathy fatigue” has set in; borders started to close to Afghan refugees, and the political will began to evaporate as other international crises took center stage. However, Secular Rescue never stopped working to save endangered Afghans, even when the Afghan Rescue Fund officially ceased operations on December 31, 2022. Even now, threatened Afghans constitute most of all Secular Rescue cases. Legal immigration processes are enormously time-consuming and rife with bureaucratic sloth. While they wait for slow-to-process visas to safer nations—mostly in cramped safehouses in Pakistan or moving from house to house in Afghanistan—nearly all our cases need some financial …