Engineers at Boeing Research & Technology (BR&T) are testing an airplane lavatory that cleans itself of microorganisms with ultraviolet light. Maybe they can fix that smelly hand soap while they’re in there. The UV light isn’t the kind that will give you a tan, so you’ll have to wait until your plane lands in Hawaii. Actually, the purifying lights won’t go on at all if someone is in the john.
We don’t know how the competition will respond to this tech development. Will the new Air France toilets have bidets? Peut-être.
Angus Deaton has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
“To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.”
“Princeton professor Angus Deaton wins Nobel Prize in economics,” Jeff Guo, Washington Post
“Why Angus Deaton Deserved the Nobel Prize in Economics,” Christopher Blattman, Foreign Policy
Video [21:02]: Angus Deaton addressing the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) on “Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality.” October 17, 2013. A complete audio recording of his remarks is here.
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Michael Pollan addressed the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) about a simple way to eat healthy without a rulebook or fad diets. Video of his lecture is here, but the short animated excerpt above is more fun.
This is the month of Ramadan in the UAE and the rest of the Muslim world, a month of fasting, so you might think that dieting would be no big deal. You would be wrong. The ritual fast is confined to daylight, and the nights are marked by Iftar, the communal feast.
Good luck, Dubai dieters. Go for the gold!
More:
“Dubai paying citizens gold to lose weight in fight against obesity,” Rheana Murray, New York Daily News
“Reduce weight and win gold in Dubai,” Emirates 24/7
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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
The highlight of the 28th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Society of Hypertension this week was a study suggesting that mobile phone calls may raise your blood pressure. The study, conducted at Northern Italy’s Guglielmo da Saliceto Hospital, found that subjects talking on their telefonini had a significant rise in blood pressure, from 121/77 to 129/82. Frankly, we wonder if BP rose because subjects were irritated when their phone calls were interrupted by blood pressure tests.
More:
“New research shows what raises and lowers blood pressure: Cell phones, salt and saying om,” EurekaAlert
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Image (“Cell Phones & Blood Pressure, after Adriaen Brouwer”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
The Coca Cola Corporation is trying to dilute the flood of criticism it gets for selling the sugar-sweetened beverages that drive America’s obesity epidemic. The PR campaign features a slick new TV adthat tries to shift attention from the firm’s famous sugary fluids to Coke’s low-calorie drinks. Critics have re-edited the ad for accuracy: