Week 6: Sweet dreams!

Sweet dreams!

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Benjamin Franklin

Everyone spends several hours a day sleeping. As we know, time is precious. I have prepared a short presentation on how to use these hours efficiently.

Sleep stages

First of all, you should know there are a few sleep stages. The way you go through these phases at night determines your mood and condition in the morning. What are they?

STAGE 1
The first stage is a transition phase between being awake and asleep. Sometimes it happens that you wake somebody up and this person claims they were not sleeping – it means they were probably in this phase. In the first stage we go through Alpha and Theta brain waves.  Alpha brain waves are present in the states of deep relaxation, meditation, or relaxed alertness. Moreover, Alpha is good for learning and inspiration. This is a very pleasant stage, which you may also experience throughout the day, especially if you practice meditation.

If you have problems falling asleep, you can help yourself enter this stage and listen to some relaxation music before going to bed. For example, you can use this recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdVX9BKH6YE

After Alpha we move to Theta, which usually lasts only 5-10 minutes. This is the moment when we actually fall asleep.

STAGE 2
It lasts about 20 minutes. In this stage our body temperature begins to drop and heart rate starts to slow down.

STAGE 3
This is a transition stage between light and very deep sleep.  The brain works in the Delta phase, which means we are deeply relaxed. This is a dreamless phase.

STAGE 5
This is the phase of very deep sleep, which usually lasts about half an hour. Sleepwalking may occur in this stage. If aroused suddenly from sleep, you may feel disoriented for a while. For example, if a phone rings and you answer it, the person calling will probably know they have awakened you. You will be fuddled and it may be difficult for you to focus on the conversation.

REM

You usually enter this stage about 90 minutes after sleep onset. This is the phase of dreams and its name stands for rapid eye movement. REM sleep is characterized by eye movement, raised respiration rate and increased brain activity.

In this phase voluntary muscles (the ones you can control and move by choice, like arms and legs) become paralyzed. This is a protective measure to prevent you from hurting yourself, for example if you wanted to run in your dream.

If you want to know more about this stage, you may watch this short movie explaining the details of this phase:

http://video.about.com/sleepdisorders/What-Happens-During-REM-Sleep-.htm

Healthy sleep

Actually, you do not go through the abovementioned stages in sequence. You begin in stage 1, then you go through 2, 3 and 4. Next, you repeat stages 3 and 2 and after that you move to the REM stage. When it’s over, you return to stage 2 and begin the whole cycle again. A healthy person should have four to five such cycles at night, most time spending in the REM phase.

Biological clock

You have probably experienced a situation, for example after a sleepless night, when in spite of tiredness you found it hardly possible to fall asleep at day. The phenomenon is caused by our biological clock, which is responsible for the regulation of when we should be awake and when we should go to sleep.

Sleeping disorders

The necessary amount of sleep is an individual matter. It is related to numerous factors, one of which is age. Infants usually sleep 16-18 hours a day, teenagers about 9 and adults 7 to 9 hours. Many of us have a tendency to undersleep. Regular undersleeping, however, may have unpleasant consequences, the most common being depression, difficulties in learning, fatigue and weakened immune system.

If you feel you can suffer from some sleeping disorders, I recommend doing a short test:

http://www.sleepnet.com/sleeptest.html

If the results are worrying, it is a signal you should contact a specialist and take more care of your sleep hygiene.

What role does sleep play in your daily routine? Is sleep hygiene something you take care of? Or maybe you don’t pay much attention to that and sleep irregularly (do you experience consequences of that)?

Do you know some tips on how to deal with sleeplessness or, conversely, too intense and undesirable sleepiness?

Sources

http://www.centerforsoundsleep.com/sleep-disorders/stages-of-sleep/

http://psychcentral.com/lib/stages-of-sleep/0002073

http://synthesislearning.com/article/brwav.htm

http://www.centerforsoundsleep.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Stages-of-Sleep1.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Biological_clock_human.svg/1200px-Biological_clock_human.svg.png

Week 6: Modern inventors’ struggles

We all know about the greatest inventors of the world and can easily attribute inventions to their creators – Gutenberg, Tesla, Newton, Volta, Edison, Bell etc. However, as time passes, modern inventions (or more often – innovations) are widely considered more or less irrelevant, compared to the milestones of human heritage: printing press, electricity, light bulb or internal combustion engine. How do modern inventions fare in this era? Let me go through a few examples.

Big struggles, big success

One of the prime examples of a great invention, developed after persistently retrying attempts was the WD-40 – widely known as a remedy to all the screetching, rusting in our homes.WD-40 was first used by Convair, an American aircraft manufacturer, to protect the thin-steel coating of the balloon tanks from rust. These tanks were crucial in the architecture of the Atlas missle, the first intercontinental ballistic missle, which warhead was more than a hundred times more powerful than the Nagasaki bomb.

WD-40 officially hit the commercial shelves in 1958.
The name WD-40 is actually an acronym of “Water Displacement  40^th attempt”. It was developed by Norm Larsen (and his two teammates), who had a goal of inventing a formula which could prevent corrosion, by way of displacing water.  WD-40 became a huge success worldwide, simply by pure persistence in conducting experiments with water displacement by three people.WD-40 is, interestingly, not patented in the United States, as the successful formula is a top secret, known only by the company insiders.

From hype to disaster

We all know what the Segway is. The uproar around Dean Kamen’s invention, revealed to the world in 2001, was tremendous. Packed with state-of-the-art technology, involving 5 gyroscopic devices and a computer, which spans all these components to keep the Segway upright, the project was destined for huge commercial, lifestyle and social success. Kamen said that “it will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy”, it was also meant to be a golden remedy for the disabled. After his constant struggles to invent something big – the Segway came.

After the smoke cleared, the  Segway ran into trouble with the US law – it was disallowed to move around on sidewalks in most American cities, because it was too fast and bulky. Moreover, the would-be car substitute was also not comfortable on the road as it was too small to be visible and simply too slow. Segway was starting to fall into the void. Many users also fell – to the ground due to low battery level in their Segways which In this situation was unable to maintain gyroscopic balance.

To buy the Segway, you have to lay out 17-29k zlotys. For this amount, you can buy a very good, new, motorcycle or a 5-year-old Honda Civic – premium equipped. The choice is obvious.Segway’s nail in the coffin was the death of  Segway CEO - James Heselden, whose company acquired Segway Co. 1 year prior. He died by falling off the cliff on his Segway in 2010.

Rapidly emerging, slowly disappearing

The story of QR Code is a tale of a promising commercial adaptation of a manufacturing convenience invention.

QR Code (Quick Response Code) was invented by Denso Wave, Japanese vehicle manufacturing company, and was used to trace manufactured vehicles due to quick tagging and scanning of their parts.

It took about 15 years for commercial industry to pick up these ‘user-friendly’ barcodes in various marketing campaigns. Since about 2009, American and European products started introducing these funny markings on their products, billboards, websites, even in TV ads hoping to gain interest with little cost – a good idea, at first glance. Sadly, most of the QR Code scanning experiences end with a redirection to poorly designed websites, e-mail templates or pointless mobile apps, nobody cares about.

There are several problems with commercial QR codes, one of which is that majority of customers have to use their smartphone camera to scan the codes. The first obstacle is that you have to download the QR scanning app in order to be able to actually perform the scan. Of course, some smartphones do have built-in QR scanner apps, but it is approximately about 10% of all annually sold smartphones (which are certainly not iOS or Android devices). Many of us don’t even bother looking for those apps. Another case is a lack of wireless connectivity in many of stores with QR advertisements, and not everybody possesses cellular Internet connection.

QR codes nowadays are fading away, being replaced by several inventions/ideas, with NFC or Bluetooth going with a head full of steam, becoming an obsolete technology within 4-5 years of public awareness.


Questions:
Do you know of any modern ‘perennial’ inventors?
What other interesting recent invention stories have you heard of?
How many times have you scanned a QR code?

Sources:
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/qr-codes-dead-toppled-easy-apps/240548/
http://marketingland.com/the-death-of-the-qr-code-37902
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/09/27/from-hype-to-disaster-segways-timeline/
http://wd40.com/about-us/history/

Week 6: Where are the boundries?

We all have heard about the Eurovision Song Contest.
Its an annual song competition held among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Unions. Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and radio and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition. The contest has been broadcast every year since its inauguration in 1956 and is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world. These years contest was won by controversial Conchita Wurst. Conchita the drag persona is a man who likes to dress up as a woman with a beard.

I must say, that I'm very disappointed with this choice because this reflects the direction in which Europe is heading. Promoting freaks(guy dressed up as a woman) in TV is not healthy for our culture. I think we are going too far with the tolerance concept, trying to say that something disgusting is normal.
In future, I would not like to see my children watching something like that, thinking: "She won, maybe I should try something like that too".


Maybe this is just my intolerance, what do you think?

Week 6: Personal life vs Career

Most people can divide their lives into two parts. One part is persons private live, realtions with fammily and friends, second part is persons career. Both parts are related to one another, should we draw a line between them or integrate them?

Unfortunetely for all hard working people, the simple answer doesn't exist. Fortunetely there are principles created, based on other peoples' experience. One of those person is Kenneth W. Freeman, Dean of Boston University School of Management. He created useful tips which in my opinion every one should get familiar with.

Be realistic about your work. - We should aim for the realistic goals which we can achieve without working around the clock making our private lives misrable.

Don’t expect perfection in personal life. -  Personal matters differs from our business tasks. Forcing yourself and family members to aim for perfection in family life, will not work and be destructive.

Change the metaphor. - Try to integrate work and personal life as opose to sepatate them.
For example you can integrate your private calendar with your work calendar so that all commitments are inviolable. This principle differs from what we all have heard for years, to draw a line between those two parts of our lifes.

Be present. - While you are spednig time with the famili, you have to be fully present with your body and mind. On the other hand you can't treat this time as a business meeting. This is the most difficult part for me, as technology got mobile.

Don't forget yourself. - Don't ignore health realated activities like workout, relaxing, sleep etc. It happends very often that we ingore those important areas.

As it comes to me I'm still looking for the best solution, which will make my "both lifes" easier. I would like to know your opinion on this topic. Do you have some other tips?


Source:
Don’t Let Your Career Cause Regrets in Your Personal Life
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/dont-end-your-career-with-regrets-in-your-personal-life/

Week 6: Should we rethink the way we run our schools?

Today I’m going to talk about schools. It’s an curious topic for a presentation, because everyone is pretty intimately familiar with it - we all spent a good portion of our childhood sitting in a classroom. As a consequence we usually think about the way our education system is organized as something evident and immutable - almost like a law of nature. Sure, we can argue about the specifics, but in broad terms the way our schools function seems to us as the only sensible way to tackle the problem of educating our offspring. And indeed - our schools haven’t really changed since the XIX century.

I’d like to use this presentation as a chance to ask the questions we don’t usually ask: why are schools organized the way they are? Is it really the only sensible way?

Start by watching this entertaining presentation by Sir Ken Robinson:



The Robinson’s messages seems pretty clear - our schools are not in step with modern times (by the way, if you liked this talk, he did a second one on that topic). Even more basic thing to ask might be “why people thought this was a good way to teach kids in the first place?”. We can find a possible answer in “The Third Wave” - a book by Alvin Toffler published in 1980. In his chapter about the “Second Wave” industrial revolution society of the XIX century, Toffler makes some interesting remarks about the origins of the modern school:

As work shifted out of the fields and the home, moreover, children had to be prepared for factory life. The early mine, mill, and factory owners of industrializing England discovered, as Andrew Ure wrote in 1835, that it was "nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty, whether drawn from rural or from handicraft occupations, into useful factory hands." If young people could be prefitted to the industrial system, it would vastly ease the problems of industrial discipline later on. The result was another central structure of all Second Wave societies: mass education. Built on the factory model, mass education taught basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, a bit of history and other subjects. This was the "overt curriculum." But beneath it lay an invisible or "covert curriculum" that was far more basic. It consisted—and still does in most industrial nations—of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in rote, repetitive work. Factory labor demanded workers who showed up on time, especially assembly-line hands. It demanded workers who would take orders from a management hierarchy without questioning. And it demanded men and women prepared to slave away at machines or in offices, performing brutally repetitious operations. 

According to Toffler,  our school has been organised to resemble a XIX-century factory floor - with focus on obedience, punctuality and one’s ability to sit still for hours, doing repetitive work. The scary thing is modern schools still use the same XIX-century blueprint.

So... maybe not teaching creativity it is not a failure of our education system after all? Maybe it was designed this way deliberately?

The problem is, even if we agree that’s the case, it doesn’t help us find a better way to educate our children. What might help, however, are examples of schools that are successful without following the classic XIX-century model of “obedience, punctuality and repetitive work”. One of them is Summerhill. This free (“free” as in “freedom”, not just “free of charge”!) school was founded in 1921 by Alexander Neill. Today, more than 90 years later, it’s still going strong. What’s remarkable about the school, it is completely antithetical to the classic educational system. It is more concerned about making its pupils into happy well adjusted human beings who follow their passions than about forcing them into a pre-defined model of success.

Creative Commons licensed photo by Blue Square Thing

There are no mandatory classes in Summerhill. I know the idea might be hard to comprehend for people educated in a traditional school, so I’ll repeat: no mandatory classes. You could literally spend all 12 year of your education without attending a single class. This is hard for us to accept, because we were taught by our schools that children have to be forced to learn. The example of Summerhill clearly shows this notion is false. Children want to learn. The development of new skills and new knowledge is in fact one of basic human needs. In the 90 year history of Summerhill there was never a student who wasn’t interested in learning something.

There is however an interesting phenomenon connected with the kids transferred to Summerhill from different schools. After learning they are not forced to attend lessons, many of them declare they will never go to another class. Ever. While Sumerhill kids associate learning with fun, those children were already “corrupted” by adults forcing education on them. It often takes many months before those kids discover they actually want to learn and start to attend classes again. This time for a much better reason.

You can learn much more about the Summerhill school from Neil’s book entitled “Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood” (it was published in Poland under the title “Nowa Summerhill” by Wydawnictwo Zysk i S-ka). I found the book utterly fascinating. Below you will find found a short report on Summerhill from Euronews TV:

Sumerhill is obviously not the only free school out there. There are plenty more. “This American Life”, the radio show I raved about in my previous presentation, made a story on The Brooklyn Free School. I think it is worth listening to.

Source: "Stuff No-one Told Me"

So. What do you think? Should we rethink the way we teach children or is the current system just fine?

Week 5: My sweet little critter

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I was struggling with choosing a topic for this post. I wanted my presentation to be at least a bit amusing, and I couldn’t skip the educational part of it as well!

Lately I have been thinking of getting a dog, a French bulldog to be precise. It is a wonderful animal; still, not an esthetically obvious choice. It’s one of those phenomena that usually people are either passionate about, or are completely repulsed by them. 

I think this dog breed is just adorable and exceptional!

I’ve been browsing through the internet for more information about these dogs when 

I started digging deeper into the world of domesticated animals, discovering more and more unusual species that people tend to keep at home – and that gave me the idea for this presentation. 

Skunks

http://parade.condenast.com/274632/jonathanhorowitz/the-daily-cute-follow-your-nose-to-skunks-thursday/

 

Skunks are often associated with the extremely repulsive odor they give off in their defense. You might find it interesting that baby skunks are very often adopted by people (or simply – taken from their parents and from their natural environment). In order to make them more friendly and ‘socially acceptable’, most of these animals have their scent glands surgically removed.

Tigers and other wild cats

http://joemonster.org/art/13290

Keeping tigers seems ridiculous. Having a wild predator cat at home might seem dangerous, and it is dangerous indeed. It is ironically not illegal to keep an animal like that, even though they are probably in the top of the list of most deadly animals existing.

An interesting fact – there are only 3500 tigers living free in the wilderness. In only the USA there are kept around 10 000 of these pets…

Alligators and crocodiles

http://matadornetwork.com/life/photo-essay-15-unusual-pets-that-could-be-yours/

Keeping a little alligator turned out to be very trendy. Bring up a scaly little fella like that and you will never call him a reptilian!
Unfortunately these animals are extremely whimsical, so if you don’t care about losing 

a limb or two – get yourself an alligator!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgzyoP_GMag

 

Zebras

http://eldope.tumblr.com/

You can get a zebra for only 4000$ if you think horses are not cool enough. They actually are very similar to their more popular cousins, both in behavior and their needs. With a lot of patience, there is even a possibility you will be able to convince your new striped friend to let you ride him.

Getting a zebra is not going to be that easy if you live in the UK though. You need to prove you have the right facilities and the knowledge necessary to keep and handle it safely – both for you and for the animal.

Alpacas

http://alligator-sunglasses.com/post/14728889432/check-out-my-pet-alpaca

Alpacas are the smaller relatives of llamas and camels. Actually, they look like the hybrid of a llama and a poodle. They are mainly bred for their wool, which makes a very popular textile. Alpacas originate from South America, Peru being probably the country most often associated with these animals. You can purchase an alpaca in Poland if you wish, and it is not as difficult as it might seem. Let’s take allegro.pl portal as an example: there are several auctions that let you buy an alpaca for around 6500zł.

’These animals are not very needy. They spend the night in a wooden croft, during the day they walk around the garden. They eat the same things as cows’ – says an alpaca owner. – ‘They like dry bread, but they will eat whatever you give them. Alpacas are very friendly, they play along with the cat. They do not get on well with the dog though…’

More and more weird animals are kept at home, and I personally think the place for most of them is in the wilderness. I do not support domesticating animals that are not naturally prepared to live with people, who might suffer because of living on small and limited and restricted areas.

Sources:

http://www.wekendowo.pl/ciekawostki/p,najdziwniejsze-domowe-zwierzeta-jakie-czlowiek-jest-w-stanie-kupic-19-zdjec.html

http://www.echodnia.eu/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121207/POWIAT0304/121209229

http://www.wspolczesna.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100311/POGODZINACH/528502151

http://joemonster.org/art/13290

http://matadornetwork.com/life/photo-essay-15-unusual-pets-that-could-be-yours/

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/exotic-animals-pets.html

Week 5: Crowdfunding

 

link to picture

Crowdfunding. You probably heard this word here and there. It is quite a buzz word nowadays. But what is it really ? How does it work ? And should you engage or stay away ?

Week 5: Diet for brain

The session is fast approaching ... exams, projects program completion, BSc Thesis... At this time, our brain is extremely busy, we require the long hours of work in full swing. So it is worth taking care of its proper functioning. Are liters of coffee or energy drinks enough? Definitely not. How to increase the efficiency of the brain (the most complicated organ in the human body)? 

We start with diet!

Week 5: Benefits of reading books

Imagine: you are coming back home after a hard day at work and you are dreaming about a moment of relaxation so you can forget about the events of the passing day. What is your way to have a rest? For me the answer is very easy – I reach for a book! In my opinion, reading is one of the most enjoyable things, very relaxing. I cannot imagine my life without it. Or at least it would be a terribly boring one!

  

Source: http://mkalty.org/books-quotes/

I was inspired to write this article by a very sad data published by the National Library of Poland in 2013. According to the Library’s survey, in 2012 over 60% of Poles did not read anything, not even a single book! Only 11% read 7 or more books and those people are considered to be "real readers". But it’s not the only reason to be scared reading this report. This data is also so appalling because it reveals that since 2004 the group of “real readers” decreased: diminution to the current level has been made between 2004 and 2008 and still a size of this group cannot return to the level of 20%.

Respondents’ declarations on reading books during past 12 months

Year of study	Non-readers	Readers of 1-6 books	Readers of 7 and more books
2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012	44,4 41,8 50,3 62,2 56,0 60,8	32,1 32,9 31,7 24,8 31,1 26,5	22,2 24,4 17,2 10,6 11,6 11,1

Source: http://www.bn.org.pl/aktualnosci/501-czytelnictwo-polakow-w-2012-r.-%E2%80%93-wyniki-badan.html

Full report here

In Poland there are numerous initiatives which aim is to spread an interest in literature, to popularize a habit of reading (the most important one: National Readership Development Programme 2014-2020 introduced by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage). But despite noticeable popularity of such actions as "Nie czytasz, nie idę z tobą do łóżka" (almost 100 000 “like it” on Facebook; official webpage: http://nieczytasz.wix.com/nieczytasz-1), which engaged many celebrities and representatives of culture and art to cooperation (such as Kazimiera Szczuka, Robert Leszczyński, Rafał Bryndal, Marcin Szczygielski or even Jeż Jerzy), or "Ustąp miejsca czytającemu” (more than 25 000 “like it” on Facebook), the percentage of a readership is still very low.

 

Source: http://nieczytasz.wix.com/nieczytasz-1#!about/component_73913; 

Taking this data into consideration, it can be concluded that in Poland reading is an activity popular only among a small group of people. It is not a part of everyday functioning, it is not perceived as a way to relax, as an intellectual fun, which has an added value in broadening vocabulary or widening imagination, as an activity which builds good habits (like empathy or understanding the others).

In my opinion so called derivative illiteracy is a tragedy for intellectual functioning of Polish people, and therefore I would like to write why we should read, hoping that it might convince those who do not do it to reach for a book. I will put up the reasons presented some time ago by the Swedish Academy for Children's Books, which were created in support of reading the children's literature to the youngest. Many of those arguments can be referred to reading in general. Here are the most important ones:

- “Books help us develop our language and our vocabulary”;
- “Books develop our thinking. They give us concepts to think with and new ideas. They widen our consciousness and our world”;
- “Books develop our capacity to empathise. They give us a chance to put ourselves in the position of others and understand their emotions”;
- “Books can entertain and excite us. They can make us laugh and cry. They can comfort us”;
- “Books can explain reality and help us understand how matters are connected”;
- “Books can show us that there's not always only one answer to a question, but that most things can be seen from different points of view”;
- “Books help us understand ourselves. It strengthens our self-confidence to realise that others think as we do and feel as we do”;
- “Books can awaken in us new and interesting issues which give us something to think about”;
- “Books give us knowledge about other countries and other ways of life, about nature, technology, history, and everything under the sun that we might want to know more about”;
- “Books make us reflect on what's right or wrong, good or bad”;
- “Books help us understand that all of us are different, too. Reading books written by authors from other times and other cultures increases tolerance and helps combat prejudice”. 
  Source: http://www.barnboksakademin.com/

All list available here

To summarize: I do believe that reading should be considered as something more than only a leisure activity. Reading is first and foremost a valuable lesson of history, culture, customs, relationships, feelings.  Without that lesson life seemed to be limited. Therefore, since reading is so beneficial, why so few people in Poland spend their free time doing it? Maybe books are too expensive? Or reading is too exhausting? Or maybe it just does not bring any obvious profits, so it is not appealing?

And, at the end, a very inspiring example how books can change a life:

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ibCtsHgz3Y

Additional question:

1)      In your opinion, why a level of readership is so small in Poland?

2)      Do you think that reading has a future?

3)      What is your favorite book?

4)      Which of the advantages of reading pointed out above convince you the most? Why?