Christmas is fast approaching – but don’t stress if you don’t have those perfect gifts yet. Here are some ideas for great gifts that you can make on your own, from home.
Amazon Says Goodbye Blue Light
Apparently, many hand-held devices emit blue light that can ruin your internal inner clock. This is true with television screens, laptops and smartphones. Amazon has gotten smart and has just started to roll out a feature called “blue shade” on its Kindle Fire tablets. This feature limits the amount of blue light that gets to the eye and can be turned on and off with a tap.
The Blue Shade will be available for Amazon’s company’s Fire HD 10, Fire HD 8 and Fire tablets as part of a free software update.
The way that it works is as the sun sets and the evening comes, the apps replace the blue overlay with red. As Andy Bett’s indepth report at makeusof.com explains, “Even if you’re skeptical about it improving your sleep, you will immediately notice a reduction in eye strain when using your phone in a dimly lit room.”
Interestingly, scientists at both Penn State and Harvard have found that people who regularly use e-readers before going to bed sleep less hours than do others. They take ten minutes longer than other people to fall asleep after using their devices and their sleep is worse.
The Neuroscientist Dr Anne-Marie Chang, whose research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the use of screens has an “extremely powerful effect” on the body’s natural sleep pattern.
Some are skeptical, however, of the power of color on the screen. Vincent Gualino, a French ophthalmologist, for instance, warns that the real problem is how much time we spend on our screens – not what color we are using.
Best Travel Destinations for 2015
Skyscanner, the global travel search engine, has released its predictions of the destinations to watch for this coming year. The data included the analysis of millions of Skyscanner flight searches for the last three years in the UK, looking at the locations that had increased in interest the most dramatically.
The winner is Ponta Delgada in Portugal where the interest has increased 63% in recent years. Havana was the second one with a 33% increase in interest, while Tokyo came in number three with a 25% increase. Copenhagen was the fourth with a 21% increase and Cape Verde was number five with a 14% increase.
Cat McGloin, the Skyscanner travel editor, said “With 50 million searches to the site every month from all over the world, our search data gives us some really robust insight in to these trends. It’s interesting to see how people’s travel interests are changing and what these destinations are offering to become even more appealing.”
Using Thanksgiving Leftovers
Thanksgiving is over…but the leftovers aren’t. What should you do with all of that food? Here are a few quick and easy suggestions to help you out. Enjoy those leftovers before you have to start focusing on the next holiday.
Music Really Does Soothe the Soul
Most people realize that music can have a calming influence and that it’s used for therapy in many ways. Now, the benefits are even more pronounced. Dr. Diana Vetter and her team at the University of Zurich have found that patients who listen to their favorite music have lower blood pressure and heart rates than do those who don’t. The benefits of the music, interestingly enough, were most pronounced when the patient picked his own play list. Their analysis covered research in the past 15 years. Their findings were published in the Annals of Surgery.
In their study, music was linked to 31% less pain, 29% lower odds of using pain medications and 34% less anxiety.
Marianne van der Heijden, a researcher at Erasmus Medical Center – Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam explained the potential impact of the study. As she said, “Music interventions are not yet part of the system because for an intervention to be formally adapted in medicine and hospitals, efficacy needs to be shown. There now seems to be enough evidence to support the formal adaptation of music interventions in clinical guidelines. Self-selected music interventions shouldn’t be difficult to provide at all and could be realized by creating awareness among hospital staff, patients and their family members about the positive effects of music.”
Brisk Walking May Be the Best Answer to Weight Issues
Research by the London School of Economics might just make you smile. They found that people who walked regularly for exercise had a lower BMI and smaller waist than did those who took part in sports like running, cycling and going to the gym.
Dr. Grace Lordan, who led the research, compared people who said they regularly walked for half-an-hour at a fast-pace with those who did the same amount of manual labor, sports or other rigorous activity. The findings are based on the physical activity levels from the annual Health Survey from England from 1999-2012.
The article will soon be published in the journal Risk Analysis. Read the entire article to learn more.