The reasons are plentiful, mostly involving motivation and time. And herein lies the beauty of dance.Estimates suggest that people can burn about 200 calories in 30 minutes from a quick-paced dance routine. And growing research suggests that dancing not only helps people stay in physical shape but also improves brain and mental health.

The trouble with exercise is that it’s easy to avoid

The reason dance is the ideal exercise is that it’s a total-body workout. It’s a great way to access all movement planes and access some muscles that get ignored in typical day-to-day activities.Depending on the type of dance, it can offer cardiovascular benefits by increasing your heart rate, it can help strengthen the lower and upper extremities through repeated muscle contractions, and it can challenge coordination and balance, especially when following a choreographed dance at different tempos.Once you get into it, dance also feels good.

Dance: The ideal exercise

Dancing appears to affect the brain in ways that extend beyond mental health conditions. One of the benefits of physical activity is that it enhances executive function and attention, processing speed, and memory. Dancing involves both a mental effort and social interaction. <ul><li>Regular dancing can help prevent cognitive decline as we age and is associated with a reduced risk of dementia.”</li><li>It can offer cardiovascular benefits by increasing your heart rate, it can help strengthen the lower and upper extremities through repeated muscle contractions, and it can challenge coordination and balance.</li></ul>

Dancing and brain health

<ul><li>Dancing on your own is a great option for those who are not able to attend a class or feel uncomfortable dancing around others.</li><li>To get the most out of a solo dance experience, consider scheduling it into your calendar once a week, experiment with different music, and try it out when feeling different moods. </li><li>Dance just for yourself, allowing any movements to flow that feel good — or pretend that someone is watching to enhance your personal dancing experience.</li></ul>

Dancing is accessible

How to make home workouts fun and accessible

remotework

Remote Work

sports

Sports

health

Health

exerciseandfitness

Exercise & Fitness

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

How to Start Working Out at Home

The trouble with exercise is that it’s easy to avoid. Only 23% of American adults meet the federal recommendations for two hours and 30 minutes of weekly aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercises…

Dancing May Be the Best Form of Exercise

The Earth is mainly a water world — more than 70 percent of its surface is covered by oceans — and yet we know so little about what resides beneath the waves.The ocean, in this light, is like an alien world within our own. Many of its creatures are still unknown to us — both in kind and number. Their behaviours and adaptations remain inexplicable. Even the very contours of this world are still unmapped: We probably know more about the surface of Mars than we know about the ocean floor.Understanding the sea is to understand our planet better, at a fundamental level.

The Earth's Forgotten Space: The Oceans

Where is plastic pollution in the ocean hiding, and how does it get there?Every year, tons of plastic manufactured on land is dumped into the sea. But scientists have yet to complete the work of figuring out all the nooks and crannies our plastic pollution nudges its way into.Researchers like van Sebille want to know where the pla<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/99-of-ocean-plastic-is-missing/id1554578197?i=1000545025793">stic is going so they can better understand its effects on marine life.</a>

Unsolved Mystery 1: Plastic Pollution

Why do whales strand themselves on beaches? And are humans to blame?every year, thousands of marine mammals like whales end up trapped on beaches or in the shallow waters near shore. According to some studies, these strandings have been increasing.But why do the animals do this? And are humans to blame?It’s an incredibly difficult question to answer because while we know that humans are affecting the ocean environme<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-whales-get-beached/id1554578197?i=1000540598590">nt, it can be hard to parse how those effects impact individual species.</a>

Unsolved Mystery 2: Stranded Whales On Beaches

<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-octopus-friend/id1554578197?i=1000558838022">Can a human really be friends with an octopus?</a>Can a caring relationship form between humans and a sea creatures like an octopus? It’s not known whether the friendship in the documentary was genuine from the octopus’s perspective. The interior lives of animals may never be fully understood.It’s like interstellar travel, the closest we can come to that kind of alien contact moment.<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-octopus-friend/id1554578197?i=1000558838022">If we can connect with an octopus, what else could we connect with?</a>

Unsolved Mystery 3: The Octopus Being Friendly To Humans

How many fish live in the ocean’s mysterious “twilight zone”?As you dive deeper into the ocean, less and less sunlight shines through. About 200 meters beneath the surface, you reach an area called the mesopelagic, or the “twilight zone.” Sunlight fades almost completely out of view, and our knowledge about these dark depths fades too.Yet this region of the ocean is extremely important. It’s possible — but not certain — that more fish are living in the twilight zone than the rest of the ocean combined, and these creatures of <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twilight-zone-of-the-ocean/id1554578197?i=1000518013927">the dark ocean play a large role in regulating the climate.</a>

Unsolved Mystery 4: The Abyss Inside Earth

Why do so many sea creatures glow?It’s wrong to say there’s no light in the depths of the ocean. There’s light, it just doesn’t come from the sun. Deep in the ocean (and also on the surface), divers find other-worldly displays of bioluminescence, sparkling like fireworks in the dark. Almost every deep-water creature lights up in some way.You’re not viewing it at a distance. You’re in the centre of the display. In fact, you’re part of it<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/glow-in-the-dark-ocean/id1554578197?i=1000558128630"> because any movement you make triggers flashes all around you.</a>

Unsolved Mystery 5: Glowing In The Dark

Only 20 percent of the ocean floor has been mapped. What’s down there?Currently, only <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html">20 percent of the seafloor has been mapped</a>, making it a more mysterious place than the surface of the moon or Mars. That means every time explorers go down to the bottom, they are potentially seeing things no human has ever laid eyes on before. More people went on the Apollo missions to the moon than have been to the Challenger Deep, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-low-can-you-go/id1554578197?i=1000530953776">the deepest part of the deepest trench in the ocean.</a>

Unsolved Mystery 6: The Unknown World In Our World

Can we drill through the seafloor, to the mantle of the Earth?Scientists’ curiosity doesn’t just stop at the bottom of the sea. They’re also interested in what lies beneath it.Sixty years ago, geologists tried to drill down through the seabed to pull up a piece of the Earth’s mantle, a deep layer of the Earth no human has directly observed. Their <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/journey-toward-the-center-of-the-earth/id1554578197?i=1000513388164">mission didn’t go exactly as planned</a>. But it sowed the seeds for a new field of science that has helped rewrite not only the history of the planet but, potentially, our definitions of life itself.

Unsolved Mystery 7: Journey To The Center Of The Earth

The ocean is Earth’s final frontier. Explore it on Vox’s podcast Unexplainable with these 7 ocean mysteries.

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

7 ocean mysteries scientists haven’t solved yet

Everybody talks about how to establish that work-life balance. But the phrase work-life balance is misleading. A better phrase is work-life harmony. When you feel energised and happy at work, feeling you're adding value, it makes you better at home. Likewise, if you're happy at home, it makes you a better employee or a better boss.

There is no such thing as work-life balance

It's not about the number of hours in the week. It's about if you have energy.  Is your work depriving you of energy or generating energy for you? Similarly, are you adding energy to your work or draining your coworkers of energy? You have to decide if you're going to add energy. The same at home. So it's a cycle, not a balance.

It's not a work-life balance, it's a cycle

The work-life balance metaphor implies there's a strict trade-off. However, you could be out of work and have all the time for your family but be really depressed and demoralised about your work situation.  It's not about the number of hours. Yet, if you went over the top and worked 100 hours a week, then there could be limits. The best place is where both sides of your life give you energy.

Why the work-life balance metaphor is dangerous

In this Sessions short, Jeff Bezos details why there is no such thing as work-life balance. To be considered to attend our next event, we welcome applications at http://www.summit.co/apply Connect with Summit: http://www.summit.co http://www.instagram.com/summit http://fb.com/summit

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Productivity

career

Career

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Videos

In this Sessions short, Jeff Bezos details why there is no such thing as work-life balance. 

To be considered to attend our next event, we welcome applications at http://www.summit.co/apply

Connect with Summit: 
http://www.summit.co
http://www.instagram.com/summit
http://fb.com/summit

Summit is an ecosystem that exists to connect and nourish global makers. 

We are committed to fostering experiences that bring people together to explore, play, gather and grow ... together. 

We gather across six pillars including thought leadership, culture and performance, art and expression, hospitality, health and happiness and impact.
 
The Summit Community is diverse and multidisciplinary, made of renowned activists, artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders, performers, scientists, and beyond. 

Summit Series | Brings together global entrepreneurs and change-makers to cross-pollinate and collaborate. 
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Ready to make no small plans … so that you can live your biggest life? 
Apply to join our community: www.summit.co/join

For inquiries: hello@summit.co 

 


Summit

Work-life balance — Jeff Bezos

In Saudi Arabia, some 50 miles north of Jeddah, 57 seeds sprouted into healthy, seven-inch-tall water spinach leaves by harvesting water out of thin air.Like all conventional crops, spinach needs water to grow. But, in this case, the spinach sprouted thanks to a solar-powered system that pulled vapour from the air and condensed it into two litres of water. Now published in the journal <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(22)00048-0">Cell Reports Physical Science</a>, the results of the experiment suggest that small farms in remote, arid regions can grow their own crops without a water supply.

Growing Spinach In A Desert

The prototype used during the experiment consists of three main components: a small-scale photovoltaic panel, a composite material made of hydrogel (a high-tech version of the hydrogel used in bandages to re-hydrate wounds), calcium chloride (the kind of salt we use to de-ice roads), plus a metal container that acts as a condensation chamber.

The Desert Crop Experiment

Like most conventional solar panels, 10-20% of the solar energy they absorb is converted to electricity. The remaining 80-90% is converted to heat. The hydrogel material—think of it as a layer of jelly attached to the backside of the solar panel—plays a dual role. First, it can cool the solar panel so it doesn’t overheat. Second, it can absorb water vapour from the air because of the calcium chloride, which can absorb more than its weight in moisture. The hydrogel itself swells and locks that moisture into the material so it doesn’t spill.

How The Prototype Works

Deserts may be dry, but that’s not to say there are no moisture particles in the air. The relative humidity in the region revolves around 40%, but Wang says it’s closer to 80% at night. As a result, the hydrogel material typically absorbs water vapour during the evening and at night.

Water In Saudi Arabian Desert

By the morning, the material is saturated with moisture, so when the sun hits the solar panels, and the heat from the solar panels comes into contact with the material, it turns the moisture into vapour and drives it out of the hydrogel layer. The metal box below then collects the vapour and condenses it into water.  None of these steps consumes the electricity generated by the solar panel, meaning that if the system gets scaled up, the electricity produced by the panels could be fed directly into the grid, and the heat produced by the panels could be used to grow crops.

Overnight Result

There are many steps before the system can be commercialized.The scientists need to find industrial collaborators who can manufacture the system cost-effectively it could be used in off-grid communities around the world. For a single household living in the mountain, or a very small community living in the middle of nowhere, this system can really help get those very basic human needs.

The Bottom Line

The results suggest that small farms in remote, arid regions can grow crops without a water supply.


food

Food

How scientists grew spinach in the desert by harvesting water out of thin air

Sending thoughtful, professional gifts to clients will help you and your company build and maintain relationships. It’s the perfect way to show appreciation for your clients. 
When you do it right, it will keep you at the forefront of their minds throughout the year.

The Right Professional Gift

Find out about your client’s hobbies and interests. Everybody on your list may not get the same thing. If you choose a food item, find out about allergies and special diets.
Godiva chocolates are not going to be appreciated by the client who has spent the last six months on the South Beach Diet.

Be A Detective

Get your shopping and shipping done as soon as possible so your gift does not get lost in the shuffle or arrive after your client has left for the holidays. 
Your corporate gift ought to be delivered no later than December 17th in case your client is taking the week off.

Shop Now, Send Early

Remember everyone who helps you to be successful. People whom you pay for services and those who go beyond the call to help you deserve your special thanks.

Don’t Limit Your Gifts To The People Whose Business You Want

The purpose of giving professional gifts is to show appreciation and have people think of you when it’s time to do business.
It’s also to express gratitude to those who support you. Call to say thank you and send notes that you have written by hand throughout the year.

Keep A Goal In Mind

Gifts are the perfect way to show appreciation for your clients and stay at the forefront of their minds throughout the year.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

business

Business

A Quick Guide For Giving Professional Gifts | Sales Gravy

We are surrounded by sound waves. Sound has the power to communicate ideas, scare us, entertain us, even help us fall in love. Sound waves are a kind of energy that is launched when an object vibrates. These waves travel through a medium like air or water. When they reach your eardrum, the brain translates the pressure waves into words or music.

Sound waves are a type of power

The shape of waves is rolling peaks and valleys. If the wave moves faster, the peaks and valleys form closer together. If it moves slower, the waves spread out. <ul><li>The speed of a sound wave - how fast the waves move from peak to trough - is called frequency, but we also know it as pitch. We measure sound frequency in hertz (Hz), which is the cycles per second.</li><li>Understanding frequencies is useful. For example, you can tune an instrument - middle C on the piano is tuned to the frequency of 261.63 Hz.</li></ul>

Sound frequency

<ul><li>Amplitude (amps) describes the height of the sound waves and gets measured in decibels (dB).</li><li>Timbre is the perceived sound quality. You can distinguish the unique harmonics of timbre by the combination of notes in a chord.</li><li>Envelopes determine how a sound's amplitude changes over time. It can be quick and loud, like a door slamming, or it can slowly increase in volume, like a cello's note.</li></ul>

Other useful sound terms

Sound must travel through a medium like water, air or even sand. It means you will never hear an explosion in a vacuum. The speed of sound, or the sound's velocity, differs depending on how dense the medium is it's moving through. Generally, the speed of sound is 1,127 feet per second or 767.54 miles per hour.

The speed of sound

Musicians and content creators need knowledge of frequencies and amplitude in their home recording set-ups to ensure their voice sounds rich and clear. Understanding sound can help them choose microphones best suited and help to set up the room to reflect or dampen sounds.

Benefiting from understanding sound

Learn the basics of physics when it comes to sound waves. Learn about the types of sound waves, how they travel and more.

timemanagement

Time Management

What are sound waves and how do they work?

Star Trek, a science fiction mainstay, has millions of fans, fondly called Trekkies. They are very interested in the many innovative, but fictional technologies featured in the long-running franchise, many of which have become a reality(like the Communicator or the Floppy Disc).
The fictional Star Trek universe, called the Trekiverse, has spaceships flying at ‘warp’ speeds, many times faster than the speed of light. The sub-light speed cruise modes of spaceships are called Impulse Drive.

Star Trek’s Many Technologies

Impulse engines use nuclear-powered propulsion technology, and though the speed is not faster than light, it is faster than what we have today. All this is still in the fictional realm, though the theory is sound and we can have such engines in the future.Impulse drives have a theoretical problem of time dilation, in which ‘near-light’ speeds cause anomalies in time. They also can behave unpredictably in different atmospheres, as they are designed to work in a vacuum.

Impulse Drives

Ion drives are real life engine propulsion technologies similar to impulse drives used in the fictional Star Trek universe. They operate continuously due to low-power consumption, like the Dawn spacecraft sent to dwarf planet Ceres in 2007. It lacks the quick acceleration ability of the fictional Impulse drives, but is promising nonetheless.

Ion Drives

Rocket scientists are working on plasma drives, which use electricity instead of the old ‘chemical’ technology in most rocket engines.They are supposed to be much more powerful and fast in terms of propulsion and can get a spacecraft to Mars in about 30 days, as compared to the six months it takes now.

Plasma Engines

In Star Trek, the ships use a propulsion system known as impulse drive to maneuver at sub-light speeds. Could we develop it someday? It might be possible.

sciencefiction

Science Fiction

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

Is Star Trek's Impulse Drive Possible?

The Matrix is a cult Sci-Fi movie and refers to a computer-generated dream world where all mankind is suspended, not knowing that they are being farmed by AI(artificial intelligence).
The first film of the Matrix Trilogy is now 20 years old. Apart from being a huge box office smash hit and cultural phenomenon, it has spawned discussions spanning decades about the nature of human life and reality itself.

The Matrix And Its Philosophy

A Matrix-like scenario was discussed in a book by Plato, Republic, in which he imagined all human life akin to a group of prisoners who have lived their entire lives inside the walls of their prison, with the only experience of reality being the shadows on that wall.
If they are freed and discover the truth of reality, they may not be able to comprehend the vastness of life and may find it difficult to leave the captivity of ignorance.

Plato And The Captivity Of Ignorance

The 17th century Frenchman René Descartes had observed how easily our senses are fooled and noted the difficulty of being certain about any human experience, which he claimed can be faked.
We know it too well now with the advent of fake news, fake-reality TV and our fake online identities, hiding all which is not good enough to broadcast.

Descartes And The Certainty Of Human Experience

The uncertainty about the realness of our experience is studied by many philosophers, like the 20th-century French thinker Jean Baudrillard, whose book, Simulacra and Simulation, ponders on the phenomenon of imitations/representations being mistaken as reality itself.
In recent times, the Simulation Theory ponders about the same questions about reality.

Simulation Vs Reality

According to 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, our senses are everything, creating our reality for us. The world, according to him, does not have one reality, but as many realities as there are people.
Through our senses, the world available to us is the only world we ever experience and is a fraction of reality.

Immanuel Kant And The Perception Of The World

Neo, the protagonist of the Matrix, is pushed into the rabbit hole when he takes the red pill to embrace the real reality, instead of the blue pill, which is a way to return to the normal, ignorant reality most of us live in.
This choice itself was based on a 1974 thought experiment by American philosopher Robert Nozick, pondering how an experience machine, by which we can have any reality we desire(a comfortable illusion) would be better than our current reality, with all its problems.

The Real Reality Vs A Comfortable Illusion

Cult film The Matrix was released 20 years ago this month. From Plato to Baudrillard, the film explored philosophical dilemmas we are still wrestling with today.

philosophy

Philosophy

communication

Communication

The Matrix 20 years on: how a sci-fi film tackled big philosophical questions

General skills not only help you with a narrow problem but can be used repeatedly to solve other problems.
But building general skills can be challenging because it is built from many specific ones. If you're prepared to do the work, you can find better ways to learn that can make breadth possible.

How to build general skills

Earlier theories of the mind - like the formal discipline theory - assumed that things like reason, language and attention were like muscles and that any activity strengthened them. It led to views that learning Latin and geometry was essential even though few students would use these skills.
Edward Thorndike disproved this theory in 1901. He formed a new theory known as the identical elements theory, which suggested that two problems must share common elements for one skill to apply to another.

The narrowness of acquired ability

Thorndike's replacement theory was not correct. He was wrong in thinking that only the superficial elements of a task needed to match.
An idea, as an abstract concept, can influence your thinking more on a broader range of problems than only memorising some steps in a procedure.

Ideas influence thinking

Learning ideas are useful to a point. To make a general idea useful, some key obstacles need to be overcome:
<ul>
<li>We need to notice the idea in other contexts. Research found that people tend not to apply patterns they learn to different domains unless prompted.</li>
<li>We need to change the idea to suit our current purposes.</li>
<li>Knowing about an idea is not the same as using it.</li>
</ul>
Ideas help, but it is just the start. Easy ideas in a field may be the only visible tip of deeper knowledge.

The power of ideas as a starting point

People that develop expertise in multiple areas are able to solve a wide range of problems.
The key is to gain broadly valuable skills:
<ul>
<li>Breadth comes from specificity. General skills are built from large libraries of specific knowledge.</li>
<li>Deeply understanding more abstract ideas extends the range of your knowledge.</li>
<li>Visible knowledge is built on invisible ones. The easy facts depend on skills that are harder to spot.</li>
<li>Practice in various real situations because knowledge is not always expressed.</li>
</ul>

How do you learn skills not just for one problem, but for many? Subjects that don't just matter in school, but in real life?

education

Learning & Education

problemsolving

Problem Solving

The Science Behind Building General Skills

It is the perfect strategy for learning something new, deepening your understanding of a concept, enhancing your recall of certain ideas, or reviewing for tests.
The process takes 15 minutes to master. All you need is a blank notebook and a pen or pencil.

The Feynman Technique

Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, was recognized as someone who could clearly explain complex topics in a way that everybody—even those without degrees in the sciences—could understand.
While studying at Princeton, Feynman began recording and connecting the information he knew with the things that he either didn't know or didn't understand. This resulted in a complete notebook of topics and subjects that he had disassembled, translated, reassembled, and written down in simple terms.

Richard Feynman

<ul>
<li>It helps you gain a complete understanding of what you're learning.</li>
<li>Use the Feynman Technique if you are struggling with tough subject matter.</li>
<li>It helps to improve your teaching skills.</li>
<li>It increases your capacity to use critical thinking skills.</li>
</ul>

The Benefits of the Feynman Technique

Feynman relied heavily on verbal communication, such as when he used cartoonish diagrams to explain highly scientific principles.
Feynman could easily tap into complex ideas using shapes, lines, and drawings. This method helped him strip away confusing language and permitted the power of storytelling to take precedence.

Verbal Communication As A Basis

<ol>
<li>Choose the idea or concept to learn about. Write the concept as a heading on a blank piece of paper or notebook page, then write down everything you already know.</li>
<li>Imagine that you have to teach the concept to a new student. In your own words, explain the concept in simple language. Include a few examples. </li>
<li>Review your explanation and find the areas you were unclear in. Find answers and revise your notes. Practice step #2 again with your new notes.</li>
<li>Can you explain the concept now to someone with no prior knowledge of the concept?</li>
</ol>

The 4 Steps of the Feynman Technique

<ol>
<li>Go over your notes and identify the specific parts of a lesson that are vague to you.</li>
<li>You can create simple analogies to enhance your recall of concepts.</li>
<li>Go through all of the information that you are trying to learn without referencing your notes.</li>
<li>See how far you can get in explaining the concepts without getting stumped.</li>
</ol>

Applying the Feynman Technique to Your Study Habits

Strategies and tips to ace your next exam

books

Books

How To Study Effectively For Exams

As a student (or someone interested in lifelong learning), there are many things competing for your attention.