Lifeboat Foundation

Someone recently asked me how you shop for groceries on a bike. It struck me as a question lots of people have probably never thought about, so why not write something about it?

I think the first thing to keep in mind is that you’re probably going to have to shop for groceries more than once a week. To me, that’s a feature not a bug, as I mostly try to eat fresh produce, some of which doesn’t keep all that well for a week anyway. Shopping more frequently means I only have to plan meals for a few days at a time. It’s also not that much of a burden, if you shop closer to home, which is easier if you live closer to stuff.

It was probably an easier change for me as well because I actually transitioned to bike shopping from shopping on foot. When we lived downtown, there was a grocery store two blocks away and a mass market retailer between the office and home. It was no big deal to make a stop and grab what I needed.

“They’re almost perfect,” she said.

Because the farms are not dependent upon the seasons they can acheive up to 10 crop cycles per year as opposed to 1 to 2 cycles in normal agriculture, producing up to 80 tons of food annually.

Because of this, one indoor acre is equivalent to 4–6 outdoor acres, Riffat says.

When I was ten years old, I discovered computers. My first machine was a PDP-10 mainframe system at the medical center where my father worked. I taught myself to write simple programs in the BASIC computer language. Like any ten-year-old, I was especially pleased to discover games on the computer. One game was simply labeled “ADVENT.” I opened it and saw:

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.

I figured out that I could move around with commands like “go north” and “go south.” I entered the building and got food, water, keys, a lamp. I wandered outside and descended through a grate into a system of underground caves. Soon I was battling snakes, gathering treasures, and throwing axes at pesky attackers. The game used text only, no graphics, but it was easy to imagine the cave system stretching out below ground. I played for months, roaming farther and deeper, gradually mapping out the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a seismic shift in the way organizations and offices operate. Working from home has become a preferred option for countless businesses and millions of employees around the globe. The work from home trend might continue in the future too, as it has proven not to affect business productivity adversely. Additionally, as per a McKinsey study, up to 278 business executives plan to reduce their office space by 30% even beyond the pandemic. Work from home is a seemingly viable option for employees for a variety of reasons, one of them being the possible arrival of the metaverse, a concept that will make traveling to a specific location for work redundant. This will affect one particular part of employees’ personal lives—domestic chores. There are more than a few reasons why IoT for smart cities and homes will play a significant role in optimizing household chores.

Domestic chores are an unavoidable yet necessary part of individuals’ personal lives. For instance, tasks such as cooking meals, managing laundry work and making timely lighting and plumbing repairs are hard to overlook, even if an important virtual business meeting is going on. In simple words, tasks such as cooking, cleaning, maintenance and task management act as distractions that stand in the way of remote organizational work. Resultantly, the productivity of remote employees is seriously affected by domestic chores. To state the obvious, remote working blurs the boundaries between the workspace and personal life. Work hours increasingly blend into the time that would normally be associated with completing household tasks. These are remote working problems that you probably know. The biggest problem of remote working is how it has regressed gender equality and the involvement of women in prominent positions at the workplace.

Chinese researchers are reporting that applying an electric field to pea plants increased yields. This process — known as electroculture — has been tested multiple times, but in each case there are irregularities in the scientific process, so there is still an opportunity for controlled research to produce meaningful data.

This recent research used two plots of peas planted from the same pods. The plants were tended identically except one plot was stimulated by an electric field. The yield on the stimulated plot was about 20% more than the control plot.

The actual paper is paywalled in the journal Nature Food, but the idea seems simple enough. If you search for the topic, you’ll find there have been other studies with similar findings. There are also anecdotal reports of electrical plant stimulation going back to 1746.

Ground squirrels spend the end of summer gorging on food, preparing for hibernation. They need to store a lot of energy as fat, which becomes their primary fuel source underground in their hibernation burrows all winter long.

While hibernating, ground squirrels enter a state called torpor. Their metabolism drops to as low as just 1 percent of summer levels and their body temperature can plummet to close to freezing. Torpor greatly reduces how much energy the animal needs to stay alive until springtime.

That long fast comes with a downside: no new input of protein, which is crucial to maintain the body’s tissues and organs. This is a particular problem for muscles.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has recognized Chad and Ben Johnson of Nebraska for designing a robot called “Grain Weevil” to lower maintenance and make grain bins safer.

Carolyn Hartz, a 70-year-old woman, was like most individuals on the planet. She couldn’t get enough of sweets. And she wasn’t afraid to gorge herself on desserts for four decades. But then she made the decision to make a substantial lifestyle shift. She also made the decision to eliminate all processed sugar from her diet.

Today, three decades later, Carolyn appears to be much younger than she has ever been. She has a fantastic physique that many women all over the world would lust over. Even at her advanced age, she has the confidence to go to the beach in a bikini like any other young lady. Her skin also appears to be in excellent condition.

It’s all because she made the decision to change her lifestyle choices, she claims. She believes that it is never too late to change one’s life. All you have to do is make the decision to improve your life.

New biodegradable straws developed in China are as cheap as plastic, stronger than paper, and made from edible materials — but can they make a difference in the global plastic waste problem?

Plastic everywhere: People produce 330 million tons of plastic every year. Less than 9% of it is recycled, and about 12% is incinerated — the rest ends up polluting our natural environment or languishing in landfills.

Continue reading “New biodegradable straws are made by bacteria” »