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r0B0t: How to Run Hills Without Crushing Your Confidence  

Few things can ruin a good run like turning a corner and facing a towering hill. You were making good time! You were flying along and everything felt great and the robot lady on your running app was whispering excellent numbers into your ear. Now that all comes to an end. You must trudge.

Hills are as much a mental challenge as a physical one. If you fear hills, it's hard to get better at running them. Maybe you can't turn off gravity, but you can change the way you think.

Remember That Everybody Is Slow On Hills

This is an especially important point in races, and anytime you're running with other people. No matter how much you slow down, remember that everyone else is slowing down too. Even the people that have their heads high and look like they're breathing easy. Those people know how to run hills (and soon you will, too) but gravity applies to them just as it does to you. They are fighting to chug up the hill. They are much slower, now, than they were on the flat a few minutes ago. That's normal.

So don't be discouraged that you, too, slow down when you hit a hill. Just like the speedsters are faster than you on the flat, some people will be faster than you on a hill. When people start passing you, you can't wish yourself stronger. All you can do is use the strength that you have today, however much or how little that might be.

Keep Your Rhythm

We've explained hill running techniques before, but one part is crucial: you can't let yourself work harder on the hill than on flat ground. Does that sound impossible? Remember, you're slower on the hills. You know this, so you're allowing yourself to go slow. Even embarassingly slow. (But now that you understand this, you won't be embarrassed.) You must go so slow that the hill no longer feels difficult.

http://vitals.lifehacker.com/how-to-run-hil...

The easiest way to do this is to listen to the rhythm of your footsteps. When the road starts to slope upwards, keep that rhythm the same, but make your strides smaller. It may feel like you're only moving by an inch with each step. That's okay. You're still moving.

It only takes about ten seconds to gauge whether your steps are small enough. If you're out of breath, try again: step even smaller. You need to find the place where you're not working any harder than you would be on flat ground.

What if you're stepping so small that it would be faster to just walk? There are two answers to this. If you're in a race, do whatever is faster for the same effort. On very steep hills, that might be walking. But if you're on a training run where pace isn't super important, practice running even if you're slow. That will build the right muscles so someday soon you will be able to run faster.

If you end up walking because you started up the hill too fast, that's okay. Walking does not mean giving up. Keep up the same effort level as when you were jogging on the flat. Stay strong. Keep climbing.

Don't Look Up

Now that you're locked in to the perfect pace, do not look up. Hold your head high, because that's good running form, but don't pay attention to the top of the hill. There are two reasons for this.

First, the top of the hill is an illusion. If you pick a spot that looks like the top, and decide your effort will be over when you reach that spot, you'll find when you arrive that you are not at the top after all.

Second, this isn't a sprint with a finish line. You chose a pace that feels easy, so you shouldn't be longing for the stretch to end. I once tried to explain this to my son in terms of the fable about the tortoise and the hare. You don't want to sprint like the hare, because you'll get tired, I said. But before I could blurt out some advice about going “slow,” he explained it better than I could. “OK, not rabbit fast,” he said. “I'll go turtle fast.”

You can go turtle fast forever. It doesn't matter how far away the top of the hill is. It could be ten paces, it could be ten miles. You're going, and that's all that counts. Don't look up.

Pretend That Hills Are Your Superpower

When you tell yourself that you're good at hills, it becomes true. Skeptical? Go out and run a small hill this week. Use these techniques and try to make your climb feel easy and great. Now, stick that happy easy hill run into your mental highlight reel. The next time you hit a monster hill, smile. You know hills. You're good at hills. You've got this.

http://vitals.lifehacker.com/make-a-mental-...

Even with that minimal preparation, you have a real advantage over the hill-phobes: confidence. They fear the hill and stop, walk, feel defeated, feel that they failed. You hit the same hill and slow down, but you are in your element. You are not afraid to keep moving. You respect the hill, but you conquer it.

Illustration by Angelica Alzona.

 
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Trapped  
How much suffering can you stand to watch?

The raccoon is trapped in a shallow creek, her paw ensnared by the hidden steel jaws on the ground below the water. She gasps for air and tries to survive, even as the trapper slams her face with his wooden pole... and then slams again. She gasps for air as he uses that pole to force her head beneath the surface, seconds ticking away... but death does not come. She gasps for air as the trapper steps on her awkwardly, searching for the right angle to keep her submerged. With inexplicable resilience, she battles death. You can see it in her eyes: unfathomable fear and utter helplessness.

The coyote is innocently walking through a field, as he may have done hundreds of times before. He is bewildered by the searing pain on his paw. He can't move. Minute after minute, he struggles, mud starting to encase his precious fur as he falls on his side. You can see that he is starting to lose his breath. You can see that he is starting to lose his will. The trapper approaches. A swift kick in the coyote's side. Why? You can see it in his eyes: unfathomable fear and utter helplessness.

How much suffering can you stand to watch... and do nothing?

The trapping industry is barbaric and archaic, fundamentally unchanged for centuries. Steel-jaw leghold traps set out for unsuspecting furbearers on both public and private lands. Jaws slamming shut to cause agony to the trappers' prey. Conibear traps baited to attract their victims and crush their backs, stomachs, or necks. The fur industry causes shameful and unnecessary suffering to feed a business that should finally die.

And, while Born Free USA has worked for years to stop cruel trapping in the National Wildlife Refuge System, we now applaud Congressional representatives Alma Adams (D-NC) and Nita Lowey (D-NY) for introducing the Public Safety and Wildlife Protection Act (H.R. 5560), which would ban the import, export, and interstate transport of Conibear and steel-jaw leghold traps (including all modifications: padded, toothed, enclosed foothold, "dog-proof" foothold, etc.). It would also ban the purchase or acquisition of any leghold or Conibear trap that was transported illegally.

Nearly 90% of American trappers use these devices that cause such distress, misery, suffering, and death. These traps are indiscriminate, so, despite being set for a beaver or a coyote, other animals--including people's companion animals--could be caught instead.

People can be harmed, as well. One of the inspirations behind Congresswoman Adams' support for H.R. 5560 was the story of a 12-year-old boy who got his arm caught in a Conibear trap in Whitsett, North Carolina (just outside of her district). The boy suffered tissue damage and had a very bad, very long day in the emergency room, as six doctors tried to figure out how to release his arm from the trap.

Upon introduction of the bill, Congresswoman Adams stated, "The preservation of human life and wildlife is a priority that lawmakers must take seriously. We can no longer afford to disregard the ill-effects that animal cruelty has on our ecosystem and on us, as well. Steel-jaw leghold and Conibear traps are body-gripping tools that are inhumane and archaic. They also pose unnecessary risks to humans, especially young children."

In the U.S., more than four million animals are trapped every year for their fur. Shockingly, the trapping industry is growing: increasing by 20% over the past decade. It's not an important source of household income, though. It's "sport"; it's a hobby or recreation. It's also shockingly pathetic, arrogant, and barbaric. I think that warrants repeating... Trapping is shockingly pathetic, arrogant, and barbaric.

The time has come to rid the U.S. of the trapping industry. No one needs fur except the wolves, coyotes, beavers, foxes, mink, raccoons, and other animals who live in wild areas.

Today, I'm asking you to support legislation aimed at banning or restricting this industry. Don't buy real fur, and consider boycotting stores that sell it. Better yet; shop at stores that are officially fur free.

How much suffering can you help end?

Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Adam

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Tyson's Pollution Pathways: from Factory Farms to Fouled Waters  


With the passing of July 4th, summer is officially in high gear in America. Perhaps more than any other time of year, this is when we enjoy clean water -- swimming at the beach, fishing in a creek, kayaking down a river, or sailing on a lake or bay.

Unfortunately, corporate agribusiness is imposing a heavy - and growing - toll on America's waterways. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture is the probable cause of polluting more than 145,000 miles of rivers and streams, along with over 1 million acres of lakes, bays, and more.

Last year, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined--the largest since 2002. And now, agribusiness is even threatening our drinking water - with incidents from Toledo to Des Moines, from Wisconsin to Washington State.

How did we get to the point where companies selling us food are polluting our water?

The answer lies in the industrialization and concentration of their agribusiness operations. Factory farms produce huge volumes of manure with no place to put it. That manure is frequently over-applied to cropland, where it all too often flows into nearby rivers and streams. Moreover, pollution also runs off of vast acres of commodity crops (often grown to feed the millions of animals on factory farms). And finally, the huge slaughterhouses and other facilities to process meat and grain dump pollutants directly into our rivers and streams.

To better hold agribusiness accountable, we need to start tracking the pollution threats created by individual companies.

For example, Tyson Foods, Inc. is one of the world's largest producers of meat and poultry. Based in Springdale, Arkansas, the company has long been a dominant player in the region's high concentration of chicken production. It has additional operations in the Midwest and the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Environment America Research & Policy Center recently took a look at how Tyson's water pollution footprint stacks up against four other major agribusiness companies: Smithfield, Cargill, JBS, and Perdue. We published the results in our new report, "Corporate Agribusiness and the Fouling of America's Waterways."



Using data available from EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we documented the manure load and direct dumping of toxic pollutants by each of these corporations. For both measurements, Tyson came out on top of the polluter pile - with more than 55 million tons of manure in its supply chain, and its facilities responsible for dumping 104 million pounds of toxic pollutants into waterways over a five-year period.

To put this second figure in perspective: Tyson's toxic discharges for these years were 2nd by volume, as compared to all other industries. That is, Tyson not only dumped more toxic pollution into waters than Smithfield or Perdue; Tyson dumped a greater volume of pollution into our waters than Exxon, DuPont, or Koch Industries.

Moreover, the vast majority of toxic pollutants Tyson poured from its processing plants were nitrates. Nitrates not only contribute to the dead zones plaguing our waterways but also threaten the safety of our drinking water, as they can cause "blue baby syndrome" and have recently been linked to certain types of cancer.

Tyson's pollution has had particularly severe impacts on the waters of northwest Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. When chicken manure contaminated two sources of drinking water for Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tyson and other poultry processors agreed to pay the city $7.5 million. And when the Illinois River and several tributaries became so polluted with pathogens from animal waste that they were no longer safe for swimming, the Oklahoma attorney general sued Tyson and several other chicken processors to clean it up.

Since then, Tyson has been charged with numerous violations and pollution incidents. In 2015, for example, Tyson settled a case in Missouri for releases into a municipal sewage system that ultimately resulted in killing at least 100,000 fish in Clear Creek.

Will Tyson begin to curb its massive water pollution footprint?

So far, the signs are not encouraging. While the company's environment webpage highlights efforts to address water consumption, it has no reference to water pollution. Moreover, Tyson's own 2015 sustainability report shows that the company exceeded water pollution limits on hundreds of occasions in recent years. Finally, in the past two years, Tyson has twice rejected shareholder resolutions calling on the company to reduce its water pollution.



Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. We know how to grow food without polluting our water.

Take second-generation Missouri farmer, Terry Spence. Terry raises his cattle on rotational pasture to nurture the soil and keep manure from flowing into nearby streams.

"As a farmer it is my duty to preserve our land and water resources for future generations," he said during a recent call with reporters. "And it's high time these companies look beyond their profit margins and do the same."

We couldn't agree more. It's time to protect our rivers and streams - and our drinking water - from the pollution of agribusiness giants like Tyson.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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The cruelty of cloning endangered animals | Letters  

Harvesting the eggs, sperm and tissue of endangered animals for future cloning is a good plot for a horror film, but not reality (Report, 5 July). We need to spend time and resources on saving existing animals whose natural habitats are fast disappearing, rather than trying to resurrect them. Cloning animals after they've vanished from nature is fraught with problems, such as severe birth defects, premature degenerative diseases and poor immunity. If wild animals were cloned, they would likely end up in zoos, denied the opportunity to do almost anything natural and enjoyable, just like the polar bears, elephants and other animals currently kept captive. It is inarguably urgent to save threatened species' habitats, but inflicting pain and torture is not the answer. If Dolly has taught us one thing, it's that cloning animals belongs only in sci-fi stories.
Jennifer White
London

• Join the debate email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Continue reading...  
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Sunset over London  

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Matrix'-Style Skill Transfer Is Possible With Electrical Brain Stimulation  
This article was originally posted on Inverse.



By Yasmin Tayag

What if becoming a pilot was as simple as putting on a cap?

That's the question posed at the beginning of a video from HRL Laboratories, a company attempting to develop Matrix-style brain uploading using electrical brain stimulation techniques.

In their latest study, researchers successfully used a technique called transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS, to "transfer" brain activity from expert pilots to beginners. If their results, published in the latest issue of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, are any indication, it looks like we're all on the way to becoming like Neo, expressing surprise that we know the proverbial "kung fu."

Imagine brain activity as a skull-shaped map of electrical currents: People who are better at certain tasks -- say, landing a virtual plane -- are going to have very different natural patterns of electrical activity than the rest of us when it comes to actually applying those skills. It's a good thing, then, that we've figured out other ways to run electricity through our brains.



Using customized skullcaps, fitted with electrodes, the researchers zapped the brains of novice pilots with the brain patterns of six flight experts, hoping they could improve their performance during flight simulation training.

In particular, the researchers focused on stimulating the brains' right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is known to be linked to working memory.

They found that novices who received four consecutive days of brain-zapping showed a 33 percent increase in skill consistency during flight simulations compared to those who got fake brain stimulation, suggesting that TDCS really did improve learning.

Picking up a new skill, like landing a plane, takes both time spent actively practicing and "offline" days spent consolidating those experiences. While the researchers aren't changing up the learning process altogether -- the novice pilots still had to go through training -- they suggest that TDCS can cut down on the time it takes to complete the learning process.

The field is still in its infancy -- it's still largely the domain of DIY brain zappers -- but the researchers are hoping that their research could someday help people with traumatic brain injuries re-learn essential skills.

At this rate, it won't be long until we all know kung fu.




MORE FROM INVERSE:

• No, Netflix Doesn't Make You Hate Commercials More
• 
  
• How the Internet's Favorite Cloud Works
• 
  
• China Has Built the World's Largest Alien-Hunting Telescope
• 
  
• The Future of Social VR Could Open the Headset's Isolated World
• 
  
• 10 of Elon Musk's Craziest Quotes From 2016

Photos via https://www.facebook.com/TheMatrixMovie/

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Juno Enters Jupiter's Orbit, Capping 5-Year Voyage  
A signal from the spacecraft Monday night confirmed that it arrived at the planet, on a mission NASA hopes will yield clues to the origins of our solar system.  
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What to Expect When NASA's Spacecraft Juno Gets to Jupiter  
Juno will orbit the gas giant 37 times in 20 months, with the hopes that it will collect data and images that offer clues to the origins of our solar system.  
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A Space Pioneer, 79, Is Ready to Track Juno for NASA  
Susan G. Finley, whose career with NASA spans more than five decades, will monitor signals from the explorer Juno on the Fourth of July, when it is expected to reach Jupiter.  
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NASA Announces Extension of 9 Spacecraft Missions  
As the spacecraft Juno approaches Jupiter, NASA has decided to extend the lives of several older explorers, including one orbiting Ceres, the dwarf planet.  
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a case with a gramophone by Anka Zhuravleva  

a case with a gramophone by Anka Zhuravleva

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Wish you were here by Yuichi Sahacha  

Wish you were here by Yuichi Sahacha

Lavender field with a girl in Valensole, Provence,France.

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Coffee wins!

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1887 by Gabriele Vinci

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Infinite Horizon by George Christakis

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Osaka City by Vic Tsui

Osaka City

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I Think We're Haunted by Michelle Magnoli  

I Think We're Haunted by Michelle Magnoli

Self-portrait. Living in a toxic enviornment is getting to me. My only hope is that it will make me a better artist.

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r0B0t: Washington University to train locusts to 'sniff out explosives' - Daily Mail  

Daily Mail

Washington University to train locusts to 'sniff out explosives' Daily Mail A team of engineers from Washington University in St. Louis hopes to breed 'cyberinsects' tuned to smell out explosives. Wing tattoos will allow researchers to steer the insects remotely. HOW IT WILL WORK. Researchers hope to develop and demonstrate a ... Cyborg locusts being developed to sniff out explosivesITV News Scientist Wants to Engineer Locusts Into Remote-Controlled Bomb DetectorsGizmodo Why is the Navy paying to engineer hordes of tattooed robot locusts?TrustedReviews BBC News -The Stack -Telegraph.co.uk -Engadget all 12 news articles »

 
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r0B0t: Amazon moves one step closer toward army of warehouse robots - The Guardian  

The Guardian

Amazon moves one step closer toward army of warehouse robots The Guardian Kiva robots transport goods at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, ahead of the Christmas rush, in Tracy, California in 2014. Photograph: Noah Berger/Reuters. Sam Thielman in New York. @samthielman. Tuesday 5 July 2016 15.15 EDT Last modified on Tuesday ... Amazon robot competition won by shelf stacking AI that could one day be used in warehousesThe Independent Team Delft Wins Amazon Picking ChallengeIEEE Spectrum Amazon robots close to replacing the rest of warehouse workersExtremeTech The Verge -BBC News -Engadget -Tech News Today all 23 news articles »

 
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Stonewall National Monument - Celebrating Love Over Hate  


On Monday, my teenage daughter and I attended a powerful dedication of our nation's newest addition to the National Park System, the Stonewall National Monument. President Obama designated this new national monument to celebrate and remind all of us of the great courage and commitment of gay right activists almost 50 years ago.

During the 1960's, the Stonewall Inn bar in lower Manhattan was one of the few places in our nation where lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people could safely convene, dance and recapture the humanity that was too often denied them in the rest of their lives. A police raid of the bar in 1969 elevated Stonewall as a national icon and spurred the gay rights movement across America and other parts of the world. The Stonewall monument designation on Monday also marks the one year anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision making same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. Today, the LGBTQ movement is seen as a powerful civil rights effort, creating equality and dignity for all.

Yet as we celebrated this newest national monument, many of the speakers also reminded us that we must remain vigilant in stopping hate crimes. The horrible mass shooting in the LGBTQ Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were killed is a poignant reminder that such hatred towards LGBTQ people remains very real and deadly.

For me, this act of hatred and violence made me recall the horrific murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. My wife and I lived in Laramie, Wyoming in the 1990's. The brutal beating by two men, who then left Matthew to die tied to a fencepost, was a hate crime that shattered our sense of Laramie as a small, safe town. It was an eye-opening glimpse into the cruelty faced by those targeted for their sexualized identity.

Eleven years after Matthew Shepard's murder, President Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard Act that extended hate crime protections to LGBTQ people. Also, less than one year after Matthew's murder, my daughter was born. Today, 17 years later, being at the Stonewall designation instilled in her an affirmation of her value and place in our country and as a member of the LGBTQ rights movement.

The Stonewall National Monument will always remind us that our nation's history is complex and vivid. Adding the important history of Stonewall Inn to our National Park System validates our parks as places for and about all Americans. They are places where we come together to celebrate life, heal our wounds, and remember those that put it all on the line to protect our democracy.

Join me in thanking President Obama for yet another gift to America!

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