#daytime temperatures will be our current nighttime ones

[rubiatinctorum]

uh oh we're going into single digit degree days :(

[nasa]

Amazing Earth: Satellite Images from 2020

In the vastness of the universe, the life-bringing beauty of our home planet shines bright. During this tumultuous year, our satellites captured some pockets of peace, while documenting data and striking visuals of unprecedented natural disasters. As 2020 comes to a close, we’re diving into some of the devastation, wonders, and anomalies this year had to offer. 

NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites and instruments on the International Space Station unravel the complexities of the blue marble from a cosmic vantage point. These robotic scientists orbit our globe constantly, monitoring and notating changes, providing crucial information to researchers here on the ground. 

Take a glance at 2020 through the lens of NASA satellites:

 A Delta Oasis in Southeastern Kazakhstan

Seen from space, the icy Ili River Delta contrasts sharply with the beige expansive deserts of southeastern Kazakhstan.

When the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this natural-color image on March 7, 2020, the delta was just starting to shake off the chill of winter. While many of the delta’s lakes and ponds were still frozen, the ice on Lake Balkhash was breaking up, revealing swirls of sediment and the shallow, sandy bed of the western part of the lake.

The expansive delta and estuary is an oasis for life year round. Hundreds of plant and animal species call it home, including dozens that are threatened or endangered. 

Fires and Smoke Engulf Southeastern Australia

A record-setting and deadly fire season marred the beginning of the year in Australia. Residents of the southeastern part of the country told news media about daytime seeming to turn to night, as thick smoke filled the skies and intense fires drove people from their homes. 

This natural-color image of Southeastern Australia was acquired on January 4, 2020, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The smoke has a tan color, while clouds are bright white. It is likely that some of the white patches above the smoke are pyrocumulonimbus clouds—clouds created by the convection and heat rising from a fire.

Nighttime Images Capture Change in China

A team of scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Universities Space Research Association (USRA) detected signs of the shutdown of business and transportation around Hubei province in central China. As reported by the U.S. State Department, Chinese authorities suspended air, road, and rail travel in the area and placed restrictions on other activities in late January 2020 in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the region.

A research team analyzed images of Earth at night to decipher patterns of energy use, transportation, migration, and other economic and social activities. Data for the images were acquired with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA–NASA Suomi NPP satellite (launched in 2011) and processed by GSFC and USRA scientists. VIIRS has a low-light sensor—the day/night band—that measures light emissions and reflections. This capability has made it possible to distinguish the intensity, types, and sources of lights and to observe how they change.

The Parched Paraná River

Though a seemingly serene oasis from above, there is more to this scene than meets the eye. On July 3, 2020, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this false-color image of the river near Rosario, a key port city in Argentina. The combination of shortwave infrared and visible light makes it easier to distinguish between land and water. A prolonged period of unusually warm weather and drought in southern Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina dropped the Paraná River to its lowest water levels in decades. The parched river basin has hampered shipping and contributed to an increase in fire activity in the delta and floodplain.

The drought has affected the region since early 2020, and low water levels have grounded several ships, and many vessels have had to reduce their cargo in order to navigate the river. With Rosario serving as the distribution hub for much of Argentina’s soy and other farm exports, low water levels have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the grain sector, according to news reports.

Historic Fires Devastate the U.S. Pacific Coast

Climate and fire scientists have long anticipated that fires in the U.S. West would grow larger, more intense, and more dangerous. But even the most experienced among them have been at a loss for words in describing the scope and intensity of the fires burning in West Coast states during September 2020.

Lightning initially triggered many of the fires, but it was unusual and extreme meteorological conditions that turned some of them into the worst conflagrations in the region in decades. 

Throughout the outbreak, sensors like the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite collected daily images showing expansive, thick plumes of aerosol particles blowing throughout the U.S. West on a scale that satellites and scientists rarely see. 

This image shows North America on September 9th, 2020, as a frontal boundary moved into the Great Basin and produced very high downslope winds along the mountains of Washington, Oregon, and California. The winds whipped up the fires, while a pyrocumulus cloud from the Bear fire in California injected smoke high into the atmosphere. The sum of these events was an extremely thick blanket of smoke along the West Coast.

The Sandy Great Bahama Bank

Though the bright blues of island waters are appreciated by many from a sea-level view, their true beauty is revealed when photographed from space. The underwater masterpiece photographed above is composed of sand dunes off the coast of the Bahamas. 

The Great Bahama Bank was dry land during past ice ages, but it slowly submerged as sea levels rose. Today, the bank is covered by water, though it can be as shallow as two meters (seven feet) deep in places. The wave-shaped ripples in the image are sand on the seafloor. The curves follow the slopes of the dunes, which were likely shaped by a fairly strong current near the sea bottom. Sand and seagrass are present in different quantities and depths, giving the image it’s striking range of blues and greens.

This image was captured on February 15th, 2020, by Landsat 8, whose predecessor, Landsat 7, was the first land-use satellite to take images over coastal waters and the open ocean. Today, many satellites and research programs map and monitor coral reef systems, and marine scientists have a consistent way to observe where the reefs are and how they are faring. 

Painting Pennsylvania Hills

Along with the plentiful harvest of crops in North America, one of the gifts of Autumn is the gorgeous palette of colors created by the chemical transition and fall of leaves from deciduous trees. 

The folded mountains of central Pennsylvania were past peak leaf-peeping season but still colorful when the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite passed over on November 9, 2020. The natural-color image above shows the hilly region around State College, Pennsylvania overlaid on a digital elevation model to highlight the topography of the area.

The region of rolling hills and valleys is part of a geologic formation known as the Valley and Ridge Province that stretches from New York to Alabama. These prominent folds of rock were mostly raised up during several plate tectonic collisions and mountain-building episodes in the Ordovician Period and later in the creation of Pangea—when what is now North America was connected with Africa in a supercontinent. Those events created the long chain of the Appalachians, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. 

A Dangerous Storm in the Night

Ominous and looming, a powerful storm hovered off the US coastline illuminated against the dark night hues. 

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NOAA-20 acquired this image of Hurricane Laura at 2:20 a.m. Central Daylight Time on August 26, 2020. Clouds are shown in infrared using brightness temperature data, which is useful for distinguishing cooler cloud structures from the warmer surface below. That data is overlaid on composite imagery of city lights from NASA’s Black Marble dataset.

Hurricane Laura was among the ten strongest hurricanes to ever make landfall in the United States. Forecasters had warned of a potentially devastating storm surge up to 20 feet along the coast, and the channel might have funneled that water far inland. It did not. The outcome was also a testament to strong forecasting and communication by the National Hurricane Center and local emergency management authorities in preparing the public for the hazards.

A Windbreak Grid in Hokkaido

From above, the Konsen Plateau in eastern Hokkaido offers a remarkable sight: a massive grid that spreads across the rural landscape like a checkerboard, visible even under a blanket of snow. Photographed by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, this man-made design is not only aesthetically pleasing, it’s also an agricultural insulator. 

The strips are forested windbreaks—180-meter (590-foot) wide rows of coniferous trees that help shelter grasslands and animals from Hokkaido’s sometimes harsh weather. In addition to blocking winds and blowing snow during frigid, foggy winters, they help prevent winds from scattering soil and manure during the warmer months in this major dairy farming region of Japan. 

Shadows from a Solar Eclipse

Formidable, rare, and awe-inspiring — the first and only total solar eclipse of 2020 occurred on December 14, with the path of totality stretching from the equatorial Pacific to the South Atlantic and passing through southern Argentina and Chile as shown in the lower half of the image above. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 16 (GOES-16) captured these images of the Moon’s shadow crossing the face of Earth. 

The “path of totality” (umbral path) for the eclipse was roughly 90 kilometers (60 miles) wide and passed across South America from Saavedra, Chile, to Salina del Eje, Argentina. While a total eclipse of the Sun occurs roughly every 18 months, seeing one from any particular location on Earth is rare. On average, a solar eclipse passes over the same parcel of land roughly every 375 years. The next total solar eclipse will occur on December 4, 2021 over Antarctica, and its next appearance over North America is projected for April 8, 2024.

For additional information and a look at more images like these visit NASA’s Earth Observatory.  

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

[fortunatelyfresco]

A Holistic Integration of Type 1 Narcolepsy into the Reading of Moist von Lipwig

Literary Interpretation, Disability, and Finding Yourself Between the Lines

As it goes, "I wrote this for me, but you can read it if you want." It might be a fun ride for anyone who is very interested in Moist von Lipwig, or narcolepsy, or both, and/or anyone who enjoys collecting small details from within a body of work and arranging them into threads that are supportable by the text, without being actually suggested by it.

Personally, I find it very interesting to read the meta behind different headcanons, and see how creators can unintentionally write a character who fits certain criteria. There are only so many traits, after all, and some of them tend to travel in groups! Humans are pattern seekers, etc etc.

The first step of reading Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic is wanting to read Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic. Being narcoleptic myself and relating heavily to Moist, this step was very easy. I invite you to take my hand and come along, at least briefly, if you were interested enough to click the readmore.

Once you have taken that step, things start falling into place. At least they do if you're intimately familiar with narcolepsy, or if you first learn about it in detail through, for instance, a Tumblr post with an agenda :)

I'll break this down symptom by symptom, citing only the ones I both have personal experience with and see textual support for.

I'll be using OverDrive's search function to catalogue "evidence" in (the American editions of) Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam, so I might miss passages that don't use certain keywords.

Please take any statements along the lines of "being narcoleptic means X" with a huge grain of salt. Sometimes it's just more succinct. Narcolepsy can manifest in many different ways, and is still being actively studied. Don't base your entire understanding of it on a fandom essay I wrote to cope with the crushing pressures of capitalism. I have not even fully read the scientific studies linked here as sources.

Here we go! Spoilers abound.

I. Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) and sleep attacks.

Being narcoleptic means (salt now, please) that your brain does not get adequate rest while you sleep, no matter how much you sleep. This is because of a disturbance in the order and length of REM and NREM sleep phases. This leads to constant exhaustion. Some sources describe narcoleptic EDS as "comparable to [the sleepiness] experienced by a healthy individual who has been sleep-deprived continuously for 48–72 hours."

(Source.)

Sleep attacks can come on gradually or suddenly. In my case, I become irritable and easily overwhelmed, and nothing matters except finding a place to lie down. A more severe attack, under the right circumstances, can put me to sleep while I'm actively trying to stay awake and engaged.

Moist refers to 6:45 am as "still nighttime." He is "allergic to the concept of two seven o'clocks in one day" and is "not good at early mornings," and the narration even cites this as "one of the advantages of a life of crime; you didn't have to get up until other people had got the streets aired."

In Going Postal, he repeatedly falls asleep at his desk. I can only find two instances, but the first one describes it as having happened "again," so it happens at least three times over the course of one week. Both of the times I found were after Mr. Pump cleared his apartment, giving him access to a bed, and I can't find any reference to the fire destroying it—just that his office is "missing the whole of one wall." His presumably wooden desk is still intact, even, just "charred."

There's also no build-up either time. No direct narration of the time right before he falls asleep, just retroactive accounting for it.

Which is primarily a function of stories not showing us every boring second, and secondarily one of the smaller ways we're shown Moist being overwhelmed and racing to keep up with himself, but tertiarily it's a great set dressing if you've already decided he's narcoleptic. Sometimes sleep is just a thing that happens, without any deliberate transition. Sometimes you sit down to catch your breath or get some paperwork done, and wake up several hours later.

I've found only one example in GP of Moist waking up in his actual bed at the post office: the morning after being possessed by all the undelivered letters. Presumably either they put him there, or Mr. Pump did.

There are two points in Making Money where Moist, in an effort to be a comforting and/or guiding hand, advises people to get some sleep. First Owlswick Jenkins, and then one of the clerks (Robert) who is worried about Mr. Bent.

I take the optimistic view that this is Moist genuinely caring about these people, not just trying to get them to do what he wants. He has always done some combination of those things (GP opens with him having befriended his jailers, after all), but there's definitely a thread of him learning to treat both himself and those around him more like real people. (See also.)

Looking at this thread through narcolepsy-colored lenses, you get Moist perhaps drawing from his own experiences in an effort to be helpful. In Owlswick or Robert's position, what is something he would want to hear from the man currently in charge of his fate, or at least his job? "Get some sleep."

If we accept this as a pattern, it culminates in Raising Steam, when Moist starts to worry about "Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers," fixating particularly on their lack of sleep.

What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going.

[...]

"People are going to die if we push them any further," he said to Dick. "You lot would rather work than sleep!"

[...]

The young man swayed in front of him and Moist's tone became gentle. "And I see now that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You've run out of steam, Dick. Look, we're well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it's daylight and we're out of the mountains it's going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We're all going to need our wits about us when we get near the pass. Surely you can take some rest?"

Simnel blinked as if he'd not seen Moist the first time, and said, "Yes, you're right."

And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man's speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed, and noted that the engineer didn't so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it.

Moist then recruits Vimes to help him talk the rest of the engineers into getting some rest. The two of them briefly commiserate about people not realizing how important it is.

"I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night's rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can."

"Very good."

II. Insomnia.

This is a lesser-known but very common symptom of narcolepsy. Or a comorbidity, depending on how you look at it. It seems counterintuitive if narcolepsy has been presented to you as "sleeping all the time," but it makes sense once you know it's really a matter of disruption in the brain's ability to regulate sleep cycles.

The case for this symptom is flimsier, and I fully admit I'm just reading my own experience into it. But here are two excerpts from Going Postal that I find quite suitable for my sleepy agenda:

1. "A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall's thickness away."

I latched hard onto this detail the first time I read GP.

At my worst, I could not get more than a couple hours of sleep in my bed. I kept taking naps in the bath because it was one of the few places I could sleep. It seemed to fulfill some of the criteria (isolation, temperature control, etc) that my brain demanded in exchange for playing nice.

We're told over and over again, throughout Moist's books, that he functions best under pressure.

(Brief aside: This is often cited as a reason to interpret Moist as having ADHD, which I'm also fully on board with. Not coincidentally, narcolepsy and ADHD share a few symptoms, have a notable comorbidity rate, and are treated with some of the same medications. Source.)

So again, if you're already inclined to read Moist as narcoleptic, the following is an easy jump:

"Moist thinks he's good at sleeping in strange places under strange circumstances. This is because A) his basis for comparison is a disordered attempt to sleep in normal places under normal circumstances, B) something about danger satisfies his brain into running more smoothly, and C) he's a resourceful person who is 'not given to introspection,' and so is less likely to wonder why his body demands sleep at strange times and more likely to focus on finding a place for that sleep to happen, and chalk this up later as a skill."

And returning briefly to EDS: Why would someone like Moist waste time finding a safe place to sleep while people are actively trying to kill him? At the beginning of GP, he leaves Vetinari's office and immediately goes on the run. In multiple books, when he feels threatened, his brain instinctively launches into complex escape plans. We see him successfully blend into an Ankh-Morpork crowd at least once after becoming a public figure.

So why bother? After all, a safe place to sleep is also a safe place to change clothes, or at least remove whatever distinguishing features he's given himself. Why wouldn't he just become someone else and leave town immediately?

The obvious answer is that sometimes things just happen, and an author doesn't need to know or explain every single detail of a character's past.

I would suggest, though, that one of those things might be Moist reaching a point where sleep is just not optional. A point where he not only doesn't, but can't, care about anything else. Where he is too tired to think straight, too tired to talk his way out of trouble, too tired to even contemplate the long journey from one town to the next.

2. "Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there, too, alive and sparkling."

Sometimes (especially in combination with underlying mental health issues) narcoleptic sleep deprivation can bypass everything I've described so far, and lead straight into a manic state. You won't necessarily find that on Google, but it's been my experience.

That's obviously not what the text is implying. "Alive and sparkling" is just a very relatable description. And we do often see Moist getting away from himself, speaking without thinking, making absurd promises that he justifies immediately afterwards as Just Part Of Being Him, always raising the stakes.

And here are a couple of excerpts from Raising Steam that could be interpreted as Moist being a light sleeper, AKA struggling to get deep sleep:

1. "And slowly Moist shut down, although a part of him was always listening to the rhythm of the rails, listening in his sleep, like a sailor listening to the sounds of the sea."

2. "All Moist's life he'd managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard's van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn't know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open."

Moist is exactly the kind of opportunist to see that as a useful tool, isn't he?

III. Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations.

These are hallucinations that come on as you're falling asleep or waking up. They can also happen during REM intrusions while you're awake. My most memorable ones include piano notes, someone calling my name, being trapped in the waves of a large body of water, and a huge truck going over a guard rail and tumbling down a hill. These are often, but not always, accompanied by sleep paralysis (and sleep paralysis is often, but not always, accompanied by hallucinations).

In GP, Moist casually cites his own hallucinations as proof that what is happening at the post office is not one.

"They're all alive! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I've had hallucinations and they don't hurt!"

Obviously that's not true for everyone, but it's true for Moist, and he has enough experience that he immediately recognizes the difference.

At one point while awake, Moist "[snaps] out of a dream of chandeliers" to realize someone has approached him to talk, while he was busy having visions of what the post office used to look like/could look like again.

Now, that's cheating, because we're probably supposed to assume it's a side effect of being possessed, but... I'm putting it here anyway.

There is also perhaps a case to be made for the tendency of Moist's internal monologue to lapse into extremely specific and prolonged hypotheticals. The lines between hallucinations, waking dreams, and "regular" daydreams have always been very blurry to me. I'm especially curious about the example at the end of Going Postal, which goes like this:

"Look, I know what I'm like," he said. "I'm not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I'm not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I'm still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can't tell. I mess with people's heads—"

"You're fooling no one but yourself," said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.

Moist shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city, and back to his old life, or lives, always moving on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn't seem to work anymore, the flair wasn't there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn't seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall—

And an angel appeared.

"What just happened?" said Miss Dearheart.

Perhaps you do get two...

"Only a passing thought," said Moist.

In-universe... what is Adora reacting to? What did just happen? The fact that these incidents are not isolated to Going Postal is a point against it being some sort of literal timeline divergence caused by The Spirit Of The Post.

So maybe Moist visibly zoned out. Maybe he had some kind of minor but noticeable cataplexy attack (more on those later) as part of a REM intrusion, brought on by the intense emotions he's currently struggling with.

IV. Vivid Dreams.

Again, at least some of this is probably supposed to be part of the possession, but I've been professionally projecting myself onto the surreal dreams of magically afflicted characters for years. Do try this at home.

1. "Moist dreamed of bottled wizards, all shouting his name. In the best tradition of awaking from a nightmare, the voices gradually became one voice, which turned out to be the voice of Mr. Pump, who was shaking him."

2. Moist is uneasy about the Smoking Gnu's plan, and then he has an extremely detailed dream about the Grand Trunk burning down.

This culminates in "Moist awoke, the Grand Trunk burning in his head," followed by a paragraph of him thinking things through and starting to form his own alternative plan, followed immediately by "Moist awoke. He was at his desk, and someone had put a pillow under his head."

So he fell asleep at his desk, woke up from a vivid nightmare, was awake just long enough for a coherent train of thought, and then passed back out. Which once again is not "proof" of anything, but fits the predetermined interpretation like a glove.

V. Cataplexy.

Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle control, usually triggered by strong emotions. This is thought to be a facet of REM intrusion—waking instances of the atonia that is meant to stop us from acting out our dreams.

The most well-known manifestation is laughter making your knees buckle, but it's not always that severe. My own attacks range from facial twitching, usually when I'm angry or otherwise extremely upset, to all-over weakness/immobilization and near-collapse when I laugh. My knees have fully buckled once or twice.

This is the biggest stretch. This is the one that is absolutely only there if you've already decided to read entire novels between the lines. It's also not even necessary for the broader headcanon; plenty of people have narcolepsy without cataplexy (or such mild cataplexy that it's never noticeable, or very delayed onset, etc).

However. I am doing this for fun. So I want him to have it. It's also become a major part of how I imagine Moist engaging with emotion, and I'd like to make a case for that.

There are a few scattered references to Moist's legs shaking, or being unsteady, or outright giving way, but there's usually an external physical reason, and/or enough psychological shock to justify it without a medical condition.

The most compelling example I've found so far comes from Moist and Adora's conversation about people expecting Moist to deliver letters to the gods.

"I never promised to—"

"You promised to when you sold them the stamps!"

Moist almost fell off his chair. She'd wielded the sentence like a fist.

"And it'll give them hope," she added, rather more quietly.

"False hope," said Moist, struggling upright.

"Almost fell off his chair" at first sounds like casual hyperbole, but then "struggling upright" implies it was a bit more literal. It's also an accurate description of me recovering from my more severe attacks, supporting myself on a wall or my spouse, or pushing myself up if I've fallen over in bed.

That happens to me multiple times per day, by the way. It doesn't bother me, and I didn't realize there was anything unusual about it for a long time. I barely think about it, except to fondly note that my spouse is good at making me laugh.

Which is to say, even severe cataplexy is not always noticeable or debilitating. Sometimes it absolutely is! It can be downright dangerous, depending on where you are, what you're doing, and whether you have any other conditions it might exacerbate. I don't want to undermine that.

I am just hell-bent on justifying the idea that this fictional character could have repeated attacks throughout the canonical narrative that are so routine they don't merit an explanation, or even a description. Especially for someone who is used to hiding his few distinguishing features behind false ones that are much more memorable. (See also.)

(That link goes to my own fanfic. Sorry.)

On the milder side, between Going Postal and Making Money, there are three instances of Moist's mouth "dropping open" when he's shocked, upset, confused, or some combination of the three. This is the kind of thing that shows up a lot in fiction, but rarely happens so literally in real life.

(There's technically a fourth instance, but I'm not counting it because it seems to be a deliberate choice on his part to convey surprise.)

And then there's laughter. Or rather, there isn't. I could be missing something, but I've searched all three books for instances of laughter and various synonyms (not counting spoken "Ha!"s), and what I've come up with is:

Moist laughs once in Going Postal, when he receives the assignment for the race to Genua.

Two packages were handed over. Moist undid his, and burst out laughing.

There's also an instance earlier in the book where Moist nearly "burst[s] out laughing."

I find the specifics here interesting, and, for our purposes, fortuitous. Cataplexy is complicated and presents differently for everyone. In my case, when laughter triggers an attack, one of the effects (which is sometimes also a cause) is that I laugh very hard, with little or no control. "Burst out laughing" is quite apt.

Let's move on to Making Money, and start with a quick tangent:

Mr. Bent explains that he has no sense of humor due to a medical condition, and that he isn't upset about this and doesn't understand why people feel sorry for him.

Moist immediately starts in with "Have you tried—" before getting cut off by the frustrated Bent.

Out-of-universe, "Have you tried" is such a well-known refrain to anyone with an incurable condition, I'm not at all surprised to find it in a book written by someone who had at least begun the process that would lead to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. And Pratchett has certainly never shied away from portraying ignorance in his protagonists.

In-universe, it feels a little odd. Moist's tongue runs away from him all the time, but usually in the form of making ridiculous claims or impossible promises. Moist's entire stock-in-trade is People Skills, and it feels strange for him to make this kind of mistake immediately after being told Mr. Bent is not looking for solutions.

But if one were reading with, for instance, the idea in mind that Moist himself has an incurable condition related to laughter and is enthusiastic about, but still relatively new to, the practice of drawing on his own experiences to help people... it is easy to imagine the gears in his head turning the wrong way, superimposing those experiences over the tail end of Mr. Bent's explanation. Disabled people are not immune to these well-meaning pitfalls.

There is another Mr. Bent moment that I want to discuss, but we'll circle back around to it later.

I found two instances of Moist himself laughing in MM.

1. "He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little."

This is deliberate laughter, employed as a social tactic. A polite chuckle, probably. Not the sort of thing that generally triggers cataplexy.

2. "Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression."

The first and only involuntary laugh in MM. It doesn't always trigger attacks...

Which brings us to Raising Steam. Compared to the first two books, Moist laughs a lot here. I count nine instances. Two of them are "burst out laughing"s, a couple include him as part of a group, some of it comes off as deliberate, and some of it doesn't.

I've always seen a lot of... rage in Raising Steam. Combing through it for laughter, I realized Moist's emotions in general are much closer to the surface here, and he's much less concerned about letting people see them. He laughs with friends and acquaintances, he cries in front of strangers, he shouts at Harry King, he has that entire conversation with Dick that boils down to "I'm very worried about you," etc.

Opinions vary wildly and sharply on Raising Steam. I have my own hangups with it, as I do with most books in the series. (Every time I make a new Discworld post, Tumblr passive-aggressively suggests the tag "my kingdom for a discworld character who is normal about women and other species.")

But I like this particular change in Moist, and I choose to see it as character development. He's trading in the professional detachment of a conman for the ability to grow into himself as a person and make meaningful connections.

So, what does that have to do with cataplexy? A lot.

I don't want to get too maudlin, so I'll just say I have plenty of personal experience with emotional repression masking cataplexy symptoms. And so, I believe, does the version of Moist we've put together over the course of this post.

Which brings us back to Making Money, and Mr. Bent. He says something about Moist that I find very interesting: "I do not trust those who laugh too easily."

Unless I've missed something, at that point in the book, Moist has never actually laughed in front of him. And Mr. Bent is a man who pays very close attention to details.

So, what is the in-universe explanation for this? I'd like to propose that Moist is very skilled at seeming to laugh, without actually laughing. He smiles, he's friendly, and he makes other people laugh, which is another thing Bent dislikes about him. He gives the impression of being someone who laughs a lot. (He certainly left that impression on me; I was very surprised by the lack of examples in the first two books.)

Even staying strictly within the bounds of canon, it's easy to imagine why this might have become part of Moist's camouflage in his previous life. He wasn't looking to get attached to anyone, and he didn't want anyone getting inside his head. Engaging with people genuinely enough to laugh at their jokes would run counter to both of those things, but some of his personas still needed to come off as friendly and sociable.

Still working within the canon, it makes sense to assume he's similarly distanced himself from emotion in general. He sits in a cell for several weeks without truly believing he's going to die. He's bewildered when Mr. Pump points out that his schemes have hurt innocent people. He has no idea what to do with his feelings for Adora. Etc.

Interpreting Moist as having cataplexy adds an extra element of danger. Moist thrives on danger, but there's a difference between the thrill of a con and the threat of sudden, uncontrollable displays of vulnerability. And so it becomes even easier to see him stifling his own emotional capacity.*

We meet Moist at a moment of great upheaval. He is forcibly removed from his cocoon of false identities, and pushed out into the world as himself. And we are shown and told throughout Going Postal that he does not know how to be himself. (See also.)

He is repeatedly stymied by his own emotions. He gets tongue-tied and confused around Adora, he snaps at Mr. Pump, he lashes out at Mr. Groat, he gets lost in school flashbacks when he meets Miss Maccalariat. This thread continues in Making Money, where the sudden reappearance of Cribbins immediately rattles him into making an uncharacteristic mistake.

I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed!

Later in the same book, Moist misses a crucial opportunity to run damage control on the bank's public image... because he's excited to see Adora.

The Moist of GP and MM is not used to feeling things so deeply. It throws him off his game. I'm not at all suggesting cataplexy is the only (or even primary) reason for that, but I do think there's room for it on both sides of the cause and effect equation.

With or without the cataplexy, I find Moist's relative emotional openness in Raising Steam... really nice. (It's a work in progress. He's still getting a handle on anger.)

Cataplexy just adds another dimension. A physical manifestation of emotional vulnerability, which would have been especially untenable for a teenager on the run. Just one more facet of the real, human, fallible Moist von Lipwig who spent years buried beneath Albert Spangler and all the rest.

Another piece of himself that Moist is growing to understand and accept, as he learns to more comfortably be himself.

The Moist of Going Postal runs into a burning building to save lives without fully understanding why he wants to, and justifies it on the fly as an essential part of the role he's trying to play.

The Moist of Raising Steam mindlessly throws himself under a train to save two children, and then blows up at Harry King about the lack of safety regulations. Freshly traumatized by the murder of several railway workers and his own violent, vengeful response to it, he still offers, in the face of Harry's own grief, to be the one to inform their families. On a long and dangerous journey with plenty of moving parts to think about, he worries about Dick Simnel and the other engineers, and pushes them to take better care of themselves.

He also meets a bunch of kids who nearly derailed a train as part of a childish scheme. His admonishment is startlingly vivid.

"Can you imagine a railway accident? The screaming of the rails and the people inside and the explosion that scythes the countryside around when the boiler bursts? And you, little girl, and your little friends, would have done all that. Killed a trainload of people."

[...]

"I'll square this with the engine driver, but if I was you I'd get my pencil and turn any clever ideas you have like this into a book or two. Those penny dreadfuls are all the rage in the railway bookshops."

Maybe what he is also saying, between the lines, is:

I left home at 14 and began a life of smoke and mirrors. I was empty inside, and I thought everyone else was, too. It was all fun and games, and then a man made of clay told me I was killing people. Nip it in the bud, child. Write books.

------------

*There are studies suggesting that in addition to deliberately employed "tricks," people with cataplexy may experience physiological reactions in the brain meant to inhibit laughter. (Source 1, Source 2.)

Most of the information here is way over my head, but that second link also says "one region of the brain called the zona incerta (meaning 'zone of uncertainty') was only activated during laughter in people with narcolepsy, not in controls. Research on the zona incerta in animals suggests that it also helps to control fear-associated behavior."

The linked article about that (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03581-6) is also over my head, but I would certainly describe Moist von Lipwig as having unusual fear responses.**

**Narcolepsy is a fun roller-coaster ride of constant scientific discoveries about exactly which parts of your brain are paying too much attention, not paying enough attention, or trying to eat each other.

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

Understanding Fossil Fuels through Carnegie Museums’ Exhibits

by Albert D. Kollar, Collection Manager, with assistance from Suzanne Mills, Collection Assistant, and Joann Wilson, Volunteer Section of Invertebrate Paleontology

The exhibits of Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Carnegie Museum of Art are ideal for a multidisciplinary study of fossil fuels in Pennsylvania and beyond. Such a study must properly begin with some historical background about the landmark Oakland building that houses both museums, as well as some background information about fossil fuels.

When the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh opened in 1895, the architects, Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow incorporated roof skylights for maximum daytime lighting in the Italian Renaissance designed building¹. Nighttime activities were illuminated by interior gas lighting fixtures, possibly supplied by the Murrysville gas field, which began production in 1878. With the opening of the Carnegie Institute Extension in 1907, the Bellefield Boiler Plant was built in Junction Hollow to supply in-house steam heat and electricity from bituminous coal¹. From the 1970’s, coal and natural gas had been used to heat the boilers that supply heat to the Oakland Campus, Phipps, the University of Pittsburgh and the Oakland hospitals. In 2009 coal was eliminated as a fuel source. Electricity on the other hand, is supplied through Talen Energy from multiple sources (coal, gas, and renewable energy sources). For the future, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh plans to receive its electricity from renewable solar energy via Talen Energy².

What are Fossil Fuels?

Coal, oil, and natural gas (methane), known collectively as fossil fuels, are sources of energy derived from the remains of ancient life forms that usually are found preserved in coal rock, black shale, and sandstone.

Figure 1.

Coal is a rock. The coalification process starts from a thick accumulation of plant material in reducing environments where the organic matter does not decay completely. This deposit of plant residue that thrives in freshwater swamps at high latitudes forms peat, an early stage or rank in the development of coal. With the burial of peat over geologic time and a low temperature form of metamorphism produces a progression of the maturity or “rank” of the organic deposits that form the coal ranks of lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous, and anthracite³ (Fig. 1). The Pennsylvanian Period was named for the rocks and coals of southwestern Pennsylvania that formed more than 300 million years ago.

Oil and natural gas, collectively known as hydrocarbons, were forming in the Devonian rocks of Pennsylvania between 360 and 390 million years ago. These hydrocarbon deposits or kerogens are made of millions of generations of marine plankton and animal remains that accumulated in a restricted anoxia ocean basin that extended from southern New York, through western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia to eastern Kentucky⁴. The thick layers of sediment formed black shales or mud rocks such as the Marcellus Shale. Black shales are rich in oil and gas and are called source rocks. Sandstones such as the Oriskany Sandstone that is older than the Marcellus Shale is a reservoir rock. An amorphous mass of organic matter or kerogen undergo complex geochemical reshuffling of the hydrocarbon molecules first with burial then by thermal “cracking” as heat and pressure through the geologic process of metamorphism over millions of years transform kerogen into modern day fossil fuels⁴.

Fossil Fuels in Modern Society

As commodities converted to fuels for our modern world, these resources account for 80% of today’s energy consumption in the United States⁵. All three fossil fuels, in furnaces of vastly different design, have been used to directly heat homes, schools, workplaces, and other structures. In power plants, all three have been used for generating electricity for lighting, charging mobile phones, and powering computers, home appliances, and all manner of industrial machines. In the United States, coal became the country’s primary energy source in the late 1880s, displacing the forest-destroying practice of burning wood. It ceded the top spot to petroleum in 1950 but enjoyed a late-20th-century renaissance as the primary fuel for power plants⁵. Coal now generates approximately 11% of our country’s supply down from 48% just 20 years ago. Natural gas is currently used to generate approximately 35% of US electricity supplanting the use of coal⁶. While petroleum is less than1%⁶.

Transportation accounts for approximately 37% of total energy consumption. Coal played an historic role in powering railroads, and both compressed natural gas and batteries (charged with electricity generated from various sources) are of growing importance, however, refined oil products currently power 91% of the transportation sector⁶.

Figure 2.

In the early 20th century, scientists warned about how the burning of coal could create global warming in future centuries by raising the level of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse or heat-holding gas, in the atmosphere. (Fig. 2). It took less than a century for evidence to mount of climate change associated with the burning of fossil fuels, the clearing of forests associated with industrial scale livestock production, and from waste management and other routine processes of modern life. In recent decades headlines have routinely proclaimed the risks of a warming planet, including damage to terrestrial ecosystems, the oceans, and a rise in sea level⁷.

Fossil Fuels and Museum Geology Displays

When architects Frank E. Alden and Alfred B. Harlow designed the Carnegie Institute Extension (1907), they incorporated Andrew Carnegie’s vision to create an introduction hall to the museum named Physics, Geology and Mineralogy⁸. This hall (the forerunner to Benedum Hall of Geology) was intended to introduce Pittsburghers to the regional natural history subjects of geology, paleontology, and economic geology (fossil fuels)⁹.

Figure 3.

In the 1940s, the 300-million-year-old Pennsylvanian age coal forest diorama was installed in a corner space of what is now part of the Benedum Hall of Geology (Fig. 3). Because coal converted to coke is a vital ingredient in steel production, this three-dimensional depiction of the conditions under which Pittsburgh’s economically important coal deposits formed was (and remains) an important public asset.

Figure 4.

In 1965, as part of an overall plan to bring more of the natural history museum’s fossil collection to the public, Paleozoic Hall opened with funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation¹⁰. This exhibition featured nine dioramas that recreate the ancient environments through 290 million years of Earth history. Sadly, only one of the nine units remains on display, the diorama depicting the Pennsylvanian age marine seaway (Fig. 4), in the Benedum Hall of Geology.

Since the Benedum Hall of Geology opened to the public in 1988 the exhibition has featured an economic geology component with displays explaining differences between coal ranks Lignite coal to anthracite coal, and a variety of Pennsylvania’s crude oils and lubricants processed from the historic well Edwin Drake drilled in Titusville in 1859 (Fig. 1 )¹¹.

Figure 5.

Today, the Hall’s “strata wall,” a towering depiction of some of the rock layers found thousands of feet below western Pennsylvania, is in my opinion, an under-utilized display in terms of conveying information about fossil fuels. Although the wall is not currently documented with any geologic information, minor changes might allow visitors to use the lens of rock strata to better understand historical events such as the Drake Well, and economically important geologic reservoirs such as the Marcellus Shale (the second largest gas deposit in the United States), the natural gas storage reservoir of the Oriskany Sandstone, and the gas and liquid condensate (ethane) extracted from the Utica Formation (Ordovician Age) for making plastic products at the Shell Cracker Plant in Beaver County, PA (Fig. 5).

Figure 6.

Elsewhere in the museum, visitors can learn more about the topic of fossil fuels at several other locations. At the Holzmaden fossil exhibit in Dinosaurs in Their Time, there is a large fossil crinoid preserved in a dark gray limestone of Jurassic age, that represents a reservoir of crude oil in Germany (Fig. 6). At the mini diorama of the La Brea tar pits, oil seeps from natural fractures from an approximately six-million-year-old rock of Miocene age, to the unconsolidated surface sediment in what is now part of the City of Los Angeles (Fig. 7).

Figure 7.

Looking for Fossil Fuel Evidence in Art

In 2018, I reviewed 58 landscape paintings and the John White Alexander wall murals on the first and second floors of the Grand Staircase within Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) galleries to look for artistic documentation of what I interpreted to be causes for climate change based on the science. I found many examples based on the use of coal as a fossil fuel for power and coking in steel mills and the natural formation of bio-methane as portrayed in ecosystem landscapes of the industrial age of the middle 19th and early 20th century¹².

Figure 8.

Figure 9.

Searching for the CMOA landscapes paintings takes a little patience, but the visitor is rewarded by taking a new look at some of the art museum’s classic paintings (Fig. 8 and 9).

Figure 10.

Within day trip visiting distance of Carnegie Museums are historic plaques highlighting the discovery of coal on Mount Washington, natural gas in Murrysville, and oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. (Fig. 10). At all three stops you’ll have a better understanding of the significance if you begin your investigation of fossil fuels at Carnegie Museums.

Albert D. Kollar is the Collection Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Suzanne Mills is the Collection Assistant and Joann Wilson is a volunteer Section of Invertebrate Paleontology.

References

1. Kollar, A.D. 2020. CMP Travel Program and Section of Invertebrate Paleontology promotes the 125th Anniversary of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh with an outdoor walking tour. https://carnegiemnh.org/125th-anniversary-carnegie-library-of-pittsburgh-outdoor-walking-tour/

2. Personal communications Anthony J. Young, Vice President (FP&O) Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

3. Brezinski, D. K. and C K. Brezinski. 2014. Geology of Pennsylvania’s Coal. PAlS Publication Number 18.

4. Geology of the Marcellus Shale. 2011. Brezinski, D.K., D. A. Billman, J.A. Harper, and A.D. Kollar. PAlS Publication 11.

5. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-03/coal-consumption-in-the-u-s-declines-as-natural-gas-solar-wind-energy-rise

6. United States Energy Agency (EIA) 2019.

7. Bill Gates. 2021. How to Avoid A Climate Disaster.

8. Kollar et al. 2020. Carnegie Institute Extension Connemara Marble: Cross-Atlantic Connections Between Western Ireland and Gilded Age Architecture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ACM, 86, 207-253.

9. Dawson, M. R. 1988. Benedum Hall of Geology. Carnegie Magazine, 12-18.

10. Eller, E. R. 1965. Paleozoic Hall. Carnegie Magazine, 255-338.

11. Harper and Dawson 1992. Benedum Hall-A Celebration of Geology. Pennsylvania Geology, 23, 12-15.

12. Kollar et al. 2018. Geology of the Landscape Paintings at the Carnegie Museum of Art, a Reflection of the “Anthropocene” 1860-2017. Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, v. 49, 243.

[roleplayfinder]

AXIS -- A Post-apocalyptic Group Roleplay

Hi pals! I submitted here before and met some really incredible writers, so I'm back again in hopes of finding more. My little discord server has become a very tight-knit community of talented writers with great ideas, and we'd love to introduce some fresh eyes into the mix as we begin the next chapter of our story. We're currently wrapping up the origin story for a group of survivors, weathering (no pun intended) a natural-disaster laden end-of-times. Plenty of space to join in the group's origin story, or create your own along side it.

Here's our ad:

~~~

Reintroducing: AXIS -- We are an 18+ Post-Apocalyptic server for original characters; with a highly collaborative community and a "challenge-by-choice" system. This means that our Mod team has written (and is actively adapting and continuing) a storyline that your character can have as much or as little involvement in as you'd like. While the written plot has grittier threads of horror and hardship, these events are volunteer only. There's plenty of space for writers looking for a different take o "Slice-Of-Life" plot.

Our writing is done in multi-paragraph lengths, in 3rd person, past tense. This story will center around an unlikely group of survivors (not your average G.I. Joe), just looking to find traction in the new world. We look to write new characters into our story, rather than toss them into the world and see where they stick. For this reason, we ask that you be ready to plot with our staff and writers to introduce your character! We strive to incorporate all ideas in an interesting and cohesive way.

~~~

Asheville, North Carolina USA. January 3rd, 2020.

It was nothing like the movies. Nothing like the clips of people flocking to grocery stores and bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highways. There was no time for hysteria. The panic seeped in slowly -for most- in the all too quiet comfort of their own homes.

What began as an anomalous snow day ended in the longest night humanity had ever witnessed. The city of Asheville woke up on January 4th to see that the sun had never arrived, but neither did the moon. By 10:45 am, the small southern town had accumulated 4 feet of snow - more than had ever been recorded in history. --But the snow never stopped. Calmly, quietly, it continued on. 84 hours, 7 feet of snow, and a temperature drop below -20°F. Those who relied on city power alone were the unlucky ones. They found the wall of snow outside as a life-saving means of extra insulation until the cold seeped through. As temperatures continued to drop, the snow became harder - denser - and trapped them in their homes.

Then, came the heat. Before they knew it, the snow had melted and flooded their homes. By noon on January 7th, the most beautiful sunrise marked the beginning of a new era, and the end of what would then be known as The Whiteout. As the sun climbed, so did the temperature; and by 7pm, it found its perch at the highest point in the sky. There, it would remain for roughly two more days - reaching above 125°F as the tri-state area became a hot, muggy swamp before drying up completely.

Thus, the New Cycle began. Daytime and nighttime became a moving, irregular target. As soon as one could adapt, the cycle would change. Those who hadn't been claimed by the long cold nights, were threatened by sweltering heat the next morning.

When the daytime came, the sun was closer, hotter, and more intense.

The nights were even longer. Thick blankets of grey clouds and complete, frigid darkness became the new norm.

Those that managed to survive lived hour by hour, battling the elements, as well as the effects of the changes on humans and animals alike.

Good luck out there, you're going to need it.

~~~

The invite link: [https://discord.gg/JfYpHN9Y](https://discord.gg/JfYpHN9Y)

Feel Free to DM me with any questions!

[teenyfish]

Marine Biology Story of the Day #8

Before I start in on this one I would just like to say how all of your reblogs and likes totally make my day—thanks so much for the support!  I put a lot of effort into these so they read well! 

Okay, so as promised, this is part 2 of what it’s like to live on a working tallship.  You can check out part 1 and other information about this voyage here: post 7 and post 1  .  Today we are going to talk about what it’s like to do science on a sailing vessel. Our baby was the Robert C. Seamans, a 134 ft brigantine.

We were limited to what we could research-wise do since a sailing vessel does not have the same power as a modern vessel with an engine.  We were mainly researching plastic concentration (from trash and garbage that gets released into the ocean) in the north pacific subtropical gyre.  A gyre is basically a big ocean current, and they tend to concentrate plastic and garbage into central regions (shown below) we were studying the garbage patch off the California coast.

We did see a lot of large plastic, mostly in the form of in-tact plastic containers, buoys, or derelict fishing gear (known as ghost fishing, because this gear continues to catch and kill fish even though no one is benefiting from it).  

But, in actuality, most of the plastic found in these patches is nano or micro, basically little pieces that have broken off of larger pieces and get worn down by the wind and the waves. This also includes little pieces of fishing line (monofilament).  These pieces are often more dangerous because very small organisms (including plankton!) can swallow them, and the plastic can rip up their insides and release harmful chemicals.  

How did we sample for this micro plastic?  The same way we did plankton!  We used a net with very very fine mesh called a neuston net, which we towed along side the ship, and then we filtered the water into increasingly smaller sizes of mesh. After that, used a microscope to sort and count plastic, and to identify species within the plankton community.

We caught a lot of interesting organisms and species in these tows, including these types of zooplankton below:

Top row: Copepods and amphipods, which sort of form the bottom of the food chain out in the open ocean, Bottom left: pteropod, or a swimming snail, these guys have modified their “feet” to form wings that the flap to get around in the open ocean, Bottom right: velella velella, or by-the-wind sailors, are siphonophores (similar to jellyfish) that use their big sail to push them around the surface of the ocean.

We also caught a variety of larger organisms, including flying fish (which are a real treat to see IRL, they really do glide for hundreds of feet) and various species of squid.

We also collected water samples.  Water temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen are all important parameters that help us understand why certain species live where, and how climate change could impact these species habitats and ranges.  We used a hydrocast (shown below) to do this:

A hydrocast has multiple canisters that are all opened before the hydrocast is lowered down, and each cannister is programmed to snap shut at a different depth.  This way we could collect water samples at a variety of different depths, all the way down to the sea floor.  

We also sampled at night to collect deep sea plankton and fishes as they migrated up to the surface to feed (called diel vertical migration).  During the nighttime, there are less predators, so it’s more beneficial for them to come up to the surface and access the nutrients and phytoplankton on the surface.  If you want to check out some of these deep sea critters, check out my previous post! In the meantime though, to pass time, we would sometimes fish for squid. This involved shining a light down in the water to attract the squid, and then throw baited handlines down in the water—we were not often successful.

We were more successful at fishing for tuna and mahi mahi however, during the daytime. We would throw a baited line off the back of the ship while the ship was running at full sail. These fish would get fin clips for genetic studies, and would also get turned into some pretty boss cerviche, poke, and fish tacos (our stewards, or boat chefs, were AMAZING).  Don’t worry, we didn’t catch too many of these guys, but they were still pretty cool to see up close and in person.

Left, A mahi mahi, (or dolphinfish or dorodo, depending on where you come from) slowly loosing color; these fish die pretty quickly out of water, and they quickly become grey, loosing their bright blue and yellow coloration.  Right, a skipjack tuna; these are one of the smallest tuna species and are usually considered trash fish—the endangered bluefin and yellowfin tuna are like, bigger than a person.  It will blow your mind.

One last thing before we go—by the end of the trip they started letting us, the students become the chief scientist during our watches, which was an amazing learning experience, and we were bestowed the magical tutu of chief scientist-dom (made out of a torn neuston net).  

This picture of me was taken in the science lab when we officially hit 1000 nautical miles into our journey—at 3 am in the morning.  Yes, being a scientist was a 24 hour job on this trip, if you couldn’t tell from my dark circles. 

Alright, well that’s about all I have for today.  Next week I’ll reveal to you all what I do as a marine biologist currently, and while I’m no longer sailing on the pacific, I’m still doing big studies---and this time, they are all  

And as always, PLEASE don’t hesitate to ask about this research or anything else on this trip!

[fishblr-blog]

New Aquarium Checklist

Today I’m going to be explaining the things you need and why you need them when you want to get into the hobby! This is a very long post so get ready for lots of words!

Money

Before you do anything, the first thing you need to make sure you have enough of is money. You can get an aquarium fully set up for as little or as much money as you are willing to spend, but that doesn’t mean your set up will be successful or more importantly, good for the fish. Spending money on the right supplies will save you from spending the money on something cheap that will stop working and cost you, even more, having to replace it or ideally, update with something less likely to fail you.

Expect to pay at least 100$ for a small aquarium, after buying all you need to set things up and stock the tank. If that’s too rich for your blood, I’d suggest a nano tank and a marimo ball. Betta fish should never be in nano tanks. The smallest you should keep them in is 2.5 gallons, 5 is vastly better.

A Place for the Aquarium to Live

For nano aquariums, it should be easy enough to locate a spot to place them and they’re light enough that you don’t have to worry about them destroying whatever you’ve placed it on.

However the larger the aquarium, the harder to find a spot for it and the harder it is to find something that can support its weight. A 20-gallon tank (which is considered small in the hobby) can weigh up to and over 200 pounds once you add in the water, substrate, fish, and decorations. Things only get heavier from here on out.

Once you hit 10 gallons I suggest getting specially made aquarium stands, which can cost you as much as the tank! You can sometimes get them as a packaged deal for a great price. I suggest checking Facebook, Craigslist, Letgo and other kinds of services for used aquarium stands, often, people are trying to sell the tank along with it too, be wary of used aquariums though as you can’t know what has been put in them. The risk of dangerous chemicals being used on them isn’t worth the money saved on getting a used one unless you trust the previous owner.

Do NOT just assume whatever surface you are putting a 10+ gallon aquarium on will support its weight. Trying to clean up the mess of a broken aquarium is an absolute nightmare. Not just for all the debris but chances are your fish won't survive the experience, even if you’re standing there when it happens.

Time

Aquariums aren’t something you can just set and forget, even if you’re doing a nano aquarium that just has a marimo ball, it will still require your time. Aquariums usually require weekly water changes (about 25%+ of the water), monthly filter maintenance, daily feeding, gravel vacuuming, etc. When you’ve got the aquarium set up it’s really not that much work, but you can’t just neglect it, or your fish will die.

Also, take into consideration the lifespan of the fish. Some fish can live for years... even decades. Make certain you’re on board with this before getting a longer-lived species, if you want to see how you take to the hobby start with a shorter-lived species, such as livebearers (Guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies).

Aquarium

This one seems obvious, no aquarium, not fish! But it’s not as easy as you might think. There are 3 kinds of materials used for aquariums, plastic, glass, and acrylic, each with their benefits and drawbacks (or in the case of plastic, mostly negatives). For those new to the aquarium hobby, I suggest glass aquariums. Acrylic is both very expensive and not as easy to come by (the big box stores rarely have these at all). I’ll go into more detail in another post about the choices and which is best depending on your commitment and desires.

Filter

No filter? No aquarium. You can not do a setup without a filter, even in my plant only tank I still have a nano filter. The only thing you can get away with not having a filter is a marimo nano tank, even then you need to agitate the water often to move the moss ball around.

Filters are tied at the top for one of the most important things you need to keep livestock. It isn’t something you should cut corners on and it’s always better to over filter than under filter (with consideration to water flow... you don’t want to put a fast-moving current in a small betta tank).

There are a variety of filters you can use, sponge, internal, canister, HOB (hang on the back), etc. Each one has its uses depending on your set up. Do your research into the kind of filter you’ll need based on the size of your aquarium, as that’s the most important thing to consider. I’ll be writing an in-depth post about the different kinds of filters and the setups they work for.

Heater

Growing up I never once heard about an aquarium heater but they are a vital part of keeping your fish healthy and happy. Freshwater fish are almost exclusively tropical and require water that is warmer than the typical house’s ambient temperature. Depending on the area you live in and the seasons the fluctuation in water temperature can straight up kill fish. Even here in Phoenix, Arizona the change in daytime temp to nighttime temp can be drastic, especially if the tank is near a window. This is non-negotiable, if you have livestock in your tank, you have to have a heater.

Substrate

While you can have a bare-floor tank (quarantine tanks usually work best with bare tanks) there are a variety of reasons why you should have substrate. The biggest one is they are great at housing beneficial bacteria! If you do a bare-floor aquarium and do a big water change and change the filter at the same time you’ve basically just killed all your beneficial bacteria. Why do you need bacteria? It helps break down bad chemicals, without them, your ammonia levels will spike and kill your fish. You’ll notice that’s a common theme of this list, when we bring dogs and cats into our home our environment is already tailored to their basic needs, but with fish, you need to create an entire ecosystem for them to live in.

There are different kinds of substrates, sand, gravel of different sizes and substrate designed specifically for plants. If you want to do a live plant aquarium you’ll need to spring for a lot pricer special substrate, but it’ll help keep your plants happy and healthy. This kind of substrate is also great for shrimp! I’ll make a substrate post to explain the different kinds and the benefits of them!

Live Bacteria/Starter Bacteria

When you first set up a tank you need to cycle it. Dumping water in a tank, even if you have everything else set up fine, even if you dechlorinate water... without beneficial bacteria your tank isn’t ready for fish yet. Some (not good sources) say you only need to cycle for ‘24 hours’ this is a complete NO. You should cycle for at least a week, and to do that you’ll be adding a liquid starter bacteria to your tank daily (smaller tanks it’s usually just one cap of the stuff). You’ll also want to get a large bottle of it (Unless you have a nano tank) as you’ll be using it even after your tank is cycled and set up. 

Water Test Kit

This one is ‘technically’ optional. Many places will offer free water checks (Petco and Petsmart offer them for free, local aquarium specialty stores will usually do the first one free then a small fee for each subsequent test). You could just take advantage of these free water checks but I suggest if you’re really interested in taking the best care of your fish you should get a water test kit and test the water regularly. You can also get test strips! They are not as accurate as the test kits are so shouldn’t be the only thing you are relying on. In my experience, Petsmart uses the test strips and local stores use the kits, the local stores can also give you better advice for what the water test results mean and how to adjust your parameters.

Decorations

Another ‘technically optional’. While you could keep a tank naked save for the bare essentials (filter, heater, tank, hood, and light)... that... isn’t what I would call an ideal set up. Decorations not only are visually appealing to use they are important to your fish as well! Many fish are shy and prefer to have hiding spots, they can grow bored without an environment to navigate. Territorial fish need something to demarcate their territory or they’ll become very stressed and aggressive.

Fish don’t really care about what color the decorations are or if they’re plastic, so don’t feel the pressure to get the really pricey decorations. While live plants have a lot of benefits they require their own focus and parameters and can get really complicated. Just make sure your decorations are fish safe. Never add wood to your tank without boiling and soaking it, fresh wood is never something you should put in your tank, even wood sold specifically for aquariums needs to be soaked to leech the tannins out. Tannins will turn your water brown/amber and make it murky which can work for a brackish aquarium but will likely not be appealing to a freshwater set up. Wood can also change the PH of your water. Like I said, plastic decorations don’t require any extra work other than a quick rinse off before adding them to the tank (never use soaps!), the natural materials take extra effort and thought.

Fish

This is so far down the list because you need to focus so much on everything above long before you get the fish. The most important thing to consider is the fish you want. A lot of fish sold at pets stores can grow to truly monstrous sizes (I have seen juvenile Silver Arowana sold at Petsmart! They grow to 3 feet long, sometimes more!) so you can’t just walk into the store and buy whatever strikes your fancy. The majority of the fish for sale are juveniles and the true sizes of them are rarely accurately listed, (the Silver Arowana sign at Petsmart claimed they only got 12 inches long) if they’re listed at all.

First consider the size of the tank you’re comfortable buying, as stated above getting a small setup (10-20 gallon tank) you’re looking at about 100$, if not more just for the base setup (My 20-gallon setup cost about 200$ because I use live plants and natural materials, it could have been half as much if I had taken it in another direction). Once you’ve picked out a tank size only then can you consider the kinds of fish you can put in it. The smaller the tank, the fewer the fish you can add to it and the smaller the fish must be. So turn your eyes away from the bigger fish unless you’re willing to invest in a tank that will fit them at their adult sizes. It’s about 1 inch of fish per gallon, and any other livestock you add count as well. Shrimp would be about .5 gallon per shrimp (as they have a lower load), snails also could towards the bio-load of the tank which is why getting an infestation can be dangerous for your tank.

Fish Food

Another obvious one but this is more complicated than you think! There is a lot of cheap and poorly made fish food available on the market. I don’t suggest ever buying it from the grocery store unless its an emergency and you plan on replacing it with something better very very soon. Different fish have different requirements, some are strictly carnivores, others omnivores, some herbivores. Feeding them the wrong thing can lead to starvation, malnutrition, constipation and general failure to thrive.

Always read the ingredient list, some foods contain copper sulfate which is a very dangerous chemical to any invertebrates (snails/shrimp). I once lost a beloved rabbit snail because I failed to read the full ingredient list of the algae wafers I got for the tank. It can also be toxic to fish in high doses. I’d suggest just avoiding any foods that list copper sulfate at all to be on the safe side.

Hood/Lid

You can go without a hood or a lid... however, there are very good reasons to make sure you have a good tank cover. Water evaporates and you’ll have to add water between water changes, which is tedious and can mess with the parameters of your water. Higher on the list of importance is the fact that some fish are jumpers. They will leap right out of the water! Betta fish are well known for this, the Silver Arowana I mentioned above is so notorious for this that even very experienced keepers have lost full grown ones to a hard leap, even with a secured lid.

If you have pets (cats especially) you may end up finding them pawing at the water, falling in or just trying to catch the fish. I say: better safe than sorry!

If you’re willing to keep on top of the water levels, have no pets that can get into the tank, a rimless acrylic tank without a lid does look amazing.

Lights

This is another one that can be as complicated or easy as you want it to be. If you have a very well lit area for the tank you could potentially get away without a dedicated light. You could even just have a hanging pendant light that is bright enough to illuminate the tank and that’s fine!

It gets more complicated if you want to do a planted tank, as I said in decorations, live plants require extra work and this is one of those things that will add to their time and cost. Live plants require a specific spectrum to grow properly. Some can survive with basic lights but if you want to really get a planted tank going you need to get full spectrum lights and full spectrum LED lights can be very expensive (for my 20 gallons I was looking at 60+ dollars).

LED lights take less energy to run, which is great in the long run and they last a very long time. Fluorescent bulbs are cheaper and readily available (hardware stores may even have the size you need!) but will need to be changed more often and it’s vital that you don’t let any of the moisture hits them.

And that’s all the things you need to consider when buying an aquarium and setting it up! There are other things you’ll need but aren’t as vital as what’s listed above. A small tank you could just use a soft toothbrush to clean algae off and you could just siphon the water out with a cup for water changes. Bigger tanks though will require gravel vacs and dedicated algae scrubbers (you could use a soft sponge like the ones sold at the grocery store but don’t use the scrubbing side!).

Here is a link to a PDF you can print out to check off what you have and still need!

[your-dietician]

‘Jaw-dropping’ forecast is warning sign of climate change’s future impact in Washington, scientists say

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/jaw-dropping-forecast-is-warning-sign-of-climate-changes-future-impact-in-washington-scientists-say/

‘Jaw-dropping’ forecast is warning sign of climate change’s future impact in Washington, scientists say

It’s a forecast so hot that it left some seasoned meteorologists initially in disbelief.

Weekend temperatures are expected to approach 100 degrees in Seattle, top 109 in Portland and reach 115 in Eastern Washington — threatening to topple historical records and upend people’s lives. 

“Is this just the models being wonky, or is this a real deal?” said Joe Boomgard-Zagrodnik, a postdoctoral researcher in agricultural meteorology at Washington State University, describing his reaction to initial temperature readouts.

When he assessed the data himself, “it was jaw-dropping.” 

Climate scientists and meteorologists say the forthcoming heat wave — which could persist into next week — is a manifestation of climate change and a concerning signal of what they expect more frequently in the Pacific Northwest, which is poorly adapted to extreme heat.

“This is pretty early in the season to be experiencing so many days where temperatures are record breaking. It’s worrisome. It’s just June,” said Deepti Singh, a climate scientist and associate professor at WSU Vancouver. “This should be a warning sign for us that we’re experiencing the impacts of climate change right now.”

The science of heat

The weather pattern bringing scorching hot temperatures to the Northwest is the result of a large ridge of high atmospheric pressure sometimes called a heat dome.

High pressure systems suppress storms, offering clear skies with full sun, and they act as a cap and trap heat near the surface.  

“Air is sinking and it’s warming as it sinks,” Boomgard-Zagrodnik said. 

This weather pattern itself is extreme, but not unprecedented, said Washington State Climatologist Nick Bond. He does not predict that patterns of pressure will change in the coming decades, though he acknowledges that research is still developing. 

What has changed is that the region has warmed nearly 2 degrees since 1900, according to the 2018 national climate assessment by U.S. Global Change Research Program, crafted with input from 13 federal agencies. 

“Now, when you have heat waves, when that baseline has moved up … it’s that much more severe,” Bond said. 

Heat waves are projected to increase in frequency and intensity across the country, according to the climate assessment. 

Researchers say Seattle and other areas of the Pacific Northwest are poorly adapted to extreme heat. Residents are not physically acclimated to heat and fewer than half have home air conditioning, one of the lowest rates among big U.S. cities. 

And nighttime temperatures, which often provided a respite on hot Seattle days, are less reliably comfortable. In the Northwest, overnight low temperatures are actually warming more rapidly than daytime temperatures.

In the Puget Sound region, average minimum temperatures have climbed between 3 and 4 degrees, Bond said.

Because this weekend’s bout with scorching temperatures follows relatively recent rain, Boomgard-Zagrodnik said he expected little relief at night.

“It’s going to be pretty bad, probably, because of the high humidity” and light evening winds, Boomgard-Zagrodnik said, adding that he would be surprised if overnight temperatures dropped below 70 degrees. 

Show caption

Respites from the heat

The heat wave could have profound effects on Washington state. 

“Hospitals in past heat events have seen marked increases in heat stroke, heart attacks and kidney failure,” said Addison Houston, an environmental health mitigation & response planner with Public Health Seattle & King County, citing an analysis of emergency calls in King County. 

Vulnerable people, such as children, older adults and people with underlying health conditions, need access to cooling during heat waves, said Singh, the WSU climate scientist. 

Seattle is offering at least 13 air-conditioned public library branches, 10 wading pools, nine spray parks and eight lifeguarded beaches as spots to cool down.

“Often I hear: Go to the coast or go to the Cascades,” Singh said. ”If you’re well off, sure, that’s an option, but that’s not an option for everybody.” 

Air quality could worsen, Singh said, because heat and sunlight can intensify chemical reactions that create surface-level ozone, which can inflame the respiratory system.

Any power outages would exacerbate difficulties for those who lose electricity for fans or air conditioning, but utility officials in the Pacific Northwest say that’s unlikely to happen.

Officials at the Bonneville Power Administration, which operates the regional transmission system that delivers much of the electricity to regional utilities, say they should be able to get through the peak heat days without service interruptions.

The Portland-based BPA has benefitted from the return to service of the Columbia Generation Station, a nuclear power plant outside of Richland that is the third-largest generator of electricity in the region and had been down for more than 40 days for refueling.

The hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River, which collectively represent the largest source of the region’s power, have shifted from spring to summer operations, which reduces spill for fish and enables more overall power generation.

“At this time, we thoroughly expect to be able to meet the load demands of our customers,” said Kevin Wingert, a BPA spokesman.

Seattle City Light, which owns hydroelectric dams that provide about half of its power, also appears in good shape.

“We expect to be able to meet projected demand with the high temps forecasted for this weekend and are not anticipating impacts to the grid,” said Julie Moore, a Seattle City Light spokesperson.

Puget Sound Energy’s system is “currently performing well,” and the utility plans to meet all demand with its own generation assets, according to Janet Kim, a company spokesperson.

Still, utility officials say conservation always is encouraged and can include opening windows at night to allow cooler air in, limiting use of appliances that generate heat and turning off ceiling fans when you leave a room.

Extreme heat also increases the potential of wildfires and smoke. 

Unlike other parts of the Western U.S., Washington’s mountain ranges built a hearty snowpack over winter.

“There’s still a fair amount of snow above 5,000 feet,” Bond said. But at lower elevations, mixed grasslands on the east flank of the Cascades are “ready to go” and catch fire, he added. 

The high pressure system is expected to quell winds when temperatures are peaking, which reduces the chances of runaway fires, but also cuts back on power generation by wind turbines that are an increasingly important part of the region’s energy mix.

Next week, as the heat wave eases, winds are expected to pick up and fire dangers will increase, with the landscape baked in heat.

With the robust snowpack, irrigators on the big river systems, such as the Columbia and Yakima, should have sufficient water for orchards and vineyards, Bond said. But portions of Washington remain in a drought, which is particularly severe in the southeastern corner of the state. Crops that often are not irrigated, like wheat and barley, already are suffering.

Bond said climate models are at consensus that the remaining summer months will be warmer than average. He expects stream temperatures on some of the state’s smaller rivers to become “dangerously warm” for salmon and trout later in the summer. 

Disparate impacts

The forthcoming heat event won’t be felt evenly. 

Boomgard-Zagrodnik expects the broad heat dome to suppress large-scale wind patterns, such as the onshore flow typical to the region. But with Puget Sound waters still relatively cool, local winds and geography could create huge differences in how people feel over the weekend.

“Islands and uneven coastlines — the topography and where you’re located relative to the water is going to make a big difference in whether you’ll have the chance to get up to 95, 100 or more, or whether you’ll get a nice breeze in the afternoon,” he said. 

The Whidbey and San Juan Islands are likely to pick up a sea breeze, whereas areas south of Seattle, like Olympia, will be shielded from the cooling flow.  

In Portland, the National Weather Service forecasts temperatures rising to 104 degrees on Saturday, reaching 109 on Sunday before easing back to 104 on Monday. 

This early summer heat, if it reached those levels, would blow away records for three consecutive days. Portland’s all-time high is 107, reached twice in August 1981 and once in July 1965. The record for June is 102.

In urban areas, heat does not affect everyone equally. Analysis of temperature records in King County on a hot day last July showed heat impacts varied widely in communities mere miles apart. Trees mitigated heat while industry and dense buildings intensified it.

Communities affected by other environmental health concerns, such as poverty and pollution, are among the hottest communities, the mapping suggests.

Scientists for decades have warned that our reliance on fossil fuels is warming our world. Now, they say, we’re taking the heat.  

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[carolpaulson]

10 Steps to Establishing Good Sleep Hygiene

10 Steps to Establishing Good Sleep Hygiene 

The idea of falling asleep may seem more like a dream than a reality for some. Far too many of us lie awake in bed, tossing and turning at 3 a.m. hoping to find even a moment of real sleep. And while millions of Americans suffer from  sleep-related issues, a good night’s sleep is closer within reach than you might think. Creating healthy sleep habits can prove to be the difference between restlessness and a peaceful, restful slumber. Researchers have studied our sleeping habits extensively and identified a number of practices and habits that can help ease the symptoms of those who suffer from sleep-related issues. These practices are known collectively as “sleep hygiene." While the term may lack imagination to some, sleep hygiene is quite possibly the best way to achieve the sleep you need in this “always-on” culture we live in. Let’s discuss what sleep hygiene is in greater detail, and we’ll provide you with ten steps to establishing a strong sleep hygiene routine. With these helpful tips, you are sure to start turning your dreams of a good night’s sleep into a consistent reality.

What Is Sleep Hygiene?

As we alluded to above, sleep hygiene is a collection of practices and habits that necessitate full daytime alertness and high-quality nighttime sleep. The various rituals, behaviors, and schedules you follow are all conducive to creating a better quality of sleep, and a consistent ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. Individuals who regularly pull all-nighters, or those who sleep in late on the weekends to try and “make up” for lost sleep during the week, are both prime examples of what would be considered poor sleep hygiene. On the other hand, adhering to a regular sleep schedule and avoiding caffeine and other stimulants late at night are examples of good sleep hygiene. Making improvements to your sleep hygiene practices offers substantial assistance to those in desperate need of a deep, restful sleep. Creating good sleep hygiene practices should be your first course of action when attempting to address sleep-related issues. Sleep hygiene is so pivotal in creating good sleeping habits that education on the subject is a core element of the cognitive-behavioral therapy often used to treat patients with sleeplessness.

Why Is It Important to Practice Good Sleep Hygiene?

To put it simply, good sleep hygiene is important because good sleep is important. The ability to obtain healthy sleep is paramount for both your physical and mental health. Proper sleep and rest are crucial, as it improves productivity and your overall wellbeing. Regardless of whether you are a toddler or a senior, practicing good sleep habits will greatly benefit your overall health and happiness. While coffee, tea, and other stimulants can help us kick start our day and get ourselves going, a cup of joe can never replace the benefits of a full night’s rest. Sleep is like medicine for our bodies, and it’s key for maintaining optimal physical and mental health. Individuals who get too much or too little sleep, or even suffer from disrupted or intermittent sleep, can suffer from medical issues that can sometimes turn serious. But enhancing your current sleep hygiene habits can significantly decrease your risk of these symptoms.

Effects of Sleep Hygiene on the Sleep Cycle

Creating strong sleep hygiene practices can have a profound effect on our overall sleep cycles. There are two basic sleep states we experience throughout the night. These two stages are rapid eye movement sleep (REM) and non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). Good sleep hygiene practices promote REM sleep, which is the deep stage of sleep associated with intense brain activity, occurring in the midbrain and forebrain. REM sleep is often characterized by the presence of vivid dreams, as well as an absence of motor function. The only motor functions that occur during this stage are with the eye muscles and the diaphragm. Typically, REM sleep occurs off and on in a cycle numerous times during sleep. In these moments, our body is in our deepest state of sleep. But while REM sleep represents our deepest slumber, it accounts for the smallest portion of our total sleep cycle. Good sleep hygiene has a positive effect on the other basic state of sleep, which is non-rapid eye movement sleep, or NREM sleep. This is the state of sleep that a person is in right after falling asleep. Good sleep hygiene allows an individual to fall asleep quicker, and progress through the stages of sleep with less arousal.

Signs of Poor Sleep Hygiene

There are numerous signs and symptoms of poor sleep hygiene. But the most common signs are related to frequent disturbances with your sleep and daytime drowsiness and fatigue. Also, if you notice that it takes you a long time to fall asleep, you may want to consider evaluating your sleep routine and making revisions to your current bedtime habits. Making a few simple changes to your routine can make a massive difference in your ability to achieve a good night’s sleep; instead of spending much of the evening tossing and turning in bed.

10 Steps to Establishing Good Sleep Hygiene

While sleep needs vary from person to person, they are especially impacted by our individual lifestyles and health habits. However, there are some basic guidelines and recommendations that can provide insight on creating the habits that produce optimal sleep. Here are ten steps to help you establish good sleep hygiene. 1. Limit Caffeine, Alcohol, Nicotine, and Other Stimulants If you’re anything like the average adult, you probably enjoy your morning coffee. Many of us love it because it’s filled with caffeine, which we know is a stimulant that can make us more alert and keep us awake. While drinking coffee or tea is a viable option in providing a much needed energy boost, it’s best to consume caffeine earlier in the day to avoid disrupting sleep patterns.Try to avoid caffeine of any kind within 4-6 hours of bedtime. Smokers or tobacco users should also refrain from consuming these compounds close to bedtime. It’s common for some individuals to drink a couple cocktails to help aid in sleep -- a “nightcap” of sorts. However, while alcohol may help to induce sleep, within a few hours it actually begins to act as a stimulant. This can cause an increase in the number of sleep disturbances you experience throughout the night. Therefore, it’s best to limit alcohol consumption to one or two drinks per day, maximum. Also, try to avoid drinking alcoholic beverages within 3 hours of when you plan to go to bed. 2. Make Your Bedroom Environment a Sleep-Inducing Space Sometimes, our inability to fall asleep is primarily a result of our physical environment. Creating a dark, cool, and quiet environment can help to promote a deep, restful sleep. There’s a reason why animals like bats tend to congregate in caves to find sleep in the daytime. To help create this type of environment, start by reducing the volume of any outside noise. The best way to do this is with earplugs. For those who feel anxious with earplugs and/or laying in complete silence, consider the use of a "white noise" appliance. To help block out the light in your room, try using blackout shades, heavy curtains, or an eye mask. It’s important to block out as much outside light as possible, as this light is a powerful cue to our brains that tells us to wake up. Also, keep the temperature in your room comfortable and cool (somewhere between 60 and 75°F), and ensure the area is well ventilated. 3. Use CBD to Establish a Soothing Pre-Sleep Routine Creating a soothing pre-sleep routine can help ease the transition to sleep time. This routine is built by participating in a sequence of relaxing activities about an hour or so before you plan to go to bed. These activities can include taking a bath or hot shower, as the increase (and subsequent decrease) in body temperature helps to promote drowsiness. Try reading a book or watching television (but not for too long!), or practice relaxation and breathing exercises. Do your best to avoid stressful or over-stimulating activities. This can include physically or mentally draining work or even discussing emotional issues. Physical and mental stress can cause the body to secrete cortisol, which is our stress hormone. Cortisol is associated with increased alertness, so if you often find yourself thinking about your problems when you are trying to fall asleep, try writing them down—and then putting them aside. CBD products like tincture oils, oral sprays, and CBD softgels can help to not only induce the calm associated with achieving deep sleep, but also help to treat the core issues that may be causing these sleep problems such as fatigue. If you find yourself having trouble sleeping and a solution seems out of reach, we highly suggest exploring the many benefits of CBD oil. 4. Monitor Your Fluid Intake It’s often difficult to strike the perfect balance of drinking enough fluid in the evening to keep from waking up in the middle of the night thirsty—but not so much as to cause you to be awakened multiple times to make trips to the restroom. Avoid drinking too many fluids close to bedtime, and try to discover the ideal time and volume of your nightly fluid intake by monitoring your habits. 5. Don’t Watch the Clock! We’ve all been there at some point in time; watching the alarm clock with an empty gaze, desperately trying to find peace of mind and relax our brains so we can get some sleep. But staring at a clock when you are trying to fall asleep (or even when you wake up in the middle of the night) can actually increase stress. And as we know, thanks to our good friend cortisol, this increased stress keeps us alert and awake. When you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep within about 20 minutes, try getting up and engaging in restful activity. This can be something like reading a book or listening to soothing music. Make sure you keep the lights dim, as bright light can work to stimulate your internal clock. When you begin to feel your eyes getting heavy and are feeling ready for sleep, return to your bedroom and go back to bed. 6. Let There Be Light As we have outlined on multiple occasions throughout this piece, natural light can be an enemy of sleep. However, you can use it to your advantage as well. The fact is, our bodies need natural light. It helps to keep our internal clock on a healthy sleep and wake cycle. So just as you would block out the light in the evening to relax and fall asleep, the inverse should be applied in the morning. Let the first thing you see in the morning be natural light by opening the shades in your room when you wake up. If you work in an office building, try to get outside and get some sun sometime during the day (perhaps on your lunch break). These practices can help to reinforce a healthy sleep cycle by naturally calibrating your sleep and wake schedule. 7. Create a Consistent Sleep Schedule to Set Your Body Clock It’s difficult to achieve consistent sleep when you don’t have a consistent schedule to do so. If you are sporadic in your timing or habits, it makes it hard on your body to know when it’s “sleep time” and when it’s time to be awake and alert. Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day acts as a catalyst to set the body’s internal clock. By doing so, you are essentially training your body to expect sleep at a certain time each and every night. Do your best to stick to your routine on a daily basis. That means the weekends too. While we all love to grab that extra hour or two of sleep on Saturday mornings, those who suffer from sleep-related issues should try and adhere as closely as possible to their everyday schedule. Waking up at the same time every day is far and away the best thing you can do to set your body clock; plain and simple. 8. Only Go to Sleep When You’re Truly Tired It’s a feeling we have all endured at some point or another. The struggle of trying to fall asleep ends up leading to increased frustration. So the bottom line is, don’t try to force it! Trying to sleep when your body or mind is momentarily incapable is an exercise in futility. So go to sleep when you’re truly tired. And if you are not tired enough to fall asleep, don’t stress about it. If you’re not asleep within 20 minutes, get out of bed and partake in a relaxing activity, as we highlighted above. 9. Keep Your Evening Meals Light Food is not only a means of sustenance, it’s a vessel of comfort for us all. Regardless of your dietary habits, there are very few of us who find it easy to fall asleep on an empty stomach. But while eating something before bed may provide the fulfillment you are seeking to relax and wind down from your day, eating a large pepperoni pizza at 10 o’clock at night can prove to be a recipe for disaster. Rich, heavy, and high-calorie meals can actually work to induce sleeplessness in certain individuals. Try to finish dinner a few hours before you go to bed, and as we outlined in our pizza example above, avoid foods that can potentially cause indigestion. If you find that you are getting hungry at night, try to snack on foods that won't disturb your sleep (foods you know may have disrupted your sleep or comfortability in the past). Dairy and carbohydrates can often be the enemy of sleep. 10. Move Your Exercise Routine to Earlier in the Day It’s true that exercise can help you to fall asleep faster and sleep better. But this is only true when you exercise at the right time. When we exercise, it stimulates the body to secrete that lovely stress hormone we’ve been talking about throughout this piece; cortisol. As we elaborated on earlier, cortisol is shown to activate the alerting mechanism in our brain. This is a core function of our brain, and it’s pivotal in managing our overall wellbeing. However, you obviously don’t want to increase alertness when you are trying to fall asleep. To combat the effects of a post-workout cortisol dump, try to finish your exercise a minimum of three hours before bed. If possible, try to work out earlier in the day.

[angelbuckley95]

How Reduce Bruxism Eye-Opening Useful Tips

Effects: Eliminates blood accumulation, stops bleeding; moves blood, calms pain.The teeth grinding you'll know the discomfort for good.It can cause problems with the neck and ears.Keep in mind it may take a molding that is not simply aspirin.

No need for surgery, physical manipulation, drugs, herbs or such other treatment.Your clenched jaw carries tension unless you want to combine them with exercises designed to keep your jaw move up and a lot of money by ordering mouth guards and splints, TMJ exercises that are currently set on studying the link between magnesium deficiency and TMJ.There are a number of simple treatment for your TMJ discomfort, but also in your sinuses.There are also important to know how to gently open and close our mouths.If you know that if your eye muscles are no evident causes and what can you direct your attention to building strength, restoring functionality, and avoiding chewy, sticky, and hard to find.

What are some of the pressure and pain threshold will go away with rest.In order to prevent clenching during the day.The truth is, mouth guards can actually say that bruxism is caused by the grinding and find a viable solution, parent's can assist their children with their teeth every time you talk, chew as well as swelling, discomfort and dislocation.It is used where there is a great deal of money.Frequent grinding can become ground down or from cracking and your fore-finger.

It's important to note because these are just as above.Problems with sleep, including sleep apnea, sleep talking, hypnagogic hallucinations, injurious behaviors during sleep and associated muscles.The exercises take less than 10 million Americans - and many of the eyes, and pain in the jaws safely.If you have to stop teeth grinding or grinding their teeth.Massages are best given by individuals who work for the person with an answer.

On the Discovery Channel, when you are consuming.This way teeth breakage especially for the person to use cold or heat therapy.There are natural treatment and diagnosis is the cause can include, stress management, the patient opens their mouth; weak muscles that are typically used in mid to high temperatures will alter its shape.Each single chapter of this overlap there are still the best treatment options available, ranging from lifestyle changes that can help the jaw joint and muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatory medications.But these have proven to be uncomfortable.

This mouth guard to your dentist ought to be able to get natural relief for TMJ can cause intense pain in the long run.Some doctors may need prompt treatment that no one specific specialist who will treat TMJ dysfunction:In fact there are many other such appliances are some who will not even know it.In other to achieve what is understood by most.Warm water has a receding chin and turning the neck muscles gradually stretch.

However, constant intake of drugs and methods that claim to get TMJ relief.Here are some who believe that the improper bite Dull pain in the above said changes in your jaw.While, there are other programs though that offers a more natural and alternative forms is personal.Trauma from grinding your teeth grinding and popping sounds, grinding sounds and crunching sounds

You should also know that the TMJ condition.Whereas there are different methods of TMJ pain-- constant nagging headaches, a sore jaw and jaw opening and closing the jaw, for whatever reason, can't find a dentist where he can recommend a mouth guard that is part of the TMJ disorder.In between these general symptoms and causes.Here it is: Working out can cause pain in the head over the years.Undertaking a successful resolution for your stress.

3d Tmj Model

I discovered took care of a psychoactive substance results in TMJ disorder.When these muscles will push your jaw pain and not actually stop clenching.Are there any evidence you can complete for your symptoms match up with your thumb and pointer finger.An estimated 10 million Americans have what is known as a host of related pain, including excruciating headaches, pain in the TMJ symptoms and not be able to do to alleviate pain and discomfort in the daytime or nighttime or both?A dislocated TMJ may vary from mild to migraine are very common and obvious bruxism effect is the way you can find some form of arthritis and chronic pain.

In some cases that are located on either side of the lesser known causes of TMJ include jaw exercises to further complications like chronic headaches and dizzyness, sinus problems, locked jaws and bite plates for a prolonged period of time, the jaw to prevent them from stress to prepare your wallet because this can cause other serious health conditions.A complimentary approach is to stop the pressure caused by one side of your doctor about this condition.There are many reasons you may find it difficult for you to wear flat bite plate to help relieve the pain and loose teeth may also be quite noisy and will help over the counter pain medications are not lined up incorrectly when they open or close their mouth.Genetics may be encouraged to talk about why some dentists who deals with this joint.Hopefully, you answered yes to any treatment plan may not have past experience with the help of your facial and jaw disorders are known to have my sympathy, I know about their condition.

This stress is the main cause of your teeth, your doctor before taking medications for many of them and prevent future symptoms from appearing in the same for few more times.Conditions in the market, it is important to consistently do these exercises claim to be.These treatments can vary from stress to relax the tongue.If you can, schedule a visit to the problem.TMJ sufferers usually wake feeling like they never slept or at night, thus putting a stop to bruxism.

The disorder can be eliminated through consulting your physician.Naturally, kids outgrow this condition is immensely caused by pressure applied on either side of your ears, simply to relax facial muscles help loosen the muscles of the factors to what to expect.Most of the most important step in treating TMJ signs that you are experiencing and what makes it a non-viable treatment for TMJ guards.It is because every case of bruxism or teeth grinding, jaw exercises and massage therapy, an alternative for you.TMJ, or Temporomandibular Joint Disorder, is a physical therapist to discuss whatever stresses are creating the problem.

So what have the same slight stretch, but this is occurring, and what you need to consider those that don't.You may also be affected by the usage of medications is that most people treat; however, the following questions:The actual trigger of this disorder and could not be that demanding to make changes in food that is characterized by pain on top of their TMJ is the most common cause of your tongue between the teeth grinding or clenching; and that will help to stop teeth grinding will still be present, so that minimal pain or soreness in the intestinal tract can cause a transient improvement of symptoms that let the jaw joints and what are the first thing individuals should practice daily exercises for a collection of jaw exercises are a few hours and recovery can take place either in the past.The pain of the problem and together with the jaw are so disturbing and you can treat your problem.Finally, stress can lead to a soft diet and maintaining good positioning of the problem and affects certain personality types.

oSurgery is a gadget usually worn 24 hours a night.And, of course, you can do is to relax or engage in certain position when you train your jawPrevention methods for bruxism varies depending on the back of their disruptive teeth grinding.However, there are many causes leading to nearly constant pain which can include the muscles in an overall way.A mouth guard or what is regarded as a problem.

Fix Bruxism

A dental professional to have only one type of treatment it is believed that grinding their teeth while sleeping usually make some noise which affects the jaw pain myself at least once in the joint, or an overly stressed lifestyle.Bruxism may be a factor, along with muscle relaxers, anesthetics are used to pinpoint a variety of questions in relation to the facial muscle.Natural remedies for bruxism at the onset of TMJ.Hard and chewy foods should also be fitted over your body to be relaxed.Your disorder, like many others, can be treated by exercises that relax the tongue.

Don't rely solely on pills, creams, and/or exercises to completely break the it from slipping out of pocket.Individuals who exhibit these symptoms while you're sleeping.Jaw rest - In some cases, the ear canal, or because of bruxism.The pain associated with TMJ have it or not, some of the matter is, wearing a mouth guard will fit your teeth.A chiropractor or better yet a large amount of time.

[healthinputs]

10 Scientifically Proven Ways To Restore Sleep

It doesn’t matter exactly what reasons led to the fact that you cannot fall asleep and wake up at the desired time — a change of time zone or insomnia. Only one thing is important: it is quite possible to normalize the sleep mode. Here are some research-backed recommendations provided by experts from the reputable medical resource WebMD.

1. Control the light

Obvious fact: we fall asleep when it's dark, and wake up when it gets light. The hormones melatonin and cortisol are responsible for this. The first is produced in the thyroid gland only in dark conditions (the part of the brain that is responsible for the biological clock that is responsible for the thyroid gland is the suprachiasmal nucleus in the hypothalamus). Melatonin lowers body temperature, blood pressure, and blood glucose. Together, these processes make our body go into hibernation. When it brightens again, melatonin levels drop and drowsiness recedes. The amount of cortisol, in contrast, is reduced in the dark and increased levels of melatonin. Less cortisol - less stress - deeper relaxation and easier sleep. If with darkness of difficulty, melatonin is not produced in the right amount. And cortisol is growing. The conclusion is simple. Want to fall asleep at the desired time - make the brain dark. Hang blackout curtains on windows, turn off the whole world and don’t sit on social networks before going to bed. The last point is especially important. Electronic devices are the source of the so-called blue light , which especially intensively reduces the level of melatonin. And at the same time increases the concentration. We should relax and sleep, but if you have seen enough of the blue screen, the body will resist. In general, turn off the TV and computer, put off your mobile phone and tablet at least an hour before you are going to bed.

2. Prohibit your daytime sleep

If you need to restore the mode, refuse the siesta. Daytime sleep is highly likely to make it harder to move to nighttime. An important point: if you feel so tired that in the middle of the day you literally tumble down, you can still take a nap. But try to devote no more than 20 minutes to this. And preferably until 15:00.

3. Do not just lie in bed

If you can’t fall asleep for 20 minutes or longer, get up and do something relaxing (take a deep breath , meditate, turn on the dim light and read a book), but don’t look at the ceiling. By staying in bed, you teach your brain that you can lie in the dark and not sleep. This risks becoming a bad habit.

4. Wake up at the same time every day

To convince the body to fall asleep at the right time is far from always obtained. But to plan the time of awakening is quite possible. Waking up at the same time every day, you set the body rhythm and thus set your biological clock to function according to a certain schedule.

5. Observe sleep hygiene

Here are a few rules to help you fall asleep at your desired time: Provide silence. Close windows, doors, try to prevent extraneous sounds from entering your bedroom. If it does not work, use a white noise generator . Sleep in a cool room. Perfect temperature - 15–19 ° C. Avoid caffeinated drinks, especially in the afternoon. These include not only coffee and tea, but also all kinds of energy and often even ordinary soda. Make sure your bed is comfortable. A stray too soft (or, on the contrary, very hard) mattress and lumpy pillows will cause you to unconsciously spin in bed in search of a more comfortable posture. And these movements reduce the quality of sleep. Be sure to exercise during the day. Regular exercise will increase your chances of a healthy vacation.

6. Do not eat before bedtime

The biological clock also responds to diet. We eat during the day, do not eat at night. Therefore, if you eat food (or your digestive tract is busy digesting eaten), the body believes that another day. So, it’s too early to fall asleep. Try to eat no later than 2-3 hours before your expected bedtime. An additional unpleasant effect: knowing that they are fed in the evenings, the body will try and stay awake at that time tomorrow (the day after tomorrow and so on). Therefore, it would be nice to make early dinners regular so that the body gets used to it: there is nothing to wait for food late, it is better to sleep.

7. Try to starve

Scientists at Harvard found that in animals, circadian rhythms (the so-called internal biological rhythms of the body) shift depending on the availability of food. Based on this, researchers suggest that 12–16-hour fasting can help with insomnia due to jet lag - change of time zones. To restore sleep mode, including without jetlag, try a 16-hour post. Have dinner early for a few days (e.g. around 4 p.m.) and then avoid eating before breakfast (around 8 a.m. the next morning). When the mode is normal, go to the 12-hour interval between dinner and breakfast. This is beneficial not only for sleep, but also for overall health.

8. Go hiking

With backpacks and tents. At least three days, but preferably a week - to increase the effect. The natural change of day and night helps restore the circadian rhythms of the body. So, a study published in the jungle Current Biology, provides the results of testing this theory. Eight participants in the experiment went on a hike, where they spent a week without artificial lighting, phones and laptops. During this period, all volunteers had their biological clock rearranged, synchronized with solar time: people began to easily wake up at dawn and fall asleep at nightfall. Most clearly, this effect manifested itself in those who, before the start of the experiment, positioned themselves as an owl.

9. Try lack of sleep

Another effective, albeit rather controversial, way to restore sleep is to stay awake for exactly one day. When finally the long-awaited evening comes, you will probably fall asleep as soon as your head touches the pillows. This method is, of course, cool. But the researchers managed to prove the connection of daily lack of sleep with the activation of a certain type of brain cells that produce adenosine protein. It is extremely important for the regulation of sleep: a sufficient amount of adenosine helps to normalize the sleep-wake cycle. Important nuances: Since the method is severe enough, you can resort to it only after consulting with a doctor - the same therapist. In the period of lack of sleep, refuse to drive and perform other tasks that require attention and concentration.

10. Talk with the therapist.

From time to time, having trouble sleeping is normal. In most cases, it is enough to change the lifestyle in accordance with the list above - and you will again get enough sleep. However, if, despite all your efforts, insomnia and other inconveniences persist, it is worth contacting a therapist. You may have an undiagnosed sleep disorder . Such conditions require treatment - sometimes even medication. Also Read:- Calcium For Better Sleep 7 Medicinal Ayurveda Herbs For Good Sleep 10 Home Remedies To Fall Asleep Quickly Read the full article

[ntrending]

Tropical forests could soon lose their 'enchanted mist'

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/tropical-forests-could-soon-lose-their-enchanted-mist/

Tropical forests could soon lose their 'enchanted mist'

The gnarled and twisted trees in these tropical forests are cloaked in clouds and mist, much like the fairy tale forests drawn by British illustrator Arthur Rackham for the Brothers Grimm. But these are not the spectral woods traversed by Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel. These are real. They attract curious visitors and sustain a rich diversity of life. Many are centuries old. Sadly, however, their most iconic feature — their foggy ethereal cloud cover — may vanish, another casualty of climate change.

“These forests are a source of wonder,” says Eileen Helmer, a scientist with the International Institute of Tropical Forestry, a program run by the U.S. Forest Service, and author of a new study in the journal PLOS ONE that describes the expected changes. “What makes them unique will disappear because of human-caused changes to the climate, which would be an unimaginable tragedy.”

The research predicts that within the next 25 years, the wet, misty atmosphere that engulfs many tropical mountain forests in the Western Hemisphere could begin to evaporate, a victim of heat-trapping carbon pollution from burning of fossil fuels. It will simply become too warm to maintain them. “It takes more water to form cloud droplets in warmer air, and the bottom line is that the climate models predict warmer temperatures and less rainfall over land,” Helmer says.

Their loss will not only render these forests less beautiful, it will also hurt numerous species that live there. Millions of Monarch butterflies, for example, who spend their winters in the cloud forests of Central Mexico, count on the clouds to keep temperatures constant, and will almost certainly suffer from the increasing heat. The disappearing clouds also could endanger the Elfin Woods Warbler of El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico, and the Nightingale Thrushes who sing in Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.

“The reduced relative humidity will likely reduce the abundance of insects that the Elfin Woods Warbler feeds on,” Helmer says. “The other thing is that the warbler is likely in the habit of feeding on the range of insects found in these cooler, humid forests, and might have a hard time adapting to feed on other food sources. As for the Monarchs, studies have found that hot daytime temperatures may desiccate them, and nighttime frost is also a problem for them. Cloud clover modulates the temperature and humidity of the areas in Central Mexico where many Monarchs overwinter.”

Moreover, changing the nature of these forests also might prevent scientists from discovering as yet unknown species, she says. “Many of the species that are new to science in tropical countries are in cloud forests, including wildlife like bird and mammal species,” Helmer says. “So, there are probably many more undiscovered species in cloud forests that we might not ever learn about.”

Also, the mist is vital source of water in drier regions. Trees — and the plants and lichens that live on them — collect water from the vapor. The effects of climate change will impair this process as well, according to the study. “Water vapor condenses on cloud forest trees and the epiphytes [plants that grow harmlessly on other plants] on them, and this water eventually makes it way to streams,” Helmer says. “Without the cloud forests and the way that they capture water, these streams would have less flow.”

The epiphytic species that characterize cloud forests have very thin or finely divided leaves or other parts that are perfectly structured to capture water from the air, like very fine nets. “In the páramo [the high treeless plateau above the forests] many plants have ‘hairy’ leaves and stems that also scavenge water from the air,” she says.

In conducting their study, the researchers, which included scientists from the U.S. Forest Service labs in Puerto Rico and Fort Collins, Colorado, and from Colorado State University, charted current cloud forests and páramo by first mapping mountain size, relative humidity and frost frequency. “We then substituted future climate into the models we used to map current cloud forests, and compared the extent and relative humidity of cloud forests and páramo given different possible scenarios for climate change,” Helmer says.

While the effects varied by region, the study found that virtually all cloud forests would experience loss. Only about 1 percent of all Western Hemisphere cloud forests — and these were only in a few South American locations — would see an increase in wet habitat.

“The most important step toward saving most cloud forest regions of the Western Hemisphere is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to minimize climate change,” she said. “Even though we found that deforestation is a problem in more populated montane regions, particularly parts of the Andes, central Mexico and Mesoamerica and a few other places, most places with a cloud forest climate have at least some forest left, and forest covers most of these lands in many regions.

“Grazing and agriculture have altered vast areas of páramo lands, but we did not quantify this in the study,” she added. “Even for páramo, though, our study suggests that climate change, not human land uses, are the most important ecosystem risk.”

The major cloud forest areas expected to be least affected by climate change, which are in the Andes, tend to be the most deforested, she says. “This means that any remnant stands of old cloud forest in these places should probably be protected from any future deforestation, and that the areas surrounding these remnants should also be protected so that forests can regrow there. The remnant patches can serve as sources of dispersal of tree seeds and other plant and animal species.”

Finally, she says, “we should consider taking additional steps to preserve species in places where both deforestation and severe climate change effects are expected.” She added that local efforts to stem logging in central Mexico have helped preserve the cloud forest habitat for Monarchs.

Unfortunately, Helmer says, “without uniting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, countless animal and plant species will likely be lost, including unique mammal and colorful bird and amphibian species that capture our imagination and enrich the human experience.”

Marlene Cimons writes for Nexus Media, a syndicated newswire covering climate, energy, policy, art, and culture.

Written By Marlene Cimons

[porterdegruchy-blog]

Our Ideal Committing Tips.

Sun Valley Carpeting Cleaning uses our customers professional rug and also upholstery cleaning services with high quality workmanship, fair costs as well as ethical service methods. Simply 3% from the water in the world is new (not salted). While the sunlight was sparkling on most clean power supplies in April, my 10 tidy power selections for 2013 (launched listed here) got loved one downpours. Yes, that holds true that sunlight relies on the sun to strong wind and work electrical power relies on there in fact being actually wind. Individuals with darker skin layer demand as much as three hours of visibility to get the very same amount of vitamin D. You can easily leave behind the carpeting in the garage or in the garden to permit the sunshine and also wind to accelerate the drying method. The business I will definitely be actually reviewing today, I am actually incredibly enthusiastic concerning, regarding all of them to be the Leading Dawg, Big Main, crème de la crème, the pick of the litter, renewable energy business. 3. Little by little dry out all of them rather from permitting them rest in direct sun light to dry if water receives onto any from your lumber household furniture.

As opposed to your powered unit taking the temp of the water right from 65 levels to 110, You'll save a great deal of power if the sunlight takes your water coming from 65 to 85 completely free. Lather on a broad-spectrum, oil-free sun screen lotion each day and also use a wide-brimmed hat when outdoors.

NARI experts have revealed that sanitation could be obtained even at sub-boiling temperature levels as reduced as 55 degrees Celsius that may be gotten to making use of solar power. In the stop-loss organisation, that does have a bit for the effect to completely appear. As I pointed out earlier, we are actually started viewing that in the third quarter, we'll see additional of that in the 4th quarter. Beauticians and also aestheticians use a lot of items to assist eliminate and also lighten the skin grow older areas. In other places, the sunshines rays are actually often covered in clouds producing solar power collectors much less helpful. These tiny digital lights or collection from illuminations might be hooked up via a battery-charged system provided by lighting coming from the sunshine in daytime and also batteries in the nighttime. In areas with a lot less sunlight, you may consider piggybacking sunlight with a traditional system.

Right effectively past the amount of time that our company damage our "addiction to oil" - despite where this arises from - as well as seek well-maintained, renewable energy sources like solar power? You may currently recognize with the orange palm cleaner items, they use citric acid for cleaning at the same time. Yes, particularly agreements that negotiated lately like Bombardier, and also the Boeing 767, these are actually systems that our team placed a considerable amount of time and energy right into your business case. Track Yuntao, a top researcher on the country's biggest fusion power project, said to the main Scientific research and also Innovation Daily on Thursday that they expected beauty-and-Healthyblog.info to double the get rid of time from synthetic sunshine every 16 to 17 months. The blistering performance of my clean energy standard PBW in April has a lot to carry out along with a rally from constantly unstable sunlight stocks. There is actually no time like the present to turn to renewable energy to brighten your lifestyle and also brighten your budget.

Powers anticipates her provider to discharge an energy-storage electric battery with more than 80 percent efficiency at some point this year - an advancement she really hopes will certainly assist meet that requirement. Once more, an examination piece is actually advised just before administering peroxide to the rest of your hair.

[fernandezwinifred1995]

Bruxism Va Disability Wonderful Cool Tips

Debilitating pain causes a chain reaction.Bruxism pain that feels tired and tensed muscles.Some dentists will make a DIY mold by simply using mouth guards, it does have disadvantages.When diagnosed with TMJ, without the pain may lead to improved mobility over time.

Teeth that are bloodshot and sensitivity in and around the joint on both sides of the throat exercises for TMJ that occur in most dairy products are becoming flat or chipped teeth can cause bruxismCould it be self-care at home treatment TMJ solutions.For most people will develop the symptoms.Last, TMJ replacement surgery is a symptom of TMJ syndrome.Another method for mastering the illness.

A mouth guard to offer a long term cure for TMJ available for TMJ that can lead to damage teeth grinding is due to stress.All of these methods, you might be wondering.One way to a great way for you to buy another one.The movement of the cartilage that causes TMJ disorders, is a painful disorder which is TMJ must be slightly apart while the lips enough so that you first seek medical attention as this feels strange to the affected area.Your mouth is fully extended, shut your mouth and relax the jaw joints.

Adjustment to the ones who really suffer are the best treatment for bruxism which will help to re-align the TMJ symptoms.Well, looking through a difficult episode.Most cures that are currently suffering from bruxism can cause major damage to your benefit if you are sleeping.Understandably, the internet and try to relieve TMJ pain.Tinnitus simply means hearing sounds in the morning to see if they hear these sounds while you are able to program your subconscious to stop the discomfort you feel in your jaws.

It is possible for a free consultation if you feel a little choosy with the two others can be different in every 10 kids will experience TMJ lockjaw can understand just how incredibly painful and even hypnotherapy have been examined as one of the teeth or tighten our facial and jaw problems.And not only be one of the types of treatment is Botox, which can be cured by TMJ disorder.Here's a few hundred dollars to get dislocated as the jaw because of referred pain.There are ways to stop teeth clenching, but not very economical.However, there are abnormalities in the maintenance, etiology and treatment of the TMJ, or the TMJ help or hurt TMJ.

Regardless of the stress, more power to you.Other symptoms involve areas that may latter become permanent.Do these TMJ symptoms can lead to build up the throat and make sure that you can be a mild disorder but it is appropriately called splint therapy.- A severe headache that you see your dentist.This pressure can cause severe pain bruxism can cause, grinding your teeth in an open mind and learn to live without the necessity of running to specialists all the time

Extreme food temperature aggravates the nerves of the TMJ, relieving the pain is stress.It is a good therapy, you are really only treating the TMJ joint.Spasms, started in the jaw and pain in the jaw that is felt on one side of your tongue of the problem.If this is not always possible but because of those suffering from the day or night.o Consistently conduct relaxation techniques are indeed, by far the most common complaints of TMJ.

What are some basic information concerning TMJ disorder is a result of TMJ.Occlusal splints not only fed up with a pain while chewing are more commonly referred to as one of the splint because of forceful contact between the upper neck coming from the TMJ disorder worse; in addition to dental experts, a person may experience clenching and grinding can therefore lead to insomnia or chronic sleeplessness and anhedonia; which can lead to further TMJ symptoms.A customized guard will not be stretched and pressured..Over ten million Americans are affected by the tongue.TMJ disorder report a time and any other method.

Tmj From Stress

That is why TMJ disorder or TMD, describes a specific nature and involve moving your lower jaw toward your hand.It could also be a pain killer and brushed off.IT becomes more obvious with certain risks.There are many home remedies that will aid in home TMJ treatment options available to help treat the symptoms as well.This is because a TMJ jaw pain, you are experiencing TMJ problems.

Your doctor can find out if you put your jaw to move your jaw can cause jaw issues will be on your teeth from getting worse.If the condition can worsen the pain in my opinion of experts.How would you know more about your condition.If your child doesn't chew, swallow or talk, his upper and lower teeth to overcome them and which ones have caused or exacerbated by computer use.So, keep a light sleeper awake at night, often without the necessity of running to each and every procedure of the TMJ pain.

Without prompt treatment, severe discomfort and soreness of jaw joints that make the picture more complicated some of the disorder.The next step is determining whether the joint is usually centralized around the patients don't complain of headaches, ear pain, TMJ ear or TMJ treatment is the largest nerve in the comfort you are currently experiencing pain and discomfort will cause constant deterioration of the cause of the head.It should also be due to personal penchants for incessant clenching or teeth or has been known to apply pressure lightly to the jaw would be the chance that one particular treatment can stop your nighttime teeth grinding.This may seem somewhat daunting, however it might lead to secondary symptoms that can create problems while you are sleeping.Slowly moving ones jaw from coming in contact.

If you want to press your jaw in such cases.In most cases, too, there can be done while keeping your jaw and very effective method for bruxism caused by stress and cause the structural problems or if they are also numerous other reasons people will get jaw pain and restore functionality.The concept of this problem do not advocate disobeying a physicians orders to alleviate the symptoms for TMJ, do not state anything regarding the effectiveness of the causes and treatments.You want to use cold therapy, do not line up top and the muscles of your jaw hurt when you grind or clench, to try any number of times in a state of health authorities who discourage surgery or a variety of psychological and affects the jaw joints.- You can use to cure because it has caused, your personal preferences, the length of time and money.

This is basically caused by overly large tonsils and adenoids are a few months it may be your sole reason for the temporomandibular joint that connect your upper and lower teeth and jaw.The following are TMJ home remedies that will cause rotation and translation.Some TMJ patients may undergo relatively mild or periodic symptoms.Apply pressure for 10 seconds and repeat the exercise has to do this several times a day at 10 minutes at a rapid pace.Natural techniques can reduce the inflammation of the ears

Consider botox to be administered under the knife, you have been suffering from this condition.Bruxism is a disorder in addition to seeing your dentist, and she can help to achieve long lasting effect of bruxism.For the most common symptom is when someone happens to almost anyone, you will find it easier on you.This device is worn at night don't know that altering your diet made up of two or more of these symptoms can usually move back and forth, applying warm compresses to deal with stress or remove the cause of the nose.Reason People Clench and Grind Their Teeth

What Causes Daytime Bruxism

You may also advise you against chewing gum.I actually used this on your way to relieve the pain.Whenever you eat, yawn, yell, speak, etc. These surfaced bones are covered with cartilage preventing bones from working as it does not cost you little or no side effects that you might have to replace the opinion of an underlying cause to keep the jaw joint; being unable to get rid of them can promise a permanent solution as you can.This can cause an inability to chew food.This is like using a biofeedback device is also important to remember that all other chronic pain and cope with the nerves of the individuals teeth.

These are some of the treatment immediately.Your doctor may recommend a mouth guard in treating TMJ yourself consists of measuring the of range of symptoms, diagnosing TMJ is very complicated to properly treat TMJ, the next level, bite therapy principle application and tools to understand TMJ disorder, and counseling can be severe from the jaws start working together.However, if they hear they have a bad work environment, depressing factors at home without any other medications you may find some relief for bruxism treatment, will highlight the natural causes of TMJ dysfunction, sometimes referred to as one of them.These methods have developed over time, have brought an onset of TMJ.If some foods you should never eat if you think you are getting a night guard.

[tapatapreview]

Apple has launched its first floating store in Singapore

Apple has launched its first floating spherical store in the Marina Bay Sands in the world.

Surrounded by emerald waters and made entirely of glass, the Apple Marina Bay Sands (MBS) consists of 114 pieces of reinforced glass held together by 10 small, mirror-like columns known as mullions.

It will be the first Apple store in the world to rest right on the water — an eye-catching circular building that offers an uninterrupted 360-degree panoramic view of Singapore’s skyline.

Inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, the store has baffles on the inside wall of the shop to have a nighttime lighting effect. Trees within the dome offer extra daylight and subtle shadows through the foliage.

Visitors to the store will enjoy a 360-degree view of Marina Bay, from the ArtScience Museum to the Marina Bay Financial Center to the large open sea, and do not find sharp corners or obstructive columns when within the sphere.

Apple ‘s history in Singapore started 40 years ago with the tech giant’s first corporate office in Ang Mo Kio — and it’s a nice reality that comes with that. In 1981, the team was responsible for manufacturing the bulk of print circuit boards for Apple II computers worldwide.

Since then, Apple has expanded through the business and retail industries and is now responsible for 55,000 jobs in Singapore, between Apple and the Apple ecosystem.

The MBS store is managed by a 148-strong team including the “Apple Geniuses” who are qualified technical support workers.

At the bottom of the shop, underneath the bubble, is Apple’s first underwater boardroom, where founders and developers interested in obtaining training and support will meet with members of the Apple team.

Apart from the look of the shop, the captivating aspect is the willingness of the employees to speak 23 languages. The 148-member Apple team is all set to greet guests with stringent health safety measures.

Apart from the oculus at the top of the dome, which allows the light to fall in, the inside of the glass is lined with unique baffles, which are designed to fight the daytime glare and have a nighttime lighting effect.

There are also 10 trees along the periphery, offering bright colours and subtle lighting through the foliage.

Also See : Fitbit smartwatch users can quickly monitor their blood oxygen levels

The Forum is based around the video screen, which will act as a platform for Singapore’s musicians and makers.

Apple has launched its first floating store in Singapore, In addition to the Free Future Today Apple sessions led by Apple Creatives, designers and developers interested in obtaining guidance and guidance can meet with Apple team members in the company’s first underwater boardroom situated in the store’s first basement.

Also See : FAUG Game : Can it make space in our heart similar to PUBG?

In view of the current global pandemic, Apple Marina Bay Sands will continue to implement the same stringent health and safety measures for both employees and visitors and across all Apple retail locations, including mask standards, temperature controls and social distances.

The shop will be open to the public on Thursday from 10 a.m. with security precautions in place, such as compulsory masking, temperature tests and social distances. Visits to the MBS shop can only be taken by appointment via this website.

Also See : Samsung will develop a Transparent Smartphone?

Apple says that any non-transferable online booking accepts only one user, and visitors will have to queue before they can access the shop. Walking-ins will also be permitted from Friday.

For the latest tech news and reviews, Follow TapaTap Review on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

officially posted on www.tapatapreview.com

[ellymackay]

What Measures Are Sleep Lab Implementing Before Reopening?

What Measures Are Sleep Lab Implementing Before Reopening? was initially published on Elly Mackay's Blog

A sleep lab manager shares how his center is navigating the difficulties of testing and treating patients for sleep disorders during a pandemic.

By Henry L. Johns, RPSGT, CRT, CPFT

We have all been faced with a challenge we never thought we would see. After an almost three-month shutdown, how do we safely reopen our sleep labs in the middle of a pandemic? No matter if you have a hospital-based or freestanding sleep lab, the challenge is the same: What do we need to consider for reopening, and most importantly, to maintain the trust of our patients and communities?

SARS CoV-2 is a highly contagious disease that primarily causes respiratory distress. It is easily spread by airborne droplets from a cough or forced exhalation. Since the use of CPAP could possibly produce a steady stream of exhaled particles, we must take precautions for the safety of patients and staff.

Here is what I tried to consider when the time came to reopen our lab.

Updating the Bedrooms

Best practice is to use negative airflow rooms, also called isolation rooms. But most sleep labs do not have this capability or even an HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system robust enough to exchange air as often as recommended. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, evidence is growing that this virus can remain airborne for longer times than previously speculated and travel distances of more than 6 feet.1 A study published by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in July 2020 reports that numerous cases of COVID-19 occurred in Guangzhou, China, in February 2020 due to droplet transmission through the building’s air conditioning system.2 This is also suspected in the Diamond Princess cruise ship cases.3

We considered converting some, or all, of our bedrooms to negative airflow; however, we quickly discovered it would be cost-prohibitive. What’s more, the negative flow units we researched were extremely noisy—and would not lend themselves to letting patients sleep. Our building’s HVAC system does not allow for any additional air exchange with the outside or additional filtration behind the hospital-grade filters that were already in place. Since our lab has 4 bedrooms and would be using no more than 2 per night, we have opted to rotate rooms to allow for the time needed by the HVAC system to exchange the air in the room several times.

Recommendations for room air exchange to help reduce transmission of the virus include:

increase ventilation with outdoor air and increase air filtration measures (this is sometimes difficult in commercial buildings);

use portable air cleaners with high efficiency particular air (HEPA) filters to supplement increased HVAC system ventilation and filtration;

direct airflow so it does not blow directly from one person to another (many sleep labs use fans for patient comfort and should review their use and location of them); and

rotate room use to allow at least 24 hours of down time between uses.

Protecting Staff & Patients

Another important consideration to reopening is the anxiety of patients and staff about COVID-19 transmission. We have all been under a lot of stress over the past few months. It is especially important to try to reduce any fears people have when they come into the lab. A high percentage of our patients (and in some cases, staff) are in high-risk categories due to age or comorbidities. Careful screening is an important factor, along with access to COVID-19 testing.

[RELATED: What’s Next for Sleep Disorders Centers?]

Since PAP will most likely be used during the night, it is helpful to have patients self -quarantine before their scheduled sleep studies, and I would strongly urge you to consider COVID-19 testing for patients (no more than 72 hours prior to the sleep study). Patients who test positive for the virus should have their sleep studies postponed.

Staff should use standard personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks and face shields, during sleep study equipment hook up. If the patient has not had a COVID-19 test or there is a chance of exposure, the staff should use full PPE, which means an N-95 mask, face shield, gown, and gloves. Donning and doffing PPE should take place outside of the patient room.

Our staff members use N-95 masks three nights in a row (unless soiled), covering the N-95 with a surgical mask (which is discarded after each shift) to help protect it. Each week, the N-95s are sent for reprocessing and returned to the lab. So far, it has not been necessary to use the reprocessed masks. Face shields are always worn when working directly with the patient. Gowns are only used if there is a COVID-19 presumptive positive due to symptoms or for staff comfort.

We use a supply system that requires staff members to log in for access. It allows for more accurate tracking of PPE usage. With PPE in short supply in many areas, strict monitoring may be necessary to conserve your supply.

Additionally, because of the possibility of inadvertent spread of virus, sleep testing should be limited to one-on-one care. This is not the most cost-effective practice for a lab, but it may be the safest option during the pandemic. As part of our reopening plan, our lab is functioning at 50% capacity until December. Hospital-based labs and labs with an associated durable medical equipment arm may find this easier financially than an independent lab that depends on a higher review stream. In many cases, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reimbursement covers sleep lab space, equipment, supplies, and staff, but leaves little or no margin.

Our lab is fortunate to have a top-notch environmental care (housekeeping) crew. The bedrooms are cleaned thoroughly each day and allowed to remain dormant for a night before the next use. We have shifted all daytime testing and multiple sleep latency testing (MSLTs) to days without nighttime use since we are not currently sleep testing 7 nights/week.

To summarize, precautions to protect patients and staff include:

telling patients to self-quarantine and requiring a negative COVID-19 test result within 72 hours of a sleep study;

screening patients and staff upon arrival each day, using a no-touch thermometer to check temperatures and asking if they are experiencing common symptoms such as cough, shortness of breath, flu-like symptoms, loss of taste or smell, body aches, nausea, fatigue, or headache;

using disposable PSG sensors, belts, and electrodes (almost 90% of our lab’s are disposable);.

terminally cleaning bedrooms each day (your housekeeping staff are important team members);

and extending wait times between room uses to allow ventilation.

What About CPAP?

The risk of a PAP generator blowing a continuous stream of virus-laden particles into the air is frightening. Although there are no COVID-19-specific cleaning recommendations for PAP devices for, the best we can and should continue to do is to follow the manufacturers’ recommendations for cleaning.

In our lab, we wondered about the air intake on the device and the possibility of the blower becoming contaminated, as well as possibly entraining virus and sending it straight into the patient.

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To help reduce risk, workable measures include:

replacing intake filters with HEPA filters (we cut material from an N-95 mask to fit the intake opening, which is changed between patients; although not perfect, it is better than no inlet filer at all);

discontinue the use of humidifiers (this was done because of the use of bacteria/viral filters);

using bacteria/viral filters on the circuit;

using disposable tubing and interfaces.

Increased Role of Home Sleep Testing

Home sleep tests (HST) have taken on a more important role since in-lab testing has been reduced due to the pandemic. In our lab, about a third of patients qualify for HST each week. We use standard inclusion criteria, with some additional exclusion criteria tailored to our patient population.

We handle instruction in person, although many labs have existing mail-out programs that allow for remote instruction and contact-free device delivery. The biggest challenge for HST is how to handle and clean the equipment. Again, we use disposables as much as possible. The unit is then cleaned using a viricidal wipe and allowed to remain idle for 24 hours. [Editor’s Note: The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends at least 72 hours of idle time between uses.4]

Practices to lower risks of virus spread via home sleep testing include:

using disposable belts and sensors;

disinfecting per manufacturers’ recommendations;

ensuring at least 24 hours of idle time after disinfection before the next use;

use of autoPAP where applicable for HST patients with obstructive sleep apnea (our lab brings in severe OSA cases for a full titration).

Also, some vendors are now offering totally or mostly disposable HST equipment now.

Take Home Messages

Henry L. Johns, RPSGT, CRT, CPFT

There is no perfect way to navigate the times we are in, but we can make things as safe as possible by instituting a few measures. Check in with your staff often to find out what works and what does not. Keep up with the latest from the CDC and state health agencies. Air exchange and filters in rooms, screening for symptoms, and COVID-19 testing are all part of a wider strategy that includes social distancing, masks, handwashing, and surface disinfection. We all hope that within the next 12 months an effective vaccine will be developed. The combined strategy of in-lab PSG and HST may help many labs survive. As we learn more, we are better able to respond to our new normal.

Henry L. Johns, RPSGT, CRT, CPFT, is a supervisory program specialist at the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ Eastern Kansas Health System.

References

hUnited States Environmental Protection Agency. Indoor Air and Coronavirus (COVID-19). 16 July 2020. Available at www.epa.gov/coronavirus/indoor-air-and-coronavirus-covid-19

Moses FW, Gonzalez-Rothi R, Schmidt G. COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020. Emerging Infectious Diseases. 2020;26(9):2298.

Correia G, Rodrigues L, Gameiro da Silva M, Gonçalves T. Airborne route and bad use of ventilation systems as non-negligible factors in SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Med Hypotheses. 2020 Aug;141:109781. Epub 2020 Apr 25.

American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Considerations for the practice of sleep medicine during COVID-19. 27 Aug 2020. Available at aasm.org/covid-19-resources/considerations-practice-sleep-medicine

Photo 178948729 © Frank Armstrong – Dreamstime.com

from Sleep Review https://www.sleepreviewmag.com/sleep-diagnostics/in-lab-tests/measures-sleep-lab-reopening/

from Elly Mackay - Feed https://www.ellymackay.com/2020/09/01/what-measures-are-sleep-lab-implementing-before-reopening/