Category Archives: cool

cool, entrepreneurship, healthy habits, nutrition, policy

Fresh food vending machine

 

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3025638/this-vending-machine-sells-fresh-salads-instead-of-junk-food

This Vending Machine Sells Fresh Salads Instead Of Junk Food

Chicago’s Garvey Food Court has a McDonald’s, a Dunkin Donuts and a vending machine that sells kale.

Each morning, the machine is filled with freshly made salads and snacks packed in recyclable jars. The ingredients, carefully layered to stay crisp throughout the day, are all organic, and locally grown when possible.

“I have always been someone who sought out healthy food, and I have been a bit obsessed with the food industry my entire life,” Saunders says. “I really noticed how hard it was to eat healthy when I was traveling a lot for work, and I started thinking about ways to give healthy food an edge in the market.”

By forgoing the rent and staff costs of a restaurant, Saunders can start to compete with the chains. He says he prefers the vending machines–which he calls kiosks or “veggie machines”–to selling the food in grocery stores, since the machines give him control over the user experience and distribution model.

“We are running pilot programs with a few stores, but at the end of the day I feel like having my own distribution channel gives me the flexibility to stay true to our healthy food mission,” he says. “I also felt like I could get the machines closer to the end user, which we believe is key to making it easier to eat healthy.”

Each of the vending machine’s offerings is carefully balanced nutritionally for the most health benefits. The “High Protein Salad,” for example, which includes quinoa and chickpeas, claims to offer more protein than many protein bars. The food is also always fresh: After discounting salads and snacks at the end of the day, the company donates any unsold meals to a local food kitchen.

The machine itself, clad in recycled barn wood, includes a small hole where users can return the jars for recycling. “It’s fairly low tech, and we occasionally find trash in there,” says Saunders. But at their newest location, he says they’re already getting a return rate of 80%.

So far, almost everyone who tries the food comes away a fan. “As far as I know we are the only vending machine in the world to have Yelp reviews,” Saunders says. “Most people tell us that the salads are the best they have ever had.”

“All of the food we serve from our machine has to be in the running for the title of ‘Best ______ I have ever had,'” he adds. That means some items, like sandwiches, will never be on the menu, because they just can’t be as good when they aren’t freshly made. But salads are different, and the company is constantly testing new recipes to add.

After opening two more vending machines last fall, Saunders says that Farmer’s Fridge is continuing to quickly grow. “I am not sure where we will stop, but at this point we have more machines planned to launch in February than I thought would launch in all of 2014.”

cool, quantified self, technology

plasma-powered batteries…

super-cool, almost about time really… http://www.springwise.com/edible-batteries-power-tech-bodies/

Edible batteries could power tech inside our bodies

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created ingestible batteries, that could make internal devices a possibility.

United States 29 Jan 2014 Spotted by Raymond Neo, written by Springwise

alttext

While wearable technology is bringing smart devices even closer to home, another emerging field is the development of electronics that actually sit inside our bodies. We recently reported on TruTag — ingestible nanoscale electronic tags that could help tackle pharma fraud — and now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created edible batteries, that could be used to power biodegradable devices located inside the body.Developed by professors Christopher Bettinger and Jay Whitacre, from the materials science and engineering and biomedical engineering department at the institution, the idea stems from the need for a power source for biodegradable electronic materials that could have a number of medical benefits — timed drug delivery or health tracking, for example. The result is a non-toxic sodium ion battery that uses melanin derived from an organic material — cuttlefish ink. Since the ink is fairly commonly available, the cost of the edible batteries is low. The team says that the devices could be ingested in much the same way as a pill, without the need for prior sterilization, and any casing is biodegradable and deteriorates in the body. Combined with other technology, the batteries could have wide-ranging use — both medical and otherwise. In the near future, Bettinger imagines that humans could be taking his battery pills once a day in order to keep internal devices running. What possible inventions could be brought about thanks to this development? Website: www.cmu.edu Contact: cbetting@andrew.cmu.edu
cool, silly

Hi-fi coffin…

The pharaohs would be proud, as will the archaeologists who dig it up…

http://www.springwise.com/hi-fi-coffin-audiophiles-offers-soundtrack-afterlife/

Hi-fi coffin for audiophiles provides a soundtrack to the afterlife

Sweden’s Catacombo Sound System is a funeral casket that eternally plays the deceased’s choice of tracks while they’re six feet under.

Sweden 27 Jan 2014 alttext

Weird Of The Week: This is part of a series of articles that looks at some of the most bizarre and niche business ideas we see here at Springwise.
Music lovers are fanatic enough that they would probably take their favorite albums to the grave with them. Taking this idea literally, Sweden’s Catacombo Sound Systemis a funeral casket that eternally plays the deceased’s choice of tracks while they’re six feet under.

Created by Pause Ljud & Bild, the system consists of three different parts. Firstly, users create an account through the online CataPlay platform, which connects to Spotify and enables customers to curate a playlist for their own coffin or get friends and family to choose the tracks when they’re gone. The CataTomb is a 4G-enabled gravestone that receives the music from CataPlay and display the current track — along with details and tributes to the deceased — through a 7-inch LCD Display. Finally, the CataCoffin is where the parted will themselves enjoy two-way front speakers, 4-inch midbass drivers and an 8-inch sub-bass element that deliver dimensional high-fidelity audio tailored to the acoustics of the casket. The video below explains more about the concept:

Much like And Vinyly — the service that presses loved ones’ ashes into vinyl records — Catacomb Soundsystem caters for the fanatical nature of the audiophile who requires perfect sound even if they can’t hear it. Although priced at EUR 23,500, there’s certain to be an audience of music geeks that would willingly part with the cash.

Website: www.catacombosoundsystem.com
Contact: info@pauseljudbild.com

Spotted by Murtaza Patel, written by Springwise

cool, music, silly, words

HBO set to do dance-music comedy….

  • knob-twisters
  • self-oblivious man-children

http://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2014/jan/26/calvin-harris-irvine-welsh-dance-music-comedy

Calvin Harris and Irvine Welsh’s HBO dance-music comedy could be hilarious

Egomaniacal knob-twisters? Self-oblivious man-children? According to the anonymous duo behind the @DJsComplaining Twitter feed, the EDM scene provides a rich comic seam
Calvin Harris
Funny man? Calvin Harris, who will be collaborating in the making of HBO’s new comedy. Photograph: John Lamparski/WireImage

Remember when you first heard Calvin Harris‘s 2007 hit Acceptable in the 80s and thought to yourself how amazing it would be if Harris wrote a sitcom with Irvine Welsh about electronic dance music? And then remember thinking that the only way that could happen would be if Jay Zand Will Smith agreed to produce it? Well, it’s happening.

HBO – the visionary network behind modern parables The Wire and Boardwalk Empire – has announced it is in the process of developing Higher, a new half-hour comedy series “set in the world of electronic music,” clearly concluding that the next logical step on from crack dealers in Baltimore and bootleggers in prohibition-era Atlantic City is a kid sitting alone in his mum’s house in Romford listening to the same kick drum for hours on end and occasionally going out to buy clothes pegs just to “get out of the house”.

While, on the face of it, this may not seem like the most fecund comedy ground, as DJs ourselves, we are well aware that the world of dance music is a rich tapestry of egomaniacs and self-oblivious man-children that is ripe for mockery. We have tried to mine this particular seam of comedy for a couple of years now, first undermining our peers by retweeting their bitter, mundane gripes on our Twitter account,@DJsComplaining, then drawing on our own hard-won experience to write cutting think pieces about the EDM scene. And we have remained completely, spinelessly anonymous – because sharing a backstage area with a socially impaired knob-twister is often awkward enough even without the added frisson of them knowing you’ve spent 500 words and several days of your life lampooning them in the national press.

Saying that, Harris clearly operates in a different sphere to the likes of us, and while details about which aspects of EDM Higher will focus on are scarce, we can only assume that The Most Highly Paid DJ in the World™’s input to the project will be somewhat influenced by his own lifestyle. Harris probably slaps together his latest chart-topper on his iPad in between sips of ambrosia and bouts of clay-pigeon shooting, occasionally sloping off to wistfully roam his grounds on his gold-plated penny farthing. Let’s hope, then, that the presence of Welsh – a man whose heart remains closer to the gutter – will bring things back down to Earth. Welsh was reared in a different world of dance music altogether: a world of pills and pubs, of minicabs and chilli sauce; a world where ketamine was what you gave a horse and Traktor was what you used to get away from the horse once you’d given it some ketamine.

We don’t know yet quite how these two very different world views will meet on the page, but with Welsh’s keen eye for hallucinatory nightmare and Harris’s renowned comedic prowess, Higher just might be the laugh-a-minute romp that the EDM world has been so desperately waiting for. Perhaps.

complex adaptive systems, cool, facts & data points, healthy habits, meaning, nutrition, policy, politics, quantified self, research methodology

Ornish at TED

http://deanornish.com/

  • Wellness vs Illness – We vs I
  • 95% of NCD is preventable
  • NCDs are also reversible
  • Prostate Cancer, Breast Cancer susceptible to diet change
  • Obesity Trends in the US – new categories on the US map
  • Has worked with McDonalds and Pepsi to advise on products – didn’t go anywhere

Ornish Healthways Spectrum Program
http://deanornish.com/ornish-spectrum/

16 min: Healing Through Diet
http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_ornish_on_healing.html

3 min: Your Genes Are Not Your Fate

3 min: Killer Diet

complex adaptive systems, cool, data saving lives, entrepreneurship, healthy habits, nutrition, policy, quantified self, rapid learning health systems, startup, storytelling

Fear + Clear Action = Effective Behaviour Change

  • people indulge in unhealthy behaviours to relieve stress and anxiety
  • ads that cause stress and anxiety can drive unhealthy behaviours
  • one solution is to couple compelling threats with clear and specific paths to behaviour change
  • another approach is to apply the adicitive rewards that video games create for real life challenges
  • SUPERBETTERLABS.COM build video games which build resilience and maintain motivation while working to overcome injuries, anxiety and depression

 

http://www.iodine.com/blog/anti-smoking-ads/

Why Graphic Anti-Smoking Ads Make Some People Smoke More Cigarettes

Jessica Goldband

If these images make you squirm or want to click away, you’re not alone.

get-unhooked-man-1anti_smoking130328_anti_smoking_ad_thumb

How, then, can this type of message change the choices you make? Can we really be motivated by something that turns us off, rather than on?

You’d think, perhaps intuitively, that the scarier the ad, the more powerfully it affects our behavior. And the research supports that argument. Indeed, since the classic 1964 Surgeon General report on “Smoking and Health” came out 50 years ago this month, that’s been the basic strategy for health communication around the issue. But there’s a catch. A BIG one.

While we’ve seen a significant drop in global smoking rates (down 25% for men and 42% for women) since those landmark reports in the 1960s demonstrated the link between smoking and lung cancer, many people continue to smoke: 31% of men and 6% of women. In the U.S., 18% of adults (down by half since 1964) continue to do something they know might kill them.

Public health agencies have spent years communicating the dangers of smoking. Their anti-smoking ads have grown increasingly disturbing, threatening us with graphic images of bulging tumors and holes in our throats — possibly to try to reach that last stubborn segment of the population that hasn’t kicked the habit.

Why aren’t these ads working?

Turns out, the most recent and comprehensive research on so-called “fear appeals” and attitude change says that this kind of messaging does work, but only if the person watching the ad is confident that they are capable of making a change, such as quitting smoking. Public health gurus call this confidence in one’s ability to make a change “self-efficacy” — and threats only seem to work when efficacy is high. (The reverse is also true.)

If someone lacks efficacy, ads with fear appeals don’t help. In fact, they make the behaviorworse. How? Many people engage in unhealthy behavior because it makes them feel better and relieves their anxiety.

If you threaten someone who has little to no confidence they can change their behavior, their anxiety goes through the roof. What do they do? Perhaps turn off the threatening ad, walk away, and light up a cigarette — the very behavior you were trying to prevent. This same principle applies to other coping behaviors, such as eating unhealthy types of food or just too much of it.

Unfortunately, anxiety is quite common in this country. According to arecent Atlantic article, 1 in 4 Americans is likely to suffer from anxiety at some point in life. Making big life changes is tough, and it seems as though fear and anxiety don’t energize people, they just paralyze them.

So what’s the solution?

A step in the right direction would be for ad campaigns to couple compelling threats with equally clear and specific paths to behavior change. Or why not apply the rewards built into reaching a new level in addictive video games to apps that people can use for real-life challenges? One great example of this is Superbetter, a social online game to help people build resilience and stay motivated while working to overcome injuries, anxiety, and depression.

Stand-alone threats implicitly assume that people don’t already know how bad their choices are, and can drive them to the very behaviors they wish they could change. Truly effective ad campaigns might still appeal to our fears, but they should also let us wash it all down with a confidence chaser that empowers the more anxious among us to act on our fears.