Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Sleep more. Researchers say an afternoon nap prepares the brain to learn better and remember more
How siestas help you remember more
Sleep Pods devised by MetroNap
“It has already been established that those who siesta are less likely to die of heart disease (people who siesta for 20-30 minutes each day are 30% less likely to suffer from heart disease as sleep lowers stress on the heart). Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. A post-prandial snooze, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning. The ideal nap, follows a cycle of between 90 and 100 minutes (according the research, napping for 90 minutes after lunch can improve your productivity by up to 10%). The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta. The grogginess that results from an unrefreshing siesta is termed “sleep inertia”. This happens when the brain is woken from a deep sleep with its cells still firing at a slow rhythm and its temperature and blood flow decreased. Sara Mednick, from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that non-habitual nappers suffer from this more often than those who siesta regularly. It may be that those who have a tendency to wake up groggy are choosing not to siesta in the first place. Perhaps, though, as in so many things, it is practice that makes perfect.” Read the full story in Economist
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Cool bookshelves fighting back - for the love of books
Puntmobles Perec Wall-hung Shelf - click on the image to buy it
With iPad and Kindle paving the way for the virtual bookland on one hand and bookless world on the other, designers are turning humble book storage into a work of art. See our selection of cool bookshelves see our Links/Reading resources page. “There’s been a bibliophile backlash. Books have morphed from being ’stuff to store’ into a decorating opportunity.”
Read the full article with all the links to the top bookshelves designers.
Saturday, February 27th, 2010
Memory control discovered in forgetful flies
You may not like forgetting things but a new research suggests that any healthy brain need to be able to loose old memories. A protein has been discovered in flies that is the key to forgetting. At this time the scientists don’t know if this protein has the same role in people. If people forget in similar fashion as flies do, this could pave the way to new ways to enhance memories or erase unwanted ones. Read the whole story in the NewScientist
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Competition for the iPad - the Bonnier Mag+ project
Watch this video prototype of the Mag+ project. It could be a serious competitor to the iPad that Apple recently announced. You want to curl up with a book or magazine and lose yourself in. Can Mag+ project portable tablet e-reader deliver that experience?
Monday, February 1st, 2010
How do you store 35 million books?
35 million books could be stored on a single cartridge made using a new type of storage tape developed by IBM and Fujitsu. Can iPad beat that? Not for some time. This new cartridge has the capacity to hold up to 35TB of uncompressed data. This is about 44 times the capacity of today’s IBM LTO Generation 4 cartridge. A capacity of 35TB of data is sufficient to store the text of 35 million books, which would require 248 miles (399 km) of bookshelves. The biggest bookshop in Europe - Waterstones in Piccadilly, London UK SW1Y 6WW (tel 020 7851 2400) stores about 250 000 books on four floors in over eight and a half miles of shelving.
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Speed reading made easy on the iPad via iBook Store - revolution in ebook reading
Amazon Kindle tried to do it and Apple just did it! Apple revolutionised listening to music and now they’ve revolutionised ebook reading with the iPad via iBook Store. Five big partners… Penguin, Harper Collins, Macmillion, Simon & Shuster, Hachette Book Group… and more will sell their ebooks via iBook Store to be read on the iPad.
“It has a bookshelf. In addition there’s a button which is the store — we’ve created the new iBook Store. You can download right onto your iPad.” The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn’t look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly or fast for speed reading. “You can change the font… whatever you want. And that is iBooks.” “So iBooks again, a great reader, a great online bookstore. All in one really great app. We use the ePub format. We’re very excited about this.” said Steve Jobs at the launch of the iPad and iBooks Store today in San Francisco (6pm London time).
iBooks Store on the iPod - speed reading ebooks on the go
Watch Apple video on the iPad below (if you want to just watch the iBook Store and the ebook reader skip to minute 4)
For more info go to the iPad, iBooks Store and ebook reading
Read more on speed reading on Stanza free ebook reader for iPhone
Monday, January 25th, 2010
The 10 best brain-training websites
The neuroscientist Dr Kawashima helped to develop Brain Training, the Nintendo game that suppose to help us develop our minds. Check the best online brain-training programms.
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
3D Books - Embedded electronics bring pop-up books to life
Move over Kindle, there’s a new type of electronic book on the scene - and this one’s got pop-ups. The interactive pages come alive with LED lights, sounds and even vibrate in response to touch.
The Electronic Popable book, developed by the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab, has electronic circuitry embedded in its pages that turns the tabs, flaps and wheels of a traditional pop-up into switches and a variety of sensors. The interactive pages come alive with LED lights, sounds and even vibrate in response to touch.
Watch the Electronic Popable book in action
Venus fly traps spring up invitingly from one page; sensors in the trap’s jaws respond to the user’s touch, gently closing around the probing finger as it withdraws. The sensors control the amount of electric current flowing through springs in the leaf. The springs are made of the shape memory alloy nickel-titanium and contract to close the leaf shut as their coils are heated by the current. The leaves reopen as the wire cools.
To create the pages for the book, mechanical engineer Jie Qi and Lab director Leah Buechley used off-the-shelf electrically conductive paints and fabrics, adding custom-made magnetic components programmed using a standard integrated circuit. “The innovation was in finding new uses for these easily available materials,” Qi says.
This battery-operated pop-up book will be presented at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interfaces conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next week.
Source: NewScientist
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Video introduction to speed reading - the very first steps in speed reading in the middle ages
Speed reading video - the first ever speed reading coaching video
Watch this funny video of the first ever course in speed reading and problems with the introduction of an incunabulum [in-kyoo-NAB-yuh-luhm] - a book printed during the infancy of printing, especially one produced before 1501.
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
Reading reduces stress.
Just 6 minutes of reading a book reduces stress by 68%.
A study at the University of Sussex last year indicated that reading for even just six minutes reduced stress levels in study subjects by 68%. Reading was the most prefered method for reducing stress when compared to other typical stress reducing activities like listening to music or going for a walk. Losing yourself in a book causes all of your muscles, including the heart, to relax.
Listening to music reduced the levels by 61%, having a cup of tea or coffee lowered them by 54% and taking a walk by 42%. Playing video games brought them down by 21% from their highest level but still left the volunteers with heart rates above their starting point. Dr Lewis, cognitive neuropsychologist said: “Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation. This is particularly poignant in uncertain economic times when we are all craving a certain amount of escapism. It really doesn’t matter what book you read, by losing yourself in a thoroughly engrossing book you can escape from the worries and stresses of the everyday world and spend a while exploring the domain of the author’s imagination. This is more than merely a distraction but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness.”
If you can’t get into a story in just six minutes to achieve relaxation? Make sure to keep a book with you at your work desk, on a trip or best on your iPod or iPhone. Just read a chapter while waiting for the kettle to boil or while waiting in a queue.
Soon librarians, like doctors will be prescribing a good book alongside exercise and a healthy diet.