07-31-2016, 11:39 PM
An hour's "brisk exercise" each day offsets the risks of early death linked to a desk-bound working life, scientists suggest. The analysis of data from more than a million people is part of a study of physical activity published in the Lancet to coincide with the Olympics. Watching TV was found to be worse than sitting at a desk, probably because of associated habits like snacking. Current NHS guidelines recommend 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week. Being inactive is known to increase the risk of conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and some cancers. It has been linked to 5.3 million deaths globally a year - compared with 5.1 million linked to smoking.
Hour's activity 'offsets sedentary day' - BBC News
You might think that research upending that conclusion would immediately be celebrated as an important breakthrough. Yet when, in the late 1960s, George Akerlof wrote “The Market for Lemons”, which did just that, and later won its author a Nobel prize, the paper was rejected by three leading journals. At the time, Mr Akerlof was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley; he had only completed his PhD, at MIT, in 1966. Perhaps as a result, the American Economic Review thought his paper’s insights trivial. The Review of Economic Studies agreed. The Journal of Political Economy had almost the opposite concern: it could not stomach the paper’s implications. Mr Akerlof, now an emeritus professor at Berkeley and married to Janet Yellen, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, recalls the editor’s complaint: “If this is correct, economics would be different.”
Secrets and agents | The Economist
But it’s still limited—in resolution, how it tracks movement, and how the body responds to what it projects, among many other things. The problems are enormous and require a deeper understanding of human sensory mechanisms than currently exists. (For example, how should a pair of goggles follow the movement of the eye to allow the processor to manipulate the plane of focus?) It’s going to take billions to make it work.
Facebook’s really big plans for virtual reality
The historic surge in Apple Inc.’s stock on Wednesday is finally giving investors something other than declining iPhone sales to talk about, and could confirm what Warren Buffett may have believed several months ago, that a bottom has already been seen.
Apple’s historic stock surge could confirm what Buffett already knew - MarketWatch
Owners are under no obligation to accept the buyback offer for the value of the cars before Volkswagen’s test-rigging scheme was disclosed, plus $5,100 to $9,852 in additional compensation. If the carmaker fails to win the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval for fixes before June 30, 2019, there’s nothing to stop owners from driving the pollutant-spewing cars as long as they don’t run afoul of regulations set by individual states... The EPA and California Air Resources Board must approve any fix proposed by VW to address cars emitting as much as 40 times the allowable limit of nitrogen oxide gases. Meeting the agencies’ standards has proven elusive for the carmaker.
VW Owners Might Just Keep Driving Dirty Diesels After Settlement - Bloomberg