Latest news with #Archimedes
The Guardian
39 minutes ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Archimedes knew the golden power of boredom – so why can't we stop bringing our phones into the bathroom?
Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician and inventor, was tasked with solving a tricky problem for King Hiero II of Syracuse. The story goes that the king suspected his new golden crown had been mixed with cheaper metals, but he didn't want it damaged. Archimedes had to figure out whether the crown was pure gold without melting it down. Tough brief. Then, one day, while sinking into a public bath, he noticed something: the water level rose as he slid in. The volume of water displaced was equal to the volume of his body. That was it! The key. He could weigh the crown and measure its volume by how much water it displaced. Archimedes was so thrilled he reportedly leapt out of the bath and ran naked through the streets screaming, 'Eureka!' – the sudden flash when your brain wanders off and comes back holding the answer like a prize. These moments don't usually happen when you're trying: they happen when you're not. When your brain is doing nothing, or at least pretending to. Walking. Driving. Showering. Zoning out in a university lecture. Or, say, a wife on the brink of divorce, nodding along while her husband's mouth foams at the sides as he monologues about cryptocurrency. 'I'm done,' she whispers. Eureka. There's a scientific name for this wandering mind magic: the Default Mode Network (DMN). It's your brain's background mode, active when you're not. It switches on when you're daydreaming, reminiscing or imagining fake conversations you'll never have. When you're 'doing nothing,' the DMN is doing everything. It's where creativity, reflection, and unexpected insight come from. And one of its greatest allies? Boredom. Boredom is not the enemy. It's the invitation. A quiet stage your brain builds to see what might show up. But these days, we don't let it. Boredom tries to knock, and we shove a screen in its face. The moment a little stillness arrives, in line, on the train, on the toilet, we reach for stimulation. Our brains never get to drop into the DMN. No daydreams. No deep thought. Just dopamine on loop. Even Reddit noticed the death of the idle mind. r/Showerthoughts, the subreddit born in 2013, was a shrine to those aimless, brilliant, dumb observations that bubble up when you're bored and wet. At its peak, it was full of lines like: 'Your stomach thinks all potatoes are mashed.' 'Clapping is just hitting yourself because you like something.' 'Is Sand called Sand because it's in between the sea and land?' It was silly, accidental genius. The internet's record of DMN activity. But over time, it changed. The posts got shinier. Less 'I just thought of this while shampooing' and more 'I've been drafting this for three days in photoshop.' People in the comments began calling it out: these weren't shower thoughts anymore. They were scheduled thoughts. Viral bait. Branded content in bullet point form. The shower thought had been domesticated. Trademarked. Monetised. But maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe it's not that the thoughts changed, maybe it's us. The shower and the toilet used to be our last bastions of solitude. Now we bring our phones. People listen to full albums while exfoliating their scalp. Take business calls while walking the dog. Check emails mid-poo. There's no more empty space for thought to wander through. We've filled every corner. And when there's no space, there's no spark. No boredom, no Eureka. No quiet, no insight. Just us, endlessly occupied. Expecting our next big idea to load, buffering behind five open tabs. So stop taking your phone to the toilet! Allow yourself that loo-time clarity! Miski Omar is a speech pathologist, writer and director from Sydney
Scientific American
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Scientific American
Science Makes the U.S. a Great Nation
One of history's dark jokes is that the Roman Empire, for all its vaunted accomplishments, only made a single great 'contribution' to science: the killing of Archimedes. Today the U.S. risks suffering the same kind of shame. In 212 B.C.E. the Romans sacked the city of Syracuse after a prolonged siege , and a Roman soldier killed Archimedes, then the greatest living mathematician, physicist and engineer—and one of the greatest minds of all time. Exact accounts vary, but according to one, Archimedes was engrossed in sketching a problem in sand when his murderer arrived, sword drawn. Covering his work, the mathematician said, 'I beg of you, do not disturb this.' In response, the soldier struck down the 72-year-old man. American science now faces another sharpened edge. The Trump administration stands with its own sword drawn. It's choking our universities. It's stamping out the free flow of ideas. It's cutting funding to basic science. It's ready to make the killing blow, all in the name of making America great again. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Despite declines since the COVID pandemic, science remains one of the most trusted and most well regarded institutions in the U.S. And while modern science has many flaws, it is one of those few things we can point to as a society and say that this, this, is what already makes us great. Our technological and scientific prowess is the envy of the world, unmatched across the globe and indeed throughout human history. No other country, no other culture, no other civilization has matched what the U.S. has poured into fundamental research in the years since World War II. After the stunning success of the Manhattan Project, political leaders in the U.S. learned what the rulers of ancient Syracuse already knew: wise nations invest in their most brilliant minds. Last year the U.S. government funded about $90 billion of nondefense research. And for the relatively paltry sum of close to a hundred billion dollars—essentially a rounding error in total federal outlays—repeated year after year for decades, we have miracles made manifest: cures and treatments, consisting of a few milliliters of molecules, to balm the worst of our diseases; machines that breathe fire to take us to the stars; devices, held in our hands, that connect us to friends, family and strangers a world away. Chances are that all those marvels, great and small, can trace their roots to publicly supported research. It's easy enough to point to the monetary benefits of scientific research—and the immediate harms that will be done if the administration's proposed cuts go through. One dollar of National Institutes of Health research funding produces $2.56 in economic activity. Cutting annual research funding in half would save the American taxpayer $260 this year—and cost them $10,000 in future wealth. Federal funding of nondefense research has accounted for about 20 percent of our nation's business productivity growth since World War II. In addition, although the majority of trainees in science do not end up following a career as a researcher, they go on to add value to a wide variety of organizations, including businesses and government agencies. Science takes our best and brightest and throws them into the crucible, pitting them against the toughest problems known to humanity, and then sets them loose to solve the everyday challenges of our modern economy. But the true greatness of our achievements is in the intangibles—not in what we construct but in what we perceive. We have built telescopes to peer back through deep cosmic time and see the dim, faded light of the first galaxies to emerge in the heavens. We have developed electronic machines to mimic our own intelligent speech and, in doing so, allow us to wrestle with the nature of our own humanity. We have set ourselves to a great mission of conquest—not of a people or a rival nation but of the scourge of cancer. We have had the courage to look into our history, our own communities, our own social connections and ask uncomfortable questions and reveal painful truths. Is this not what great nations do? They don't just build bridges and roads and monuments of stone and steel. They erect edifices of the intellect. They place their stamp on history. They create gifts to be enjoyed by generations yet to come. They become beacons that future civilizations emulate. Americans have long held themselves to be different than people in other nations. French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, the great observer of early American life, wrote in his book Democracy in America that 'the position of the Americans is therefor quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.' Our modern institution of science is one our country's truly exceptional achievements. This is why fundamental science is worthy of public funding. No private enterprise would ever dare sacrifice profits to study the arcane corners of the universe. No single patron, no matter how wealthy, can provide the funding necessary to slake our thirst for answers. Only nations—great nations—can afford to take a slim measure of the public's treasury and devote it to science. Science is part of what makes us noble. It demonstrates our abilities to the world and to history. It is a projection of our strength. Look at us, we say to the world, so wealthy and wise that we set our sights farther, our minds deeper. It's here, in this nation, that we will produce works that will stand the test of time. The minuscule savings achieved from the proposed cuts to science research won't be felt in the average taxpayer's pocketbook. But the cuts will hurt us. They will hurt us now and for generations to come. That is the bitter reality that we are now facing: that we are deliberately making our children impoverished—materially and intellectually—in the name of insignificant savings today. The proposed budget cuts kill all of this —the learning; the advancement; the courage; the powerhouse of American ingenuity; and one of the pillars that we can stand on to rightly claim our place in history as a great nation. How will our descendants remember us and this moment? Will they view us as a people that dared mighty things—or as so much blood in the sand? Go ahead, strike down science if you will. But remember this: The name of Archimedes echoes through the centuries. The name of the solider who killed him does not. I beg of you, do not disturb this.
Forbes
11-06-2025
- Health
- Forbes
Trump, Archimedes Hold Lessons For CMS Hospital, Safety Rules
Archimedes theorized he could use a lever to move the earth, while Donald Trump has advised using ... More leverage to seal deals. Medicare should use its leverage to move hospitals to provide better, safer care. (Photo by) As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services mulls new payment rules for hospitals, its leaders should consult a crucial concept from the book that made Donald Trump famous, then apply it to quality and safety regulations. Also, Archimedes. The concept they have in common is leverage. In The Art of the Deal, then-real-estate-magnate-and-now-president Trump writes, 'Leverage is having something the other guy wants.' It is, he emphasizes, 'the biggest strength you can have.' Since CMS spends over $1 trillion on health care each year, it has the unique leverage of something everyone wants. The agency should apply that leverage in two ways as it finalizes the inpatient prospective payment system draft regulations, whose comment period closed June 10. First, CMS should strengthen requirements that can make care better, safer and more cost-effective. Second, it should move decisively to give patients themselves more direct leverage in the form of actionable information. Approximately one in four hospitalized adults suffers a patient safety problem of some sort, according to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General. Assessing the human impact, the Leapfrog Group has estimated that 160,000 Americans died avoidable deaths in 2018 from only the types of medical errors addressed in its voluntary standards. While there's a wide range of estimates of the financial impact of error, hospital-acquired infections alone are estimated to cost up to $45 billion. CMS has already established a timetable for implementing Patient Safety Structural Measures, but those measures' use could be amended or even eliminated due to objections to its impact on payment that some organizations are still surfacing even in this current rule-making cycle. At first glance, the requirements seem rudimentary. For instance, hospitals must merely 'attest' to elementary actions such as addressing safety topics at governing board meetings and showing a 'leadership commitment to eliminating preventable harm.' Reporting begins this year, though results won't be public until next fall. Hospitals that don't submit data can have their Medicare pay reduced, albeit not until Oct. 1, 2027. Do the feds really need leverage to prompt such basic actions? Unfortunately, a survey by the hospitals' own trade group, the American Hospital Association, found that only 50 percent of hospital boards had quality as one of their priorities. Even more worrisome, 52% of respondent to the 2022 AHRQ Survey of Patient Safety Culture survey said 'hospital management seems interested in patient safety only after an adverse event happens.' CMS should also demand more, and more useful, hospital transparency. The agency is proposing a couple of steps. It wants inpatient quality data on its Compare website to include data on Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, once a small slice of Medicare but now 54% of all those enrolled. The agency also wants to require cancer hospitals, previously exempt from reporting, to now publicly report quality measures. Comments submitted by Patients for Patient Safety US praised that proposal as a way to 'better support patient and family decision-making about where to seek intensive cancer care.' (Disclosure: I'm a PFPS US member.) But CMS can get patients an even better deal. The Leapfrog Group's comments to CMS called out meaningless transparency (my adjective, not theirs) in which the Compare website data is statistically adjusted so that 90% of hospitals seem no different than the national average. This, the group wrote, 'sends a dangerous message to consumers [that] all hospitals are the same,' even though 'the difference can mean life or death.' In my own comments, I urged CMS to stop displaying data in a complex manner that confuses consumers. I advocated switching instead to a 'radical' transparency based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a framing that resonates emotionally. An actionable framework I developed with Johns Hopkins associate professor Matt Austin mapped common hospital quality measures into three Maslow categories, with a 'drill down' possible via the web for more detail. Those categories were: 'Will I be safe?' (for Maslow, that correlates with the basic need for survival and safety from harm); 'Will I be heard?' (in Maslow's hierarchy, the need for esteem and respect from others); and 'Will I be able to lead my best life?' (self-actualization). Meanwhile, Leapfrog urged CMS to improve data usefulness by reporting results from federal programs using the actual name of the brick-and-mortar hospital, not its CMS Certification Number. I've urged something similar in regard to Medicare Advantage star ratings,, which aren't part of the current regulatory draft. Right now, star ratings of health plan quality aren't based on what a local plan does, which most consumers would assume, but on the CMS plan contract number, which at times applies to plans located across the entire country. Leapfrog also advocated eliminating the exemption from public reporting that, in addition to cancer hospitals, applies to critical access hospitals, pediatric hospitals, hospitals in U.S. territories and other facilities. Every patient, Leapfrog wrote, deserves 'the same safety, quality and resource use information.' Separately, Patients for Patient Safety urged CMS to fix a 'foundational flaw' undermining accurate patient safety data by providing patients with what amounts to a powerful lever. Current error reporting relies on hospitals self-reproting; that has resulted in only about 5% of harm being reported, according to research cited by Patients for Patient Safety . Patients 'notice things others miss,' Patients for Patient Safety pointed out, yet 'we are systematically excluded from harm reporting systems.' The group called for CMS to empower patients and families to directly report harm. As I noted in a previous Forbes column, two goals CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz immediately set out when he took office were 'empowering the American people' to better manage their health and holding providers 'accountable for health outcomes.' The quality and safety rules supported by activists represent a golden opportunity to take giant steps in that direction. Finally, there's Archimdes. The ancient Greek mathematician famously said of leverage, 'Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.' By comparison, CMS has only to use the powerful leverage of its quality and safety regulations to move the American health care system. As President Trump described leverage in his book, 'Don't do deals without it.'
India Today
27-05-2025
- Health
- India Today
Taking a shower twice a day, but still breaking out? What you might be missing
Wash. Rinse. formula for a quick shower is to be clean and ready for the day. Let's just say this is a practice nearly everyone adhered to back in the day. But today? Umm the hustlers (read: latecomers) might still comply, but for many of us, showering has become a sacred ritual that follows some form of catharsis- it often becomes a therapy session, concert hall, or time travel machine. And yes, much like Archimedes, we find our own little eureka one must not forget the nitty-gritty details of showering. The number of times you take a bath, the timing, your linen - everything is at play. Ignoring these, by the way, could be the reason why you're breaking out. Welcome to the slippery s(l)oap of showering where water, bubbles, bacteria, and curious human habits, all come together to change the way you look at your routine.#1 How many times should you shower in day?If you shower twice a day with soap (or body wash), think you're clean, and believe you have successfully dodged breakouts, it's time to burst that basic rule of hygiene suggests that one shower a day is sufficient for most of us. Unless you have beads of sweat running down, a second rinse is fine too. But during summer, we often like to increase that number. Maybe take a rinse every time we step out? Some of us can get a bit obsessive about cleanliness, can't we? Taking a shower every day is essential, but not excessively (Photo credits: Getty Image) advertisementSpeaking with India Today, Dr. Ruby Sachdev, Consultant – Aesthetic Physician, Gleneagles Hospital, Bengaluru, said, 'In the hotter months, showering twice can feel refreshing and help with sweat and stickiness. However, going overboard can cost your skin. Overwashing, using strong soaps or hot water, can strip the natural oils from your skin, rendering it dry or itchy. But, if you need to rinse more often, just water is fine.'#2 The Shower o'clockMost of us start the day with a shower and sometimes enjoy a steamy bath just before bed in a bid to have a good night's sleep. But the debate around the right time to shower still prevails. Recently, microbiologist Primrose Freestone's take on this created a explained that a morning shower helps get rid of the sweat, bacteria, and dead skin cells that the body accumulates from unwashed or not-so-clean bed linens. This helps you smell fresher and sheds the dirt acquired the other hand, Freestone also presented a case for night showers. During the day, the body invariably accumulates dust, pollutants—hello, have you seen the AQI-pollen, sebaceous oil, etc? This gets transferred from skin to clothes and eventually to the bed. So, showering before bed helps reduce the amount of bacteria transferred to your bedsheets and clothes. It is not essential to use soap or exfoliate during every shower (Photo credit: Getty Image) 'Yes, a shower before bedtime can be healthy. It helps, especially when someone has spent an entire day outdoors. It helps lower the accumulation of sweat, dirt, oil on your pillows and sheets. While morning showers are refreshing, night showers, on the other hand, can be better in terms of hygiene-especially related to your bed, sheets, and pillows,' Dr. Sachdev mentioned.#3 Don't miss the bed laundryFreestone did advocate for morning showers but highlighted that it's a personal choice and also emphasised that how frequently you wash your bedsheets influences the effectiveness of your shower o' being, do your bed laundry on time!Some pro-tipsExperts suggest sticking to fragrance-free, gentle cleansers. Antibacterial soaps can mess with your skin's balance, so only use them if prescribed. Limit exfoliation to once or twice a week. Damp skin can attract irritation and fungal infections-especially in humid weather, so, always dry off before if you are a morning sprinkler or enjoy nighttime bubble bath, in the soap opera of hygiene, balance is the key. It is not just about cleaning too much with soap and water, but showing a little love to your bedsheets and pillow covers won't hurt either. advertisement
Economic Times
25-05-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
Make Sleep Great -And Okay-Again
Once upon a time, sleep was a sacred ritual observed by all, rich and not-so-well-off, workaholics and underemployed. But among today's self-styled wakeness-wokes, it has been rebranded as a lazy indulgence, a vice best kept hidden. Sleep, dear reader, is the new taboo. Consider this: admitting to a full 8 hours is now akin to confessing treason. 'You sleep early?' 'You wake up at 9?' they gasp, clutching their triple-shot espresso in horror. 'How do you find the time?' Those who dare to prioritise rest are met with scepticism, side-eyeing and whispered accusations of complacency. A well-rested individual, in today's self-righteous eyes, is either unemployed, unserious, or, worse, a disgrace to the hustle-industrial complex. Gone are the days of glorifying slumber. Legends once spun around naps-think Archimedes dreaming of displacement, Newton nodding off under an apple tree, siestas building empires. But today's titans of industry boast about surviving on a mere 3 hours, as if sleep deprivation were a badge of honour rather than a medical concern or a childish brag. Corporations have joined the crusade, shoving 'rise and grind' propaganda down our throats like some sleep-deprived cult. There are apps to track productivity, but none to remind you to lie down like a sane human. Sleep shouldn't be a guilty pleasure-it's a pleasure. Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. How this century-old Tata company is getting ready for the next 100 What pizzas are Indians eating? The clue lies with India's largest QSR. Explainer: Why Jensen Huang's latest Nvidia play will reverberate across AI How NCLT became tribunal of hope reviving assets worth billions despite resource crunch Mid-cap companies have posted robust results. But experts don't want you to invest in them. How does IndusInd's 'fraud' tag affect its future? Stock picks of the week: 5 stocks with consistent score improvement and return potential of more than 27% in 1 year For risk-takers with medium-term perspective: 6 mid-cap stocks from different sectors with upside potential of over 35% Is tariff threat over? In Trump era, you have to read between the lines: 8 pharma stocks with upside potential of over 35%
