Fall Back On Fitness Essays - Physical Exercise, Self Care, Holiday

Fall Back On Fitness Essays - Physical Exercise, Self Care, Holiday Fall Back On Fitness Fall Back On Fitness As we head into the cooler autumn months, we undoubtedly expect that the upcoming holiday seasons surrounding Thanksgiving, Halloween, and (yes, already) Christmas will lead to our spending more and more time indulging and less and less time keeping ourselves healthy and fit. This doesnt have to be the case. We are not bears, and regardless of what one may think, we do not need to store up extra fat so that we may hibernate for the winter! Awareness of the potential pitfalls of the holiday season can prevent the pounds from sneaking up on you. Treat yourself to an early gift by purchasing a journal in which you can keep a daily record of your eating, exercise and stress behaviours. Keep an eye on your journal entries so that youll notice your less than healthy behaviours and make changes before you get overwhelmed. One suggestion is to weigh yourself once a week during the holiday season. One study of weight loss over a 50-week period found that some study participants gained 500 percent more weight per week during holiday weeks as compared to non-holiday weeks. But the good news: Participants who consistently monitored and recorded their own behaviours were able to lose weight during the holidays. (Published in Health Psychology, July 1998.) The next suggestion is to remember that your body needs movement more than ever during the holiday season. Exercise releases tension, expends the calories of those holiday goodies, increases your energy levels so you can shop til you drop, elevates your mood so you can combat holiday-related depression and be the life of the party, and gives you the gift of time for yourself. Here are some great ways to fit exercise into the busy fall season: Exercise first thing in the morning before you begin your busy day. Try to plan holiday activities around family and friends, instead of around food. Tell family and friends to bring walking shoes and comfortable clothes to your celebration. Then take a 30-minute walk together. You can do it in shifts so someone's always basting the turkey! Get into a routine now, before the holidays strike! Those who have previously developed a solid exercise habit will make the time to exercise even when they feel like they are too busy to find the time.

History of the Black Box aka Flight Data Recorder

History of the Black Box aka Flight Data Recorder David Warren had a deeply personal reason to invent the  flight-data recorder (commonly referred to as the â€Å"black box†). In 1934, his father died in one of Australia’s earliest air crashes.   Early Life and Career David Warren was born in 1925 on Groote Eylandt, and island off the Northern coast of Australia. Gadgets and devices, like the ham radio left to him by his father, helped Warren through his childhood and adolescence. His educational record speaks for itself: he graduated with honors from the University of Sydney before earning a diploma in education from the University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Imperial College London. In the 1950s, as Warren was working for the Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne, a few developments occurred to reignite his instincts regarding in-flight recordings. In Britain in 1949, the de Havilland Comet was introduced- only to experience a disaster in 1954 with a series of high-profile crashes. Without any kind of recording device from inside the aircraft, determining the causes and investigating the intricacies of these disasters was a famously difficult task for the British authorities. Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself was quoted as saying, â€Å"The cost of solving the Comet mystery must be reckoned neither in money nor in manpower.† Around the same time, the earliest tape recorders were being introduced in trade shows and storefront windows. It was a German-made one that first caught Warren’s eye, leading him to wonder how much more information the authorities would have during its investigations if a device like this had been in the Comet . Inventing the "Memory Unit" In 1957, Warren completed a prototype- which he termed the â€Å"Memory Unit†- for his device. His idea, however, was greeted with no shortage of criticism from the Australian authorities. The Royal Australian Air Force haughtily suggested that the device would capture â€Å"more expletives than explanations,† while the Australian pilots themselves worried about the potential for spying and surveillance. It took the British- the maker of the tarnished Comet- to appreciate the necessity of Warren’s device. From there, flight-data recorders proceeded to become standard procedure not only in Britain and Australia but also in America and in the commercial flying industry all across the world. There seems to be some dispute as to how Warren’s device came to be known as the black box, considering that the color of Warren’s prototype was closer to red or orange, in order to make the device stand out amidst the wreckage of a crash. However, the black-box moniker has stuck, perhaps owing to the intense steel casing required to protect the box. Warren has never received financial reward for his invention, although he has- after what was initially quite a battle- been officially recognized by his own country: in 2002, he was awarded the Order of Australia for his contributions. Warren died in 2010, at the age of 85, but his invention continues to be a mainstay on aircraft worldwide, recording both cockpit chatter and instrument readings of altitude, speed, direction, and other statistics. Additionally, car manufacturers have recently started installing black boxes in their vehicles, adding another chapter in the evolution of Warren’s originally maligned idea.