Today, exactly one year ago, our beloved Maria had her
crisis. Four days later, on 7th November, she would leave us forever
It is one year since she left us, and many things happened
to us during this time. Trying to find a horizon and a routine again, we had to
live important moments without her. Birthdays, holidays, the first day at
school and many other ocassions she was missed. We miss her every single
minute.
We had to build us a new life. Thanks to mama, Maria and her
teachings, we learned many ways on how to live our life and how to do that at
our new home. A home she gave to us with a lot of love and she was only able to
enjoy for a very short time. We learned the concept of home from her and we
will live as she would had liked us to live this experience.
We had so many encounters and received so much support from
friends. The last year, thanks to you, to the family and everyone we encountered
on our way, we could a find again a new kind of "normality". A
normality that should not be and is not normal at all, but one in which we
expect a lot from the future and learn from the present, and that is living all
about: learning and looking forward.
I want to believe, that we are standing again on our feet.
You were an important part in the process of recovery. Something is clear,
Mama, Maria will be always missed and the pain that her absence brings will
always be present. But one learns how to live with it. It is an indispensable
part of our history, a life chapter, that sooner or later and under other
circumstances, everyone has to live.
We look forward and we are grateful for all friends we made
on the way. Also for the friends of Mama that are now our friends
Even if we cannot see us, we know that you from time to time
think of us and Maria just as we think of you. And we know that the time will
come for us to meet again.
P – Someday
we must die my son, but you know what? One of the reasons why people have
children is to live longer, even if we are not anymore there. We continue
living in our children. You, my little, have
my blood and my genes, and thanks to you I will exist long and I will always be
by your side, even if I am not around anymore.
M – Then, do
you want to be buried in a coffin or in a jar.
P -I think I don’t kno…
M – I mean…
do you want to be eaten by worms? Or be burned?
Today I
read an article1 about supporting young mothers
working in science, by letting them bringing their babies and kids to scientific
conferences. While this idea very
superfluously seems to support mothers in science; it can only strengthen an
already marked sexism debilitating women in their field of work.
Part of "Father
and son"- Story of the Ilustrator. Erich Ohsers (E.O. Plauen) 2
And here I
explain why.
As a father
working in science, married to a scientist, and both attending regularly to scientific
conferences; I would personally not have a problem seeing mothers
breast-feeding their babies or kids running through poster (but not Conference)
sessions. However, I doubt that any parent would be fully able to concentrate
on networking, giving a presentation or trying to get the most of such a
meeting while the own child needs to be fed or simply needs some attention.
It will almost
certainly be boring enough for any child, as for the most of the adult
population, to hear for hours how protein “X” interact with peptide “Y” and
what the p value was for that control group that no one really understands.
The whole idea
seems to support mothers, but what it indeed does is to openly support sexism by
assuming that mothers alone should take care of their children, even at work;
leaving fathers behind or undisturbed at their workplaces.
The easiest
solutions to consider are:
1. Fathers
to take responsibility of their children specially while mamas have to work and
no other childcare option is available.
2. Although
difficult to conciliate in all countries, easier childcare options at the
working place, and conferences in this case, calls for an intrinsic change of
national policies in some countries that should favor mothers (and families)
working not only in science but in any other job.
An insider
tip, there are countries that support paid maternal/paternal leave and grant
easy childcare options.
There was only
one person that could probably be the closest to understand the complexity of
the universe and therefore of existence. The same person likely lived every day
of his life like if it was the very last one, as it should be.
Diagnosed
with a condition that would not let him live more than a couple of years longer,
he managed to survive more than 50 years with this disease, time in which he
left a path of knowledge that could only be compared with that left by Isaac Newton.
Stephen
Hawking might leave this world but he will be perpetuated as long as the human
race exists. Not for long if his forecast turns to be also true.
Activity
tracker systems are proposed to monitor physical activity during the day and
the night. However, they might fail to retrieve specific information tailored
for each user, especially from those that are still reluctant to use smart
phones.
A classical,
battery free, Old School activity Tracker system (OST) was
evaluated for the period of one year from January to December 2017.
Daily sport
activities performed by a motivated 37-year old male subject were manually documented
after training through a keyboard into a database created in a 7-year old
computer.
Daily
training sessions were classified into 6 categories: 1) Legs, 2) Core (back, abdominals),
3) Arms/back contractions, 4) Arms/chest flexions, 5) whole body training, 6)
others (including swimming, running, biking, etc).
A database
with 137 exercises for the different categories was created based on personal
experience and the recommendations of Marc Lauren (1). This database helped to
spontaneously decide what to exercise every day.
An average
of 16 exercises per week were performed uninterrupted in the year 2017, where
the weeks with lowest performance were due to A) sickness B) relaxing days in a
Spa, C) a summer family trip, D) laziness or E) the Christmas break; as shown in
figure 1.
Number of exercises
performed every week in 2017 classified by category.
Figure 1. A, B,
C, D, E arrows point weeks where the normal training was interrupted. The Old
School Activity Tracker OST was able to identify these periods
A total of 860
exercises were performed throughout the year. The in-house training period significantly
improved performance on different physical challenges.
Attempt to break the world record of abdominal plank
New year resolution: The planche pushup
(9 monthfollow up, 7 attempts)
Of note, a considerable
reduction in running activities compared to previous years was observed (285
minutes in 2017 vs approx. 2400 minutes per month from 1996 to 2003),
The
correlation found between weeks with low activity (A to E, figure 1) and the
periods of training restriction due to external or motivational reasons,
validate OST as a strategy to
monitor and evaluate physical performance.
These
results revive and expose the potential benefits of writing down training achievements
independently of invasive electronic devices such as smartphone-dependent
activity trackers.
Material and methods
A bar fixed
on a concrete wall, a very small child (4-8 Kg), a medium size child (9 to 14
Kg), a sponge mat and an ab wheel were spontaneously used depending on the mood
of the operator. Statistical analysis was performed using Excel software
(Microsoft Office). The majority of the exercises where performed according to
Marc Lauren recommendation for each training category as shown in
representative examples below.
This weekend there will be elections in
Austria to elect the chancellor. As in any other country, it won’t be easy to choose
who will be representing the country internationally and have direct influence
on our pockets. I can only give a neutral opinion without having the right and obligation
to vote in the country where my sons were born.
An introduction to the candidates:
The reds from the socialist party (SPÖ) are
represented by the current chancellor Christian
Kern, who was not democratically elected but because of his contacts with
the red party. The ex administrator of the Austrian Railways ÖBB was recruited
by the red party in order to replace the resigning chancellor Werner Faymann,
who stepped out when he was no longer
able to deal with the coalition partner. After a vacation, he restarted his
career in a high position at the UN in parallel to his personal business.
It is likely the previous experience as
manager from a state company that is able to internationally compete with others
that gives C. Kern some points in favour. With this experience he pursues a
very socialist ideal, as its party requires him to do, to please the financial
needs of the working class of his
country.This is an asset his opponents might lack.
Sebastian Kurz, commands the turquoise party ÖVP. Since his arrival
to the party he turned all upside down including the traditional black color of
the party. He obtained unconditional support since the ÖVP had no other
candidate to fill the boots of his also resigning vice-chancellor and party leader
Reinhold Mitterlehner, who not being able to work together with the red party,
decided to continue his career outside of politics (Seems to be difficult to
work together as politician in Austria, there is little persevereance and big opposition).
Sebastian Kurz, being the stereotype of an
ideal leader: tall, handsome and good speaker; heads the party still named the
“blacks” because the media are still reluctant to refer the party as the “turquoise”.
Unfortunately the propaganda of his party is similar, if not identical, to that
of the right party FPÖ, which main argument for a better Austria is the
reduction of immigration. The very short age of S. Kurz, to my opinion, is a
disadvantage to exercise a job of such an importance (He is 31 years old).
Nevertheless, S. Kurz learned quite well how to communicate (body and spoken
language) to convince the masses and this helped him to position himself in his
current and previous jobs as foreign and integration minister respectively.
Heinz Christian Strache, leads the blue right party FPÖ and as one of its
main goals is to reduce “islamization” in Austria, being other problems, to my
understanding, neglected in his agenda.
As an immigrant and self nominated
“tolerant” I can only reject the presents that his campaign give away in the
streets, although my kids would gladly take them. (photo:
During the presidential elections, the FPÖ
has demonstrated support in towns and small cities where, ironically, multiculturality
is not really observed and the immigration rates are low enough compared to big
cities such as Vienna. This unmasks the unnecessary fear to immigrants and
refugees in some parts of Austria.
The pink Neos are led by Matthias Strolz, from whose campaign I
could mainly notice that he tends to get overly upset and resented the moment
of sustaining a debate with other candidates. His style is likely not ideal for
a chancellor of a republic.
If one wishes to choose a party with
alternative ideas, maybe is the “green party” the one to elect. As its name
indicates, they would of course take care of the environment as one of their
priorities, however, they do not have much acceptation. The main candidate for
the green party, Ulrike Lunacek,
would likely be a good representant of Austria abroad, but she is not as popular
as her party camerade Alexander van der Bellen who won in the last presidential
elections (thanks to his election in the big cities, see previous figure).
This Sunday I can only impatiently wait to
see the results and afterwards reproach or congratulate friends and colleages
that were born in this colorful country. One thing is for sure, this election
can’t be as bad as that in an english speaking country on the other side of the
atlantic ocean. Reference from pictures:
In the last
two months I was able to learn with my eldest kid (4) about the universe,
planets and dinosaurs; main subjects in his daily conversation. Reading his
books and visiting (many times) museums I recalled what we all already know but
not think deeply about its meaning: how old is our universe, why dinos died and
what are we doing here.
We learned
that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. To put it in numbers 13.700.000.000
years and that it all started with a big KaBoom! (Big Bang). Since then a lot has
happened to put humans where we are now. What is interesting is that we are
definitely new in the history of the universe and we still think however that
we are central to it. Worsely, we defend blindly (even with our own lives) our
selfish mythological beliefs about who created all things.
Why I say that
we are the “new ones” here? Let’s pretend that the universe has exactly 100
years old, just like a healthy and attractive centenerian that seems will live
much longer.
At the age
of 1 year (200 million years after the Big Bang) galaxies developed, but it is only
at the age of 67 that the planet earth was formed (9150 million years after the
Big Bang). At this stage the planet Earth was still very immature for living
beings.
Multicellular
organisms (Ediacara fauna)on Earth are estimated to have occurred around 13.08
billion years after the great explosion. Translated to our centenerian universe
it means that only at the age of 95 life could arise on at least one of the trillion
planets of our universe, in planet Earth.
Dinosaurs
showed up 235 million years ago (at the age of 98 of our centenerian universe) and
they ruled the Earth for not less than 160 million years (that’s about more
than one day for our 100 year old universe).
The 5th mass extinction of
living beings on planet Earth took place 65 million years ago. Afterwards
humans, as we know them, started to develop from apes (Hominoidea). Miss
Universe is now 99 years and there are only 53 days to go for her 100 birthday.
Homo sapiens (humans) seem to appear 20 hours before the
100th birthday of our centenerian universe (fossils were found in
Morocco dating back to 300 thousand years ago. Link here).
The
chronology of events in the Universe and in our planet is intensively studied, considered
reliable and teached in school and university books. It is constantly updated
and either proved correct by scientific methods or at least by mathematical approximations
to which we don’t want to go much into detail (for more information please
apply to the nearest Paleonthology, Astrophysics and/or Particle Physics course
in your town). However, humans, right from their beginning, believed and still
believe on supernatural and mythological forces that created the universe,
earth and mankind. Each religion (although just few minutes old in the history
of our centenarian universe) had, has and will have its own version of the
origins; and their followers, as in the past, are not willing to accept other
explanation than their own.
To our
fortune, there are people in our planet who are not conformist with fairy tales
and are curious enough to investigate and go deeper into the origin of things.
Without them we would still believe that the Earth is flat, or that it is the
center of the universe, or that humans were created from mud, or dust or corn
or from a male human rib.
It is worrying
that we will almost for sure not be as long in this planet as dinosaurs were
(160 million years). In our very young existence (300 thousand years) there are
estimates pointing to human extinction to year 2600 if there are no changes in our
climate policies and the current exponential population rise 1 .
Based on
these predictions, Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest physicists of our time,
prompt us urgently to seek new worlds and colonize them if we want to avoid extinction
in the near future.
For his whole
lecture at the Starmus Festival 2017 (Norway) see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpG5P6ugeeI
It’s a
topic with many more questions that we might never be able to respond. For
example:
What about the
time before the Big Bang? Time does not count there?
Maybe is
our universe a part of another one, or one of many. And what would happen when
two expanding universes encounter each other? (Likely total annihilation). In
fact, a “Multiverse” is a possibility that is supported by the M-theorie (which
I have no clue what is but astrophysicists might understand it)
Even if we
don’t dissapear in the next thousand years, we might in few million years with the
upcoming waves of mass extinction (as it happened before 440, 375, 250, 205 and
65 million years ago) or the possibility of a cooling down of the universe or
an explosion of our sun among other astronomical catastrophes. Thinking of these
we should probably aim to make a backup of all the information we generated in the
last 300 thousand years. From “how to do fire” to “how to cook spaghetti”
should be stored for future residents living in this or more likely in other
planets.
Now, if you
excuse me, I need to use my very limited time in this Earth for something else (My
hopefully >80 years are just about
18 seconds time of our 100 year old Miss Universe).
Persistence
of memory, Salvador Dalí 1931
References
1.Hawking,
Stephen. The Universe in a Nutshell. 2001
2.The Museum or Natural History. Vienna,
Austria. http://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/
