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.
