my article

Yesterday, the Dan's Plan blog Eat Move Sleep published a blog post I wrote about sleep, artificial light, your brain, and a free computer program called f.lux that can help us live healthier lives.  Head over to Eat Move Sleep to read it.

Philo and Elma Farnsworth A biography of the American inventor of “the first complete electronic television system,” Philo T. Farnsworth (1906-1971), was written by the inventor’s widow, Elma G. Farnsworth (1908-2006) and is entitled Distant Vision; Romance and Discovery on an Invisible Frontier (1990).  Philo's work was always the priority throughout their lives.  The book relates how specific events made it possible for Philo to invent electronic television from transmitter to receiver.  After his passing, Elma was able to provide a detailed account of her husband's research and inventions as well as their life together.  The case expands the meaning and implications of thought processes associated with the concept of 'channeling' or what is here described as 'distant vision.' Phil's concept of using electrons to eliminate all moving parts from both the transmitter and receiver in his television system was a brilliant display of his genius: by intuitive ...

This is a photo of the Mark II, Philo T. Farnsworth's second model of the Fusor (under the bell jar) amidst testing apparatus.  The photo is included in the biography Distant Vision . Recent reports about nuclear fusion research progress lead me to wonder about how many contemporary researchers know about Philo T. Farnsworth's ideas and experiments in the field of controlled nuclear fusion.  Farnsworth conceived the basic operating principles of electronic television as a teenager and went on to invent the first complete system of electronic television.    An October 7, 2013 BBC News article by Paul Rincon reported that during an experiment at NIF in late September, a milestone was reached as "the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel — the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world. " Philo's widow and biographer E lma G. Farnsworth wrote in her 1989 book Distant...

Evidence is steadily accumulating that insufficient sleep increases the risk of obesity and undermines fat loss efforts.  Short sleep duration is one of the most significant risk factors for obesity ( 1 ), and several potential mechanisms have been identified, including increased hunger, increased interest in calorie-dense highly palatable food, reduced drive to exercise, and alterations in hormones that influence appetite and body fatness.  Dan Pardi presented his research at AHS13 showing that sleep restriction reduces willpower to make healthy choices about food. We also know that genetics has an outsized influence on obesity risk, accounting for about 70 percent of the variability in body fatness between people in affluent nations ( 2 ).  I have argued that "fat genes" don't directly lead to obesity, but they do determine who is susceptible to a fattening environment and who isn't ( 3 ).  I recently revisited a 2010 paper published in the journal Sleep by Universi...

Photograph from The Dragon and The Disc (1973) by F. W. Holiday: "This Disc was photographed by Mr. Lars Thörn at 9:55 a.m. on 6 May 1971, at a point 5 km. N.E. of Skillingaryd, Sweden.  Two successive pictures were taken before the object moved away behind the grenade shelter on the right.  Stereoscopic examination suggests that the object was a long way beyond the wall . . ." Some of the conclusions offered by editor Charles Bowen in the UFOlogy anthology Encounter Cases from Flying Saucer Review (1977) include the first paragraphs from the final chapter "Beliefs." We believe that "flying saucers," or UFOs, do exist: the evidence of sight, radar and sound indicates that either might be metallic, or might give the impressions of being metallic. We believe that they could be powered in ways as yet unknown to man.  There is ample evidence of their effects on electronic devices and on the electrical systems of internal combustion engines.  However it is re...