Decelerator helmet: viewing the world in slow motion

The Decelerator helmet delivers the user a perception of the planet in slow motion.

Lorenz Potthast was a first-12 months arts pupil when he created the Decelerator helmet – a hefty piece of headwear that enables the wearer to expertise a slowed-down globe. “I didn’t just want to design yet another app to make grocery shopping less difficult,” he says. “I wanted to do some thing experimental that could give a genuine expertise.”

The helmet is basically a shiny metal dome that records the see from a front camera and processes it by means of a modest computer to a display in front of the wearer’s eyes. The slow-motion is managed by a handheld remote. “The initial 3 minutes are just perplexing, but then you get a truly feel for it and you turn into the director of your personal perception,” he says. “It’s alienating, due to the fact you happen to be encountering time at a distinct pace to your own surroundings so you can not truly interact, but it is also somehow fascinating. Individuals usually never want to consider it off yet again.”

In spite of the attraction, Potthast, 23, has no ambition to market the helmet commercially. “It was never meant as a solution,” he says, and however finds himself more and more in demand from conferences, exhibitions and entrepreneurs throughout the world. The most latest was in March, from a bodily rehabilitation clinic in Italy, Villa Beretta. The director, Dr Franco Molteni, had heard of the helmet and recognised its potential as a therapeutic support for his disabled sufferers.

“I hoped there could be a true use for it,” says Potthast, “so the phone from Villa Beretta was the nicest issue that’s took place to me so far.” Soon after numerous scientific studies with volunteer patients at the clinic, Potthast and the Italian physicians eventually identified an intriguing achievable use for the helmet. A single patient, who had suffered a stroke and could no longer completely open his hands, was motivated to overcome this physical barrier following wearing the helmet in the course of his workout routines and seeing his fingers unfold in slow motion. “It is a bit like tricking the brain,” Potthast says, “but they’re contemplating building it into a real investigation subject.” For Potthast and his slow-movement helmet, it appears accomplishment has been very rapid indeed.

Decelerator helmet: viewing the world in slow motion

Fitness Truths: end viewing your fat

Jean-Claude Vacassin, our new fitness blogger and founder of boutique London health club W10 Efficiency, questions if weight genuinely issues

BY Jean-Claude Vacassin |
04 April 2014

The scales don’t lie. Neither does your BMI score – assuming that you received you height and excess weight right. So scrap the phrase ‘the scales will not tell you the reality, they lie’ and inquire your self rather, how related are either of individuals numbers?

If you inquire me, I would say not a entire good deal. We all have a excess weight that we understand to be our fighting bodyweight, a time when we looked great and felt at our ideal, but the numbers on the scales are not automatically what we’re chasing.

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The problem with excess weight, and BMI, is that they will not inform you the complete story. As guidelines for well being each of these numbers are flawed classification methods. Take a cross area of folks all weighing 80 kilos for illustration. Odds are they’d all appear rather different. Why? Due to the fact the scales only paint portion of the picture. Here’s why:

1. The scales do not know the distinction in between tissues. It is entire body composition, what our excess weight is in fact manufactured up of, that is critical, not excess weight per se.

Muscle is denser than fat (it isn’t going to weigh far more, a pound is a pound) so a person who is lean and muscular will search very distinct from somebody at the exact same excess weight with less muscle and more unwanted fat. The same goes for bones – do sturdier bones make us fatter? No.

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2. The scales don’t count your carb intake: The quantity of carbohydrates you consume can substantially affect your weight. Carbs don’t make you fat but they are how your physique retailers fuel in the muscle groups. The quick story is that carbs enter the blood stream (as glucose), which is turn is taken up and stored in the muscles to be used as fuel (glycogen).

This muscle glycogen then needs water for it to be used, which tends to make us keep water, which can make us heavier. Not fatter – just heavier. The far more muscle mass you have, the greater this fluctuation will be. Note: this is why ultra minimal carb diet plans do wonders for bodyweight reduction. Weight reduction, not fat reduction.

3. The scales never account for water fluctuations It really is evident that when we’re holding a lot more water we weigh far more. Water is not fat however. Tons of items will affect how much water we hold on to – from how considerably we drink, foods we eat (see level 2), how heavily and frequently we sweat to our mineral stability – and hence how considerably we weigh.

This is the short swift-study version, because there are other variables at play right here that will influence bodyweight, the digestive tract getting a large 1. But if you consider away just two things, bear in mind that shedding excess weight (manipulating fluids) is effortless but is not automatically a accurate representation of unwanted fat misplaced and that it is body composition that’s important, not excess weight.

Jean Claude is founder of W10 Functionality . Comply with the staff on Twitter @W10Performance

Fitness Truths: end viewing your fat