SPRING CARNY IS HERE AT IT AGAIN, COME AND ENJOY!!
April 26th
Tsongas Center // 6:30 PM
$27 tickets @ Tsongas Center Box Office
Campus Rec Center // 7 PM
SPRING CARNY IS HERE AT IT AGAIN, COME AND ENJOY!!
April 26th
Sitting all day at a desk job can be devastating to your health. In fact, it can shave years off your life. Studies show that a sedentary lifestyle causes cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, depression and more.
Researchers say that while working out at the gym during leisure time helps, it’s not enough. The key is to get moving – standing and walking – throughout long days at the office to keep circulation flowing and health ailments at bay. But can office workers be productive and safe while picking up the pace?
That’s where Assoc. Prof. Manuel Cifuentes of the Work Environment Department comes in. He is testing the use of treadmills and sit-to-stand electric desks with five University employees. The volunteers began integrating movement into their daily work lives in August. Once they adapted to their new workspaces, there was no turning back.
“We’re really talking about interrupting long periods of sitting to get the body moving throughout the day,” says Cifuentes who received funding for the project from the Center for Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace’s (CPH-NEW) Pilot Grant Program. “The treadmills and stand-up desks are promising solutions to help people stay healthy but are in need of some improvements.”
After installing the treadmills and desks in the offices of five employees, Cifuentes and his research team conducted focus groups and found that most of the volunteers are using the standing desks but not the treadmills.
One of the participants, Director of Human Resources and Payroll Operations Hilary Clark, is happy with her workspace now but she didn’t feel that way at first. “In the beginning, I had the treadmill facing the corner but it was awkward and I hardly ever used it,” she says. “Then one day, I rearranged it so that my standing desk and treadmill faced forward with a small table and chairs in front for visitors.”
The set up is just one of the challenges; another is productivity. Learning what tasks you can and can’t do while walking or standing is critical to success.
“I’m finding that I can be productive on the treadmill while reading emails and talking on the phone,” says Clark. “I find it more difficult concentrating on a spreadsheet, entering information in a database and using a calculator while walking. It really is about finding what works best for you and adjusting.”
The adjustment from sitting all day to walking and standing is a process. It took users about two weeks to adjust physically. Some participants reported discomfort in their feet and knees but then the pain disappeared. In the beginning of the trial, Clark would stand for an hour or two on one day and then sit for three days straight. The key for her was rearranging her space and wearing the right shoes. Today, she stands all day and wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I feel so much better not being stuck in a chair,” she says. “My mind seems to work faster and I process information better.” “All participants are now standing all day long,” says Cifuentes. “It might not seem like much but when you stand, you are moving without realizing it.”
Don’t Take Away That Treadmill Just Yet
Use of the treadmill is not as popular as standing. Clark likes standing better than walking because she is more productive. But don’t take away that treadmill just yet.
“Even though the six-month study is over, I signed up for the next phase for three years,” she says. “I don’t think I could go back to sitting all day long. I’m determined to use the treadmill more and have some ideas on how to improve the design. I’d like a smaller treadmill and one that just turns on when you start walking without a button.”
This is exactly this type of feedback that the product manufacturers are finding valuable.
Cifuentes says: “There are some design changes that need to be made to make the treadmill safer for employees and integrate more seamlessly into work spaces. We never want to shift hazards so making sure that employees are safely adopting this technology is one of our primary goals of the research.”
That means working with manufacturers who make the equipment to improve the designs. Cifuentes recently presented the study results to insurance companies, furniture and treadmill manufacturers and educational institutions at a conference hosted by Jaymil Ergo & Office Solutions.
“Today, the ‘gym’ treadmill is not ready for mass consumption in offices,” says Cifuentes. “But with some design changes such as shortening the treadmill, limiting the miles per hour and automatic turn on, the potential for use and improving health is tremendous. In the meantime, organizations could provide employees with a shared area with treadmills where workers could sign up to walk.”
About the Center for Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace Pilot Grant Program
CPH-NEW Pilot Grant Program supports small grants of up to $12,000 per year to conduct preliminary studies or demonstration projects. Projects must relate to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s “Total Worker Health program” – the integration of occupational safety and health with workplace health promotion to prevent injury or illness and to advance health and well-being of workers. To request information, send an email to CPHNEW@uml.edu to receive the announcement for the 2013 Pilot Grant Program.
< 3 GISELLE
For every painfully long and almost unendurable episode of The Walking Dead there are a number of things that are simply overlooked about the character flaws of zombies. There is a reason that almost every zombie movie starts in an apocalyptic setting because if you were to start from the beginning you would realize that zombies are fairly weak and not menacing at all. Just role play with me for a minute. You’re in your room and you hear a scream in the hallway, you go open your door to see what is going on and OH MY GOD THERE’S A ZOMBIE. You panic and quickly go back into your room and lock the door. Now rule seventeen says not to be a hero but think of all of the items you can use in your room to either impale or bash in that zombies skull. There is quite a few. Now think about the entire country where people have more refined weapons than a pair of scissors to use to re-dead that horrifying zombie. There are a number of other things that would just go horribly wrong with a zombie outbreak.
So it is that time of the semester again. Yes THAT time of the semester again but no not THAT time of the semester. We still have the month of April for classes and May for finals. What I am talking about is advising.
So friends, as finals approach and you’re doing all that late night studying, you are bound to get distracted and wander into the weird places of the internet.
The dark depths of various forums and message boards are where scary stories known as “creepypastas” are born. The name is derived from another internet phenomenon known as “copypasta,” which are basically ridiculous posts that get copied and pasted over and over and over. But these are better. These are CREEPY.
My first encounter with creepypasta was on a dark and stormy night in Eames Hall my freshman year. I was studying late into the evening, and after hours and hours of diligent work I decided to reward myself with a short internet break. Somehow I wandered into the badlands of the internet, but feeling brave, I continued on.
Much like Simba’s wanderings into the elephant graveyard, this was a bad idea. The first creepypasta story I came across is a classic one titled, “Gateway of the Mind.” The gist of the supposedly true tale recounts a team of scientists in 1983 conducting a radical experiment where they surgically sever all connections to the subject’s five senses and observe him over time. If you’re interested in reading the whole thing, it can be found here. It’s a little unsettling, but not as bad as some other pastas I’ve read since.
Perhaps the most well known is our tall, dapper friend Slender Man.
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One of the original Slender Man photos. |
Development: Slender Man quickly grew into a viral sensation; fans making more photos, drawings, stories [creepypastas], as well as videos and even games. The first video series involving our dapper faceless man is known as Marble Hornets. It also originated on the Something Awful forums, by user ce gars. The story tells of his friend Alex Kralie, a film school student working on a project called Marble Hornets. After stumbling across something unsettling, Alex abandons the project, dumps all his footage with Jay, and disappears. Jay then begins sifting through the footage and embarks on a creepy journey, all the while documenting his findings on his YouTube channel and Twitter. Apparently Marble Hornets is being turned into a feature length film, produced by Mosaic.
So friends, if you would like to scare yourself into not sleeping so you can stay up and study, I’d recommend watching the Marble Hornets series, browsing the Creepypasta wiki, or perhaps seeing the Evil Dead, the trailer of which Brady just showed me. I will not be sleeping tonight, or ever, and I may be crying right now.
Happy spring everyone!!
-Trudy
April 11 and 12, 2013University and Riverview suite selection process.April 14 and 15, 2013 Room Retention for those with rooms that are eligible for retention.
Hello everybody,
So this week I had to do a philosophy project about endangered species and whether or not humans should be obligated to protect them blah blah blah but the COOLEST part of it all were the cool animals I learned about that are no longer with us today.
Seriously these animals were bosses in their own right before they met their inevitable end. All of these animals existed in the last 1,000 years ago(sorry no dinosaurs in this post). Let’s get started.
This animal is like Tito from Rocket Power meets an aquatic environment. It could get as big as 26-30 feet! It’s like what would happen if a whale meets a manatee and they had babies. This thing is basically the bro of the ocean. Explorers used to write that these guys were extremely docile, however, fishermen and pirates basically genocided them to extinction during the 1700’s. Smh. If you want to learn more go here.
The only cool animals left in North America are mooses, wolves, and maybe cougars. North America is by and large devoid of any cool reptiles or cool mammals like other continents have. Imagine you were minding your own business when all of a sudden a lion bigger than any modern African Lion came out of nowhere. That’s how cool the world would be if these lions were still around. You can find more info here.
These animals were champions of the world. Let’s have a moment of silence. *pours one out for the dead homies of the animal kingdom*
-Tim Brown
ITS THE MOVES!!! Oh Yeaaahhh!
Salsa is NOT as hard as you may think. Give it try! i promise you’ll love it as much as I do =)
What you could look like!!!
HISTORY OF SALSA
While it is definitely more than just Cuban, a large part of the dance originated on the island. The French who fled from Haiti brought the Danzón or the country-dance of England/France to Cuba. This dance began to mix with the African rhumbas such as Guaguanco, Colombia and Yambú. Added to this is the Són of the Cuban people, which was a mixture of the Spanish troubadour (sonero) and the African drumbeats. This occurred in other places like the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Puerto Rico, albeit not at the same grand level and manner as in Cuba.
Before and around the time of World War II, the music traveled to Mexico City and New York. It was in New York where the term “Salsa” was created. In fact, the use of the word salsa for dance-able Latin Music was coined in 1933 when Cuban song composer Ignacio Piñerio wrote the song Échale Salsita. The word served as a type of protest against bland food. It then flourished as a popular nickname for a variety of Hispanic influenced music
LITTLE TIPS
Salsa is a dance of passion, where you feel and dance to the music. Sure.. rhythm and timing are important, but the real part of the dance comes from within.
Here’s an easy way to tell if you know the basic dance steps: While you are dancing with your partner, can you hold a conversation and complete all of the basics steps? If so, you are ready to learn the intermediate steps.
Beginners Lesson
Edwin Pabon (Boston)
617-524-0457