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Want to Experience Zero G? Stay in Bed
mrogers writes "New Scientist Space is reporting that the health effects of microgravity can be reproduced by staying in bed. Inclining the bed at an angle of 6 degrees with the head at the lower end produces bone and muscle loss, decreases in cardiovascular activity, and reduced capacity to exercise similar to those produced by prolonged spaceflight. (Valeri Polyakov was not available for comment at the time of going to press.)"
Is this like analogizing dreaming to taking hallucinogens? If so, this is like telling Slashdotters "Want to Experience Sex? Stay in Bed and touch yourself." Obviously, an insufficient "Experience". I suspect the same of the Stay in Bed "Experience". Someone try this and get back to us. -C
Not to nitpick here, but isn't experiencing Zero Gs quite a different beast than experiencing the effects of Zero Gs (based on the article's somewhat misleading title)?
I'm pretty sure one of the effects of experiencing true Zero Gs does not include bed sores!
And, is anyone else sick of the un-"stoppable" macromedia flash ads that suck up cpu and battery life? I see one now on /.
from Neumont University... and it's using 50% of
my 1.6GHz cpu, and I can't turn it off.... Fuck Neumont! Fuck
Flash ads!
Yeah maybe, but I suspect most of us would be far better served by experiencing improved health at our local sports club, and the social benefits are much better too.
Sounds to me like some scientist didn't feel like going into work one day and called in with "Hi boss I can't come in today I am researching the effects of staying in bed and comparing them to the effects of zero gravity", finally someone actually came up with a way to get a grant to just stay in bed......lucky bastard.
*disclaimer: I read the article this is a joke.
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I tried this out a while ago. The results were truly amazing. I found that I was no longer required to obey the laws of gravity. I simply floated wherever I wanted to go.
Will you experience an increase in bone and muscle mass if you sleep with your head at the higher end?
> Valeri Polyakov was not available for comment at the time of going to press.
Actually he was available, but too weak to type a reply to the questions...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Oh, that's just great. For the last month I've had my bed propped up at the end precisely to put my head lower than my feet while I sleep. I was doing this to help counteract the edema in my legs that I've been suffering as a result of spending most of my waking hours in front of the computer.
So if I don't work on the computer all day I get fired; if I do work my legs swell; and if I prop up my bed to help my legs swelling I'll suffer muscle loss, etc.
I give up. Universe, you win.
I some times have two webrowser windows open each with sometimes 11 tabs. You can imagine how irritated I am with my CPU cycle being sucked away. Two things I hate about Flash.
1. No option to say stop looping Flash animations
2. I hate the fact that Flash has an option to link to your microphone and webcam. I know this is off by default but I think its to easy for a script to switch it on.
The answer on how to loose weight easy, just sleep upside down and you will no longer have the weight of your mussels and bones holding you back plus you won't have that annoying urge to get out and do cardiovascular activities.
This is MY kind of science!
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
Dream on, buddy!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Who's got my grant money?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
spent a few weeks in a hospital bed, and something makes me think spaceflight would cause less bedsores.
This space available.
I experience zero Gs while laying on my bed all the time... then again in my case it's probably just all the drugs.
Similar results can be obtained by sitting in front of your computer and playing World of Warcraft every day for 16 hours. Remember, your results may vary.
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"No, honey, I'm not being lazy, I'm just trying to experience the effects of microgravity".
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Want to Experience Zero G? Stay in Bed
I just want to stay in bed, isn't that enough? Keep your science out of my laziness.
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I am now selling, for a short period, a Micro-Gravity Repose Divan Simulator Kit(MGRDSK).
It comprises one (1) hacksaw to cut two of the legs off your bed, and a protractor to confirm the correct angle.
Hurry, Hurry, Hurry! All Slashdotters will want one!
This is not so ridiculous as it sounds. NASA is actually starting a study soon to see the effects of staying in bed . As part of this study partcipants will have to stay in bed for 90 days including using bedpans to do your stuff. They will not be allowed to even tilt their head up only turn over for when a nurse gives them a sponge bath. Participants get paid 17000 dollars for this. They have to be in the 25-35 age group and in peak physical condition as NASA expects a significant amount of bone loss and muscle atrophy. Further their is a danger that all the calcium leaching out of the bones can cause kidney stones as well as the lack of activity can create a pre-diabetic state. Please also note the study has been scheduled to coincide with summer vacations so if you want to do a really interesting internship this summer NASA is the place to be.
**Life is too short to be serious**
zero-g sex?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
That means I can get buff by tilting the foot of the bed 6 degrees down!!!! This is going to be awesome!!! No more splindly arms and legs. I'm going to get built just by laying around in bed all day drinking protein shakes.
Zero = O
O = Oblomov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblomov>
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
What if you tilt yourself the other way? Does that simulate a high gravity environment? Reduce your need for exercise?
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h p?id=1136), to get automatic updates of add blocklists. It also supports whitelisting, something the stock Adblock does not. It also blocks flash ads.
This is truly the reason why I gave up IE and went whole-hog to Firefox. This plugin can be coupled with another, Filterset.G (https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.p
With Adblock Plus and Filterset.G, it's a rare page that I have to view that has any ads on it at all. And it's as easy as loading two plugings. These are the first two things I put into Firefox when I load it.
Flashblock is great but it only blocks Flash. Adblock Plus does that one better by blocking Flash ads and not other bits of Flash. Highly recommended.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
And while we're getting rid of flash, let's get rid of all those images too! Even the text is pretty annoying when it has all those different colors and font sizes. Perhaps a monochrome terminal screen with that blinking cursor is what we really need to get back to :)
Why the hell would someone want to have the unwanted side effects of microgravity without the cool features? It's like selling drugs that get you addicted, give you withdrawal but no high.
But I guess the real meaning of the info is in its reversed reading. We know what microgravity does to long time astronauts. So don't stay in bed for too long periods unless you want to suffer the same way they do when they return to 1.0g areas.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My friend once broke my bed frame, and I had to sleep like this for about a week until I got a new one. Not fun. Not only do your legs feel extremely weak in the morning, its also an extremely restless sleep.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
I tilted my bed 6 degrees, but now I keep rolling out. I experience zero-g for a few microseconds before hitting the floor.
Maybe I need to tilt it the other direction. At least that way my wife will cushion the fall.
Does that mean that spending 1/3 of my life in bed, but with my head angled 6 deg up, on a pillow, can prevent "bone and muscle loss, decreases in cardiovascular activity, and reduced capacity to exercise"?
--
make install -not war
Great! Now we can stop wasting billions on space flight to investigate this and other meaningless little experiments and focus on solving real problems. How about assigning all those little geniuses to hydrogen engines or alternate fuels or better mass transit instead of wasting their talents on fruitless endeavors. Why does anyone care what the effects of zero-g are? When is the earliest we will need to care? The space program has got to be the single biggest waste of money ever conceived. I don't care what zero-g does to my body if I have to worry about some doldrum of human existence on Wall Street bidding up the price of gas because the guy next to an oil exec looks like he might have a cold. What a waste of time...something we're running out of and getting to Mars or Jupiter or where-the-hell-ever is not going alleviate that problem before it gets too big to handle.
Not voluntarily though - as a child I was diagnosed with Perthes disease and hospitalized for a year in an inclined bed - I think the incline was to help the effects of the traction that was also applied. This was done for a year, the last few weeks of which were learning to walk again. The amount of muscle wastage was quite amazing; I was unable to stand at first, partly because I wasn't used to balancing, but mainly because I just couldn't exert that much force. I was lucky though - I went in again for a month a few years later, and one lad had been in for almost 2 years with no end in sight. A shame that recent thinking suggests it doesn't actually help. I guess this doesn't quite qualify me as an astronaut though?
If you sit on your arse all day you will experiance zero G's, zero $. Yup!
For all those people with BIG BONES :)
Researchers are trying to find a way to *counter* the ill health effects of zero gravity. But since it is too costly to send test subjects up into space, they are simulating the effects by having them lay down all day. They found that the resulting health effects to come pretty darn close. From the article:
The amount of oxygen the men's bodies were able to use optimally during cycling tests declined by 10.4% in the astronauts and by 6.6% in the bedrest subjects.
I have never seen an ad on /.
Maybe you need to get a better hosts file.
-@
Move all sig!
What's the meaning of this article? I mean, who would stay at bed for a long time to feel the symptoms of 0grav...?
http://polaralex.blogspot.com http://www.polaralex.tk *Define Reality*..*
What a scientific discovery! Dont move your muscles by staying in bed and loose whatever little muscles you have!!! I would have been surprised if it said "staying in bed makes strong musles!"
Actually, NASA has been doing "bed-rest studies" on the effectiveness of various exercise regimes for some time now: I remember an ad hanging in the cafeteria when I worked at NASA Ames ~ 2001, it said something like "help advance space science without leaving the comfort of a bed." I asked a friend who worked in life support about it, and she tactfully said "it's very uncomfortable" but the more complete description, for example of how your organs start to feel in a day or two after they start moving into different positions, sounded horrific. old NASA press release
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
My health has improved drastically since last summer (lost almost 50 pounds, have gone from being a couch potato to doing regular exercise, had to buy an entirely new wardrobe and am about to do it again). It's terrifying. I'm going straight home, elevating the foot of my waterbed (not sure how that'll work, but they didn't mention any exceptions), and sleeping for a month, waking only to eat Little Debbies and go to the bathroom. Well, maybe for insulin shots after a week...
This has been a standard procedure for measuring the effects of zero G's for quite a while here. The bed rest model has been used to determine the usefulness of various methods for countering the bone loss of astronauts while in zero G's. Bed rest has been used as a model for osteoporosis too. The article is mostly about the exercise counter measures they apparently developed. Unfortunately they really aren't all that innovative either. Resistance exercises and treadmill running are exactly the counter measures used now. I don't see how this is news, interesting maybe, but not news.
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Invaluable extension for me -- I absolutely can't stand Flash ads, most especially those that make noise. Try it.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
Gosh darn it, I paid $4000 for this Zero-G Mattress and all I get is muscle loss.
It would explain the horrible back/neck pains that I am experiencing. =/
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Sorry I cannot cite any source...but I remember seeing documentary around 10 years ago, doing the very same experiment (by US), for the very same purpose: investigate the effect on living in Zero G.
10 participant laid on bed for a week, exactly 6 degree tilted. Bathing in horizontal container, eating on bed, watching TV on bed, anything on bed. No exercise was done. One week later, they can't even put on the socks for themselve.
And here I was thinking:
"... Stay in bed and have a lucid dream about it!"
I think I'd go insane if I had to stay in an inclined bed like that for 17 days straight. Did these test subjects ever get the chance to leave the beds for even a few minutes over those 17 days? Did they even piss in the bed? Freaky.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
My friend took part in a 2-week study back in 1997 at Hershey Medical Center. For two weeks straight, he and 7 others were confined to lying in a bed with the feet higher than the head. This was a 24-hour situation, with bed pans and everything. At the end, it took about 4 hours just for them to be able to stand. At the time, he was a very competitive swimmer (still holds two records at his old college) in terrific shape and it still took about 4 hours just to stand up after two solid weeks of lying at this incline.
I don't know if that remark was a dig at Slashdotters or some kind of advice on where to spot the G thing.
The findings described in TFA seem like a stepping stone to developing preventative medicine or exercises to prevent the effects. Once you can reproduce the problem on earth, you can test solutions without having to put folks in zero-G situations.
I think it raises fascinating questions:
Is the cause of space-wasting too much blood in your head (because it isn't being forced into your feet)?
Is it because blood flow in the brain is throwing off feedback mechanisms (your brain thinks you are healthier than you are)?
Or is it something else entirely?
sorry im using a pencil to push the keys on the keyboard. too hard to do much else. if you see this message call 555-291-001 and tell mary that i need help.
Because then I'd be way out of shape. Instead I make my living sitting on my ass, which practically makes me a professional athlete.
-- Boycott Shell
I have nothing against ads, just annoying ones. Ads are what makes the net go round.
Flashblock is a must have plugin for me. It is the first one I download. I disable gif animations as well, that way nothing jumps around on the screen. I go to pages for information not a show. Anything that moves, needs my permission.
Single bed sized covered rectangle, 400lbs of magnesium in 1' of water, little gavity, no light, no sound, no taste, no smell, only boundless drift. Magnesium salt increases water density to buoancy point.. impossible to sink, no matter how hard you try. Quite an awesome experience. Float centres are few and far between. A listing of some can be found here.
But does it feel as good as weightlessness?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Try Avant Browser or one of the other IE wrapper browsers. Most of them have ad blocking and Avant can simply turn off Flash. It's what I use at work since one of the internal websites that I use daily refuses to allow anything other than IE to connect.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Read slashdot.
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I was not even aware there were ads on Slashdot. Privoxy must be stripping them.
After a rather large motorcycle crash I spent 3 months in traction. The bed was inclined about 6 degrees, head down, to stop me from following the traction weights to the floor!
Getting up for the first time was very weird - I'd lost about 30 kilos of body weight (about 30%), and the head spins were very unsettling.
Not something I'd recommend to anyone!
The Pennington Biomedical Research Center, in Baton Rouge, has been running these very tests, usually for 6 weeks at a time.
That was in the mid-to-late nineties.
I don't remember well, maybe because it's old
You just got troll'd!
It almost sounds like the XP experience.... flying around free because of Win XP.
Huh?
So does CIA waterboarding at a 10% backwards incline.
If so, this is like telling Slashdotters "Want to Experience Sex? Stay in Bed and touch yourself."
With this insight, we now have all the ingredients we need to experience Zero-G Sex in a single location!