Two more journalists have been killed in Haiti in the past month as rampant gang violence has gripped the capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas.
Ricot Jean, who worked for Radio-Tele Evolution Inter was found dead on Tuesday, a day after he was reportedly kidnapped by men wearing police uniforms. Jean was a prominent cultural activist in the Haitian capital and hosted a weekly radio show.
Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement that radio reporter Dumesky Kersaint was fatally shot in mid-April. Kersaint was reportedly killed by a stray bullet “between the evening of April 15 and the morning of April 16” in the Mahotiere 83 neighborhood in the municipality of Carrefour.
“The security crisis in the country is putting journalists at a constant risk of extreme violence. It is the authorities’ responsibility to make sure reporters can do their jobs without fear of violence,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director.
The National Association of Haitian Media also condemned the killings, adding that the “climate of tolerated and fueled violence” led to Kersaint’s death. He was an online journalist for Radio Tele Inurep, according to local media reports.
At least two other journalists have been killed in the troubled Caribbean country this year amid an unprecedented surge in gang violence.
John Wesley Amady and Wilguens Louissaint were killed by gang members while reporting in a conflictive area south of Port-au-Prince in January.
At least nine journalists were killed in Haiti last year, the deadliest year for Haitian journalism in recent history, according to Unesco.
Between January and March the UN human rights office counted 531 killings, 300 injuries and 277 kidnappings in gang-related incidents, mostly in Haiti’s gang-dominated capital.
Haiti’s predicament is rooted in hundreds of years of foreign exploitation, decades of dictatorial rule under the Duvalier dynasty, and a string of natural disasters including a 2010 earthquake that levelled Haiti’s capital and killed more than 200,000 people.
But the current crisis intensified in 2021 when Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his Port-au-Prince mansion. Since then, politically powerful gangs have commandeered more than 60% of the capital, elements of the resource-starved police force have gone into open revolt, and Haitian politics has been consumed by infighting.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Hundreds of cities are competing this weekend to collect the most plant and wildlife observations in an urban “bioblitz” as part of a global citizen science challenge.
From Dundee windowsills to San Francisco parks, people are being urged to document whatever flora and fauna they can spot around them in urban areas and upload the photos to the iNaturalist app to help identify rare species.
The City Nature Challenge, which started as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2016, has become a global event that will see nature lovers in towns and cities on all continents race to spot plants, fungi and animals this weekend.
Last year, nearly 1.7m observations were made around the world by 67,000 people, who identified more than 50,000 species. Last year, La Paz, Bolivia, came first with 137,345 observations, more than twice as many as Cape Town in South Africa, which came second with 66,144, and Boston in the US, which made 46,896 observations.
In the UK, London, Manchester, Nottingham and Swansea are among the 19 participating urban areas. They will compete with cities including Mumbai, which has a population of leopards, and Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil, which boasts the Iguaçu Falls that separate Argentina and Brazil.
Dundee, which will be the second most northerly city taking part this year after Whitehorse in Canada, has issued a rallying cry to citizens to take part over the bank holiday weekend and said it would inform the city’s biodiversity action plan.
Heather Anderson, Dundee neighbourhood services committee convener, said: “We hope that residents get involved in this citizen science initiative and scour their own gardens as well as the city’s parks and green spaces.
“The challenge will help to increase the overall knowledge of Dundee’s wildlife and what species can be found in the city area. Information gathering is vital to better develop our wider environmental aspirations,” she said.
Improving access to green and blue spaces and enhancing biodiversity in urban areas was agreed as a target for Cop15 in Montreal.
The pictures collected on iNaturalist, a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, will help towns and cities better understand the wildlife they live with.
Several species that were thought to be extinct, such as the Dumbéa River pipefish and the small whorled pogonia, a plant last seen in 1902, have been rediscovered thanks to people using the iNaturalist app.
The City Nature Challenge takes place from Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May. From 2-7 May, species will be identified, and the winner will be announced on 8 May.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir reported 38 fresh covid-19 cases while there was one death due to the virus during the last 24 hours, officials said on Friday.
They said that 19 cases each were reported from Jammu and Kashmir divisions, taking the overall tally to 481551. Among the cases, 174932 are from Jammu division and 306619 from Kashmir Valley.
There was one death from Jammu division during the time. So far 4790 people have succumbed to the virus and among them include 2357 from Jammu division and 2433 from the Valley.
Besides, they said, 39 Covid-19 patients recovered during the last 24 hours—29 from Jammu division and 10 from Kashmir Valley. There are now 325 active cases— 166 in Jammu and 159 in Kashmir. (GNS)
A far-right extremist who accidentally set off a “fireball” in his own kitchen while experimenting with explosives has been convicted of terrorism offences.
Vaughn Dolphin, who had spoken of his desire for ethnic minorities to be shot, was found guilty on a series of charges after a jury viewed videos and incriminating conversations on social media.
In one self-filmed video, he was seen in a gas mask surrounded by a choking cloud of smoke after attempting to blend a blast mixture in a saucepan on a domestic hob.
Dolphin spoke of causing an “awesome fireball” in videos posted on far-right chatrooms, in which he complained: “Ah the bastard fucking mixture set itself prematurely, oh my God. Next time I’ll do this outside, but, ah well, you live and learn.”
When arrested in June 2022 at his grandfather’s home, the 20-year-old college student told police: “I’m not a terrorist, OK? I have an interest in chemicals and military memorabilia, that’s all.”
Vaughn Dolphin’s homemade body armour. Photograph: West Midlands Police/PA
Dolphin, from Walsall in the West Midlands, was convicted at Birmingham crown court on two charges of possession of explosives, including nitrocellulose, discovered during a raid on his home. He was also found guilty of having an unlicensed firearm that he had made from a length of aluminium tube and on terrorism charges.
An encrypted USB thumb-drive found on his bedroom shelf contained a series of DIY guides on constructing a shotgun, making homemade plastic explosives and conducting arson attacks.
The encrypted files were found in electronic folders with the name “Boogaloo”, which the prosecution claimed was a “significant” as it was used as a reference to “race war” in far-right circles.
Dolphin had also written on extremist channels on the social media platform Telegram of creating a handheld “cannon”, and about mixing gunpowder. He claimed he would do “something that would make [the Unabomber US terrorist] Ted Kaczynski blush”.
He had further ranted about his hatred of Muslims on one Telegram chatgroup and he was found to have a significant collection of material relating to the Nazis, including his own body armour in which he slid a plate bearing the symbol of the SS.
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Others on the Telegram channels had warned Dolphin that he risked being arrested by the “Feds”, in what appeared to be a reference to the police. In response, Dolphin had said he would be safe as he had encrypted the incriminating material. He claimed he could argue that the explosive ingredients he had purchased were for “gardening” purposes.
Dolphin in a soldier’s helmet and skull face-mask. Photograph: West Midlands Police/PA
Dolphin, who shrugged his shoulders while keeping his hands in his pockets as the verdicts were read out, will be sentenced on 11 May.
Ch Supt Mark Payne, the head of West Midlands counter-terrorism unit, said: “This was clearly a young man with a really dangerous mindset. I’ve got no doubt at all that his intent was to cause harm.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
So when Justice entered the Senate race on Thursday, it highlighted the crux of McConnell’s 2024 strategy. After several Trump-inspired candidates fell short last fall and denied the GOP the majority, the Kentucky Republican hopes to run a Senate campaign plan that’s divorced from the presidential race. That means getting candidates who can win even with the former president back on the ballot next year.
McConnell’s gambit underscores the reality that, with the presidential primary still ramping up, he is probably Trump’s greatest foil in the Republican Party right now. He has not changed his mind about Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election, according to confidantes, and he sees Trump’s nomination as complicating the task of defeating Joe Biden next year.
But McConnell, true to form, is not letting emotion or his low view of Trump get in the way of the task at hand. The Senate GOP leader doesn’t talk about Trump in public, and does so little in private.
That’s despite Trump going after McConnell mercilessly and unleashing racist attacks on his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. And despite McConnell savaging Trump as “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“McConnell spoke very clearly on … his enormous disagreements with the [former] president. And I think the personal attacks at his wife, Elaine Chao, have really rubbed Sen. McConnell the wrong way,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of McConnell’s leadership team.
“Sen. McConnell is just looking forward,” Capito added. “He’s not really focused on that disagreement of the past. We all know where he stands.”
The Kentucky Republican sees a path back to the Senate majority through the red states of West Virginia, Ohio and Montana, races that the party can win even with Trump at the top of the ticket. And while he’s not looking to influence the GOP presidential primary, he views the Senate and Senate races as within his control.
Asked about Trump this week, McConnell said: “My principal focus and most of my colleagues’ principal focus is on trying to get the Senate.” It was his second consecutive weekly Trump dodge, the first being a deadpan response to the former president’s indictment: “I may have hit my head, but I didn’t hit that hard,” he said, referring to a recent concussion.
It’s vintage McConnell, and precisely the posture that made him the longest serving Senate party leader of all time — even after Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) mounted the first-ever challenge to his leadership spot. But McConnell’s end-around of Trump comes with some political risk: His conference, including Scott’s replacement as Senate campaign chair, is beginning to coalesce around the former president — who has 10 Senate endorsements, with more coming.
That means, if McConnell began speaking out against Trump, he’d be driving a wedge within the Senate GOP. He might also give Trump fuel.
“I don’t think it generally makes sense to give President Trump a target. He’s able to fire up the base in part by finding someone to attack, and the best way to keep from providing ammunition to President Trump is to stay quiet,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who opposes Trump’s 2024 bid. “He called him an old crow and Leader McConnell said: ‘Yep, I’m an old crow.’”
McConnell spent the last two years helping build a separate GOP identity from Trump, blessing bipartisan deals on gun safety and infrastructure that otherwise drew the ire of conservatives and often the former president himself. That occasionally collaborative bipartisan spirit surprised senators in both parties, who were used to McConnell’s “grim reaper” persona of blocking Democrats and jamming through judicial picks.
What McConnell won’t do, though, is pick a fight with the GOP frontrunner, whom he clearly does not want to win the nomination. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports Trump, said that “Mitch is trying to pick his battles wisely.”
“He understands that the drama of Trump probably doesn’t help day-to-day activities in the Senate,” Graham said of McConnell. “Any leadership person is going to have to make some decisions that are not popular with their base.”
And while it may seem surprising, McConnell is fine with National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines’ (R-Mont.) endorsement of Trump; he even got a heads-up before the Monday announcement.
Daines is close to the Trump family and taking a more interventionist role in primaries than his predecessor, so even Senate Republicans who are tired of the former president believe the Montanan’s move could ultimately help them get more electable candidates in their biggest races next year.
Still, a Trump nomination could complicate the task of winning the next tier of Senate races in states won by Biden in 2020: Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. But after the 2022 debacle netted Democrats a seat, the GOP leader and most of his colleagues are focused on ousting Manchin, as well as Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), more than anything else.
“The thing about Mitch is, he wants a majority in the Senate,” said one Republican senator who spoke candidly on condition of anonymity. As for McConnell’s repeated parries on the former president, this senator recalled a McConnell mantra: “Just because a reporter is asking a question doesn’t mean you need to answer it.”
And given the volume and intensity of Trump’s attacks on McConnell, it’s reasonable to assume that McConnell’s endorsement probably wouldn’t go far in a Republican presidential primary anyway. It could even hurt his ability to get the Senate majority, said another confidante: “He believes that him getting involved in the presidential cycle makes it harder for candidates to win. Not easier.”
“The practical reality of winning the Senate is probably entirely divorced from what happens in a presidential primary because of the map,” this McConnell ally added. “If Trump’s the nominee, I don’t know what happens but I can probably tell you he’s not going to lose West Virginia, Montana and Ohio.”
McConnell’s position won’t necessarily win him plaudits for courage from anti-Trump Republicans or Democrats who were impressed with McConnell’s clear-eyed and critical review of Trump’s Jan. 6 conduct. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has served with McConnell since 1997, simply said it is “normal” for McConnell to stay quiet about Trump.
“I hope he lends his voice to those who are decrying what Trump stands for,” Durbin said optimistically.
But it tracks with the majority leader’s seven-term legacy: He exercises political power where he can, to deny Democrats a Supreme Court seat or force a confrontation over the debt ceiling, while generally not picking fights he cannot win. A tit for tat with Trump is politically untenable for McConnell.
That doesn’t mean he can be totally hands-off. If Trump were to endorse Mooney over Justice, it could complicate even McConnell’s best-laid plans.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
After a frustrating and stultifying opening to the new Formula One season, Ferrari finally have a moment to savour. How much it meant was clear as Charles Leclerc climbed from his car having taken pole position for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and vigorously pointed to the prancing horse logo on his chest. Pumped by an immaculate performance, he and the Scuderia will view this as the belated opening to 2023 they wanted – but what follows this weekend will more accurately define the scale of their challenge to a dominant Red Bull.
Leclerc has taken a battering in the opening three races. He suffered an engine failure in Bahrain, a 10-place grid penalty in Saudi Arabia and was unlucky to be punted out of the race on the first lap in Australia. After a week in which he has had to dismiss rumours of talks with Mercedes to join the team should Lewis Hamilton retire, and in which it was announced that Ferrari’s racing director, Laurent Mekies, is to leave to replace Franz Tost as team principal at AlphaTauri – a blow after the recent loss of technical director David Sanchez to McLaren – Leclerc delivered reason for the embattled team to finally breathe out.
Scrutiny is part of the gig at Ferrari but it carries more weight when the horse is lame, only adding to the intensity of the task at hand as Leclerc acknowledged of his pole. “It’s good, it feels good, the whole team needed it,” he said. “It’s part our job to deal with rumours and pressure, and sometimes it is difficult to perform under those circumstances, but we did really well.”
Ending Red Bull’s hegemony over pole position this season was reason for Leclerc to feel he had made his mark on the streets of Baku, but the Monégasque driver knows only too well that the business end of the weekend remains ahead. He has now taken pole in Azerbaijan three years in a row, but on the last two occasions was unable to convert them to victory.
A hoodoo to vanquish then but it will not be easy. Red Bull’s championship leader Max Verstappen will have his part to play and he remained optimistic about his car’s formidable race pace after being beaten into second, with the Dutchman’s teammate Sergio Pérez in third.
Before Sunday, however, Leclerc and the rest will have to reset entirely for another full day of competition as F1 adopts its new sprint race format in Azerbaijan. Having revised the unsatisfactory previous structure, Saturday will now host what is being called the sprint shootout qualifying, a truncated version of the traditional arrangement, which will decide the grid for the sprint race that will follow.
The sprint will be over 100km with points from eight to one for the top eight, while both events will be standalone and have no bearing on Sunday’s grand prix, with the sport hoping the new structure will address the shortcomings of the previous format to encourage drivers to race harder.
Charles Leclerc celebrates after taking pole position. Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images
There is no reason Leclerc should not repeat his feat on Saturday morning but the margins will be tight once more. They could not have been closer as the sun began to sink low in the sky in Baku on Friday. Verstappen had set the benchmark with a time of 1min 40.445sec on his first hot lap, pushing hard past the walls of the demanding street circuit, but Leclerc was equally brilliant in his challenge, matching the Dutchman’s time down to the thousandth of a second.
On the final laps Leclerc went out first and immediately found an aggressive but beautifully judged line, going quicker in the opening two sectors with a brilliant lap that Verstappen could not match to claim pole with a time of 1:40.203.
Behind them Mercedes were reminded of the task that lies ahead. Lewis Hamilton put in a mighty effort to take fifth but remained a full second off Leclerc’s time, while his teammate George Russell went out in Q2 in 11th place. Hamilton acknowledged they were losing time on the straights but with their new design concept not expected to make a difference until Imola in May, scrapping hard for third best once more looks their likely lot in Azerbaijan.
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Verstappen currently leads Pérez by 15 points in the world championship, with Fernando Alonso in third, nine points further back. Leclerc is back in 10th, 63 points off the pace.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz qualified fourth, Alonso and Lance Stroll were sixth and ninth for Aston Martin, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri seventh and 10th for McLaren, while Yuki Tsunoda was eighth for AlphaTauri.
Esteban Ocon was 12th for Alpine, Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant were 13th and 15th for Williams while Valtteri Bottas was 14th for Alfa Romeo.
The opening session was interrupted by two red flags, the first when AlphaTauri’s Nyck de Vries crashed out, swiftly followed by Pierre Gasly’s Alpine, both hitting the barriers at turn three. De Vries will start from 20th and Gasly from 19th.
Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou was in 16th, with Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen in 17th and 18th for Haas.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
SRINAGAR: The University of Kashmir will be holding the counselling session on Monday for foreign medical graduates (FMGs) whose general merit list is available on the University website to finalise their admission and preferences for the rotatory internship in affiliated colleges of the University.
The counselling programme will be held at Centre for Career Planning and Counselling (CCPC), Main Campus, University of Kashmir, from 9.30am to 5pm in two sessions. The candidates figuring in merit list from Serial No. 01 to Serial No 200 shall report at CCPC from 9.30am to 1pm, and the remaining candidates from Serial No. 200 onwards shall report at 1pm onwards to 5pm at the venue.
This will be the last and final opportunity for the eligible candidates to finalise their admission and preference, following which no claim for admission or preference shall be entertained by any candidate under any circumstances whatsoever.
ChatGPT appears to have a better ‘bedside manner’ than some doctors – at least when their written advice is rated for quality and empathy, a study has shown.
The findings highlight the potential for AI assistants to play a role in medicine, according to the authors of the work, who suggest such agents could help draft doctors’ communications with patients. “The opportunities for improving healthcare with AI are massive,” said Dr John Ayers, of the University of California San Diego.
However, others noted that the findings do not mean ChatGPT is actually a better doctor and cautioned against delegating clinical responsibility given that the chatbot has a tendency to produce “facts” that are untrue.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, used data from Reddit’s AskDocs forum, in which members can post medical questions that are answered by verified healthcare professionals. The team randomly sampled 195 exchanges from AskDocs where a verified doctor responded to a public question. The original questions were then posed to the AI language model, ChatGPT, which was asked to respond. A panel of three licensed healthcare professionals, who did not know whether the response came from a human physician or ChatGPT, rated the answers for quality and empathy.
Overall, the panel preferred ChatGPT’s responses to those given by a human 79% of the time. ChatGPT responses were also rated good or very good quality 79% of the time, compared with 22% of doctors’ responses, and 45% of the ChatGPT answers were rated empathic or very empathic compared with just 5% of doctors’ replies.
Dr Christopher Longhurst, of UC San Diego Health, said: “These results suggest that tools like ChatGPT can efficiently draft high-quality, personalised medical advice for review by clinicians, and we are beginning that process at UCSD Health.”
Prof James Davenport, of the University of Bath, who was not involved in the research, said: “The paper does not say that ChatGPT can replace doctors, but does, quite legitimately, call for further research into whether and how ChatGPT can assist physicians in response generation.”
Some noted that, given ChatGPT was specifically optimised to be likable, it was not surprising that it wrote text that came across as empathic. It also tended to give longer, chattier answers than human doctors, which could have played a role in its higher ratings.
Others cautioned against relying on language models for factual information due to their tendency to generate made-up “facts”.
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Prof Anthony Cohn, of the University of Leeds, said that using language models as a tool to draft responses was a “reasonable use case for early adoption”, but that even in a supporting role they should be used carefully. “Humans have been shown to overly trust machine responses, particularly when they are often right, and a human may not always be sufficiently vigilant to properly check a chatbot’s response,” he said. “This would need guarding against, perhaps using random synthetic wrong responses to test vigilance.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Thousands of us have started 2023 with new exercise programmes promising to get us fit, muscle-bound and slim. But the latest science of chrono-exercise (sometimes called chrono-activity) suggests that what really counts isn’t what we do, or even how we do it, but when we do it.
Of course, moving at any time of the day is good. But we now know that our bodies and brains change over the course of 24 hours, with chemicals, proteins and hormones ebbing and flowing almost hour by hour. So perhaps it’s hardly surprisingly that a string of new studies suggests that timing our exercise to optimally match our body’s circadian rhythms could reap additional rewards. And that means faster results – and less time in the gym.
A new study published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology found that, for those of us wanting to fend off heart disease and stroke, the optimal time of day to move is between 8am and 11am. And preferably closer to 11am: “The late morning seemed to be the most ideal timing,” explained study author, Gali Albalak.
Albalak and her colleagues monitored 86,657 participants (aged 42-76) over a period of six years, using heart-rate data collected from wrist trackers. The data showed the same results, irrespective of personal chronobiology. In other words, owls benefited as much as larks from morning movement. Women appeared to benefit the most, reflecting earlier studies that also found morning to be a particularly effective time for females. A report from Skidmore College in the US found that women who exercised in the morning shed more abdominal fat than women who exercised later in the day. To boot, the female morning movers were also more likely to lower their blood pressure.
One study found that women who exercise in the morning shed more abdominal fat. Photograph: Robert Decelis Ltd/Getty Images
So, should we all be exercising in the morning and putting our feet up in the evening? Not so fast. When it comes to men, or those with type 2 diabetes, the data shows a different picture. The Skidmore College researchers found that men who exercised later in the day markedly reduced their blood pressure, cholesterol, body fat and feelings of fatigue.
There’s another reason women might not want to shake their booty in the morning and then loll, virtuously, on the sofa. For both sexes, the optimal time for building and preserving muscle appears to be later in the day. From the age of 30, our muscles start to atrophy, a process that accelerates after the age of 60. All of us should be lifting some weight or doing some resistance work at least once a week. Multiple studies suggest that afternoons and evenings are the best time to do this: our muscles increase in strength during the day, so that by late afternoon, they are at peak fortitude, enabling us to lift more, for longer. Which means – very simply – that we build muscle more effectively and efficiently, and with less perceived effort, towards the end of the day. Again, studies indicate that the benefits of resistance and strength training, done in the evening, are more pronounced for women, although it’s not clear why.
Thankfully, lengthy weight-training sessions are no longer necessary. The current trend for micro-dosing (10-15 minute sessions a few times a week) arose after studies showed short, frequent workouts to be as effective as hour-long sessions. Lifting hand weights or working with a resistance band during the first 10 minutes of your favourite TV programme is enough to keep withered muscles at bay. For extra efficiency, use heavier weights or movements that work multiple muscles in a single go. Sports scientists call these multi-joint exercises – squats, lunges and push-ups, for example.
Again, anyone diabetic or pre-diabetic should consider some gentle movement after dinner, when our glucose tolerance is typically lower, and when large, starchy meals can trigger hefty blood sugar spikes. Incidentally, evidence suggests – for diabetic men – afternoon exercise is best for improving blood glucose levels, while mornings are the least effective.
There’s just one period of time when physical exertion is consistently deemed detrimental to our health: between the hours of midnight and 6am. Albalak’s study found that moving during these hours was associated with a greater risk of heart disease and stroke. During the night, our bodies shift into rest-and-repair mode, and while a gentle amble won’t hurt, your body won’t thank you for doing jumping jacks at 3am.
What about stretching? Again, studies indicate that evening may be the better time. Our joints and muscles increase in flexibility as the day goes by, peaking at 7pm. Some researchers speculate that the greater flexibility accompanying dusk may be the result of certain hormones peaking at this time and rendering our tendons less stiff. This means we can stretch more deeply, with a greater range of motion, and with less chance of injury. Stretching at night also appears to reduce muscle tension and tightness the following morning, as well as relaxing the body before bed.
If we want to shift our circadian clock – to wake up more easily early in the morning, or to overcome jetlag, for example – moving at specific times of the day can help. According to neuroscientist Jennifer Heisz, exercising at 7am or between 1pm and 4pm will help nudge our body clock back. If we need to shift our bodies to a later wake-up time, she suggests working out between 7pm and 10pm.
So how might a chrono-inspired day look? A brisk walk or cycle (or house clean) between 8am and 11am, then an after-dinner stroll, followed by a few multi-joint strength exercises, and finally a spot of stretching before bed. But, as Albalak reminds me, the most important thing is to move regularly during daylight hours, at times that work for our individual schedules. She suggests that retired people, or those on more flexible schedules, experiment with chrono-activity, and that the office-bound try it at the weekend. Either way, understanding the chrono-tendencies of our own bodies might just mean we can achieve more by doing less. And who doesn’t want that?
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Jelly beer is a popular Thai alcoholic slushie that’s made in a bia wun (oscillating) machine that’s filled with ice, salt, water and beer bottles and that rocks constantly as it cools the beer – usually Singha or Chang – down to -3C. The pressure inside the bottle prevents the beer from freezing, so in effect turns it into a bottled slushie. A citrus juice and syrup is usually then added. This ginger, honey and citrus take on the idea involves a blender rather than a bia wun, and uses orange and lime juice instead of the more traditional calamansi juice. It’s a great refreshing drink to welcome the first warm days of spring – and to keep up your sleeve for the hotter months to come.
Jelly bia
Serves 1
For the ginger and honey syrup (makes 250ml) 125g fresh ginger juice 125g wildflower honey
For the drink 90ml cold Thai lager, Singha for preference 90ml ginger and honey syrup (see above and method) 15ml fresh lime juice 15ml fresh orange juice 15ml fresh lemon juice
First make the syrup: blitz the ginger juice and honey, then strain through a fine sieve or muslin into a clean container or bottle and seal. It will now keep in the fridge for up to a week.
Pour the cold beer into a chilled pint glass. Put all the other ingredients in a blender, add four ice cubes, blitz, then pour into the glass and serve.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
