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Here is entirely anecdotal speculation as to why this is happening (credentials - mom of two). In the late stages of pregnancy the uterus starts preparing for birth by doing Braxton hicks contractions. The uterus flexes its muscles. They get stronger and physically push the baby down like a ping pong ball coming out of a balloon. BH contractions are also like clock ticks to pregnancy, the closer you get to delivery t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s possible one of the worst long term pollution problems is from tire wear which is not addressed by cleaner running vehicles, so there’s multiple avenues to address there but most solutions only address the fuel/exhaust, was a hacker news story earlier this year.
Don't forget about break pads: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/urai-bda0107...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Half of premature babies are delivered via c-section and many more are induced, usually because there is some risk to the mother or baby at holding the baby to term.
I find it doubtful that the people researching this phenomenon didn't think of that, don't you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Half of premature babies are delivered via c-section and many more are induced, usually because there is some risk to the mother or baby at holding the baby to term.
I find it doubtful that the people researching this phenomenon didn't think of that, don't you?
1) More sleep, and easier to respect their circadian rhythm
2) Reduced un-conscious stress levels related to: the comfort of being at home in a safe place...the comfort of knowing they won't go into labor early while far from home and around non-family members...the comfort of knowing they're eliminating unforeseen risks that come with venturing out into the world
3) Significant reduction of non-natural movements/processes such as: getting in/out of car, sitting in stiff desk chair all day, work-schedule dependent restroom use, commuting related stress
4.) Reduced air pollution
Air pollution is something to be taken very seriously, Regarding that (and since we are hackers here), I bought myself one of these last year: https://m5stack.com/products/pm-2-5-sensor-usb-power-sht20 Pretty affordable and it works really well, readings match another device I have which was much more costly. Since then I turn it on from time to time, I live in an apartment near a highway, I am impressed by: How much…
I have some suggestions for bare boards/chips that you can program yourself and run your own self-hosted IoT cloud over WiFi.
CO: $8 [0] + [1] and very very easy. Great place to start, but these sensors have a reputation for being somewhat garbage (see downthread discussion for more detail). I wouldn't use it as an emergency carbon monoxide alarm but it'll do sensitive measurements (10 to 500ppm), even if it's not accurate and I'd guess not particularly repeatable over time. There are more expensive ones available which may be more reputable. Just need an arduino or any other micro controller. I personally like [2] because it has built-in WiFi but still very cheap. I run a basic web server on them that exposes the data to Prometheus/Grafana. See [3].
CO2[4]: $60 here and you'll want a $10-20 ESP32 or ESP8266 to go with it. Arduino libraries are already written for it and the Arduion IDE has good support for ESP32 so I doubt it would be much work at all to test on / port to ESP32 and fix any porting bugs when they pop up. Alternatively if you feel like writing the interface from scratch you can go down the $40 for equivalent parts from Arrow, DigiKey, or Mouser. Honestly - interfacing with these things is generally not complicated at all as long as there aren't hardware bugs or undocumented behavior.
tVOC: $20 here[5] It looks like your PM 2.5 sensor does not also measure total VOC, so this could be handy. For a very scientific breakdown of how a metal-oxide detecting chip can be used to calculate VOC's, see the following[6]. Thankfully, there is free firmware supplied by sparkfun which does all the heavy lifting, but whenever you're using a chip cross-purposes its good to double-check the math and science.
I personally combine these kinds of sensors with the WiFi-enabled ESP8266 or ESP32 microcontrollers, which make for ~$20+ USB-flash drive sized sensors I can litter around the apartment/outside. I like controlling my own cloud, because I can't stand how Nest only provided 7 days of historical data, or reliance on cloud servers for things like itead.cc / EWeLink apps. It's stupidly simple to set up Prometheus and Grafana to self-host your own cloud. See mine here[7]
If anyone decides to go this route and gets stuck anywhere, feel free to ping me. Email in profile.
0: (CO sensor) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403
1: (Board for easy soldering/mounting) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891
2: (Cheap ESP32) https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland-esp32-wroo...
3: (HTTP server running on $10 microcontroller) http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/
4: (CO2 sensor) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112
5: (MOx sensor which is programmed to output tVOC -- I would not trust the CO2 though) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193
6: https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441...
7: http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home-off...
Heart attacks are similarly down 40-60%. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doc... And cancer diagnoses are down by half. https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0 Of course, no, they aren’t down, it’s just that people that absolutely should be going to the hospital aren’t and they’re endangering their lives trying to avoid COVID-19. Could something similar be at play here? I laughed out loud when they sugge…
Potential upstream causes: "One is social distancing, which may have cut down on the amount of general infection from contact with others. Another is less air pollution, from fewer cars being on the roads." I'd love to see increased incentive for cities to act hastily on reducing <pm2.5 air pollution. Talk about a covert inequality exacerbator.
It’s possible one of the worst long term pollution problems is from tire wear which is not addressed by cleaner running vehicles, so there’s multiple avenues to address there but most solutions only address the fuel/exhaust, was a hacker news story earlier this year.
From Evangeliou et al. (2020), Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions, page 3:
"Surface concentrations of tire wear particles (TWPs) range between a few ng.m−3 and 20 ng.m−3 for PM2.5 and up to 50 ng.m−3 for PM10 (Supplementary Movie 1). Brake wear particle (BWP) surface concentrations reach 50 ng.m−3 at maximum (Supplementary Movie 1). The highest concentrations were calculated for eastern USA, Europe and South-eastern Asia. All concentrations (TWPs 0.4 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.8 μg.m−3 for PM10; BWPs 0.8 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.4 μg.m−3 for PM10) were far below air quality limits for PM (annual mean 10 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, double for PM10) and lower than typical black carbon (BC) concentrations in remote regions."
Here is entirely anecdotal speculation as to why this is happening (credentials - mom of two). In the late stages of pregnancy the uterus starts preparing for birth by doing Braxton hicks contractions. The uterus flexes its muscles. They get stronger and physically push the baby down like a ping pong ball coming out of a balloon. BH contractions are also like clock ticks to pregnancy, the closer you get to delivery t…
I would think that stress levels are higher now...
Air pollution is something to be taken very seriously, Regarding that (and since we are hackers here), I bought myself one of these last year: https://m5stack.com/products/pm-2-5-sensor-usb-power-sht20 Pretty affordable and it works really well, readings match another device I have which was much more costly. Since then I turn it on from time to time, I live in an apartment near a highway, I am impressed by: How much…
> I highly recommend getting one of these or a similar sensor. Also, I'm looking to find something similar but capable of measuring CO and CO2, if anyone knows let me know. I have some suggestions for bare boards/chips that you can program yourself and run your own self-hosted IoT cloud over WiFi. CO: $8 [0] + [1] and very very easy. Great place to start, but these sensors have a reputation for being somewhat garbage…
Considering the effects of even small CO2 level increases on mental abilities, I'm looking forward to an indoor CO2 scrubber to get back below 300 and ideally below 200 ppm in the office/living room.