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Vietnamese custom: visiting pagodas during lunar new year

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Vietnamese custom: visiting pagodas during lunar new year

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Lunar new year, called Tết, is the most important holiday in Vietnam. There are many customs during this holiday, but a custom that many people often do first is visiting pagodas or churches. This video shows how Vietnamese do and their hopes in this custom.

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Found this using ASU library one search. It has some ideas for causes of global obesity.

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Found this using ASU library one search. It has some ideas for causes of global obesity.

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In the 2nd paragraph of the overview, the authors point out that most research on global obesity has to do with social and environmental factors. This means diet and exercise.

In the 3rd paragraph of the overview, there are lots of ideas for causes that you may not have thought about such as prenatal care (pregnant women's ability to access doctors, vitamins, education, safe environment, etc), emotional stress, depression, etc.

Citation (I used the library's citation generator.)
Moini. (2020). Global health complications of obesity. Elsevier.

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Book * 2020

Authors:

Jahangir Moini, Raheleh Ahangari, ... Mohtashem Samsam

Book * 2020

Authors:

Jahangir Moini, Raheleh Ahangari, ... Mohtashem Samsam

Book description

Global Health Complications of Obesity presents a valuable resource for research scientists and clinicians by covering the burden of obesity and related diseases and serving as a s ... read full description

Browse content

Table of contents

Description

Global Health Complications of Obesity presents a valuable resource for research scientists and clinicians by covering the burden of obesity and related diseases and serving as a starting point for in-depth discussions in academic settings and for obesity-treatment specialists. Obesity is associated with a statistically higher risk of heart disease, hypertension, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and many other diseases. This succinct resource focuses on the current data, research and management of obesity. It is essential reading for healthcare professionals, endocrinologists, nutritionists, public health students and medical students.

Show more

Global Health Complications of Obesity presents a valuable resource for research scientists and clinicians by covering the burden of obesity and related diseases and serving as a starting point for in-depth discussions in academic settings and for obesity-treatment specialists. Obesity is associated with a statistically higher risk of heart disease, hypertension, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and many other diseases. This succinct resource focuses on the current data, research and management of obesity. It is essential reading for healthcare professionals, endocrinologists, nutritionists, public health students and medical students.

Key Features

Presents clinical cases, key terms and targeted references

Addresses diseases including diabetes, cancer, hypertension, osteoarthritis, fatty liver disease, infertility, renal failure and depression

Provides a link to new knowledge that is ideal for both researchers and clinicians

Show more

Presents clinical cases, key terms and targeted references

Addresses diseases including diabetes, cancer, hypertension, osteoarthritis, fatty liver disease, infertility, renal failure and depression

Provides a link to new knowledge that is ideal for both researchers and clinicians

Details

Copyright

Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

You currently don't have access to this book, however you can purchase separate chapters directly from the table of contents or buy the full version.
Shopping Cart Purchase the book

Authors

Jahangir Moini

Eastern Florida State College, Palm Bay, FL, United States

Raheleh Ahangari

Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences and College of Medicine, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, United States

Carrie Miller

Clinical Performance Laboratory, Seattle University College of Nursing, Seattle, WA, United States

Mohtashem Samsam

Brunette School of Biomedical Sciences and College of Medicine, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, United States

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Book * 2020 Authors: Jahangir Moini, Raheleh Ahangari, ... Mohtashem Samsam Book * 2020 Authors: Jahangir Moini, Raheleh Ahangari, ... Mohtashem Samsam Global Health Complications of Obesity presents a valuable resource for research scientists and clinicians by covering the burden of obesity and related diseases and serving as a s ...

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This photo was taken when I visited the Power Station of Art in Shanghai in 2019. Although I forget the author of this photo, the graffiti on the wall always makes me laugh. This graffiti is so funny, I think the person who created it must be a humorous person.

--Jean Baudrillard
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard)

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What is art - Inspiration and Motivation (Adams, 2018) 

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This video seems interesting to me because it shows what is art and how art can be an inspiration. In addition, the artist talked about how he was inspired to do paint and shows his example of art.

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What is art - Inspiration and Motivation

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Dong Ho, a traditional Vietnamese folk art.

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Dong Ho, a traditional Vietnamese folk art.

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Numerous traditional arts in the world was destroyed by wars. Dong Ho, a traditional Vietnamese folk art, also had a period that nearly was killed like that. Although, I am a Vietnamese, unfortunately I have never seen a real Dong Ho painting. This video is the thing that remind me to respect the past and to do anything possible to preserve traditional arts.

Below is a summarization of the Dong Ho art.

Dong Ho is a kind of printed painting from the carved woodcuts. All part of making the paintings from carving woodcuts, mixing colors to printing by hand. One Dong Ho painting can use up 5 different woodcuts. And each woodcut layers a print of one color and design on top of a different one. All paintings just have colors; red, green, yellow and black. Families were bought the arts to decor their house each traditional Vietnamese new year, Tet. Dong Ho painting nearly was killed in the war against French in 1940s. But today, the Nguyen Huu family one of the last still making these painting in Dong Ho village, where the art got its name, is making it still stand.

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War Nearly Killed This Vietnamese Art. Meet One Family Keeping It Alive | Still Standing

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Gardening helps to improve your mental and physical health. 

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Gardening helps to improve your mental and physical health. 

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Gardening really helps to improve your mental and physical health. I have just started gardening since last year. Before, I spent most my time sitting in front of the TV and having  Pizza, Hamburger and other kinds of fast food. These bad habits and unhealthy food causes stress and chronic diseases. After gardening, beside controlling emotional   status, getting out also helps to improve my physical health . This video describes exactly the benefits that I was getting from gardening.

Gardening for health and wellbeing | RHS Feel Good Garden | Royal Horticultural Society. (2019, February 12). YouTube. Retrieved August 26, 2022, from https://youtu.be/xC1hmFqC6e0

Home. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved August 26, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbDJxSWRkdWVyYTYwUjBjaHo2c3BFdGhyY3NCQXxBQ3Jtc0trYkU5WXVuNl9WdzlfRXZBZ3MxeDRzeVgxUEs0S3FrMFVCaElRcmxVRHRaSFl3RkM5THUwb0p2cUVmWXhFdXFZSDNOcGNIX1VkcF9Jc1NGOWZ5N2VqQ3A2UEFoWnlSdWw3MEx

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Gardening for health and wellbeing | RHS Feel Good Garden | Royal Horticultural Society

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I captured this photo while visiting Seattle, Washington. Just imagine you are over there, put your legs on the water and do a little meditation while your eyes are closed. It is what keeps us healthy mentally and physically.

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IMAGES PROVIDED BY:

1) Getty

2) Getty

3) Getty

4) Getty

5) Getty

6) Getty

7) Getty

8) Getty

9) Getty

10) Getty

11) Getty

12) Getty

SOURCES:

AARP: "Walk Your Way to a Better Life."

American Academy of Ophthalmology: "Natural Light May Benefit Seniors' Biorhythms, Sleep and Health," "The Sun, UV Radiation and Your Eyes."

American Council on Exercise: "6 Benefits of Exercising Outdoors," "Get Out! 5 Benefits of Outdoor Exercise."

American Forests: "Shirin-Yoku: Why Forest Bathing Became a Global Health Phenomenon."

CDC: "Skin Cancer: Sun Safety."

Environmental Health Perspectives: "Benefits of Sunlight: A Bright Spot for Human Health."

Environmental Science & Technology: "Green exercise may be good for your head."

Frontiers in Psychology: "How might contact with nature promote human health? Promising mechanisms and a possible central pathway."

Georgetown University Medical Center: "Sunlight Offers Surprise Benefit - It Energizes Infection Fighting T Cells."

Harvard Health Publishing: "A prescription for better health: go alfresco."

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health: "What are the Benefits of Interacting with Nature?"

Medscape: "Filtered Sunlight Effective Against Jaundice in Neonates."

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases: "Walking: A Step in the Right Direction."

National Sleep Foundation: "Circadian Rhythm and Your Body Clock."

Psychological Science: "The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature."

Northwestern University: "Morning Rays Keep Off the Pounds."

PlosOne: "Timing and Intensity of Light Correlate with Body Weight in Adults," "Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings."

Skin Cancer Foundation: "Sunscreen."

Shinrinyoku.org: "Shinrin Yoku."

Stanford Medicine: "Connectedness & Health: The Science of Social Connection."

University of Minnesota: "How Does Nature Impact Our Wellbeing?"

World Health Organization: "The known health effects of UV."

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IMAGES PROVIDED BY: 1) Getty 2) Getty 3) Getty 4) Getty 5) Getty 6) Getty 7) Getty 8) Getty 9) Getty 10) Getty 11) Getty 12) Getty SOURCES: AARP: "Walk Your Way to a Better Life." American Academy of Ophthalmology: "Natural Light May Benefit Seniors' Biorhythms, Sleep and Health," "The Sun, UV Radiation and Your Eyes."

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Delpeuch. (2009). Globesity : a planet out of control? (1st edition). Earthscan. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781849771474     -I found this source and citation at ASU library one search. Go to ASU library page and type Global Obesity effects

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Delpeuch. (2009). Globesity : a planet out of control? (1st edition). Earthscan. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781849771474     -I found this source and citation at ASU library one search. Go to ASU library page and type Global Obesity effects

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Chapter 4 of this book looks very interesting. I wonder if you'll be able to relate the easy access and affordability to fast food (causes) served by chains such as McDonalds around the globe to global warming. I'm not sure but that's pretty interesting, don't you think? I thought of this when I saw the title, "A billion Chinese meat-eaters?".

Chapter 4 Table of Contents
Agriculture in the Age of 'More is More'; Towards an agriculture without farmers?; Produce more!; The perverse effects of farm subsidies; The success of the 'green revolutions'; But the fight goes on; A billion Chinese meat-eaters?; Will the world food price crisis curb the obesity pandemic?; The issue of eco-costs; ...

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Break the Sigma. (May 24, 2017).Children's Hospital Colorado. YouTube. Retrieved August 26, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbDJxSWRkdWVyYTYwUjBjaHo2c3BFdGhyY3NCQXxBQ3Jtc0trYkU5WXVuNl9WdzlfRXZBZ3MxeDRzeVgxU

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Break the Stigma, Children's Hospital Colorado (2017)

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https://youtu.be/49mfPFTZsHs
This video seems very inspirational and informative because it talks about breaking the stigma of mental health in society. We always when talking about health, or a healthy person just consider the physical health of the person that person can walk, are their eyes, ears, and hands okay? Not, most of the time thinking of a person's mental health which is very important, and what is going on in a person's mind, feeling well inside, and so on. This video shows that let's take care of our mental health and people who have problems with this cause and help them to share their problems very comfortably and show a  solution for them instead of judging them.

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Break the Stigma Around Children's Mental Health

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Childhood obesity can lead to various conditions, including type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Learn how to protect your child’s health.

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Obesity and OverweightChildhood obesity - Symptoms and causes. (2020, December 5). Mayo Clinic. Retrieved August 26, 2022, from https://www.mayoclinic.org/disea

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Obesity: Having excess body fat that is considered unhealthy for a person's stature is called obesity and increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, and..

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Bhuvanesh, D. (2016, November 4). Top 10 Health Benefits Of Playing Badminton! Sulekha. Retrieved August 26, 2022, from https://www.sulekha.com/sports-coaching/top-10-health-benefits-of-playing-badminton-630386-blog

Badminton is not only good for our physical health but also good for our mental health. I only started playing badminton last year and the sport has really given me a better life. Playing badminton can exercise the flexibility of the body and can make our hearts stronger. But for me, the most important advantage of playing badminton is that I can have a partner to play sports with me. That really means a lot to me! I don't have to go to the gym by myself like I used to.

---Runze

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Badminton, is a racquet sport that is very similar to tennis. It is a very popular sport not only for competition but also a fun sport which can be played among your peers. If you are looking for a sport that helps you to maintain your physical and mental health, then badminton is the best choice.

Here are the top health benefits of playing badminton:
1. Helps to stay fit and lose weight
Playing badminton takes a lot of energy and is very exhausting as it uses every muscle in the body. If you play even for an hour, you will be able to burn close to/around 480 calories which are the highest among all the sports. It will help overweight people in burning fat and keep the weight optimal for their age and height.
2. Helps in maintaining physique and muscle toning
The movements while playing badminton will help to build and tone your core muscles especially for calves, butt, quads and hamstrings. This kind of cardiovascular workout will help to maintain your body in a proper shape.
3. Improves metabolic rate
Having a good metabolism will help you maintain your physique and stay fit. Playing badminton helps improve the cardiopulmonary function which means it will make your body habitual of sweating naturally. Sweating helps in removing the toxins from your body and a high metabolic rate can be achieved.
4. Increases concentration and reflex action
This sport improves the concentration of the player. When the game is played in a fast-paced, it increases the speed and improves the reflexes. Intelligence is also a factor since players must know how to deceive their opponents in every shot.
5. Improves heart functioning
The high levels of cholesterol decrease the size of blood vessels which may lead to a heart attack or a stroke. Badminton strengthens the heart muscles by unclogging the blocked walls of the heart leading to a better blood flow. People with pre-existing heart conditions can benefit from the sport by taking proper medical supervision.
6. Improves muscle strength and flexibility
The more you move, the more flexible you become. While playing badminton, moving fast and swinging the racquet in the speed required is very essential. This improves flexibility and also help players gain muscle strength and endurance.
7. Increases bone density
Playing badminton helps in the growth of those cells which form bones. This, in turn, helps you in reducing the risk of bone fractures. It also helps in developing calcium matrix which improves the overall physical appearance.
8. Decreases the risk of diabetes
Regular exercise helps in decreasing the incidence of developing diabetes. Playing badminton helps in reducing the blood sugar levels. This decreases the production of sugar by the liver which makes you keep yourself away from the disease.
9. Cures hypertension
Badminton is a social sport. You get to meet several people who play the same sport which might result in a positive feel. It keeps you active and improves your mood and sleep. This will, in turn, help you relax and reduce stress and anxiety.
10. Improves lung function
Playing badminton boosts the heart rate and blood flow. This improves the functioning of lung quite significantly and helps in reducing the dependence on nasal sprays for people who have difficulty in breathing.

If you are interested in learning badminton sport, enroll yourself in the best badminton coaching center.

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sulekha blogs top 10 health benefits of playing badminton!

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Top 10 Health Benefits Of Playing Badminton!

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Badminton, is a racquet sport that is very similar to tennis. It is a very popular sport not only for competition but also a fun sport which can be played among your peers. If you are looking for a sport that helps you to maintain your physical and mental health, then badminton is the best choice.

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It is a park near my home. I often go there for walking and sports.--Runze

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One of the hot news topics that is showing on all TV channel nowadays is Artemis 1, the rocket that is being scheduled to launch to the Moon like Apollo 11 by NASA. By the way, the topic in the Module 5 that we are learning about Space travel make me curious to the Artemis 1. This video shows the way Artemis travel to the Moon and turn back to our Earth. I am so excited the sharing knowledge in the Video.

“Return To The Moon: Artemis 1 Mission.” YouTube, 27 August 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cevVlgEZIA. Accessed 30 August 2022.

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https://youtu.be/ONzMqrs75XA
This video seems very beautiful and motivational for me to travel; how traveling makes us free and out of all stress, work, and study.

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Are you Free? | A Travel motivation video that will urge you to be free

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Obesity: Global Causes Require Global Solutions

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Obesity: Global Causes Require Global Solutions

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Mhurchu, Cliona Ni. “Obesity: Global Causes Require Global Solutions.” Health Affairs, vol. 28, no. 3, 2009, pp. 918–19, https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.28.3.918.

--Runze

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Sedentary Lifestyle and Risk of Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes(Citation Reference)

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Sedentary Lifestyle and Risk of Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes(Citation Reference)

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"Compelling evidence suggests that a sedentary lifestyle, indicated by prolonged TV watching, is an important risk factor for obesity and type 2 diabetes, whereas an increase in physical activity is associated with weight maintenance and a lower risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes." (Hu, 2003, p.p 104).

Reference:

Hu, F.B. (2003), Sedentary lifestyle and risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Lipids, 38: 103-108.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11745-003-1038-4

Zahra

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Diet and disease : nutrition for heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic stress

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Diet and disease : nutrition for heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic stress

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Citation:
Ferraro, Katie. Diet and Disease : Nutrition for Heart Disease, Diabetes, and Metabolic Stress. First edition., Momentum Press, 2016.
https://search.lib.asu.edu/permalink/01ASU_INST/pio0a/alma991048394909503841

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Diet and Disease: Nutrition for Heart Disease, Diabetes, and Metabolic Stress

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Can food really take the place of medicine? While modern medicine certainly has its place and does more than its fair share of good, there is no denying that many of society's most perilous chronic diseases are exacerbated by poor diets. Whereas infectious diseases used to cause the most number o...

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"Obesity is a global epidemic, with large proportions of adults and children overweight or obese in many developed and developing countries. As a result, there is an unprecedented level of interest and research in the complex interactions between our genetic susceptibility, diet and lifestyle in determining individual risk of obesity. With its distinguished editor and international team of contributors, this collection sums up the key themes in weight control research, focusing on their implications and applications for food product development and consumers."

Citation:

Mela, D., and David J. Mela. Food Diet and Obesity. Woodhead Publishing Limited, 2005.
https://search.lib.asu.edu/permalink/01ASU_INST/pio0a/alma991048764260803841

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Outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability

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Outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability

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Winter, Selin, S., Cerveny, L., & Bricker, K. (2020). Outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability. Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 12(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU12010081

I am a fan of outdoor recreation, especially visiting nature, ancient architecture, and local cultures. This article give many interesting issues about the intersections of outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability that makes me mindful of my recreations which can create destruction of Nature.

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US Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, 4955 Canyon Crest Drive, Riverside, CA 92507, USA

Recreation, Parks, and Tourism, Division of Forestry & Natural Resources, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA

US Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Seattle, WA 98103, USA

Parks, Recreation & Tourism, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 31 October 2019 / Revised: 10 December 2019 / Accepted: 14 December 2019 / Published: 20 December 2019

This Special Issue addresses the intersections of outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism provide essential benefits to individuals, communities, and society and thereby contribute to sustainability. Equitable provision of opportunities, cultural variations in desired experiences, barriers to outdoor recreation, and diverse perceptions of both nature and recreation add to the complexity in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism service delivery. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism occur within a socioecological system with feedback loops to changing social, economic, technological, and ecological conditions. On a global scale, climate change and other disturbance factors are impacting ecosystems and opportunities, increasing the importance of adaptation strategies for longer-term planning. Population growth and regional shifts in demographics and distribution (e.g., urbanization), as well as socioeconomic trends, affect who engages in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism, opportunities sought, nature access, and governance of outdoor services. Overall the complexity of sustainable outdoor recreation and tourism may suggest a need for different approaches to service delivery, culture change among service providers and managers of natural spaces, and novel approaches to inclusive governance and shared stewardship. Given the clear importance of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism to society, we invite you to consider this initial introduction to our assembled collection, which is meant to advance our understanding of the intersections of outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability. View Full-Text

Winter, P.L.; Selin, S.; Cerveny, L.; Bricker, K. Outdoor Recreation, Nature-Based Tourism, and Sustainability. Sustainability 2020, 12, 81. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12010081

AMA Style

Winter PL, Selin S, Cerveny L, Bricker K. Outdoor Recreation, Nature-Based Tourism, and Sustainability. Sustainability. 2020; 12(1):81. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12010081

Chicago/Turabian Style

Winter, Patricia L., Steven Selin, Lee Cerveny, and Kelly Bricker. 2020. "Outdoor Recreation, Nature-Based Tourism, and Sustainability" Sustainability 12, no. 1: 81. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12010081

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Outdoor Recreation, Nature-Based Tourism, and Sustainability

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This Special Issue addresses the intersections of outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism provide essential benefits to individuals, communities, and society and thereby contribute to sustainability. Equitable provision of opportunities, cultural variations in desired experiences, barriers to outdoor recreation, and diverse perceptions of both nature and recreation add to the complexity in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism service delivery.

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Jackie Chan is my favorite and most respected action movie star. He has many real stunts that people can hardly reproduce, and his bravery and seriousness about his film work often move me.
--Runze

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How the Hell is Jackie Chan Still Alive? | NowThis Nerd

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Rowan Atkinson is one of the most famous English actors, comedians, and writers. He was born on January 6, 1995, in the UK.

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Rowan Atkinson Live -  Attending Church [Part 1]

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57RpNFLTAZU

This Roger Federer a famous American tennis player. I like his personality and his playing tennis, but this video seems very interesting to me to share about him. That how he surprise one of his fun and keep that promise that he gave his 5 years fun. For more to know, please watch the video!

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Barilla | The Promise with Roger Federer and Zizou

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I enjoyed watching this video. It will make you familiar with traveling to a black hole.  And how will the journey to a black hole?
Nasiba*

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What Would a Journey to the Black Hole Be Like?

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Đặng Thái Sơn, a famous classical pianist. 

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Đặng Thái Sơn, a famous classical pianist. 

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References

DANG THAI SON Chopin Concerto #2 (Chopin Competition 1980). (2015, June 27). YouTube. Retrieved September 7, 2022, from https://youtu.be/9DBo0j9xlwc

Đặng Thái Sơn is a Vietnamese-Canadian classical pianist. He was born in Hanoi, and grew up during the Vietnam war (1945-1975). In this video, in 1980, Đặng Thái Sơn was still a Vietnamese - Russian student. He won the X International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and became the first pianist from Asia to do so. He is a talented person, but the thing I really admire about him is his patience in overcoming challenges. The uniform that he was wearing in the video, was borrowed from his professor and the train ticket for moving from Moscow to Warsaw, it was also funded by his professor too. He won the prize while his life is very difficult.

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DANG THAI SON Chopin Concerto #2 (Chopin Competition 1980)

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I like outdoor recreation because it makes me happy and healthier. I found a video that shows why people are doing outdoor recreation. And what will be the benefits of outdoor recreation?
https://youtu.be/uuWBAnyvL78
Nasiba*

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art is not just painting; it is all about how and what we feel about somethings.
https://youtu.be/fTrTixSNdlE
Nasiba*

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One interesting point that I got from this video is that technology might get dangerous to human life. By progressing the technology people might lose their privacy and their job. For instance, government, gangsters, and mafia bands might use this technology to control people’s lives each step of their life and might hurt them. Besides, new technology might cause people to lose their jobs because robots will be replaced with humans. Although, in my opinion, we can use technology to cure a disease and learn new methods of teaching.

Leonhard, G. (2020, September 22).

The future of technology and Humanity: a provocative film by Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard. YouTube. https://youtu.be/4uo1FlcQENkhttps://youtu.be/4uo1FlcQENk

Nasiba*

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The future of technology and Humanity: a provocative film by Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard

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The REAL Future of Artificial Intelligence

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The REAL Future of Artificial Intelligence

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The REAL Future of Artificial Intelligence - Bing video

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Rondot (Apr 13, 2022), Cultures and Customs for Children. YouTube
I found the video very informative not only for kids, but also for adults, parents, teachers, and so on, to inform them about different cultures and customs around the world. It helps them show tolerance and respect regarding different cultures and customs.

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Spring Festival is China's biggest extravaganza and a day for a family reunion. Being around family members at the turn of the year is a vital ritual for the Chinese people. In this video, the author tells people what the Chinese Spring Festival is and what people do today.
--Runze

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Importance of Technology in Our Daily Life  (Zahra)

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Importance of Technology in Our Daily Life  (Zahra)

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This video is beneficial and inspirational for me and shows how technology is helpful and important in our daily life today. In contrast, people who believe technology and innovation are dystopian and will destroy the world.

Reference:
Oko Groups, (July 31, 2022), Importance of Technology in Our Daily Life. Youtube.

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Importance of Technology in Our Daily Life

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This article shows readers what the metaverse is and how people think about the future of the metaverse.--Runze

Anderson, J., & Rainie, L. (2022, June 30). The metaverse in 2040. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/06/30/the-metaverse-in-2040/

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Hype? Hope? Hell? Maybe all three. Experts are split about the likely evolution of a truly immersive 'metaverse.' They expect that augmented- and mixed-reality enhancements will become more useful in people's daily lives. Many worry that current online problems may be magnified if Web3 development is led by those who built today's dominant web platforms

(Gremlin via Getty Images)

This report covers results from the 14th " Future of the Internet" canvassing that Pew Research Center and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center have conducted together to gather expert views about important digital issues. This canvassing of experts was prompted by emerging debates in the early 2020s over the potential evolution and impact of extended reality tools like augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual reality, as well as "the metaverse" or "metaverses." This is a nonscientific canvassing based on a nonrandom sample; this broad array of opinions about where current trends may lead in the next 18 years represents only the points of view of the individuals who responded to the queries.

Pew Research Center and Elon's Imagining the Internet Center sampled from a database of experts to canvass from a wide range of fields, inviting entrepreneurs, professionals and policy people based in government bodies, nonprofits and foundations, technology businesses and think tanks, as well as interested academics and technology innovators. The predictions reported here came in response to a set of questions in an online canvassing conducted between Feb. 6-March 21, 2022. In all, 624 technology innovators and developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded in some way to the question covered in this report. More on the methodology underlying this canvassing and the participants can be found in the section titled "About this canvassing of experts." [LINK]

Extended reality (XR) is an umbrella term to cover all of the various forms of computer-altered reality. For some experts and technologists, other terms fall under the XR umbrella:

Virtual reality (VR) completely immerses people in a digital setting. These settings can be created as fully synthetic computer-generated content, they can be made of real-world content (set in actual 360-degree video), or they can be a hybrid of both. Roblox is one of many popular metaverse VR platforms in 2022. Today's fullest home or work VR experiences require individuals to use a head-mounted device and haptic controllers.

Augmented reality (AR) overlays digital information in real-world settings. You are applying AR when you use your phone's camera to translate signs and menus in real time from one language to another, or if you play Pokémon Go. Hundreds of AR applications are available today for use on smartphones. AR keeps the real world central but enhances it with digital details that supplement the environment.

Mixed reality (MR) experiences allow people to interact with and manipulate computer-generated images in the real world, in real time. You use a headset but see and remain immersed in the real world while seeing and interacting with images using your hands - for instance, a 3D architectural floor plan for a new school or 3D schematic for an electric vehicle. At this point in time MR is mostly used in industrial, military and medical training and design.

Mirror worlds are digital creations that mimic the physical and social structures of the real world in a VR setting. Several companies are already working to create such representations of the entire planet. For example, Nvidia's Earth-2 is a digital twin that aims to enhance the capacity for climate modeling. And many mirror worlds are settings for games or businesses. One example is Upland, a virtual-property NFT game ( non-fungible-token game) where people buy, sell and trade virtual properties mapped to the real world - for instance, a real-world baseball stadium or museum.

Interest in the idea of the metaverse leaped in 2021-2022, prompted in part by Facebook's decision to rebrand itself as "Meta." The word was coined by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson in 1992 in his novel " Snow Crash." In today's terms, the metaverse is the realm of computer-generated, networked extended reality, or XR, an acronym that embraces all aspects of augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual reality (AR, MR and VR). At this point in time, the metaverse is generally made up of somewhat- immersive XR spaces in which interactions take place among humans and automated entities. Some are daily interactions with augmented-reality apps that people have on their computers and phones. Some are interactions taking place in more-immersive domains in gaming or fantasy worlds. Some occur in "mirror worlds" that duplicate real-life environments.

While extended-reality gaming and social spaces have been in existence for decades, early 2020s technological advances and societal transformations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed the development of the metaverse to the forefront, inspiring tens of billions of dollars in new investments and prompting predictions that the metaverse is "the future of the internet" or " the next internet battleground."

Proponents of XR and the development of more-advanced and immersive, 3D, online worlds say its rapid evolution is likely to benefit all aspects of society - education, health care, gaming and entertainment, the arts, social and civic life and other activities. They believe the infusion of more data into people's experiences, progress in artificial intelligence (AI) assistive systems and the creation of entirely new spaces and experiences for tech users could enrich and expand their lives. Of course, as with all digital tech, there are concerns about the health, safety, security, privacy and economic implications of these new spaces. This has spurred a great deal of speculation about what the maturing of XR and the metaverse will look like and what that means for society.

This heightened interest and investment in extended reality prompted Pew Research Center and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center to ask hundreds of technology experts to share their insights on the topic. In all, 624 technology innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists provided open-ended responses to a question seeking their predictions about the trajectory and impact of the metaverse by 2040. The results of this nonscientific canvassing:

54% of these experts said that they expect by 2040 the metaverse WILL be a much-more-refined and truly fully-immersive, well-functioning aspect of daily life for a half billion or more people globally.

46% said that they expect by 2040 the metaverse WILL NOT be a much-more-refined and truly fully-immersive, well-functioning aspect of daily life for a half billion or more people globally.

These experts were asked to elaborate on their multiple-choice answers in an open-ended question that invited their views about both the positive and negative aspects of the digital world to come. Two broad themes emerged in those written remarks. First, a notable share of these experts argued that the embrace of extended reality in people's daily lives by 2040 will be centered around augmented-reality and mixed-reality tools, not in the more-fully-immersive virtual reality worlds many people define today as being "the metaverse." Second, they warned that these new worlds could dramatically magnify every human trait and tendency - both the bad and the good. They especially focused their concerns on the ability of those in control of these systems to redirect, restrain or thwart human agency and stifle people's ability to self-actualize through exercise of free will, and they worried over the future freedom of humans to expand their native capacities.

The key themes these experts voiced in their written responses are outlined in the three following tables. The first table outlines further details tied to the two broad themes mentioned above. The second describes the five most-mentioned reasons that the metaverse is likely to be much more advanced and more broadly adopted by 2040. The third describes the five most-mentioned reasons it will not be.

This is a nonscientific canvassing, based on a nonrandom sample. The results represent only the opinions of the individuals who responded to the queries and are not projectable to any other population.

Some of the most sweeping answers written by these respondents took the long view. These experts wrote that "virtual" spaces have for millennia arisen in the human imagination and that it doesn't take special technological features or gadgetry to create vivid places beyond "real life." At the same time, some argued that even the most far-out versions of virtual reality will still anchor in basic human sensory "interfaces" of eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, balance and speech.

Still, none of these experts doubt major changes are nigh in the way reality is supplemented by technology or even reimagined in tech-enabled ways. As XR pioneer Avi Bar-Zeev, a co-creator of Google Earth, HoloLens and more, wrote, "VR fundamentally strips away the most common constraints of reality: location and travel, physics, even sometimes time, where hours can often seem like minutes, and we can travel to the historical past or imagined futures."

Many were not sure what the timeline for all this change will be, but did their best to imagine where the evolution of today's XR tech trends might take society. Some of the answers reflecting that thought:

Laurence Lannom, vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, offered an compact prediction, writing, "The metaverse will, at its core, be a collection of new and extended technologies. It is easy to imagine that both the best and the worst aspects of our online lives will be extended by being able to tap into a more-complete immersive experience, by being inside a digital space instead of looking at one from the outside. At the good end of the continuum are things like the ability of people to interact with others as though they were all in the same physical space without having spent hours burning dinosaur bones to get there; practicing difficult physical tasks (e.g., surgery) on virtual entities; and elevated educational and research opportunities of all kinds as we learn to leverage the built-in advantages of the new environments. The other end is also not hard to imagine - easier addiction to all-absorbing games and fantasy experiences resulting in increased isolation for many; further breakdown of social cohesion as the virtual offers an easy alternative to the hard task of learning to live with each other; and increased political turmoil as the prophets of fear and grievance acquire the ability to command rallies with millions of attendees."

Edward Baig, freelance columnist and longtime technology reporter for USA Today, wrote, "Even the smartest folks today have difficulty articulating the metaverse so that regular people understand it beyond it being this vague thing emerging out of augmented reality, virtual reality, 3D and mixed reality. Of course, measured in tech years, 2040 is a lifetime away and, when you factor in the sheer magnitude of the financial and intellectual investments already being plowed into the metaverse, how could this thing possibly not morph into something likely to have a profound impact on our everyday lives? Whatever it is that draws all of us into the metaverse, it must provide - or at least promise to provide - experiences and benefits that are otherwise impractical if not impossible to achieve in (for lack of a better way of putting it) the real world."

Elizabeth Hyman, CEO for the XR Association, which was founded by Meta, Google, HTC Vive, Microsoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment to convene stakeholders for the development and adoption of XR, shared a number of vital use cases already proven as useful in the XR realm: "Virtual, augmented and mixed reality are the gateway to phenomenal applications in medicine, education, manufacturing, retail, workforce training and more, and it is the gateway to deeply social and immersive interactions - the metaverse. Each day we're taking strides to make the technology better and ensure that the opportunities are limitless - because they are. The XR industry is focused on responsible innovation and it has built a strong repository of resources that lay the foundation for the industry's continued growth. While widespread adoption does take time and challenges will no doubt arise, we believe XR technology will become the next major computing platform. Already, colleges and universities are teaching students in the metaverse. Human Resources professionals at companies like Walmart, SAP, Delta and many others are using the tool to train workers - some of the fastest-growing job categories in the U.S. are in industries that are rapidly adopting XR technologies. Uses of XR include warehousing and inventory management, product engineering and design, immersive job training and upskilling and virtual health care patient monitoring. Particularly in the health care setting, we're seeing XR use with children. For example, the Children's Hospital Colorado is using XR to help to change the pediatric hospital experience for the better - for instance, for distraction and pain management reducing the need for anesthesia and physical therapy."

Daniel D. Bryant, Wales-based VR educator, co-founder of Educators in VR and a leader in the Virtual World Society, predicted, "By 2040 the internet that you now access on a screen will be a place you can enter, visit and explore. Currently we are looking in through windows (literally), but we are soon going to be starting to climb through the windows and into the internet. The word web site implies a location. Currently this is mostly in 2D. What if these sites are in 3D and you can get in and interact directly, rather than with a keyboard and a mouse? Think how creative people already get with creating and monetizing content on the 2D internet. Now add a third dimension to this and you have just created what Charlie Fink has referred to as the 'largest wealth-and-value-creation experience humankind has ever witnessed.' I can't imagine the momentum heading anywhere else. When young people can truly get their heads and hands into the 'metaverse,' just stand back and watch in wonder. And that is even before AI [artificial intelligence] gets into the mix. AI will soon be able to generate virtual worlds and useful and very convincing AI bots to populate it. It's a wild ride already. Better get strapped in."

Jon Radoff, author of the Building the Metaverse blog and CEO of Beamable, a metaverse consultancy, predicted the influence of gameplay in the evolution of XR. "The metaverse will be important for at least half a billion people in 2040 because it is already important for several billion," he said, referring to a general estimate of the number of people who have used popular game and social spaces, not the number of daily users. "The metaverse exists. The most-common definitions of the 'metaverse' are: 1) an embodied virtual-reality experience; 2) a Web3 framework for economic interoperability; 3) a creative platform for experiences (e.g., Roblox). Some current versions may be a hybrid of these. I think all of these 'product-centric' definitions fail to look at the underlying culture and social change. The fundamental shift is toward thinking of virtual property and virtual identity as 'real' and/or important. One can trace the origin of the metaverse back to Dungeons & Dragons before it was digitized and look at it as an imaginary, creative space of social interaction and storytelling. Everything since then is simply technologies that have digitized, dematerialized and democratized access to this category of experience."

About half of the respondents to this canvassing do not expect the VR aspect of the XR realm to be significantly more popular by 2040. Kevin Werbach, professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and author of " The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust," commented, "There is not a straight evolutionary path forward in maturity and importance for this collection of technologies. Virtual worlds and immersive online spaces will continue to develop in significance, but 500 million people won't be living in 'the metaverse' in any more meaningful way in 2040 than 2022. Perhaps immersive games, social spaces and work tools will merge into a coherent industry sector at that point, which perhaps we'll still call 'metaverse.'"

Eric Burger, who recently worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and as the chief technology officer at the Federal Communications Commission, now on the computer science faculty at Georgetown University, responded, "The metaverse will pan out like remote-controlled self-driving cars or roadable aircraft: almost here for decades yet structurally unlikely for decades. The use cases for fully immersive experiences have a small niche that, for economic reasons, is unlikely to grow into a global phenomenon for decades to come."

Jerry Michalski, respected technology consultant and founder of Sociate.com and ReX, predicted, "An XR metaverse will be more like 3D TV than the web. It will be more expensive, uncomfortable and disorienting, even as it is less informative and connective. XR is transformative in specific domains and cumbersome in general. I don't see how 20 years of development will fix that."

Micheal Kleeman, a senior fellow at the University of California, San Diego, who previously worked for Boston Consulting and Sprint, responded, "Unless we see a large-scale desire to escape from reality, the virtual space will not add much to human experience. The virtual world does not satisfy real interpersonal dynamics, it is expensive in terms of bandwidth unless you are just gaming and it adds little to experiential value."

Many people pointed to Facebook's corporate pivot to name itself Meta as a catalyst for the uptick in metaverse buzz over the past year. Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Initiative on Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, wrote, "Smart people have spent lots of time on different approaches to building immersive, 3D, collaborative online spaces using a wide range of technologies. Some have achieved more success than others, but none have expanded beyond audiences of 1 million or so users. Those users can be extremely passionate and are willing to learn the complexities of interacting in a virtual world. Some of them are willing to put in the work of learning to build and create in these environments, but thus far we've not seen evidence that mainstream users see a good reason to jump through these hoops. Facebook became Meta for two simple and obvious reasons. First, its brand as a social media platform has been badly muddied by years of mismanagement and irresponsibility. If it could be associated with anything other than angry dialogs online, it would benefit. Second, Facebook wants to own the entire stack from hardware to content, much as Apple does. It has a good hardware product in Oculus [a VR headset] and thus is positioned to argue that VR is the future. But does anyone really want VR to be the future? Those of us who've been down this road before remember Second Life declaring that its metaverse would be the future and we should all rush in to buy a piece of it. That community never achieved mainstream success and has hovered at 1 million users (overall, most were not daily users). Yes, the tech's better now. But in 2040 I expect VR to be popular for gaming and some simulations. It will not catch on for routine office work, standard online interaction and so on."

Jacquelyn Ford Morie, VR pioneer and chief scientist at All These Worlds, co-editor of " The Handbook of Research on the Global Impacts and Roles of Immersive Media," argued there is much to be accomplished before fully-immersive tech will be viewed as worthy of broad adoption. "To be so successful by 2040," she said, "it must be many things to many people, enrich or make better their everyday lives. It must go beyond games and entertainment to provide what each and every person needs. The first, and the biggest, step will be to instantiate and regulate the metaverse as a public benefit/utility, so the greatest number of people can access and benefit from it. It must offer value to its participants and not simply treat them as money sources. If it has to make tons of money for companies and the top 10%, it is doomed to be niche-driven and not a true evolution of humanity."

A notable share of these expert respondents said they expect that augmented reality applications will be far more widely used in people's daily lives than immersive VR, which they expect will remain a niche realm. Louis Rosenberg, is CEO of Unanimous AI. His doctoral work at Stanford University resulted in the virtual fixtures system for the U.S. Air Force - an immersive augmented-reality system built in 1992. He predicted: "By 2035 people will laugh at images of the 2020s that show people walking down the street staring down at a phone, necks bent, thinking it looks awkward and primitive. The metaverse will evolve in two directions at once - the virtual metaverse (fully simulated worlds) and the augmented metaverse (layers of rich virtual content overlaid upon the real world with precise spatial registration). The virtual metaverse will increase in popularity but will always be restricted to short-duration applications - mostly for gaming, socializing, shopping and entertainment, and it will have powerful business and education uses as well. The augmented metaverse, on the other hand, will replace mobile phones as our primary gateway to digital content. The transition from mobile phones to AR hardware will begin the middle of the 2020s and will be complete by 2035, possibly sooner. It will fundamentally change society, altering our world into a merged reality of real and virtual. People will use AR eyewear from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep, much like they keep mobile phones with them today. Blockchain will be used to assign ownership of virtual objects within the metaverse. There are many other potential uses, but it's too early to know if those will happen or not. But assigning ownership is a natural fit. To see a vision of the augmented metaverse at the end of this decade, you can check out my fun narrative, ' Metaverse 2030.'"

Many respondents who expect the AR/VR metaverse to be well developed by 2040 warned that this will significantly magnify societal challenges already present in the digital sphere. Justin Reich, associate professor of digital media at MIT and director of the Teaching Systems Lab, expressed a view shared by respondents who expect big tech companies will further exploit users, writing, "The term metaverse was coined to describe a corporate, dystopian hellscape where a completely financialized world is stripped of any culture and value. Advocates of the metaverse are currently trying to bring that vision into reality in the hopes of creating new digital surfaces that can be covered in new advertising and made as addictive as possible. As the physical world encounters saturation of existing advertising surfaces and data collection, augmented reality is the new frontier of surveillance capitalism. If it does come to fruition, it will be as terrible as social media is today. Questions that I've not seen journalists ask of Mark Zuckerberg or other folks at Meta: 'How many hours a day are you currently spending in the metaverse?' 'How many hours a day do you encourage your children to spend in the metaverse?' My hunch is that the typical Meta employee spends very little time in the metaverse, because it's terrible. And they don't want their children there, because it's terrible."

Davi Ottenheimer, vice president for trust and digital ethics at Inrupt, a company applying the new Solid data protocol (a method for building decentralized social applications that was created by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee), responded, "We should declare metaverse to only be a success if it augments the human in a decentralized human-centric model of data ownership. It is currently in danger of being co-opted into overly centralized platforms and constraints, a regression to slavery models in the guise of a proprietary 'digital twin' to be abused by giant companies looking to operate selfishly and above the law and deny social good. Those caught up in this abuse of rights, like industrial-era workers suffering the daily grind of soulless factory jobs and homes and vehicles, will long for an escape from the intentionally limiting artifice of metaverse. The utopianism and mysticism that drive cultural waves of 'escape' during times of technological upheaval and displacement are here again. There is a fundamental difference between the highly controversial technological augmentation and the politically driven escapism that metaverse development will predictably fall into."

Keram Malicki-Sanchez, a prominent expert and activist who runs conferences about VR, AR and XR and is founding president of the Constant Change Media Group, advised, "There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle of immersive technologies. There is no future without 3D realities as part of it. Will it be called the 'metaverse'? God, I hope not if that means the MAANG companies - Meta (formerly Facebook) Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google - appropriate and commandeer it to funnel us into a homogeneous, highly trackable somatosensory collection of walled gardens. An alternative path for these technologies is that they will be built using open-source solutions, improved and expanded holistically, organically by a global community who will create an estuary for systems that allow people to seamlessly transition between 3D worlds where they can embody whatever they want and share whatever experiences they choose. These are also media that can communicate new perspectives and afford us new angles of insight via dimensional contexts. They can provide scaffolding to test our analytical reasoning and processes to potentially escape our cognitive biases, develop greater plasticity, or even test new forms of embodiment. We must always take account of how these new media can and will be manipulated and weaponized and consider the rights of our future selves as we become subsumed in data. In addition, there are important digital divides to consider here. These cannot be worlds accessible only to the privileged. VR needs to be built so that anyone should feel they have the tools and access available to them."

Sean McGregor, technical lead for the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE and machine learning architect at Syntiant, observed, "With every great (and terrible) technological revolution comes great (and terrible) revolutions of social systems. Without a healthy sense of skepticism for adopting software for our new reality and working collectively against our worst imaginings, we will fail to realize social benefits exceeding the costs. The transition will be very difficult and potentially dangerous, but so, too, have been most human advancements."

Toby Shulruff, senior technology safety specialist at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, predicted, "The 'online' will increasingly extend into daily life through interfaces with our cities, homes and bodies. The varieties of both self-expression and connection across distance will expand, and this means that we urgently need to reconfigure how we establish and maintain trust in others, in information, and perhaps even in ourselves. Online life so far has mirrored and accelerated real-life trends, and - absent a major shift in priorities and design - this will be true with XR as well. The rules of the game have so far been written by the very few for the very many. Like other technologies, XR does not solve human problems like bias, fear or violence. It accelerates and amplifies what is already present in society. Therefore, we stand to see an exacerbation of isolation, echo chambers and a dissociation from our bodies and communities. We are already seeing sexual violence from earlier online spaces and real life crossing into more-immersive XR environments. This is likely to extend into and intersect with other targeted violence, or even mass violence or terrorism. There is a real possibility that those who are 'plugged in' will become increasingly untethered from the world around them. Future waves of pandemic disease and the effects of climate change will allow those with means to spend more time in virtual worlds. Will we become more willing to let conditions worsen around us because we can escape to an alternate reality? Meanwhile, those on the other side of the digital divide will struggle to access resources, connections and opportunities. As we go from 'always on' to 'always in,' the constant immersion may cause physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual effects including stress reactions, headaches, disturbed sleep and detachment. Paradoxically, while virtual worlds can be an escape from our bodies and our limitations, many users describe an intensification of sensation, emotion and response from virtual experiences. Another concern is that the more-immersive environment will expand surveillance by governments and corporations, and even within families. The boundaries between our work lives and our personal lives, between the public and the private, will continue to dissolve. Coercive trends in technology design such as dark patterns will drive users to make choices they might not otherwise make. Technology this complex defies precise predictions, but we can find hints from previous examples. If we don't shift course, we will weave our failures of empathy and justice into the very fabric of XR, as we have in other digital technologies."

Among the additional intriguing predictions from those canvassed were:

Avi Bar-Zeev said digital systems will perform ever-more-sophisticated analyses of how people think and feel about people and other elements of their lives, their private political and spiritual thoughts, their emotional triggers. "We've turned people into data mines and no longer truly free-thinking individuals."

Glynn Rogers predicted virtual extraterrestrial travel based on imagery constructed from a multitude of spacecraft sensors, "in which virtual craft can be flown, driven or sailed through environments in which humans could exist only with the most extraordinary aids." And Gary Arlen noted that alternative cyber environments will allow people to virtually go inside humans, animals or machines.

Jim Spohrer noted that "digital twins" will often function as people's alter egos in multiple worlds. And Melissa Sassi noted that having a digital twin in health care will be incredibly powerful when it comes to predictive modeling of diseases and sharing patient data across healthcare providers. She wrote, "One example I have seen inspiring this work is BioTwin, an early stage health tech startup that's created a virtual replica geared toward detecting and preventing health care ailments before they occur."

Barry Chudakov said he expects that immersive mirror-world environments may raise enough psychological issues that "psychiatrists and counselors will be called in to help people cope with multiple-self syndrome."

Stephen Downes predicted that in 2040 it will not be possible for most people to distinguish between avatars representing humans and artificial intelligences, adding that there will be "convincing impersonations and worse."

Jonathan Kolber said he expects that the "demand for all manner of physical objects will drastically diminish" as people move into digital spaces to live more of their lives and the need for real objects shrinks.

Marc Rotenberg said gaming and other life experiences will be far more immersive by 2040, with participants joining their favorite sports stars in online competitions or sharing the concert stage with the avatars of famous musicians.

David Porush predicted immersive reality will produce unexpected consequences for human intimacy and connection and "new opportunities for global unity and tribal discord, for totalizing control and individual freedoms, and for the effective expression of love and hate."

Rahul Saxena said he expects a "Super-Metaverse" of tech enhancements that help people augment their work, for instance using imaging and actuators to perform surgeries. But some will choose to live in a "Fantasy-Metaverse" that "prefers gullible consumption over critical thinking," and he warned that "the shifts to the Fantasy-Metaverse will be like the unleashing of an opium super-epidemic."

Sam Adams said anonymity applied through XR will establish far more settings in which people trust in transactions with unknown entities, leaving behind many norms of reputation and branding and allowing parties of "bad reputation (e.g., narco syndicates, mafia, terrorists) to easily conduct 'legitimate' business which income supports their antisocial agendas without the transactions being tarred with their true purpose."

Alexander B. Howard said he expects people to interact with augmented-reality layers in any given physical location, viewing the annotations and glyphs others have left, with background systems pulling up information about the people, places and objects. He also warned that it is possible that a "metaverse could empower authoritarians to track, control and coerce billions of humans in silicon prisons ringed by invisible barbed wire, governed by opaque algorithmic regulation and vast artificial intelligences."

Gina Neff called for a redrafting of fundamental social contracts about trust and democracy, noting that powerful narratives in the metaverse will combine new ways of experiencing social connection with new forms of "trustless trust" from the hundreds of little contracts and exchanges people are asked to enter into every day.

Jaak Tepandi predicted that new species may evolve out of the integration of humans and artificial systems, saying "examples of important components in the development of such a species include genetic engineering (including CRISPR), artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, metaverse and others."

Warren Yoder encouraged that humanity scrutinize its overall transition, writing: "Postmodernity interrogated modern power and knowledge. It was useful, back then. Now meta-modernity recognizes the existence of multiple modes of the real and prompts one's imagination to take bits and pieces from useful practices wherever we find them."

In the next section, we highlight the remarks of a diverse set of experts who gave some of the most wide-ranging or incisive responses to our request for them to describe what XR and the metaverse might look like by 2040. Following it, we offer a number of longer and more discursive essays written by participants. And that is followed with additional sections covering respondents' comments organized under the sets of themes set out in the tables above. The remarks made by the respondents to this canvassing reflect their personal positions and are not the positions of their employers. The descriptions of their leadership roles help identify their background and the locus of their expertise. Some responses are lightly edited for style and readability.

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Experts are split about the likely evolution of a truly immersive "metaverse." They expect that augmented- and mixed-reality enhancements will become more useful in people's daily lives. Many worry that current online problems may be magnified if Web3 development is led by those who built today's dominant web platforms.

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I personally found this video interesting and I would like to share it here with you guys. It shows a small part of Afghan culture that how people celebrate Nowruz(New Year).
UN Afghanistan. (2019, March 21). Nowruz Celebration in Afghanistan. Video. [You tube]. (10) Nowruz Celebration in Afghanistan - YouTube

Nasib*

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How Arizonas Cities are Becoming a Sustainable Green Oasis in the Desert - GREENING THE DESERT

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How Arizonas Cities are Becoming a Sustainable Green Oasis in the Desert - GREENING THE DESERT

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This video shows us interesting knowledge. Only from the inception idea of an Arizona resident is cutting sidewalks and curbs to make roads for rainwater harvesting for drylands that transformed Tucson into the most sustainable desert cities on earth. It is a great example that we can teach the world about rainwater harvesting’s positive and vital role in the environment.
References
Leaf of life films. (2020, May 1). How Arizonas Cities are Becoming a Sustainable Green Oasis in the Desert - GREENING THE DESERT. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHyrVKUEirY

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How Environmental Quality Affects Our Happiness

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How Environmental Quality Affects Our Happiness

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WHR 2020 | Chapter 5 How Environmental Quality Affects Our Happiness. (2020, March 20). The World Happiness Report. https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/how-environmental-quality-affects-our-happiness/

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Introduction

On August 20, 2018, Swedish fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg did not go to school but began to strike. Until the Swedish parliamentary election on September 9, she stood - every workday during school hours - in front of the Swedish parliament building, demanding government action to reduce carbon emissions. Her school strike for the climate soon went global. On March 15, 2019, 1.4 million young people in 128 countries took to the streets under its Fridays for Future banner to demand climate action from their governments.

One month later, on April 15, thousands of protesters of all age groups and backgrounds occupied major landmarks in London in a protest organised by British climate group Extinction Rebellion, bringing widespread disruption to the city for more than ten days and resulting in more than a thousand arrests. Activists also took to the streets in more than 80 other cities and countries around the world, including Australia, Canada, France, and Sweden. On May 26, Green parties had their best-ever result in a European Parliament election, overtaking traditional parties in many European Union member states. Climate change and environmental protection were the dominant themes of their campaigns.

Our natural environment, how to protect it, and in particular, how to deal with the causes and consequences of climate change are clearly amongst the leading issues of our time. This is reflected not only in global movements, grassroots activism, and voting behaviour, but also in policy at the highest national and international levels.

Answering protesters' calls, on May 1, 2019, the UK government declared a climate emergency. It was followed shortly after by Ireland, Canada, and France, as well as large metropolitan areas, including Amsterdam, Milan, New York City, San Francisco, and Sydney.

In the meantime, major international organisations such as the World Bank have substantially ramped up their financial commitments to the environment and natural resource management. At the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) - the World Bank Group entity lending mostly to middle-income countries - commitments to the environment in fiscal year 2018 were about $10.4 billion (up by 44% from fiscal year 2017), constituting the largest financial position by topic (followed by urban and rural development with $8.6 billion). At the International Development Association (IDA), which provides interest-free loans and grants to the poorest countries, commitments have increased even more - by 65% - from $5.8 to $9.5 billion. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) directed 36% of its investment (€3.3 billion) into the green economy in fiscal year 2018 and aims at raising this share to 40% by 2020. Other organisations, including those in the private sector, are following suit, by assessing how their operations impact the environment and incorporating environmental protection into their corporate social responsibility.

This chapter reflects the growing awareness of the major role that the natural environment plays in our happiness. It is the first in the World Happiness Report series to look at how environmental quality shapes how we feel and how we evaluate our lives. The chapter focuses on the natural environment, which is determined by the quantity of natural endowments and their change over time, as well as the quality of the environment and changes in global and local environmental quality resulting from pollution, climate change, and other factors.

The importance of the environment to people seems universal around the world. In the Gallup World Poll - a nationally representative survey that is conducted annually in more than 160 countries - respondents are regularly asked about their attitudes towards the environment. Figure 5.1 shows their responses to some of these items.

Figure 5.1: Environmental Attitudes Around the World

When given the choice, 62% of respondents say they would prioritise environmental protection over economic growth. Only half of them are satisfied with efforts to preserve the environment in their countries. Notably, 74% of respondents perceive global warming as a very or somewhat serious threat to them and their families, and 65% believe that climate change will make their lives harder.

The importance of the natural environment to people is confirmed in nationally representative household surveys. For example, when asked how important environmental protection is for their well-being and life satisfaction, 88% of respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) rate it as important or very important. When asked about whether they are concerned about environmental protection, 72% state that they are somewhat or very concerned. Similarly, 70% state that they are somewhat or very concerned about the consequences of climate change.

How the environment affects people's well-being has also been the subject of academic research. More and more datasets including indicators of subjective well-being have become available in recent years and can now be merged - often at a very precise geographical level - with external, objective indicators of environmental factors. A growing stream of studies exploits these data to show how people's feelings and life evaluations depend on these factors in their surroundings. These include, for example, geography, natural capital, temperature and precipitation, land cover, air pollution, noise pollution, infrastructure, or natural disasters, including the risk thereof.

Academic interest in the relationship between the environment and happiness has been twofold: first, there has been a genuine interest in how the environment affects people's subjective well-being. There has also been work done to use indicators of subjective well-being to monetarily value environmental factors, which are public, often intangible goods for which no market prices exist. Trading off the impact of environmental factors on life satisfaction - a measure of experienced utility - with that of income, this approach has been termed experienced-preference valuation. Second, there is a growing interest in how pro-environmental behaviour affects people's subjective well-being, and in turn, how people's emotional states can be effectively leveraged to nudge them into behaving in more environmentally friendly ways.

In what follows, we first study how our natural environment shapes our happiness in international comparison by looking at differences in natural endowments and environmental quality between countries and relating these to differences in happiness at the country level. We exploit nationally representative survey data from the Gallup World Poll merged with official OECD and World Bank statistics on the environment. In the second part of the chapter we "zoom in", by studying local environmental quality and happiness in mega cities, using the example of London. We are looking at similar environmental factors as in the first part but at a much more precise geographical level: the level of an individual's immediate surroundings. Here, we use data from Mappiness, a smartphone app that randomly asks users during the day to report their feelings of happiness while recording the exact time of answer and their exact geographical location. Answers are then linked to environmental factors in users' immediate surroundings at particular points in time.

How the Natural Environment Shapes Our Happiness: Evidence from Around the World

Before showing evidence on how the natural environment shapes our happiness, we first take a step back and ask: why do we expect nature to influence happiness in the first place?

There are three, potentially overlapping, reasons: first, biophilia refers to the hypothesis that there exists an instinctive, close connection between human beings and other living organisms or specific habitats arising from biological evolution, whereby nature has a direct, positive impact on happiness shaped by our evolutionary origins.

There is indeed evidence in psychology suggesting that being exposed to green, natural environments improves mental well-being. Mechanisms include a reduction in stress, a rise in positive emotions, cognitive restoration, and positive effects on self-regulation.

Green, Healthy, and Happy

Second, green, natural environments may have indirect positive impacts by encouraging certain behaviours, for example, physical exercise or social interaction, through the provision of public, open space, which improves mental or physical health and longevity, and thereby happiness.

The health benefits of green, natural environments are well-documented. There is evidence in the medical and epidemiological literature for both mechanisms: natural environments encourage physical activity, which brings about health benefits (that may be unevenly distributed amongst the population) while encouraging social interaction. Socialising with friends, relatives, or spouses is amongst the strongest determinants of happiness.

Finally, green, natural environments may have higher environmental quality by being free of certain environmental stressors such as air or noise pollution, which are associated with respiratory and cardiovascular disease and heightened stress levels. At the same time, they may provide environmental goods such as scenic amenity or land cover for recreation. Both have indirect impacts on happiness, but stressors can, arguably, also have direct impacts, by causing worries when they are salient to people.

To study how the natural environment and its quality affect our happiness around the world, we first use data from the Gallup World Poll, a nationally representative survey that is conducted annually in more than 160 countries, covering more than 99 per cent of the world's adult population. It includes about 1,000 observations per country per year, covering both urban and rural areas. Given this extensive coverage, we can study how environmental quality affects our happiness worldwide.

Our primary outcome is a survey participant's life evaluation, obtained from the so-called Cantril ladder, which is an item asking respondents to imagine themselves on a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top, whereby zero represents the worst possible and ten the best possible life. Besides life evaluation, which is a cognitive, evaluative measure of subjective well-being, we also look at positive and negative affect, which are experiential measures. These items are constructed from batteries of yes-no questions that ask respondents about their emotional experiences during the previous day. For positive affect, we include whether respondents experienced feelings of happiness and enjoyment, and whether they smiled and laughed a lot. For negative affect, we include whether respondents often experienced feelings of sadness, worry, and anger. We create indices of positive and negative affect by averaging across items. They are bounded between zero and 100.

We employ multiple regression analysis to relate people's happiness to the quality of the natural environment surrounding them. More specifically, we regress happiness, measured as life evaluation or positive or negative affect, on each type of environmental factor, alongside a range of control variables to net out differences in social and economic development between countries. Such differences may be related to happiness both directly and indirectly through differences in environmental factors. For instance, a higher level of economic development may be related to higher income, which has direct, positive effects on happiness. At the same time, however, a higher level of economic development may be related to more air pollution due to more economic activity, which has, in turn, negative effects on happiness. To isolate the effect of environmental factors on happiness, therefore, we control for a wide range of socio-demographic characteristics and economic conditions of respondents. Moreover, we control for a range of country-level characteristics, in particular GDP per capita as well as population level and density. Finally, to net out fixed, regional characteristics as well as overall and region-specific time trends, we control for regions in which countries are located, years, and region-year interactions. Robust standard errors are clustered at the country level to account for correlations between observations within countries.

We take the natural logarithm of our air pollution measures to reduce skewness, while leaving all other environmental factors in their natural units. Figure 5.2 shows our findings for life evaluation as our primary outcome.

Figure 5.2: How Our Environment Affects Life Evaluation Around the World

Across the world, we find that particulate matter, measured at a per-capita per-annum level to proxy for exposure, has, on average, negative effects on how people evaluate their lives: both PM10 (larger particulates) and PM2.5 (smaller ones) are associated with significantly decreased overall life evaluation. Both pollutants are statistically significant at the 5% level; differences between them, however, turn out insignificant. A 1% increase in PM10 per capita per annum (about 150 grams at the mean) decreases overall life evaluation by about 0.0064 points on a zero-to-ten scale. A 1% increase in PM2.5 (about 60 grams at the mean) decreases overall life evaluation by about 0.0036 points. Negative effects of air pollution on life evaluation are well-documented in the subjective well-being literature. Figures A1 and A2 in the Appendix show that pollutants in most cases fail to significantly change affect, suggesting that how people evaluate their lives overall is more sensitive to air pollution, especially particulate matter, than how they report to feel on a day-to-day basis.

Besides sample compositional effects (the Gallup World Poll oversamples urban areas where particulate matter might be more prevalent), strong effect sizes for particulate matter may be due to its relatively higher salience compared to other, relatively odourless and less noticeable air pollutants. Particulate matter has also featured highly in the media and on the political agenda recently, especially in discussions centring around the surpassing of particulate matter threshold values in inner cities and bans on diesel cars, which potentially contributes to its salience. Besides indirect, worry-related effects, negative impacts of particulate matter on health have been documented, which may directly contribute to a reduction in overall life evaluation.

Next, we look at climate. To account for non-linear effects of average, minimum, and maximum temperature per month, we include both the level and the squared term of the respective measure in our regressions. We find that both monthly average and maximum temperature significantly decrease overall life evaluation at the 5% level; monthly minimum temperature seems to matter less for how people evaluate their lives overall. There is some evidence for non-linear relationships between temperatures and life evaluation, but squared terms turn out to be rather small and only statistically significant at the 10% level. Overall, this is suggestive of a preference for milder climate. Contrary to temperature, average monthly precipitation seems to matter little for life evaluation. Figures A1 and A2 in the Appendix show that the impacts of temperatures on life evaluation are mirrored by impacts on positive (rather than negative) affect. Again, the impact of climate on life evaluation is well-documented.

When it comes to land cover, and in particular, per-capita area of natural forests, we find that the area of forests in a country has no significant effect on how people evaluate their lives. We find no impacts on how they feel about their lives on a day-to-day basis either. Finally, we studied whether environmental factors influence people's happiness differently depending on whether they live inside or outside cities, but we did not find significant differences: most point estimates are very similar, and where differences exist, they mostly turn out to be insignificant.

Natural Land, Scenic Beauty, and Happiness

Are people who live closer to nature happier? Sampling the happiness of more than 20,000 users of the smartphone app Mappiness, who contribute more than one million unique, geo-located data points, and leveraging data on land cover from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology's Land Cover Map 2000, MacKerron and Mourato find that people living in the UK report the highest happiness when outdoors and in natural habitats relative to dense urban areas. In particular, they are happiest when close to marine and coastal marginal areas; mountains, moors, and heathland; and woodland. Kopmann and Rehdanz show that this positive relationship holds in 31 European countries, and that people prefer "balanced" over "extreme" allocations of land; that is, they prefer more variety in natural land cover. An important channel for the positive relationship between natural land and happiness may be a deep preference of people for nature, which may manifest itself in a preference for certain, more natural landscapes. In fact, Seresinhe et al., using crowdsourced data of ratings of over 200,000 photos of Great Britain and machine learning algorithms to evaluate the scenic beauty of images, show that natural features such as coasts, mountains, and natural canals as well as areas with more tree cover are rated as more scenic. Scenic beauty, however, does not seem to be limited exclusively to natural environments but can also relate to the built environment.

So far, we have been looking at how our environment affects our happiness around the world, by linking environmental factors, measured at the country level, to the happiness of survey respondents living in the respective country. However, not everybody is exposed to them in the same way, and our point estimates implicitly assume that their impacts are immediate to everybody, which is unlikely to be the case. For example, we have had to assume that air pollutants are evenly mixed throughout a country, whereas, for example, particulate concentrations vary strongly with distance to their sources, such as major roads. A more refined analysis is thus needed to link our immediate environment to our happiness. We turn to this type of analysis in the next section.

Local Environmental Quality and Happiness in Mega Cities: The Case of London

We now move from a highly generalised approach which relates country-level averages of happiness to country-level averages of environmental characteristics to a highly specific one, which relates individuals' momentary happiness to characteristics of their immediate environmental surroundings. In doing so, we narrow our geographical focus to a single large city (London) rather than looking across countries, and our treatment of well-being to a momentary hedonic rather than global evaluative measure.

Our data source on well-being is the Mappiness study. This is a panel data set collected in the UK between 2011 and 2018, using a smartphone app to elicit repeated self-reports of happiness and some key control variables alongside a precise timestamp and GPS location. The full data set comprises around 4.5 million responses from 66,000 volunteers, but we limit this to a subset of approximately half a million responses located in Greater London from about 13,000 respondents. The sample is self-selected, and hence not representative of the country as a whole (for example, the average respondent is somewhat younger, wealthier, and more likely to be in education or employment than the average citizen). Nevertheless, the size and richness of the data enable us to address the link between happiness and the environment in a particularly powerful way.

We join a number of environmental data sets to this well-being data set using the location and/or time of response. All environmental characteristics are coded as one or more binary variables (for example, we split air temperature into 5°C bands between < 0°C and ≥ 25°C).

Weather and daylight

Weather is an important environmental characteristic in its own right, and also represents a key control when considering other characteristics. For example, weather conditions may affect both airborne pollutant concentrations and an individual's decision to spend time outdoors and in natural environments. Using data from the UK Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS), we link each response with the conditions reported by the weather station nearest to the response location at the nearest available moment to the response time. We include data on air temperature, wind speed, precipitation, sunshine, and cloud cover. We also calculate whether there was daylight at the response date, time, and location.

Air quality

Noise

During responses to the Mappiness survey, noise levels were measured using the phone's microphone. We include binary variables indicating the top and bottom quartiles of these noise levels. This could be an important control in relation to air pollution, which is likely to be high where there is also greater traffic noise, but is subject to the important caveat that we cannot tell what sources of noise are being measured in each case: these could equally be music, conversation, birdsong, and so on.

Green spaces

Responses from within green areas, such as parks and allotments, were identified using the Ordnance Survey Open Greenspace data set. Responses within areas of street tree cover were recognised via the Street Tree Layer of the European Environment Agency's European Urban Atlas data.

Blue spaces: ponds, lakes, canals, and rivers

Binary variables indicating proximity to the tidal River Thames were created using the outline of England and Wales clipped to the high water mark. One variable indicates that the respondent is on or within 10m of the river - likely on a bridge, vessel, or bank - while a second indicates that they are within 10 - 50m of either bank. We also create a binary variable for proximity to canals using the Ordnance Survey Open Rivers data set, identifying responses within 20m of each waterway's centreline. Finally, we create two binary variables that flag proximity to ponds and lakes using data from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) Lakes Portal. Like the River Thames variables, these indicate that a response is made either within 10m of the water body, or within 10 - 50m of its banks.

Using Mappiness and these other spatial data sources, we estimate multiple regression models similar to those in the earlier section, but at a different scale. Each data point in these regressions is a happiness report by a single individual at a particular moment in time, and we seek to explain that report with reference to the other data available. Descriptive statistics for the environmental variables used are shown in Table A6 of the appendix.

In order to isolate the impacts of environmental factors from other influences, we include a range of control variables, including a large set of dummy variables to account for temporal variations in momentary happiness. Controls also include variables that indicate respondents' choices, such as what respondents are currently doing; whom they are with; whether they are at home, at work, or somewhere else; and whether they are indoors, outdoors, or in a vehicle. In addition, all models control for individual fixed effects. Given that the average Mappiness user participates for about six weeks, we regard these fixed effects as adequate controls for person-specific characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, employment status, personality, and so on. Controlling for individual fixed effects means that our models are estimated using only the within-person variation in the data, and this helps us to rule out that effects are caused by selection of different individuals into different environments. Finally, we include local-area fixed effects for each of the 983 Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) that make up Greater London. This helps increase confidence that we are truly picking up the effects of environmental characteristics, rather than many possible correlates that also vary by location (for example, central versus suburban areas or property values). Standard errors are clustered accordingly.

A key issue in analysing environmental influences on subjective well-being is that individuals make choices about the environments in which they spend time. Because these choices may depend on their current well-being and/or current environmental characteristics, estimating causal effects is challenging. Our baseline model includes all environmental characteristics for which we have data, only applied for when respondents are outdoors, where these environmental characteristics are more directly experienced. The results of this model are presented in Figure 5.2. Note that momentary happiness is recorded on a zero-to-100 scale (unlike the Cantril ladder in the previous section, which runs from zero to ten). Variations of our baseline model, and a reduced-choice model that has a stronger causal interpretation but includes a much more limited range of environmental data, are presented in the Appendix to this chapter.

Figure 5.3: Happiness Associations With Environmental Characteristics When Outdoors in Great-er London

We find that being outdoors in green or blue spaces is predictive of a significant boost in happiness. Responses that are from public green spaces such as parks and allotments are on average approximately one percentage point happier than responses that are not (after taking into account all controls). Happiness responses from areas with street trees show roughly the same increase. Responses from the vicinity of the River Thames or a canal are happier still, by on average 1.3 to 2.2 percentage points. Reported happiness is not significantly different near ponds and lakes (these coefficients are still positive, and it might be that the standard errors are large simply because the sample size is relatively small).

Weather conditions when outdoors also have substantial and intuitive effects. In particular, unbroken sunshine adds nearly two percentage points to happiness, while air temperatures of 25°C or higher add almost three points. Conversely, rain and high winds (15 knots and above) are both significantly negative, reducing happiness by close to one percentage point each.

Activities that are typically undertaken outdoors and in nature have the largest effects. Walking or hiking predicts an increase of two percentage points in happiness, while gardening, nature watching, and sporting activities each add on between four and seven points. Finally, simply being outside has a positive association of its own, on top of the environmental interaction effects mentioned above: outdoor responses are just over 1.5 percentage points happier than indoor ones.

We do not see significant effects of either NO2 or PM10 concentrations in our baseline model. Since the health and mortality impacts of air pollution are well-documented, this should not be taken as indicating that air pollution is unimportant for well-being, but rather that the present method is not effective at assessing well-being effects of these pollutants (perhaps because acute impacts are limited at the concentrations typically observed in London). The more limited model presented in the Appendix does identify a modest negative impact of middling and high NO2 concentrations, however. We see no influence of noise levels as measured by the respondent's smartphone, except a marginal indication that quiet outdoor environments are less happy, but since noise may be generated by a wide range of different processes this finding does not have a clear interpretation.

Overall, these results support the importance of positive features of the natural environment for individuals' happiness in cities. We find that being in green or blue spaces or a variety of (intuitively pleasant) weather conditions is in each case associated with an increase of one to three percentage points on the happiness scale. Based on earlier research with the Mappiness data set, these effect sizes are roughly equivalent to those associated with everyday leisure activities (one percentage point is approximately the increase seen for rest and relaxation; two points for washing and dressing, or eating and snacking; and three points for playing computer games, or playing with pets). On that basis, these environmental effects are of a meaningful size. Since we control for many of the indirect benefits that natural environments facilitate, including outdoor leisure activities and interaction with friends and family, the total benefits of these environments are likely even higher. Furthermore, the effects may commonly be combined, so that when people spend time outdoors, near both green and blue space, and in warm and sunny weather, we can expect happiness levels to be elevated further still.

Green Spaces and Happiness

Discussion

We have seen that people world-wide recognise the importance of the natural environment and its protection to their continued well-being, and the particular threat posed by climate change amongst the wide range of environmental risks we face. Bringing quantitative evidence to this relationship is challenging for three reasons: first, individuals can choose to seek out or avoid particular environmental characteristics, which may obscure their true benefits or costs. Second, experiences of the physical environment - such as exposure to air pollutants - are often brief and localised, and thus hard to accurately capture, while their effects may be cumulative and long-term. And third, environmental changes are typically gradual, non-random, and at least partially anticipated, so that natural experiments are hard to find.

In this chapter, we follow two contrasting approaches to estimating the strength of the relationship between natural environmental quality and happiness, which bring complementary strengths and weaknesses. At the most aggregated level, we analyse averaged environmental quality in relation to well-being levels (both evaluative and experiential) across OECD countries. We find significant effects of climate and air pollutant emissions, and these point in intuitive directions.

At the other end of the scale, we analyse a large panel of individuals' momentary hedonic experiences of happiness in the range of environments found in one large city: London. Although the data and underlying method are quite different, this second analysis broadly corroborates and extends the first. We find significant weather effects, and strong positive effects of both green and blue spaces on self-reported happiness. We are not able to pick up a clear negative effect of air pollution using this method, however, despite the increasingly well-documented damage it does to physical health. Air pollution seems difficult to adequately quantify: when it comes to individuals' momentary experiences of happiness, exposures to air pollution may be brief and not necessarily salient. When it comes to cross-country analyses, findings are sensitive to measures of air pollutants and often correlate with economic activity and levels of development, which may confound the relationship. This point perhaps highlights an important area for future work: improving models to help us understand the total, causal impact of the natural environment on happiness, and in particular, the variety of routes and mechanisms by which this impact is felt, which can range from the satisfaction of basic needs and physical health impacts to socio-cultural influences and aesthetic or spiritual effects.

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Endnotes
Back to the 2020 report

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How Environmental Quality Affects Our Happiness

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On August 20, 2018, Swedish fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg did not go to school but began to strike. Until the Swedish parliamentary election on September 9, she stood - every workday during school hours - in front of the Swedish parliament building, demanding government action to reduce carbon emissions.

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How To Create A Mindset That Leads To Happiness

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How To Create A Mindset That Leads To Happiness

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References

Black, P. (2011, February 5). How To Create A Mindset That Leads To Happiness. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2021/02/05/how-to-create-a-mindset-that-leads-to-happiness/?sh=36aff8ca392a

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Happiness is a mindset. It comes from within you, not from your outside circumstances. You don't have to have a "perfect" life to be happy. The really great news is that you don't have to be young or old or wealthy or successful in order to be happy. Instead, you can develop a mindset of happiness.

As a coach that works with many high-performing professionals, who deal with massive amounts of pressure and stress every single day, I've seen firsthand that happiness really is a mindset. And today I'm going to share four tips to help you develop a mindset that leads to happiness.
1. Define your own success - and be specific about it.
First things first: You get to define success for yourself. You get to decide what happiness looks like. Your vision of happiness may be very different from what your parents wanted for you or what your colleagues are chasing or even from what you wanted when you were younger.

Success may look like building a large firm and working with A-list clients. Or it may mean joining a smaller practice that gives you the flexibility to pick your kids up from school every day.

Get rid of the expectations other people have for you. Take time to define your own vision of success. Paint a specific picture in your mind - so real you can taste it! This gives you a "North Star" to pursue. And it keeps you focused on what you really want for your life.
2. Create a road map and take the first steps right away.
You don't have to arrive at your destination in order to be happy, but it's much easier to be happy when you're on the road to your destination. If you're feeling stuck and miserable in your business and your life, it can be very hard to find happiness. As soon as you make a plan and start taking steps toward your new vision, you'll find that it's much easier to be happy and enjoy the journey. The key? You need to be in motion, making progress, not sitting still.
3. Focus on the destination, not the obstacles.
You're going to have roadblocks in your business and in your life. You're probably going to fall flat on your face a time or two - trust me, I know what this feels like!

It's OK to fall down. But you have to get back up. You have to get back on your journey. And the easiest way to do that is to stay focused on your goals. The vision for a thriving business and a life that you love will keep you moving forward, as long as you stay focused.
4. Surround yourself with inspiration.
Your surroundings have a strong influence on your state of mind -the people that you speak to, the places that you visit, even the meals that you enjoy. I love to travel, and I'm so inspired by the places that I see and the people that I meet. Travel keeps me inspired and happy, and many of my clients feel the same way.

Since the pandemic started, travel has been difficult or impossible for most of us. We've had to work harder to stay inspired. I find inspiration when I speak with my mentors and my colleagues over Zoom, when I order takeout from my favorite restaurants and even when I watch my favorite TV shows and movies.

I also love to spend time on Instagram. I'm an amateur photographer and it gives me the opportunity to share the photos I've taken all over the world. It brings me back to those exciting adventures and makes me smile. I don't mourn traveling today because I'm thankful for the adventures I've had, and I look forward to new ones someday soon.

What does inspiration look like for you? Surround yourself with inspiration on a daily basis and you'll see that it's much easier to find happiness every day.

Happiness is a mindset. It's attainable for you, too, even when circumstances are tough. Create your own vision for success, make a plan, stay focused on your destination and surround yourself with inspiration along the way!

Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?

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Council Post: How To Create A Mindset That Leads To Happiness

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Happiness is a mindset. It comes from within you, not from your outside circumstances. You don't have to have a "perfect" life to be happy. The really great news is that you don't have to be young or old or wealthy or successful in order to be happy.

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This is a famous mountain in my hometown. I used to climb it when I was young. Located in Henan, China. He is very tall, but you must be careful when you climb the mountain.

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Sustainability in everyday life | Sustainability By Zahra

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Sustainability in everyday life | Sustainability By Zahra

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I found this video very helpful and informative regarding sustainability. It helps us with a small or signal action how we can help our environment.

Reference:
ACCIONA, (Aug 19, 2015), Sustainability in everyday life | Sustainability, YouTube.

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Sustainability in everyday life | Sustainability

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References
Primeau, M. (2021, September 15). Your powerful, changeable mindset - Stanford Report. Stanford News. Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://news.stanford.edu/report/2021/09/15/mindsets-clearing-lens-life/

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You see life through your own unique lens. This is your mindset - the assumptions and expectations you hold about yourself, your life and the situations around you. Research shows that mindsets play a significant role in determining life's outcomes. By understanding, adapting and shifting your mindset, you can improve your health, decrease your stress and become more resilient to life's challenges.

Shifting your mindset

This fall, Healthy Living is offering two classes on mindsets; Flip the Script on Stress - Enhance Your Well-Being with a Positive Mindset on Oct. 7 from 12: 00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m and The Improviser's Mindset, Wednesdays, Sept. 29 - Oct. 20 from 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

To learn more about mindsets and how to change them, BeWell spoke to Dr. Jacob Towery, adjunct clinical instructor in the department of psychiatry at Stanford University.
Mindsets help you to simplify.
Mindsets are a set of assumptions that help you distill complex worldviews into digestible information and then set expectations based on this input. For example, you may believe that becoming sick with cancer would be catastrophic or that going on a diet would be challenging and depriving. These belief systems help you set expectations, plan for the worst and guide decisions based on these assumptions.

While mindsets can be helpful for distilling information and managing expectations, they can also be maladaptive, lead to interpersonal problems and feelings of guilt, inadequacy, sadness and anxiety. Dr. Towery observes that it is common to hold onto mindsets that were adaptive at one point in life but have since become maladaptive. For example, it might have been helpful to believe that others cannot be trusted if you were betrayed at a young age, but this belief may lead to interpersonal issues at a later stage of life.

Dr. Towery assures, "the good news is mindsets are highly changeable, and if you are willing to learn the technology of changing your mindset and defeating your distorted thoughts, you can have significantly more happiness."
Having a fixed or growth mindset affects your worldview.
You may have heard of "fixed" and "growth" mindsets. These terms were coined by Stanford researcher and professor Carol Dweck, Ph.D. to describe belief systems about your ability to change, grow and develop over time. If you believe your qualities are essentially unchangeable or "fixed," you may be less open to mistakes because setbacks are seen as inherent, and impinging on future success. For example, if you have a fixed mindset and have trouble connecting with others at an event, you may see this as evidence that you will never be able to socially connect, leading to social anxiety and avoidance.

With a growth mindset, you know that you can change over time, and therefore you are more open to reflect, learn and grow from challenges. Because failure is less threatening, you are more willing to embrace life's challenges, take feedback as a learning opportunity and continue to learn and grow throughout life. With a growth mindset, you are also less likely to personalize setbacks. For example, in the scenario above, you might reflect that the cause of your social difficulty had more to do with the environment at the event than a personal inability to socialize.

With a fixed mindset, it can be hard to find motivation to work through perceived weaknesses, because the ability to change may seem as hopeless as changing your eye color. In contrast, with a growth mindset, you'll see your perceived weakness as a challenge that can be motivating - and even fun - to overcome.

As Dweck writes in "Mindset," "...as you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another - how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road."

Dr. Towery gives a personal example, "In my own life, I was dissatisfied with my singing abilities and decided to take singing lessons for nine months. While you won't be hearing me on the radio any time soon, my singing is remarkably less terrible than it used to be before the lessons." He describes that it was fun to learn that singing is a skill that can be cultivated rather than something innate and immutable.
Mindsets can impact your reality.
Mindsets can impact your outcomes by determining the way you think, feel and even physiologically respond to some situations. A 2007 study revealed that increased awareness of physical activity resulted in health benefits like weight loss and decreased blood pressure. To further investigate this phenomenon, a 2011 study was conducted to test physiological satiation in relationship to mindset around certain foods. The study revealed that participants' satiety aligned with their mindset around the food they were consuming more than the food's nutritional content.

Another example of how mindset affects physiology was shown in a 2012 study on the association between stress perception, health and mortality. Kelly McGonigal references the study in her 2013 TED talk, explaining that participants who experienced high levels of stress had an increased risk of death, but only if they believed stress to be harmful. Those who experienced high stress levels but did not see it as harmful were no more likely to die. McGonigal encourages developing more positive mindsets around stress, and to perceive your body's physiological responses to stress - like a pounding heart and racing mind - as your body's natural response to rise to the challenge and overcome it, as opposed to a signal that something is wrong.

Dr. Towery points out the impact of mindset on the effect of medications. "There is a powerful phenomenon in medicine known as the placebo effect, in which if someone believes they are going to derive benefits from taking a particular medication, they often do. In fact, regardless of the disease or condition, about 30-40% of people can have significant improvement in their symptoms even when taking a placebo (sugar) pill, if they believe that the pill is going to be helpful."

"Equally fascinating," Towery observes, "is the 'nocebo-effect,' a psychological response based on a person's expectations around side effects. When a physician emphasizes the potential side effects of a medicine, and the patient believes they will develop those symptoms, even if given a sugar pill, these patients can develop the adverse side effects, just based on what their mind expects."

Science is just beginning to validate the power of the mind-body relationship. Mindset matters, so it is important to pay attention to your belief systems-where they come from, how valid they are, and how they impact your quality of life.
You can change your mindset.
Although your mindset about topics like appearance and success are largely influenced by outside factors, the brain is neuroplastic, meaning neural networks can continue to grow, change and reorganize throughout the lifespan. By challenging yourself with new experiences and perspectives, you can form new neural connections - or mindsets - at any point in life.

Even a fixed mindset is not set in stone. You can change your mindset by learning and consciously choosing to believe that your characteristics are not predetermined and that you can continue to grow over time.

According to Towery, "The exciting news about mindsets is that they are absolutely changeable. The entire field of cognitive therapy is based on the idea that thoughts determine feelings and that you can learn powerful techniques to modify distorted thoughts and self-defeating beliefs. For those that want to learn how, I recommend reading the book "Feeling Great" by David Burns, MD and doing all of the writing sections. A competent cognitive therapist can also teach you how to change your mindset, even in a small number of sessions."

Dr. Towery says that the most rewarding part of his work is helping people transform distorted beliefs like "I'm a failure" to more realistic thoughts like "I didn't perform well, but I can better prepare next time and it will probably go much better."

Towery encourages questioning self-defeating thoughts and creating new narratives that are more self-serving. If you develop a growth mindset, setbacks can become learning opportunities and there is always another chance to improve and feel better.

1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345472322/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0345472322&linkCode=as2&tag=farnamstreet-20&linkId=ZYKJHPHELN46AOWM

2. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3196007/Langer_ExcersisePlaceboEffect.pdf?sequence=1%3FviewType=Print&viewClass=Print

3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21574706/

4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22201278/

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU&t=722s

6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTDYtwqKBI8

7. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.75.1.33

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Your powerful, changeable mindset - Stanford Report

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You see life through your own unique lens. This is your mindset - the assumptions and expectations you hold about yourself, your life and the situations around you. Research shows that mindsets play a significant role in determining life's outcomes.

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"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"
---Runze

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we cannot put our happiness at the whim of other people and of circumstances. If we want to be happy, we have to "stop outsourcing our happiness to other people" and cultivate a source of inner peace.

--Runze

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Happiness is all in your mind: Gen Kelsang Nyema at TEDxGreenville 2014

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How Your Environment Impacts Your Productivity, Health, and Happiness

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How Your Environment Impacts Your Productivity, Health, and Happiness

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How Your Environment Impacts Your Productivity, Health, and Happiness