Beach Jogger. Credit: Flickr.com, Steve Crane
On TV, while watching a soap opera, a sudden commercial shows three muscular men with handsome faces. You take a look at yourself on the mirror; it makes you feel depressed. Some could go to the length of opting for steroids to get some results fast. Some would opt for the gym and start taking more exercises and muscle building tune-ups in order to appear handsome and athletic. Yes, it is on record that a sudden depression or anxiety due to one’s looks can be attributable to general anxiety disorder. General anxiety disorder (GAD) is a frequent and constant worry about things like one’s look, career, health etcetera which is disproportionate to the actual source of worry. By the way, such worry often interferes with daily life.
Taking to the gym because you want to look good is fine. But do you know that getting constant regular exercise like going to the gym can also improve your mental health? That is, it can help you stave off and cure problems like depression and anxiety disorders?
Two factors that are at work
Several studies have shown that adolescents who were physically inactive, who live sedentary lives or who perceive their bodies as either “too thin” or “too fat” were at greater risk of internalizing problems like depression and externalizing problems like substance abuse. By participating in organized sports, these youths can place themselves at a lower risk for mental health problems. Two factors are at work in this regard.
AdvertCar seats, strollers, carriers...The first factor that has been used to explain why exercises can boost your mental health is the self-image hypothesis. It suggests that the positive effects on body weight and body structure due to physical activity leads to positive feedback from peers and improves one’s self-image, thereby improving mental health. When you feel good about yourself because others make positive comments about how your recent regime of exercises makes your body look good, then you are making yourself healthy in the mind.
The second explanation for this relationship is the social interaction hypothesis. It explains the improved mental health from physical activity as being a result of the increased social relationship and mutual support received from peers or colleagues that contributes to exercises having an effect on mental health. This hypothesis tells us that people whom we respect and whom we care about make us do exercises because they give us positive comments while not realizing on the other hand that we are not only building a healthy social system, but also healthy minds.
Take a health assessment before choosing exercising regime
Many persons who read this article might be living sedentary lives because they work more with their minds than their hands. It cannot be helped. Yet, they can help themselves by taking to regular exercise regimes. Do not start though without seeking a medical health assessment where it is available. It is recommended that a weekly dose of 150 minutes of moderately intense exercise or 75 minutes a week of vigorous intense activity like lifting weights is beneficial for one’s physical and mental health. When starting out, focus on the short term benefits of such exercising rather than the long term because the short term benefits like reducing stress, improving your mood, makes you sustain the exercising after a long period of time.
So, whether you are a health care provider or a health enthusiast, use physical activity as a booster for your mental health. You could end up saving yourself lots of worry, fear and financial debts in the long run, if not depression and excessive anxiety right now.
(Related Post:Will She marry rich or poor? Wealthy women seeking sexual partners see no difference!)
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Biker and Son, Poster art. credit: Flickr.com, Moriza
When art historians evaluate an artwork, they ask and answer questions such as the time and place where the artwork was done, what school of art the artist represents as well as his influences, and the artists his work has influenced. Asking a computer using an algorithm to do this would be very difficult. This is a field where human intelligence is very much required. Yet, computers and computer algorithms can still help us novices evaluate a work of art.
In a recently published experiment in the ACM Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage, using approximately 1,000 paintings of 34 well-known artists,Advert researchers showed that a computer was clearly able to identify different art styles and even little nuances between art schools using only visual content. The results obtained were largely in agreement with the perception of art historians and dwarfed what one can obtain from untrained humans in the analysis of artworks.
A similar algorithm that was designed to place artworks in particular artistic periods using artificial vision algorithms also gave outstanding results. The computers were able to “understand” images and also differentiate between artistic styles based on low-level pictorial information.
Low-level pictorial information encompasses aspects such as brush thickness, the type of material and the composition of the palette of color. Humans on the other hand perform art analysis more abstractly. They employ medium-level information which differentiates between objects and scenes in a picture and the type of painting, and high-level information that takes the historical context and artist’s knowledge along with artistic trends into consideration.
Computer algorithms for arts not yet fully explored.
The future is stillborn as to the scope and extent visual algorithms can be used in evaluating works of art. At least, when it involves broad artistic differentiation, usually amongst art schools and periods, computer algorithms can beat an untrained human in arts analysis but fall short in precisely dating art periods or styles. According to Miquel Feixas, one of the authors of the study that was published in the ACM journal, “it will never be possible to precisely determine mathematically an artistic period or to measure the human response to a work of art, but we can look for trends.”
This is not the only technique that has been expended towards paintings. Physicists sometimes use ion beams to determine paintings and painting authenticity. This is the first time though a machine has gone one step better than humans, whether trained or untrained, in evaluating and analyzing works of art. It is hoped that this work will also open the way for further work in developing image viewing and analysis tools, classifying and searching for collections in museums, creating public information and entertainment equipment and to better understand the interaction between humans, computers and works of art. Digital technology will not replace art historians at all, just as software has not replaced human mathematicians, but with digital technology, art historians have an arsenal that makes their work stand out with more precise accuracy.
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