Healthy Home PC Habits

 

Written by Jenny Catton

 

Whether you work from home, spend hours surfing the Internet, or enjoy playing games on your computer, most of us are spending more time than ever on our home computers. And whilst they’re great for working, or having fun; working or playing on a computer in the wrong environment can cause all sorts of health problems from a bad back to headaches.

Here are some tips for creating a healthy environment whilst using a laptop or PC at home:

 

Check Your Posture
It’s best to sit in a supportive chair rather than slouching on the sofa with your laptop. If you don’t have a separate office, you should still sit at a table or use a specially-designed lap tray to encourage good posture whilst using a laptop.

 

Be Kind to Your Eyes
Make sure the font size on your computer is set to the right size. If you’re struggling to read the text on screen, you could cause headaches. In addition, make sure there is no glare from sunlight or artificial lighting which could cause you to strain your eyes.

 

Stay Fresh
It’s easy to spend hours online without realising it – make sure you stay alert and refreshed by opening a window or take regular breaks. Remember to stay hydrated by keeping a large glass of water nearby when using your computer for long lengths of time.

 

Add Some Plants
If you have a desk or table where you spend a lot of your time, try placing a plant nearby. Studies have shown that having real plants in a working environment can help reduce the ill effects caused by electronic equipment.

 

For more advice on creating the ideal home office environment, visit: www.channel4.com/4homes/rooms/home-office

 

Categories: computer, environment, Home, home office, laptop, spend hours, working

Computer Now Able to Predict Cancer

It may become a usual event that we see doctors regularly using computer predictions in judging how to treat their cancer patients. This has come after scientists constructed mathematical formulas that have been able to outperform human experts in forecasting how sufferers will respond to treatment. This suggests that the future of medical diagnostics could be based around computer programs.

It was recently shown that a computer model of lung cancer made consistently better predictions of the future symptoms that would be suffered by a set of patients undergoing radiotherapy or chemotherapy than the doctors who were actually treating them. The authors argue that the study now demonstrates the increasingly important role of mathematics in cancer medicine.

This concept has been around for a while, but so far it has been difficult to find examples of computers outperforming their human counterparts. However, this study worked as personal medical details and the history of treatment for each patient were fed into the computer model, which then gave a better assessment than experienced radiation oncologists of how individuals were likely to respond to the treatment and how it could be altered to give a more positive outcome.

The authors stated that if models based on a patient, tumour and treatment characteristics already out-perform the doctors, then it may become unethical to make treatment decisions based solely on the doctors’ opinion when there is a more reliable source available. We believe models should be implemented in clinical practice to guide decisions.

However, this statement in itself brings up a number of ethical questions about the medical profession and how far we should rely on machines as a long-term diagnostic tool.

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Computer Now Able to Predict Cancer

Categories: cancer, computer, Computer Model, computers, Doctors, ethics, Medical, treatment