Author Archives: Norm Levy

Critical Safety-Measures for Decreasing Virus Spread and Susceptibility!

1. Health screenings at all commercial entryways; nursing homes, offices, supermarkets, restaurants, theme parks, stadiums/arenas, broadway shows, concerts, hotels, meat packing facilities, cruise lines, etc.

This will assure that everyone who is allowed “in” is healthy, and at the same time will act as a deterrent to keep sick people home (if they know they will get their health checked).

Do not use thermal imaging cameras for this task!  According to a newly published report by the FDA, they were not designed or meant for accurate body temperature taking!

The Washington Post: ‘Thermal scanners are the latest technology being deployed to detect the coronavirus. But they don’t really work.’

Additionally, the infrared forehead thermometers (“thermometer guns”) are “notoriously unreliable”, according to the medical experts quoted in a New York Times article: ‘Thermometer Guns’ on Coronavirus Front Lines Are ‘Notoriously Not Accurate’

Please contact me for more information about health screening devices.

2. Indoor Air Quality; now is the time to demand that all indoor commercial spaces monitor and verify the air in their building dramatically reducing bacterium, virus, or other microorganisms that can cause disease.

This can be done by air passing through ionization tubes on its way into common area spaces, where the ionized air then treats contaminants as it encounters them.

Please contact me for more information about Indoor Air Quality solutions that deactivate 99.82% Covid-19 airborne and surface particles!

3. In your home, please humidity: 50-60% (especially while you sleep)!

Dry air vs Moist air is the critical factor in the spread or lack of spread of this virus:
If the indoor humidity is above 50% (not more than +-60%), this has 3 huge benefits:

  1. By keeping our mucous membranes moist, we maintain a natural barrier to infection that’s like a “bulletproof vest” protecting our lungs, nose and mouth from infection. Dry air, especially while sleeping, makes us vulnerable to infection.  Viruses are 10-100X more viable in dry air.
  2. High humidity causes “friction” in the air that limits the distances that viruses can spread through the air. It markedly decreases the risk of person-to-person spread of infection.
  3. Moisture keeps virus particles on surfaces from drying out, going airborne and getting into our lungs.

SPREAD:  DRY Air allows the virus droplets to stay in the air and to float around like feathers.  Moist (humid) air forces the droplets to the ground minimizing spread.

SUSCEPTIBILITY: DRY air dehydrates our mucous layers protecting our nose, throat and lungs.  Moist (humid) air keeps our protective linings hydrated and healthy and acts as a bulletproof barrier against the virus droplets

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Norm’s Suggestion of the Day; Get Humidifiers for your Bedrooms

The 25 Best Humidifiers of 2020 - Smart Style Today

I have been fortunate to work with a handful of incredible doctors and scientists who specialize in infectious disease, disease control as well as building A.I. “wellness monitoring” devices.  Their urgent recommendation is an easy step to take in the fight against the Coronavirus in your home (and PLEASE for the elderly in your family).  The important take away from this entire message is to achieve humidity above 50%, especially at night while you sleep to maintain hydration.

  1. By keeping our mucous membranes moist, we maintain a natural barrier to infection that’s like a “bulletproof vest” protecting our lungs, nose and mouth from infection. Dry air, especially while sleeping, makes us vulnerable to infection.  Viruses are 10-100X more viable in dry air.
  2. High humidity causes “friction” in the air that limits the distances that viruses can spread through the air. It markedly decreases the risk of person-to-person spread of infection.
  3. Moisture keeps virus particles on surfaces from drying out, going airborne and getting into our lungs.

In epidemiology, you have transmission and susceptibility.  Transmission is what sick people do and susceptibility is the measure of how difficult it is for well people to fend off illness.

Healthy lifestyles make for less susceptibility.  Respiratory diseases enter through the lungs.  Arguably sinuses but they’re fairly hardened.  We know this because 20% of humans have staph in their nasal passages and 20% of those are MRSA.  But the body is not infected.  So the lower respiratory tract is the area we want to protect.  Therefore the cilia, mucus coating the lungs (essentially skin) are able to stop the big droplets if they are properly hydrated. A doctor at Duke who obsessively studies cystic fibrosis (his son suffers) finds that around 65% or less hydration in the lung tissue makes you susceptible.  So if you breathe moist air (OR HYDRATE), you’ll avoid it.  At 15%RH room temperature you exhale about 20x more moisture than you inhale. At 50% its 5x.  So after 8 hours of not drinking water, you’re probably dehydrated when you wake up.  Getting on a scale at night and weighing yourself in the morning will prove this to you.

————-
 
From Stephanie Taylor, MD, M. Arch, CIC (The Power of Indoor Air)
Graduated with Honors from Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
 
This virus attaches really deeply to the receptors in your lungs. So, while the common cold more likely attaches to your sinuses and throat, this attaches deep in your lungs, which causes you to get sicker.
 

It’s very clear that it’s transmitted through the environment. And this is both alarming and good news. We’ve known for a long time that viruses can be spread through droplets. If somebody sneezes and one of those wet droplets lands on you, or a few feet away from you, and then you rub your nose or the virus or bacteria get into your body, you have a high chance of getting sick. But the transmission pathway that we haven’t really wanted to think about is when an infected person sneezes, coughs, or simply breathes droplets into the air. If the air is dry, those droplets shrink and desiccate to reach a moisture equilibrium within the air around you. And we now know that the viruses in those very tiny desiccated particles can go up in the air, they can travel into an HVAC system and re-infect people who are quite far away and have had no immediate contact. That’s one of the things that makes this virus alarming. We can no longer deny airborne transmission of infectious aerosols.

The concept of airborne transmission of infectious droplets is scary, but we can help control it by keeping the relative humidity in our breathing zone or in our buildings between 40%-60%. This has turned out to be the magic zone. I think Mother Nature gave us that opportunity so we could survive. If you’re outdoors, even say in the winter, your relative humidity is typically in a fairly safe zone. It’s cold out and the low moisture content puts the relative humidity at 50%-60%. When we bring that cold air in the building, we warm it up to comfort temperatures, and all of a sudden relative humidity falls to 20%. And this is where we’re getting into trouble. Data and research show us that if people in offices, hospitals, and schools manage their indoor relative humidity at 40%-60%, humans’ mechanisms for physiological defense are improved.

There is some brilliant research from Yale that came out last May that really helps us understand how appropriate water vapor in our breathing zone bolsters our immune system.  If you can humidify your indoor environment to this moderate zone, you actually bring out the infectious particles. They are brought down from the air. Research from 2010 as well as up to up to a week ago from the NIH [National Institute of Health], Princeton, and Harvard shows that viruses in the air and on surfaces are inactivated when the relative humidity is maintained in that zone.

As human beings, we don’t do well in dry air, and these quickly mutating viruses and bacteria do. In dry air, they’re like, great, we can mutate, we can fly around, and we can find new hosts. So, one thing we can do is really think about the air. We can humidify from 40%-60%. There are other strategies, like UV-C light, which de-activates many organisms. Filtration can be very beneficial. Hydrogen peroxide misting is another one, and I’m sure I’m missing some. The one I like best is humidifying the indoor environment, because not only does it help support the air we breathe, it also bolsters our own immune systems, which is critical, especially now.

  • Jeffrey Gusky, MD is an emergency medicine physician in Dallas, Texas / Emergency Response Doctor in COVID-19
  • Stephanie Taylor, M.D., M. Arch, CIC
  • Rik Heller, Chairman, and CEO of Wello – Pioneering inventor of automated wireless temperature monitoring sensors and cloud-based technology for healthcare and food services; he recognized the need for improved disease control and contagion management.
  • Prof Gordan Lauc, PhD: Director of the National Centre of Research Excellence in PHC; Director of the Human Glycome Project / Member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars
    • Fighting Viruses with Glycans: Our mucosa (a membrane that lines inside of our mouth, nose, all airways, eyes, etc) is protecting our cells with a thick layer of glycans, but it has to be moist to be a functional barrier.
————–

Please stay hydrated, healthy and safe!
All the best
Norm

 

“Hey Norm, This is doubtful!  Humidity in Miami is regularly over 75% and the virus seems to be spreading there just fine”

Rik Heller’s response:

Humidity is friction to epidemics. The problem with Florida is that AC is a dehumidifier. You can see the water coming out of the AC when it’s on. The AC is sized for comfort and lowers the humidity indoors to ~40%. Covid19 is very infectious as much as Norovirus (the Chipotle virus). The reason it travels around Cruise ships is because the AC desiccates air by 20% indoor @ room temp.

Anything around salt water gets a constant absolute humidity. It’s hard to talk RH, only AH or dewpoint. AH is grams/m3 .  Much simpler than RH to use. Rh is very misleading and hard for anyone to think about except at constant temperatures like to room temperature.

It’s why this subject is so confusing. Adding metric over initial measurements increases the confusion.
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Norm Joins Artificial Intelligence Company Founded by A.I. Pioneer Who Coined The Term ‘Artificial General Intelligence’ (AGI)

As the world’s foremost authority on conversational A.I. based on a cognitive architecture, or what DARPA calls ‘The Third Wave of AI’, Peter Voss has been working with his team of A.I. Psychologists for more than 15 years to develop, commercialize, and perfect this technology.

The first generation of Aigo technology has been successfully commercialized for more than 10 years through SmartAction, while the second generation is now being aggressively commercialized via Aigo.AI.

Norm joins Aigo.AI as a Business and Sales Consultant, introducing an adaptive, contextual, conversational Artificial Intelligence based on cognitive architecture.  It remembers what is said, and it constantly learns; it’s so much more intuitive and intelligent than current chatbots (ML/DL), virtual assistants, Siri, Alexa, etc.

  • Aigo is the most advanced Natural Language Interaction platform.
  • ​Aigo is a generic intelligence engine – it is domain agnostic.
  • ​Aigo is software – it is hardware agnostic.
  • ​Aigo is multi-modal – Talk, Text, or Touch.
  • Aigo increases stickiness, loyalty, and user adoption by creating engaging customer experiences.
  • Aigo’s Brain scales from 10 users to 100 million users

Aigo is built on a mind-like integrated cognitive architecture. This is radically different from the other current chatbots and so-called ‘personal assistants’ and puts Aigo ‘Light Years’ ahead.

Aigo’s human-like cognition allows it to:

  • Remember what was said and utilize this in future conversations
  • Understand context and complex sentences
  • Use Reasoning to disambiguate and answer questions
  • Learn new facts and skills interactively, in real-time
  • Have ongoing, meaningful conversations
  • Hyper-personalize experiences based on user’s history, preferences and goals

 

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Norm Joins Centurion VR as Strategic Advisor

Centurion VR is transforming the sport of cricket with its patented VR technology. Star India, the world’s leading broadcaster of cricket and a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is a major shareholder in Centurion VR.

Centurion’s ground-breaking virtual reality experience allows you to face bowling from some of the best cricketers in the world giving you the opportunity to hit them for a six or see if you will have your stumps rearranged. The system means users will be facing a virtual version of super quick yorkers and bouncers, or see the ball flying past their outside edge.

Centurion’s product has already proved to be a huge hit internationally, and with Centurion heading to the CPL this year, it means fans across the Caribbean can be closer to the action than ever before with the chance to enjoy the world’s best cricket batting simulation during this year’s tournament.

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Norm Joins Supracam as Special Business/Sales Advisor

Supracam is comprised of a unique “cable camera” service, engineering and tech group that specializes in amazing live video shots for sporting events, music concerts and festivals from cables above:

Recent Projects include:

  • CBS Thursday Night Football
  • CBS Super Bowl 50 (Emmy Award)
  • NBC The Players Championship
  • NBC The US Open
  • ESPN NBA Draft
  • MBLAM Arizona Bowl
  • NBC Phoenix Open
  • NBC Ryder Cup
  • NFLN and ESPN NFL Draft
  • NFLN Super Bowl 50 Opening Night
  • NFLN Super Bowl LII (Emmy Award)
  • Taylor Swift – Red Music Video
  • Steve Miller Band Concert

Supracam’s technologies were used by James Cameron in the original Avatar (the movie) and are currently being deployed by the latest Avatar production team in New Zealand.

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Norm sets up vGolf Demonstration with Justin Timberlake

Norm finds golf tech start-up vGolf the perfect match made in golf heaven and coordinates a demonstration for Justin Timberlake.

Justin puts on the Augmented Reality glasses and plays a fairway at Troon North Golf Club, using a real golf ball, showing off his flawless swing using his favorite driver, all performed in a hotel conference room.

Image copyright Golf Digest

If interested to learn more about vGolf, please email or call me.

 

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One of the Most Needed Technologies of our Time, Sadly; Sensor Device that Detects Gun Powder, Ammunition, Explosives.

Norm assists team that has developed the first portable sensor device to detect gunpowder across distances and barriers. Our patented technology accurately detects the gunpowder that is found in the ammunition of modern handguns, shotguns, and rifles.

We are working tirelessly to convert our technology into a digitized notification workflow that will be easy and cost-effective to use in wearable devices, entry-ways as well as allow it to be integrated into existing security systems.

We have technology that we believe will dramatically enhance public safety at movie theaters, live music and sporting events, schools, hotels, restaurants, malls, office buildings, apartment buildings, homes, etc.
If interested in more information, please email me
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Norm Joins VR/AR Adtech Startup Admix as Business Advisor

Admix empowers VR/AR developers to monetize their content through interactive, programmatic brand placements. It the first and only programmatic route to buy VR/AR media, from premium advertising platforms like Verizon Media.

Over the past 18 months Admix has seen exponential growth thanks to a partnership with Oath (the parent company of Yahoo and AOL), launching a beta earlier this year which has seen over 100 VR/AR creators working with its platform.

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Norm Joins Party Shack as Business Advisor

Party Shack – The Ultimate “Portable”, Temperature Controlled,
All-You-Can-Eat, All-You-Can-Drink Tailgate Experience

Pro & Collegiate Sporting Events * PGA Tour * Concerts * Festivals

As a leader in portable hospitality solutions, Party Shack designs, builds and deploys innovative products at a competitive price point for brands to reach their fans and consumers 365 days a year.

Our focus is on manufacturing purpose-built solutions for modern day venue experiences. Trends show that consumers are looking for informal event within-an event ways to connect, and brands are looking for out-of-the-box ways to relate to their consumers.

In 2018, the pilot program for the Party Shack Village concept was launched with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The village comprised of nine portable, and climate-controlled executive suites activated during every home game for the 2018 season. The venture in Jacksonville included hosting game day events, assuming the risk for event management and activation, but it is not our intent to be in the venue hosting and marketing business; rather, the focus will be design, manufacture, and sales, lease or rental of our products set in the various applicable target markets identified.

Our 2019 goal is to produce multiple portable units, designed to up-level traditional open air tent activations at almost any venue or event.

Please contact me to learn more!

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Norm Joins vGolf as Business Advisor

 

 

vGolf is a patented mixed reality golf simulation and training system. It revolutionizes how golfers play and train by blending the real world with a virtual reality overlay.

Using augmented reality glasses and the latest in mixed reality technologies “Virtual Courses” enables you to play the top golf courses in the world, right from your own living room.


 

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