Jan became interested in namdas during a research project on declining crafts while getting her master’s degree at the Craft Development Institute in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital.
As part of her research, Jan was required to introduce innovations to increase the marketability of Kashmiri namdas. So instead of using local wool, she used 100-percent merino, a type of sheep prized for its wool quality. She also used dyes free of azo compounds, a chemical used in dyes for its vivid colors, so they wouldn’t be harmful or bleed.
“You can hand wash our namdas,” she says. “They won’t lose their color. You can even vacuum them, things you can’t do with the ordinary namda you find in the market these days.”
For embroidery, she opted for a superior thread and a style called crewel, often used on curtains.
On this day in in 2000, Mark Hughes, the founder and CEO of Herbalife died. Herbalife is a global nutrition, weight management and skin-care company who’s products are marketed through a network of 2.1 million independent distributors.
In February 1980, Mark Hughes began selling the original Herbalife weight management product from the trunk of his car. Hughes often stated that the genesis of his product and program stemmed from the weight loss concerns of his mother Joanne, whose premature death he attributed to an eating disorder and an unhealthy approach to weight loss. His goal was to change the nutritional habits of the world.
His first product was a protein shake designed to help people manage their weight. He structured his company using a direct-selling, multi-level marketing model which attracted thousands of distributors (Herbalife Independent Distributors) who sold its products door-to-door or through word-of-mouth, without relying on commercial distribution in retail stores.
The company’s slogan, “Lose Weight Now, Ask Me How”, became a marketing theme for distributors, featuring heavily on badges, flyers and posters. Early methods to recruit distributors included seminars, which would feature distributors giving health and weight loss testimonials on the Herbalife products and a keynote address by Hughes. By 1982 Herbalife had reached USD 2 million in sales and had expanded into Canada.
Mark Hughes died at age 44 of an accidental overdose.
Scientists still say they are desperate to learn the secret of ‘Starlite’ – and the inventor’s family may have it.
The material was the invented by the eccentric English inventor and former hairdresser Maurice Ward who had no formal scientific training and claimed he put it together on his kitchen table with a food processor.
It was unveiled to the world on the BBC TV show ‘Tomorrow’s World’ in 1991 during which he held a Starlite-coated egg up to a blowtorch.
Despite the extreme heat it was barely warm to the touch and was still runny inside.
Experts immediately realised its possibilities for things like aeroplanes, fire doors, spacecraft and dozens more possibilities.
Mr Ward, however, refused to play ball.
Over the following few decades his paranoia, capriciousness and need for absolute secrecy ruined all attempts to get it onto the market.
Now the Etch-a-Sketch, that beloved toy which started life in the 1960s and amused children for the next three decades, is coming back – thanks to the help of the iPad.
Inventor Ari Krupnik has created an almost exact replica sleeve of the Etch-a-Sketch, including those two big twiddly buttons with which you can sketch on your designs on the grey screen.
Plug an iPad into the belly and – hey, presto! – everyone’s favourite toy has come back to life.
For the re-birth of Etch-a-Sketch, Ari worked on the software side, emulating all those beloved features to make this identical to the original – so shaking your iPad will clear your image just as before.
Although there is a nod to modern times – you can share your pictures via Facebook or Flickr – or even send a timelapse video to YouTube.
The defibrillator is still a work in progress, but Strauss recently filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to secure a patent for CardiaGard, a device that will monitor the heart to detect and treat coronary artery disease — a condition that affects more than 15 million Americans.
The device is designed to be inserted into a subcutaneous layer over the heart. Electrodes attached to the wires can detect the slightest changes in the heart’s rhythms in the same way that an electrocardiogram does, he said. The implantable defibrillators currently on the market thread wires into the arteries to monitor and shock the heart. Those wires can cause irritation or result in infection after the surgery.
“There is no risk of causing a patient to go into cardiac arrest when they are actually being operated on because we are not touching the heart,” he said.
