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Intermediate
JMW Turner, one of Britains greatest painters, will appear on the new 20 note, after a nationwide vote.
It will be the first time an artist has appeared on a British banknote, after the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, asked the public to choose a deceased cultural figure they felt deserved to be on the banknote.
Turner, who is famous for his dramatic seascapes, beat off competition from 590 painters, sculptors, fashion designers, photographers, film-makers and actors put forward by 30,000 members of the public.
The list included Alfred Hitchcock, Alexander McQueen, Derek Jarman, Laura Ashley, William Morris and Vanessa Bell. This list was narrowed down to a final choice of five by a panel of artists, critics and historians.
The final five Barbara Hepworth, Charlie Chaplin, Josiah Wedgwood, William Hogarth and Turner were chosen because of their unquestioned contribution to both the visual arts and British society, as well as their enduring influence.
The announcement of the new banknote was made at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate. The announcement was made jointly by Carney and the artist Tracey Emin, who grew up in the town.
Carney said it had been so important to get this right and have a proper process that involved the public. He added that banknotes are not only a practical necessity they can be a piece of art in everyones pocket.
The fact that we will have Turner on the 20 note shows that the British people are a nation of people who appreciate creativity and appreciate the arts, said Emin.
The note will show Turners 1799 self-portrait, as well as one of his most famous works, The Fighting Temeraire, the ship that played an important role in Nelsons victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
The note will also contain a quote from the artist light is therefore colour as well as his signature. The signature is from his will, in which he left many of his paintings to the nation.
Historical figures were first shown on banknotes in 1970. Turner joins Winston Churchill and Jane Austen as the significant figures who will feature on the new polymer notes a plastic-type material Churchill on the 5 and Austen on the 10 note. The new 20 note will be available by 2020.
Turner was born in 1775 in London, the son of a barber, and he entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 14. In 1786, when he was sent to Margate, his love of painting and drawing the north-east Kent coast began. He returned to that coast throughout his life and it was where he painted some of his most dramatic oils and watercolours. He described its skies as the loveliest in all Europe.
Turner was a very prolific artist he produced more than 550 oil paintings and 2,000 watercolours in his lifetime. His life was also the subject of a film, in 2014, by Mike Leigh, with Timothy Spall as the artist.
Victoria Pomery, the director of Turner Contemporary, said: The decision to celebrate JMW Turner, one of the greatest technical pioneers in the history of British art, is extraordinary. It has proven that Turner is the nations favourite artist. | 1int
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Intermediate
Youve spent eight hours in the office. The most important work of the day is done; whatever is left can wait until the morning. This is the point many workers would think about heading for the door.
But, for millions of Japanese employees, the thought of leaving their desks and being at home in time for dinner is enough to make people accuse them of disloyalty.
For decades, the government has allowed companies to make sure their workforce is as productive as possible. But, now, it is challenging Japans culture of overwork. The government is considering making it a legal requirement for workers to take at least five days paid holiday a year.
Japanese employees are currently entitled to an average 18.5 days paid holiday a year only two fewer than the global average with a minimum of ten days, as well as 15 one-day national holidays. In reality, very few employees take these days. Most use only nine of their 18.5-day average entitlement, according to the labour ministry. While many British workers see a two-week summer holiday as their right, workers in Japan think that a four-night vacation in Hawaii is complete self-indulgence.
By the end of the decade, the government hopes that the law will push Japanese employees towards following the example set by British workers, who use an average of 20 days paid annual leave, and those in France, who take an average of 25.
Japans tough work culture helped turn it into an economic superpower, its employees respected and admired in the rest of the world for their commitment to the company, but they have little time to do anything except work.
Japans low birth rate and population decline are partly blamed on the lack of time couples have to start families. More employees are falling ill from stress, or worse, succumbing to karoshi, death through overwork.
Japanese people continue to work hard, despite studies that suggest that longer hours in the office or workshop or on the factory floor do not necessarily make people more productive.
About 22% of Japanese people work more than 49 hours a week, compared with 16% of US workers and 11% in France and Germany, according to data from the Japanese government. At 35%, South Koreas workaholics work even more.
Erika Sekiguchi spends 14 hours a day at work and gives up many of her paid holidays. But she is not even an extreme example. The 36-year-old trading company employee used eight of her 20 days of paid vacation in 2014, six of which were sick leave. Nobody else uses their vacation days, Sekiguchi said.
Yuu Wakebe, a health ministry official overseeing policy on working hours, admits that he does 100 hours of overtime a month. He blames the pressure to match the number of hours your colleagues work. It is a workers right to take paid vacations, Wakebe said. But working in Japan involves quite a lot of volunteer spirit.
That fear of being ostracized at work is the reason for a rise in stress-related illness, premature death and suicide. According to official data, about 200 people die every year from heart attacks, strokes and other karoshi events because of tough work schedules.
The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is not known for taking long vacations. But even he has said that companies ask too much of their employees and that working hours in Japan are too long. | 1int
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Intermediate
A lonely old man living on the moon is the unusual focus of John Lewiss 2015 Christmas advert.
There is increasing hype around John Lewiss seasonal ad, which has come to mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping season for many. The department store will aim to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for Age UK. It will also encourage staff and customers to join up with their local branch of the charity to care for elderly people who might be alone over the holiday.
The department store has spent 7m on a campaign that ranges from the TV ad to a smartphone game and merchandise, including glow-in-the-dark pyjamas, as well as making areas that look like the surface of the moon in 11 of their stores.
After two years of successful ads with cuddly animals a bear and hare, then a penguin this time, the store is tugging at the heartstrings with a story of a young girl, Lily, who spots an old man living in a shack on the moon through her telescope. The determined child tries sending him a letter and firing a note via bow and arrow, before floating him a present of a telescope tied to balloons, which finally allows them to make contact.
The ads message is: Show someone theyre loved this Christmas, which echoes Age UKs own campaign: No one should have no one at Christmas. Profits from three products a mug, gift tag and card will go to the charity.
Rachel Swift, head of marketing at John Lewis, said that people talk about the charity at this time of year and the ad makes you think about someone who lives on your street that might not see anybody.
The campaign features the Oasis track Half the World Away reinterpreted by Norwegian artist Aurora.
The ad cost 1m to make. The moon scenes were shot at the Warner Bros Studios, where the Harry Potter films were made, and the specially built set was created by one of the team behind the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens.
As in the last few years, John Lewis has drummed up interest in their most recent ad with a teaser campaign on TV and social media using the hashtag #OnTheMoon. A full moon will fall on Christmas Day 2015 a complete coincidence, according to Swift.
In 2014, the retailer also spent 7m on a campaign with a realistic animated penguin and a young boy playing together to the tune of John Lennons Real Love, sung by British singer-songwriter Tom Odell. It had drummed up 22m views on YouTube by the first week of January more than the 16.6m views of Sainsburys ad with First World War soldiers sharing a bar of chocolate, the UKs second most popular ad of 2014.
Swift said that, despite the hype, John Lewis had kept the same strategy for the last five years. Its all about thoughtful gifting and going the extra mile for someone you love at Christmas, she said. We dont go into it thinking, This is going to be huge, just getting something right for the brand at this time of year and something we hope customers really love.
Sarah Vizard, news editor of trade journal Marketing Week, said John Lewis appeared to have simplified efforts this time, with a lower-key presence in stores despite a growing number of competitors. There are definitely a lot more brands doing Christmas ads this year but I think a lot of those brands who tried to compete with John Lewis by doing something emotional and creative have gone back to what you can buy in store, she said. John Lewis still does the emotional piece the best. This campaign is another great way of communicating that in a way that customers can relate to. I think people will think it is really cute. | 1int
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Intermediate
The last time she went on stage, the mobile phone was having its first trials. Thirty-five years later, as she performs once again, singer Kate Bush is faced with a different world.
While most concerts are now aglow with phones and tablets, Bush does not want her fans watching her shows through a screen.
Before her highly anticipated series of concerts at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, Bush released a statement asking her fans to put down their mobile phones at her gigs.
Bush wrote on her website: I have a request for all of you who are coming to the shows. We have purposefully chosen an intimate theatre setting rather than a large venue or stadium. It would mean a great deal to me if you would please refrain from taking photos or filming during the shows.
I very much want to have contact with you as an audience, not with iPhones, iPads or cameras. I know its a lot to ask but it would allow us to all share in the experience together.
With her love of theatrics and opulent costumes, Bushs keenness to stop fans uploading footage to YouTube could also be an attempt to keep the show a surprise for the thousands of fans who have bought tickets for the 22 dates she is playing.
Bush is not the first singer or musician to speak out against the effect of phones at concerts. The Who front man Roger Daltrey recently said it was weird that people did not have their mind on the show when they had gone to a performance and were concentrating on staring at the screen rather than the artist on stage.
He said: I feel sorry for them, I really feel sorry for them. Looking at life through a screen and not being in the moment totally if youre doing that, youre 50% there, right? Its weird. I find it weird.
In 2013, Beyonc berated one her fans at a gig for filming. You cant even sing because youre too busy filming, Beyonc told him. You gotta seize this moment. Put that damn camera down!
The debate around phones at live events is not restricted to music. Recently, Dutch football fans at PSV Eindhoven protested against the introduction of wi-fi in their stadium, holding up banners with messages like No wi-fi. Support the team, You can sit at home, and Stand united, while Manchester United have also told fans to leave their large electronic devices at home.
Jarvis Cocker has also criticized fans with phones in the audience he says they drive him insane at concerts, adding: It seems stupid to have something happening in front of you and look at it on a screen thats smaller than a cigarette packet.
Johnny Marr said in 2013 that it meant that fans missed out on the sensory experience of live music in their desperation to film the event for later.
To stand and just be looking at it through your phone is a completely wasted opportunity. You know, I dont mean to be unkind but I think you should put your phone down because youre just being an idiot, really. Just enjoy the gig, he said.
Even in the world of classical music, one of the worlds leading pianists surprised concertgoers in June 2013 when he stormed off stage because a fan was filming his performance on a smartphone. Krystian Zimerman returned moments later and said: The destruction of music because of YouTube is enormous.
But Sam Watt of Vyclone, a phone app that encourages audiences to film at concerts and then brings together the footage to create a crowd-sourced video of the event, said that filming at concerts enhanced the experience.
Fans filming is now part of the concert experience that is a just a fact so we take the footage that people are filming at concerts and then it comes back to them mixed together with everybody else who was filming. You end up with really fantastic content, he said.
Our thinking is that filming at concerts adds to the experience, rather than taking away from it and I think, if Kate Bush came round for a cup of tea, we could have a really interesting discussion about this, he added. Knowing that people are going to film and want those memories is really important. Youve got to embrace it. | 1int
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Intermediate
Cities dont often decide to pack their bags, get up and move down the road. But thats exactly what Kiruna, an Arctic town in northern Sweden, has to do to avoid being swallowed up into the earth.
Its a terrible choice, says Krister Lindstedt of White, the Swedish architects company that is managing the biblical task. They have to move this city of 23,000 people away from a gigantic iron-ore mine that is fast swallowing up the ground beneath its streets. Either the mine must stop digging, creating mass unemployment, or the city has to move.
Founded in 1900 by the state-owned Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara mining company (LK), Kiruna has grown rich off the vast amount of iron ore that is below the town but its now facing destruction by exactly the thing that made it rich. The town is here because of the mine, says Deputy Mayor Niklas Siren. Otherwise, no one would have built a city here.
Located 145km inside the Arctic Circle, Kiruna has a brutal climate. It has winters with no sunlight and average temperatures below -15C. But the iron ore has kept people here. It has become the worlds largest underground iron-ore mine. It produces 90% of all the iron in Europe, enough to build more than six Eiffel Towers a day. And demand continues to grow.
In 2004, the mining company told the town that its days were numbered: digging its shafts towards the city at an angle of 60 degrees, subsidence would soon lead to buildings cracking and collapsing. Ten years later, cracks are starting to appear in the ground, and they are creeping closer and closer to the town.
The people of Kiruna have been living in limbo for ten years, says Viktoria Walldin, a social anthropologist who works with the architects. They have put their lives on hold, unable to make major decisions like buying a house, redecorating, having a child or opening a business.
After years of dithering, the city finally has a plan for how it will proceed. Lindstedt has a plan that shows the towns streets and squares beginning to crawl eastwards along a new high street, until the whole place has moved safely away from the mine by 2033.
A new town square is already being built, 3km to the east, with a circular town hall planned by Danish architect Henning Larsen. Twenty other key buildings will be dismantled and put together piece by piece in their new home like an Ikea flatpack on a bigger scale. Kirunas red wooden church, built in 1912 and once voted Swedens most beautiful building, will take pride of place in a new park, and the bell tower will stand once again above the town hall. But not everything will be saved.
I spoke to an old lady who walks past the bench every day where she had her first kiss, says Walldin. Its things like that the hospital where your first child was born, for example that are important to people and all thats going to disappear.
Called the most democratic move in history, the project will get 320m from the mining company for building new facilities, including a high school, fire station, community centre, library and swimming hall. But the biggest worry for most people is where they will actually live and how they will get a house or flat.
People are used to very low rents and very high incomes but, in future, this will have to change says Lindstedt. LK has agreed to compensate residents to the value of their homes plus 25% but many locals say this is not enough to afford a new-build house.
A closer look at the plan shows the new town does not look like the original Kiruna at all. The current town has winding streets and detached houses with gardens. Whites plan has multi-storey apartment blocks around shared courtyards in long straight streets.
It is an opportunity, say the architects, for Kiruna to reinvent itself into a town that will attract young people. There will be new cultural facilities and visionary things such as a cable car above the high street. But it is a vision that many of the existing residents will probably not be able to afford. | 1int
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Intermediate
Legos profits rose strongly in the first half of 2014, helped by the success of its Lego Movie, which has stormed box offices in the US and UK.
The Danish toy firms sales rose across Europe, the Americas and Asia as children bought products linked to the film. The film, released in February 2014, took more than $250m in the US and 31m in the UK by the first weekend in April.
The movie cost about $60m to make and has been described as an almost perfect piece of marketing. It is entertaining and aimed at consumers who are likely to go out and buy the companys products.
Legos finance director, John Goodwin, said that the Lego Movie products had a positive effect on profits during the first half of 2014. They are now waiting to see how the products will continue to develop after the launch of the movie on DVD in the second half of 2014.
Jrgen Vig Knudstorp, Legos chief executive, said: It is a very satisfactory result that shows our significant growth in recent years in a tough economic environment. The result for the first half of 2014 is an outcome of our ability to develop, launch and distribute Lego products, which children all over the world put at the top of their wishlists.
Lego, based in the small town of Billund, started producing its plastic bricks in 1949 and became a popular and well-known childrens toy around the world by the 1970s. But the group lost its way and was on the brink of collapse in 2003. Knudstrop took over as chief executive, ending 70 years of family rule, and got rid of hundreds of surplus products. He then refocused the business on its bricks.
The company opened its first factory in China in April and opened an office in Shanghai to start expansion into the worlds second-biggest economy. | 1int
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Intermediate
Loneliness has finally become a hot topic. The Office for National Statistics has found Britain to be the loneliest place in Europe. British people are less likely to have strong friendships or know their neighbours than people anywhere else in the European Union. And research at the University of Chicago has found that loneliness is twice as bad for older peoples health as obesity and almost as great a cause of death as poverty.
This is shocking but such studies do not examine the loneliness epidemic among younger adults. In 2010, the Mental Health Foundation found that loneliness was a greater concern among young people than among the elderly. The 18- to 34-year-olds surveyed were more likely to feel lonely often, to worry about feeling alone and to feel depressed because of loneliness than the over-55s.
Loneliness is a recognized problem among the elderly and there are day centres and charities to help them, says Sam Challis, of the mental health charity Mind, but, when young people reach 21, theyre too old for youth services. This is problematic because of the close relationship between loneliness and mental health it is linked to increased stress, depression, paranoia, anxiety, addiction and it is a known cause of suicide.
But what can young people do to prevent loneliness? One researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute points out that social media and the internet can be both a good thing and a problem. They are beneficial when they enable us to communicate with distant loved ones but not when they replace face-to-face contact. People present an idealized version of themselves online and we expect to have social lives like those we see in the media, says Challis. Comparing the perfect lives of our friends with our own lives can lead us to withdraw socially.
Meditation techniques and apps such as Headspace are trendy solutions frequently recommended for a range of mental health problems, but theyre not necessarily helpful for loneliness, as they actively encourage us to be alone with our thoughts. It is better to address the causes of your loneliness first whats stopping you going out and seeing people? says Challis.
Indeed, a study of social media at the University of Michigan in 2013 found that using technology to help you meet new people can be beneficial. And, if you are unable to go out for some reason, the internet can help you. For example, Mumsnet, an online network for parents, can help you feel less alone when bringing up young children.
Helplines can also reduce loneliness, at least in the short term. One in four men who call the emotional support charity Samaritans mention loneliness or isolation and Get Connected is a free confidential helpline for young people, where they can get help with emotional and mental health problems often linked to loneliness. There are also support services on websites such as Minds that can remind you youre not alone.
At work, it can be beneficial to tell your employer how youre feeling. John Binns advises businesses on mental health and well-being. He was admitted to hospital for stress-related depression in 2007 and took two months off work. He felt as if there was no one to talk to and wasnt close enough to colleagues for them to notice the changes in his behaviour. More openness with his employer and colleagues made his return to work easier. Office chit-chat may seem like a waste of time but it helps to protect us from the emotional and psychological effects of work strain.
We treat the networks we have as incidental but theyre fundamental to our well-being, says Nicky Forsythe, a psychotherapist and the founder of Talk for Health, an organization that trains people to give and receive support in groups. The most important thing is to have a regular time and place to reflect on your life and to have an empathetic listener.
If we believe recent research, loneliness is killing the elderly and, with an ageing population, we should aim to reduce our isolation before it is too late. Getting older doesnt have to mean getting lonelier, says Ruth Sutherland, the chief executive of the relationship counselling service Relate. But it is very important to lay the foundations to good-quality relationships earlier in life. | 1int
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Intermediate
According to American researchers, a nasal spray containing the Love hormone oxytocin could help children with autism behave more normally in social situations. Scans of autistic children showed that a single dose of the chemical improved brain responses to facial expressions. This is something that could make social interactions feel more natural and rewarding for them.
The researchers said oxytocin might increase the success of behavioural therapies that are already used to help people with autism learn to cope with social situations. Over time, what you would expect to see is more normal social responding, being more interested in interacting with other people, more eye contact and more conversation, said Kevin Pelphrey, of Yale University.
Autism is a developmental disorder that more than one in 100 people have. The condition affects people in different ways, but leads to difficulties in social interaction and communication. So far, there is no established treatment for the social problems caused by autism.
Researchers at Yale have studied the brain chemical oxytocin as a possible treatment for the social problems caused by autism because it plays an important role in bonding and trust. Results have been mixed, though: one recent study found no significant benefit for young people given the chemical over several days. But Pelphrey said oxytocin might help the brain learn from social interactions; it would work best when used with therapies that encourage people with autism to interact more socially, he said.
The scientists scanned the brains of 17 young people aged eight to 16 with autism while they looked at images of cars or the eyes of people expressing different emotions. The scans were given 45 minutes after the young people inhaled a placebo or oxytocin through a nasal spray.
The scans showed that the reward circuits in the childrens brains behaved more normally after a dose of oxytocin: that is, they were more active when the person was looking at faces and less active when looking at the inanimate cars. The study appears in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
The study suggests that oxytocin might treat something for which we dont have a treatment in autism, and thats the core social motivation, said Pelphrey. He warned that it was too early to use oxytocin as a treatment for the social difficulties caused by autism and said people should not buy oxytocin online. We dont want them trying oxytocin at home. Its impossible to say what they are buying. We are nowhere near thinking this is a ready treatment. It needs more follow-up, he said. This is an important new study in identifying changes in brain activity in key areas of the brain, said Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University.
A surprising finding, however, is that oxytocin nasal spray did not change performance in social recognition tasks. And, it is also not yet clear if oxytocin only has benefits for people with autism or has any unwanted side effects. Finally, oxytocin effects only last about 45 minutes, so there may be practical considerations as to whether this could be used as a treatment.
From a scientific perspective, this study has a lot of evidence from animal and human work to justify serious attention, but more research is needed. Doctors should be cautious about the potential of this hormone until we know much more about its benefits and risks, in much larger studies. Said Simon Baron-Cohen.
Uta Frith, who studies autism at University College London, said: According to this study, oxytocin may have the effect of making faces more interesting. Disappointingly, this effect is seen only in brain activity and not in behaviour. Demonstrating an effect on behaviour will be critical if nasal spray treatment is to be of any value. | 1int
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Intermediate
James Bond films are one of the worlds longest running and most successful film series, with 23 movies and more than $6bn earned at box offices around the world. But James Bond shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, Bond is more popular than ever, after the record-breaking performance of Skyfall, which became the biggest ever film at the UK box office in 2012, earning a total of $1.1bn.
For this reason, there was a lot of interest surrounding the announcement of a few more details about the 24th Bond film especially its official title, Spectre. The number one question is: can Spectre repeat Skyfalls success?
Charles Gant, film editor for Heat magazine, says it is heading in the right direction. Skyfall was a brilliant strategic move, he says. It was simultaneously modern and retro. It appealed to fans of Daniel Craig and it also engaged the older, more nostalgic Bond fans, who may have lost interest over the previous few films. With the new title, he adds, it is certain to be a success.
It seems that Eon Productions, the company originally founded in 1961 to make Dr No and that is behind all the official Bonds, is doing all it can to ensure another success they are installing the key creative talent behind Skyfall on Spectre. Daniel Craig will play Bond at least until film 25 and the same writers have produced the script.
But its getting Sam Mendes as director again that gives Bond fans the most hope. A director mainly known for character studies such as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, Mendes has taken the Bond series to new heights. Gant says: Mendes managed to engage with both the modern and the traditional Bond audience, and he also attracted top actors like Ralph Fiennes. Actors like Fiennes will only agree to be in a film if they like the director.
Though the Bond series was not in trouble before Mendess arrival and Craigs there was a certain amount of staleness towards the end of Pierce Brosnans time as Bond. The series had survived the drying up of original Bond stories to adapt, and the movies were no longer anything like the Ian Fleming originals, but they were lacking dynamism.
This cycle, however, was nothing new: the history of the Bond series has been one of ebb and flow, revolving most obviously around the lead actor: first, Sean Connery; then, successively, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Brosnan and, now, Craig. Each new Bond has been a response to the state of the series, and some have been more successful than others.
Lazenby only lasted a single film and Daltons two efforts, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, were during a period in the late 80s when the 007 movie was eclipsed by more aggressive, slick Hollywood action movies. According to Gant, the period of Roger Moores last films, and the Dalton period, didnt really excite audiences. Brosnan was more successful commercially, but Craig has taken Bond to new levels. On the other hand, the early Bonds were incredibly commercial films, sexy and exciting, and there was very little like them.
Skyfall made more money than all the other Bond films. However, the performance of some of the 1960s films was almost as brilliant by comparison. If you adjust the figures for inflation, the 1965 release, Thunderball, is only just below Skyfall, while Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice both did better than the other Craig films (and the 70s Bonds, The Spy Who Loved Me and Live and Let Die, did better, too). By this calculation, Licence to Kill is the worst-performing of all Bonds, with Moores final film, A View to a Kill, the second least successful.
Nevertheless, the Bond brand has remained very powerful over the years and Eon has had to fight off attempts by rival companies to capitalize on the popularity of the series. Through a quirk of rights ownership, adaptations of Casino Royale (in 1967) and Thunderball (as Never Say Never Again, in 1983) were released in competition with Eon productions. After legal disputes that continued for many years, Eon now has full control of both books.
Martin Campbell was another experienced British director and he was able to plan one of the most elaborate stunts in Bond history. In the famous opening scene of Goldeneye (released in 1995), Bond freefalls into a pilotless light aeroplane. This scene really helped modernize the series and increase its popularity. Moreover, a whole new generation was reached through a hugely successful Goldeneye video-game spin-off, which made a significant contribution to perceptions that the Bond film was no longer stale and old-fashioned. | 1int
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Intermediate
Benjamin Carle is 96.9% made in France, including even his underpants and socks. Unfortunately, six Ikea forks, a Chinese guitar and unsourced wall paint stopped him being declared a 100% economic patriot, but nobody is perfect.
Carle, 26, decided, in 2013, to see if it was possible to live using only French-made products for ten months as part of a television documentary.
He got the idea after the Minister for Economic Renewal, Arnaud Montebourg, asked the French people to buy French products to save the countrys industrial production sector.
For the experiment, Carle had to give up his smartphone, television, refrigerator (all made in China); his glasses (Italian); his underpants (Moroccan); morning coffee (Guatemalan) and his favourite David Bowie music (British).
Fortunately, his girlfriend, Anas, and cat, Loon, are both French.
Politicians say all sorts of things. I wanted to see if it was possible to do what the minister was asking us to do, Carle said.
He had just three rules: eat only food produced in France, remove any contact with foreign-made goods and do so on 1,800 a month (above the minimum wage of 1,430 to cover the extra expense of living in Paris).
The journalist was shocked to find out, at the start of the experiment, that only 4.5% of the contents of his flat were made in France and that the rest would have to go, including the lightbulbs (China) and green beans (Kenya).
Left without a refrigerator (none are made in France), he was forced to chill his food on the window ledge.
His foreign-made clothes, including his underwear, were replaced with more expensive alternatives: French-produced underpants (26), socks (9), polo shirt (75), espadrille sandals (26), but no jeans because none are produced in France.
During the experiment, Carle hunted in supermarkets for 100% French-made products, learned to cook seasonal fruit and vegetables grown in France, proudly brushed his teeth with a toothbrush made in France and hand-washed his underwear until he found a French-made washing machine (which opened at the top and so would not fit under the kitchen counter).
Going out with friends was a problem no American films, no Belgian beer, no sushi or pizza. Staying home, with no sofa for the first few months and no television, meant listening to French singer Michel Sardou and reading French novels. French wine was, of course, allowed and French-Canadian singer Cline Dion, but not French bands such as Daft Punk, who sing in English.
Unable to use his British-made bicycle or even a French car, because he discovered that the only affordable Peugeot, Renault and Citron models are mostly made overseas, he bought an orange Mobylette moped.
The last things to go were the computer, replaced by a Qooq, a recipe tablet that connects slowly to the internet and the iPhone, which he swapped for an old Sagem mobile.
Carle said his aim was to save the French economy. He admits the experiment was part serious and part jest. At one point, he asked a French language expert to check if he should use cool and other English words he was advised to swap it for the nearest French equivalent: chouette.
When he discovered that France makes no refrigerators (apart from wine coolers) or televisions, but makes aeroplane seats and windmills, he sighed and said: Great. Nothing that will fit into my apartment.
At the end of the experiment, Carle took out a bank loan to buy new furniture and clothes. A special auditor declared him 96.9% made in France and Montebourg visited to present him with a medal.
Carles conclusion: Its not entirely possible or even desirable to live 100% made in France, particularly in terms of new technology. But that wasnt the point.
This wasnt about French nationalism or patriotism. It was trying to show that we should reflect about the way we buy and make different choices, and that applies in all countries. If we want to save jobs and industries, wherever we are, we might think about supporting them.
A T-shirt is more expensive in France but I can be sure it has been produced by workers who are correctly paid and have good working conditions. I cannot be sure about a cheaper T-shirt produced in Asia or Morocco. People could do more as consumers.
Carle says he hopes to continue supporting French industry and producers, but not 100%. It is a full-time job just finding the stuff, he said. | 1int
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Intermediate
He is not the first person to express scepticism about Mars One, a private mission that aims to send humans to live on Mars from 2025. But Joseph Roche is different from most critics: hes on the shortlist of astronauts.
Roche, an astrophysicist at Trinity College Dublin who was announced in February as one of the 100 people shortlisted for the mission, has written for the Guardian expressing his doubts about the viability of Mars One.
The selection process, Roche writes, was not rigorous enough to reach the standard of more traditional astronaut selection programmes. He also says the Dutch Mars One team have shown a certain naivety because they believe they can succeed alone in the $6bn mission. He says they should now accept it is very unlikely to happen.
Roche also expressed worries about the way the mission organizers publicized a top-ten list of candidates. The ranking, he said, didnt mean these were the best astronauts. It was based on how many supporter points each had earned.
He says that these points only show how much each supporter has donated to Mars One, for example by buying official merchandise.
The official timeline for the mission says the group plans to send a stationary lander and satellite to Mars in 2018, followed by a rover in 2020 and cargo missions starting in 2022. Humans would start arriving in 2025 and crews of four would be sent every two years to add to the settlement. They would not return to Earth.
In February, a supporter of the project, Gerard t Hooft, a Dutch Nobel laureate in physics, said he did not believe this timetable was realistic. He said: It will take quite a bit longer and be quite a bit more expensive. When they first asked me to be involved, I told them: You have to put a zero after everything.
Roche also said that there were not 200,000 people who applied to be astronauts, as Mars One said; there were only 2,761.
He talked about the selection process in more detail: I have not met anyone from Mars One in person. Initially, there were going to be regional interviews; we would travel there, wed be interviewed and wed be tested over several days. In my mind, that sounded like a proper astronaut selection process.
But, all of a sudden, it changed from being a proper regional interview over several days to being a ten-minute Skype call.
Roche told the Guardian that he did not want to give more interviews because he didnt want to sound negative about the idea of space travel.
He writes: I am passionate about scientific endeavour and that is why the ambitiousness of the Mars One plan appealed to me. Mars One were never likely to overcome the financial and technical barriers during their proposed timeline. But it was nice to hear a new idea that challenges us to think about our own role in the future of space exploration.
He said that being part of the public debate about future missions has been one of the most interesting and enjoyable aspects of his involvement with Mars One. He went on to say that, If a one-way mission to Mars ever became possible, I would always volunteer. For an astrophysicist, that is not a difficult decision to make. But he does not think there will be a one-way mission in his lifetime. | 1int
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Intermediate
Why do it? The elite football referees of the future smile when you ask them this question. This season, criticism of referees has increased so much that some former referees have started to complain about standards. That is quite significant because, when you talk to referees, it is obvious that supporting each other through thick and thin is fundamental.
So why do they do it? Why spend hundreds of hours driving up and down the country? Why enforce rules, some of which inevitably upset people? Why try to climb the ladder until you get the chance to make decisions on television in front of millions of people who scrutinize you and your ability helped by many different camera angles and slow-motion replays?
You might get an answer from the face of Lee Swabey moments after he blows the final whistle of a 21 win for Grimsby over Woking, a match at level 5 of the English league system. He gets what all referees hope for every time they referee a match. Twenty-two handshakes, he explains afterwards, proudly. Symbolically, a full set of handshakes, plus a well done from both managers, represents maximum satisfaction. The buzz, as he calls it, of a game that passes smoothly, is something he loves. I wouldnt spend so much time away from my family if this didnt mean the world to me.
Swabey is one of a group of referees that is highly regarded by the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL). So he knew he was being watched at that match. PGMOLs chief, Mike Riley, was in attendance, along with his colleague Steve Dunn, watching every significant move the officials make.
A few weeks earlier, Riley, Dunn and another former referee, Peter Jones, made their way to another level-5 match to watch another young referee John Brooks. I hope to have the opportunity to get promoted to the Premier League and officiate some of the top games in this country, Brooks says.
Unfortunately, all the PGMOL delegation saw was the way Brooks handled the difficult situation of cancelling the match because of a frozen pitch. It is all part of the experience Brooks needs to acquire before he is trusted with more important games, the different problems that need dealing with often, clubs are very reluctant to have a late postponement, particularly when they have to pay all the staff who have come but will not receive any gate money.
Brooks phoned his coach for advice and made the difficult but correct decision. A little later, the football club secretary arrived with envelopes to pay the officials for their time the match fee at level 5 is 95 so it is clear that these men do not do it for the money.
Brooks, like Swabey, has clear ambitions to progress. He knows that dealing with disappointments is a big part of that. How does he feel watching football on TV when a referee gets vilified? Erm not great, he admits. I do sometimes wish people understood the time and effort we put in. It is very easy to criticize a decision but we do everything to try to get these decisions right. In certain situations, you are going to be unpopular but, if you are uncomfortable with that, you are probably in the wrong job.
The former referees agree that the backup, education and tools that todays referees have is very different from what they experienced in their own days. Riley, as a young referee, bought himself books on psychology and nutrition as there was no information on offer to him at all.
Contrast this with Brooks, who has a coach he can call. They consult weekly, discuss how his games have gone, study footage of key decisions and work out how to improve. He also has the support of a sports psychologist, Liam Slack, for regular guidance and an exercise regime to help him handle the 11km he runs during a game.
Brooks says psychology is vital in his development. One of the things we have talked about is forgetting decisions and moving on, he explains. There may be a big decision to make in the first 30 seconds of the game. Once you have made that, you need to stay focused for the next 89 minutes and not be wondering whether that was correct or worrying about that decision. Liam has taught us some techniques for forgetting that decision. Working with the sports psychologist is really important for mental toughness.
On the subject of technology, the three former referees are unanimous in their support of it. We are all in favour of anything that makes the referees job better and makes them more effective on the pitch, says Riley. Minimizing mistakes is the aim. After all, a bad decision can stick with you for a while. The rest of your life, adds Jones with a chuckle. | 1int
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Intermediate
A mirror that sends heat into cold space has been designed by scientists to replace air-conditioning units that keep buildings cool on Earth.
Researchers believe the mirror could slash the amount of energy used to control air temperatures in business premises and shopping centres because they wont need to use cooling systems.
Around 15% of the energy used by buildings in the USgoesonairconditioningbuttheresearchers say that, in some cases, the mirror could completely offset the need for extra cooling.
In a rooftop comparison in Stanford, California, scientists found that a roof that had been painted black reached 60C more than the air temperature in sunlight and aluminium reached 40C more. However, the mirror was up to 5C cooler than the surrounding air temperature.
If you cover signi cant parts of the roof with this mirror, you can see how much power it can save. You can signi cantly offset the electricity used for air conditioning, said Shanhui Fan, an expert in the study of light at Stanford University, who led the development of the mirror. In some situations, you will be able to completely offset the air conditioning.
Buildings warm up in a number of different ways. Hot-water boilers and cooking areas release heat into their immediate surroundings. In hot countries, warm air comes in through doors and windows. Then, there is visible light and infrared radiation from the sun, which also heat up buildings.
The Stanford mirror was designed to re ect 97% of the visible light that falls on it. But, more importantly, it works as a thermal radiator. When the mirror is warmed up, it releases heat at a speci c wavelength of infrared light that passes easily through the atmosphere and out into space.
To make anything cool, you need what engineers call a heat sink: somewhere to put unwanted heat. The heat sink has to be cooler than the object that needs cooling or it will not do its job. For example, a bucket of ice will cool a bottle of wine because it becomes a sink for heat in the liquid. The Stanford mirror relies on the best heat sink: the universe itself.
The mirror is built from several layers of very thin materials. The rst layer is re ective silver. On top of this are layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium oxide. These layers turn the mirror into a thermal radiator. When silicon dioxide heats up, it radiates the heat as infrared light at a wavelength of around ten micrometres and the heat passes straight out to space. The total thickness of the mirror is around two micrometres or two thousandths of a millimetre.
The cold darkness of the universe can be used as a renewable thermodynamic resource, even during the hottest hours of the day, the scientists write in Nature. In tests, the mirror had a cooling power of 40 watts per square metre at outside temperatures.
Writinginthejournal,Fansaysthatthecostofthe mirrors is between $20 and $70 per square metre. He calculates an annual electricity saving of 100MWh on a three-storey building.
Fan said that the mirror could cool buildings but he said that the mirrors would not slow down global warming. Roof space is only a small portion of the Earths surface so the mirror is not a solution to the problem of global warming. But our mirror will help limit greenhouse gas emissions by reducing electricity consumption, he said.
Im really excited by the potential it has, said Marin Solja__i__, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You could use this on buildings and spend much less money on air conditioning or maybe you wouldnt need it at all. You could put it on top of shopping malls. Im really excited by the potential it has, said Marin Solja__i__, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You could use this on buildings and spend much less money on air conditioning or maybe you wouldnt need it at all. You could put it on top of shopping malls. Im really excited by the potential it has, said Marin Solja__i__, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You could use this on buildings and spend much less money on air conditioning or maybe you wouldnt need it at all. You could put it on top of shopping malls. | 1int
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Intermediate
The Moroccan city of Ouarzazate is used to big productions. It is on the edge of the Sahara Desert and at the centre of the North African countrys Ouallywood lm industry, where scenes from movies such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, The Living Daylights and even Game of Thrones were lmed.
Now the city, known as the door of the desert, is the centre for a complex of four linked solar mega- plants, which, together with hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Moroccos electricity from renewable energy by 2020. The project is a key part of Moroccos ambitions to use its deserts to become a global solar superpower.
When the full complex is complete, it will be the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world. The rst phase, called Noor 1, will be ready in November 2015. The mirror technology it uses is less widespread and more expensive than the photovoltaic panels that you can see on roofs all over the world. But it will have the advantage of being able to continue producing power even after the sun goes down.
The potential for solar power from the desert has been known for decades. In the days after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, the German particle physicist Gerhard Knies calculated that the worlds deserts receive enough energy in a few hours to provide power for all the people in the world for a whole year. But the challenge is to capture that energy and take it to where it is needed.
As engineers nish Noor 1, its 500,000 moon-shaped solar mirrors glitter in the desert. The 800 rows follow the sun across the sky, whirring quietly every few minutes.
When they are nished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will need a space as big as Moroccos capital city, Rabat, and generate 580 mega-watts of electricity, enough to power a million homes.
Moroccos environment minister, Hakima el-Haite, believes that solar energy could have the same effects on the region this century that oil production had in the last century. But the $9bn project was triggered by more immediate concerns, she said.
We import 94% of our energy as fossil fuels from other countries and that has big consequences for our state budget, el-Haite told the Guardian. So, when we heard about the possibilities of solar energy, we thought, Why not?
Solar energy will make up a third of Moroccos renewable energy supply by 2020. Wind and hydro will make up the other two-thirds.
We are very proud of this project, el-Haite said. I think it is the most important solar plant in the world.
Technicians say that the Noor 2 and 3 plants, due to open in 2017, will store energy for up to eight hours this gives the possibility of 24/7 solar energy in the Sahara and the surrounding region.
The rst part of the project is nearly completed and Morocco has bigger international ambitions. We are already involved in transportation lines to cover the full south of Morocco and Mauritania, says Ahmed Baroudi, manager of Societe dInvestissements Energetiques, the national renewable energy investment rm. But he says the projects effects will go further even as far as the Middle East.
Exporting solar energy could have stabilizing effects within and between countries, according to the Moroccan solar energy agency (Masen). Morocco is making plans with Tunisia and energy exports northwards across the Mediterranean are a key goal.
We believe that its possible to export energy to Europe but, rst, we have to build the interconnectors which dont yet exist, said Maha el-Kadiri, a Masen spokeswoman.
In the meantime, Morocco is focused on using solar to meet its own needs. This could one day include water desalination, which is very useful in a country that is having more and more droughts as the climate warms.
About $9bn has been invested in the Noor Complex, much of it from international institutions such as the European Investment Bank and World Bank and supported by Moroccan government guarantees. Energy subsidies from Moroccos King Mohammed VI have stopped the cost from being transferred to normal people.
Over a thousand, mostly Moroccan, workers are still racing to x electric wires, take down scaffolding and insulate steel pipelines. They hurry past in yellow and orange safety vests, working 12-hour shifts beneath the Atlas mountains. They wear hard hats, safety shoes and ear plugs.
Weve done the construction and, now, we will see how these projects look when they start, says Hajar Lakhael, a 25-year-old environment and security manager from Meknes. It is exactly like the preparation for a grand performance.
A global audience will be watching with interest. | 1int
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Intermediate
Music subscription services, including Spotify and Deezer, have broken through the $1bn sales barrier worldwide, as fans choose to pay for music online.
Streaming and subscription revenues rose by more than 50% in 2013 to reach $1.1bn, and sales of recorded music in Europe grew for the rst time in 12 years, according to gures published in March.
While many people still listen for free, a desire for more choice is persuading more music lovers to part with their cash. In a three-year period, the number of paying subscribers rose from 8 million to 28 million, according to the 2014 digital music report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Easily accessible from smartphones and tablets, subscription services are popular with people who want to try out new music without buying a download or a CD. They like this cheap, user-friendly and legal alternative to pirated downloads. It is now clear that music streaming and subscription is a mainstream model for our business, said IFPI Chief Executive, Frances Moore.
The IFPI also said that One Direction were the biggest selling artists of 2013, with 4m physical and digital sales for their Midnight Memories album. Katy Perrys Prism was the best-selling album by a female artist, in sixth place behind Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars and Daft Punk.
Consumer-technology companies are joining the music-streaming trend. Apple has its iTunes Radio and Google its Play Store. Smaller companies like Beats Music are also joining the trend.
In Britain and America, streaming may soon generate more revenue for the music industry than downloads from online stores such as Apples iTunes. Subscription services now account for a third of all digital sales globally, with downloads making up the rest, but the IFPI data shows that the two formats are growing at different rates.
In the US, the percentage of people using subscription services and streaming rose from 19% in 2012 to 23%, while the percentage of people downloading fell from 28% to 27%. In Britain, downloaders remained static at exactly one third, while subscribers grew from 19% to 22%. In Sweden, France and Italy, streaming is already more popular than downloading.
Digital formats now account for 39% of all music sales, or nearly 5.9bn out of 15bn, and, while sales of physical formats, such as CDs and vinyl, declined steeply in 2013, they still contribute just over half the industrys income.
Vinyl continued to make a comeback in some markets. Sales increased by 32% in America and by 101% in the UK in 2013. | 1int
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Intermediate
The customer next to you in the queue looks quite normal. But, instead of a shopping list, you notice shes carrying handwritten notes about the appearance and cleanliness of the store. Shes been timing the speed of the queue on her phone ... and is that a tiny camera lens in her purse? Shes probably a mystery shopper.
There are approximately 50,000 mystery shopping trips carried out every month in the UK, according to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association, and, as more and more spending takes place online, the demand for mystery shoppers is growing. Retailers are becoming increasingly aware that shoppers who are prepared to set foot in a physical store want a service and an experience they cant get online, says Simon Boydell, spokesman for Marketforce, which has more than 300,000 mystery shoppers. Our clients want to measure how well their stores are delivering on that experience.
We assign different store locations to each shopper and rotate them so that they never go back to the same shop within three months, says Jill Spencer of mystery shopping company ABa. Each day, they typically spend up to eight hours visiting ve to ten stores, plus another hour or two ling detailed reports on every aspect of their visit. For that, the mystery shoppers can earn up to 155 a day. They are also reimbursed for their expenses. Mystery shoppers who lm their visits with a hidden camera can earn even more around 300 a day.
Shoppers are usually repaid any money they spend in the stores and may also be allowed to keep the products they buy. Im typically given between 5 and 20 to spend at each store, to assess the service I receive at the till, says mystery shopper Laura. Im always given a scenario, such as buying something from a speci c department or a new product range, but I can often buy whatever I want and keep it.
Like most full-time mystery shoppers, Laura is self-employed. Her income is around 30,000 to 40,000 a year and that doesnt include all the freebies she gets on the job. With the perks, its enough to live on. She nds it satisfying to return to a store she has previously mystery shopped and see standards have improved. I know it must be because of my feedback or why would they pay me to give it? Some of the retailers I shop at win awards for customer service and I think that is down to us mystery shoppers. I feel Im not just doing a service for my company; Im doing a service for all shoppers everywhere.
Its estimated that more than 500,000 people have registered as mystery shoppers in the UK, but just 10% or less manage to get regular work each month. This has led to a dramatic reduction in pay. Once you got a fee, reimbursement for your purchase and mileage, but you now often just receive a contribution towards a purchase, say Val, a 51-year-old former mystery shopper. I worked for 40 different mystery shopping companies for almost 20 years but I gave up entirely three years ago because I had bills to pay and very few assignments paid an acceptable rate.
Nowadays, mystery shopping companies mostly give freebies to incentivize their workers. Marketforce shoppers typically get a couple of pounds for a visit as a token gesture for their time and effort, says Boydell. At the most, well pay 15 to 25 plus reimbursement for, perhaps, a meal for two or a hotel stay. We dont directly employ any shoppers so we dont have to pay them the minimum wage.
Id go on a cruise for nothing, says Laura. But I think mystery shopping companies that pay you a nominal fee to travel to a restaurant and eat a meal are exploiting people. I wont touch those jobs anymore. There are plenty of people, however, that would. Hannah, a 41-year-old lawyer, has done nearly 500 visits for the Mystery Dining Company in her spare time without receiving 9 3 pay or travel expenses. She carries out their most exclusive assignments, enjoying 200 meals at Michelin-starred restaurants and overnight stays at boutique hotels.
But theres no such thing as a free lunch, even if you work for a mystery dining company. Hannah says she typically spends two to four hours after each visit writing detailed reports on everything from the quality of the food to speci c interactions with staff, whom she always needs to be able to name or describe. She has to memorize all these details while eating her meal because she cannot openly write anything down.
Theres lots to remember. Youre expected to give feedback while its fresh, so Ive had to get up at 5am to write a report before work. Its a challenging thing to do; you need to be focused, articulate and detail orientated. | 1int
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Intermediate
Himalayan lakes, spacewalks and the US presidential campaign helped Scott Kelly stay sane during his 340 days in space, the astronaut told journalists after he landed back on Earth from a record-breaking mission. It seemed like I lived there forever, Kelly said. He had been on several previous missions but said that his biggest surprise was simply how long this one felt. Maybe, occasionally, you do go bananas, he said.
Kelly and a Russian colleague, Mikhail Kornienko, spent nearly a year on the International Space Station (ISS) in order to study the effects of weightlessness, radiation and the cramped conditions of space ight on humans. NASA considers this research essential for a future mission to Mars.
Kelly said the length of the mission was its biggest challenge and that he felt much more sore when he returned to gravity than after shorter trips. Kelly and his twin brother, Mark, a retired astronaut, have spent the last year taking physical and mental tests. The tests will continue, to help NASA learn about how the body copes with the severe strains of space ight.
He said the discomfort of returning to gravity took nothing from the sense of wonder he felt after he landed back on Earth. When the Russian capsule opened on to the cool air of Kazakhstan, Kelly said, he smelled a fragrance like a plant was blooming in that area. It was the fresh air mixed with the charred, kind of sweet smell of a spacecraft that had survived re-entry through the atmosphere.
As he left the spacecraft, he said, the importance of the mission began to sink in: 340 days on a 15-year- old space station which is a million pounds, the size of a football eld, the internal volume, some say, of a six-bedroom house. The ISS, he said, is a place that uses the power of the sun and was built with the help of an international team.
There are things were going to discover about our experience in space in the space station that we dont even know now, Kelly said, comparing the research of more than 450 missions there to the work done by computer scientists at NASA in the 1960s and 1970s. He added: The view is great, too.
Kelly made the most of that view he posted spectacular photos on social media of the Earths cities, landscapes, oceans and atmosphere. The Earth is a beautiful planet, he said, describing the beautiful waters around the Bahamas and the rainbow colours of the lakes of the northern Himalayas. He said he would like to visit that region, though he would rst need to learn what country actually owns them. But, mainly, you just notice how thin the atmosphere is, Kelly added. That, together with these large areas of pollution, is kind of alarming.
The astronaut said he could see entire systems of pollution: smoke clouds from wild res that covered parts of the US, sections of Asia with continuous, visible pollution nearly all year round. He said the message we need to save the planet wasnt completely correct: The planet will get better; its us that wont be here because well destroy the environment. The worlds thin shield of atmosphere makes you more of an environmentalist after spending so much time looking down, he said.
Its for us to take care of the air we breathe and the water we drink. And I do believe we have an impact on that and we do have the ability to change it, if we make the decision to. Kelly was very active on social media, which made many people follow him online. But he said he was unaware of it. Instead, he watched the drama of the 2016 US presidential election.
Besides the news, he said, steady work helped keep him sane: I tried to have milestones that were close, like when is the next crew arriving, the next spacewalk, the next science experiment. That made a difference to me it kept my sanity. Being back on Earth with the rest of humanity had not quite sunk in, he added. He recalled how shocked he had been to see a crowd of people after a previous mission. Ill soon start feeling that kind of culture shock, he said.
Kelly predicted that he would not y again with NASA. But I dont think I would ever say Im absolutely, 100% nished, he added, because of the sudden successes of private space ight companies such as SpaceX. They might need a guy like me someday, he said. Maybe, in the next 20 years, youll be able to buy a cheap ticket, just go for a little visit. | 1int
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Intermediate
Scientists have created an atlas of the brain that shows how the meanings of words are arranged across different regions of the brain. The atlas shows in rainbow colours how individual words and their meanings can be grouped together in areas of the brain.
Our goal was to build a giant atlas that shows how one speci c aspect of language is represented in the brain, in this case semantics (the meanings of words), said Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
No single brain region holds one word or concept. A single brain spot is associated with a number of related words. And, each single word lights up many different brain spots. Together, they make up networks that represent the meanings of each word we use: life and love, death and taxes. All light up their own networks.
The atlas was described as a great achievement by one researcher who was not involved in the study. The atlas shows how modern imaging can transform our knowledge of how the brain does some of its most important tasks. If scientists make further advances, the technology could have an enormous impact on medicine and other areas of study.
It is possible that this approach could be used to decode information about what words a person is hearing, reading or possibly even thinking, said Alexander Huth, the main author of the study. One possible use would be a language decoder that could allow people who cant talk, because they have a serious illness, to speak through a computer.
To create the atlas, the scientists recorded peoples brain activity while they listened to stories. Then, they matched the transcripts of the stories with the brain activity data to show how groups of related words produced brain responses in 50,000 to 80,000 pea-sized spots all over the cerebral cortex.
Huth used short, compelling stories. The stories had to be interesting so that the people in the experiment would focus on the words and not drift off. Seven people listened to two hours of stories each. Per person, that was a total of about 25,000 words and more than 3,000 different words as they lay in the scanner.
The atlas shows how words and related terms light up the same regions of the brain. For example, on the left-hand side of the brain, above the ear, is one of the tiny regions that represents the word victim. The same region responds to killed, convicted, murdered and confessed. On the brains right-hand side, near the top of the head, is one of the brain spots activated by family terms: wife, husband, children, parents.
Each word is represented by more than one spot because words often have several meanings. One part of the brain, for example, responds to the word top, as well as other words that describe clothing. But, the word top lights up many other regions. One of them responds to numbers and measurements, another to buildings and places. The scientists have created an interactive website where the public can explore the brain atlas.
Interestingly, the brain atlases were similar for all the people in the experiment. This suggests that their brains organized the meanings of words in the same way. The scientists only scanned ve men and two women, however. All are native English speakers. It is highly possible that people from different backgrounds and cultures will have different semantic brain atlases.
Using the atlas, researchers can now piece together the brain networks that represent very different concepts, from numbers to murder and religion. The idea of murder is represented a lot in the brain, Gallant said.
Uri Hasson, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, said the work was great. He said that many studies just looked at brain activity when a single word or sentence was spoken but Gallants team had shed light on how the brain worked in a real-world scenario. The next step, he said, was to create a more complete and precise semantic brain atlas. In the future, Hasson believes it will be possible to reconstruct the words a person is thinking from their brain activity. The ethical implications are enormous.
Lorraine Tyler, a neuroscientist and head of the Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain at Cambridge University, said the research was a great achievement. But, the brain atlas in its current form does not show small differences in word meanings. This research is Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain at Cambridge University, said the research was a great achievement. But, the brain atlas in its current form does not show small differences in word meanings. This research is 4 Comprehension check ground-breaking but there is still a lot to learn about how semantics is represented in the brain. | 1int
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Intermediate
It is no longer legal to smoke a cigarette inside a bar in the worlds drinking capital, New Orleans, Louisiana. Many other cities have banned indoor smoking but New Orleans is different it attracts tourists with a let the good times roll attitude. An indoor smoking ban in New Orleans could have unique consequences.
Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans city government has begun trying to turn down the volume a bit. With the support of neighbourhood groups, the city has begun policing bars and nightclubs more strictly, while, at the same time, ghting to implement a new noise ordinance.
This is just the wrong time for something like this, complains bar-owner William Walker, who hates the anti-smoking law. Forcing people outside the bar to smoke is going to increase the tension thats already there.
Many of New Orleanss best bars and live music venues are in quiet residential neighbourhoods. This neighbourly coexistence is a big part of what makes New Orleans different and charming. But, recently, this unique social contract has become unacceptable for some people and the fate of New Orleanss musical personality feels at risk.
Martha Wood lives beside a loud bar that hosts live music. I bought the house partly because of the bar so I wont ever complain about the noise, says Wood, who also manages a live-music bar. This bar became one of New Orleanss rst ever bars legally banned from serving drinks to go, after a series of noise issues in 2013 including complaints about the loud smokers outside.
The Maple Leaf club went smoke-free voluntarily in 2014. The same happened at another club where artists had been demanding smoke-free nights. A lot of the performance venues were already starting to show that consideration to performers so I wish the city would have just let that happen instead of forcing the ban into every corner bar that doesnt host music, says Zalia BeVille, manager of the All Ways Lounge.
Luckily, All Ways has an outdoor patio, unlike Lost Love Lounge, whose owner, Geoff Douville, loves the ban hed previously felt forced to live with smoke to keep his bar going. Theres no way I could have banned smoking in my bar without a ban throughout the whole city, says Douville. People act like I have that choice, as a business owner. But, if I make that rule, customers walk down the block to a bar with smoking.
Many small business owners also fear smoke- free revenue loss. Smoker Neil Timms owns an English pub and met the smoking ban before, in England. Back home in England, every pub I knew closed within a year of the smoking ban, remembers Timms of the UKs ban, begun in 2007. He doesnt want his pub to close so hes spending money to build a patio.
But Douville feels the ban could be a great business opportunity. There are lots of people who would enjoy coming out to our bar, with our food, but would never come because they didnt want to smell like smoke for the next seven days were now an option for all those people. Nor does Douville worry about noise complaints: No court is going to say a bar is a nuisance after the city has rati ed a smoking ban that requires you to go outside! he says.
Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, who introduced the ban, disagrees: The responsibility is on the bar-owner to keep their customers respectful outside as well, she says. The owners and bartenders need to tell them to go and have a smoke but be respectful to their communities. The idea that we cant have clean air because it will cause noise problems is ridiculous. We can have clean air without noise problems I think its about communication and creating partnerships between the communities and the businesses.
Cantrell recognizes that the city is different. How is New Orleans different from the rest of the country? New Orleans is known as a place where you can relax and have fun, she says. New Orleans needs to stand up and say We care about our people. The most vulnerable people who are working in smoky conditions are the backbone of our hospitality industry, which drives the economy in the state of Louisiana.
Many were worried that the police would not have time to enforce the ban. So the health department will handle bar warnings and nes. Bar customers are encouraged to ll out a form or call 311 and to include photographs of illegal smoking. For this reason alone, Neil Timms says hell comply with the ban: I dont want someone to be sitting in the corner smoking and someone takes a photo and gets beaten up.
Unworried, Geoff Douville says that hes used to noise complaints by now. You will see: the nosy neighbours who complain about the noise now are going to be the same ones who wanted the smoking ban. In the end, Douville shares Cantrells optimism. Of course theyre going to complain, he accepts. But it doesnt mean theyre going to win. | 1int
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Intermediate
When it comes to climate change, we usually just focus on the rst part of the story, the part about the problem. We usually forget the second part of the story about the many available solutions. These solutions are speeding up recycling, slowing down emissions and providing sustainable alternatives to plastic, air conditioning, smartphones and fast fashion.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met recently in Copenhagen to present its latest report on the impacts and speed of climate change. Climate change is now measured on all continents. Our efforts to lower emissions must be intensi ed to avoid climate change getting out of control. Copenhagen looked at the risks and challenges but also the solutions.
Focusing on what can be done, Sustainia Award, chaired by Arnold Schwarzenegger, celebrated ten leading sustainable solutions used in 84 countries. From food to fashion, energy to transportation, education to health, the awards showed that there is an alternative to the grim-future scenarios we so often read about.
From California, we saw how we can now produce plastics from greenhouse gases that are competitive with normal oil-based plastics in price and quality. From Switzerland, we learned how we can recycle and reuse old clothes and shoes more effectively. And from Canada, we learned how smartphones can make bike-sharing more convenient.
The ten projects each offered unique solutions to sustainability challenges but it was the Nigerian initiative, Wecyclers, that won Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest of jurys vote. It won the Sustainia Award 2014.
Wecyclers allows poor communities to make money on waste in their streets. By using bicycles to collect and recycle waste in Lagos, Wecyclers lets families exchange garbage for consumer goods via an SMS-based point system.
Recycling companies purchase Wecyclers sorted waste and make it into products such as mattresses, pillows and trash bags. Wecyclers is a response to local waste problems, where its estimated that only 40% of the citys rubbish is collected. According to the World Bank, only 46% of municipal waste in Africa is collected. More than 5,000 households are involved and there are plans to extend the initiative to other cities throughout Nigeria.
Solutions to deal with climate change are often hi-tech innovations focused on cutting emissions. However, to successfully solve the variety of challenges, we need variety in our solutions as well. Sustainability is not just about bringing down emissions, it is also a question of using our natural resources more intelligently and creating healthier lives for ourselves. These initiatives might be low-tech in innovation, but they are high-impact when it comes to creating sustainable change for entire communities.
With a wide range of solutions for the wide range of challenges, we must focus more on the important part of the story that creates enthusiasm, momentum and that helps to create positive change. | 1int
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Intermediate
The tranquil sounds of the natural world might be lost to todays generation as people screen out the noises that surround them, a senior US researcher warns.
Rising levels of background noise in some areas threaten to make people oblivious to the uplifting sounds of birdsong, trickling water and trees rustling in the wind. These sounds can often be heard even in urban centres, said Kurt Fristrup, a senior scientist at the US National Park Service.
The problem was made worse by people listening to music through their earphones instead of tuning in to the birds and other sounds of nature that can easily be drowned out by traf c, music and others noises, he said.
This learned deafness is a real problem, Fristrup told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Jose. We are training ourselves to ignore the information coming into our ears.
This gift that we are born with to hear things hundreds of metres away, all these incredible sounds might be lost, he said.
The danger is that we are exposed to noise for so long that we stop listening. We are also losing the ability to engage with the environment in the way we were built to, he added.
For the past ten years, the US National Park Service has recorded sound levels at more than 600 places across the US, including Yosemite in California, Yellowstone and Denali in Alaska. All the places were affected by some form of noise from human activity aircraft, motorbikes, motorboats or tour buses.
Fristrups team combined the sound levels recorded from national parks with similar data from urban settings to create a model of noise levels across the US. They say that noise pollution more than doubles every 30 years.
Its not surprising people are putting on earphones or even noise cancelling headphones to try and create a quieter environment, he said.
As you raise background sound levels, it has the same effect on your hearing as fog would have on your vision. Instead of having this expansive experience of all the sounds around you, you are aware of only a small area around you, he said. Even in our cities, there are birds and things to appreciate in the environment but the ability to hear them is being lost.
People quickly become used to changes in their environments, including rising noise levels, and, over time, Fristrup fears that we will accept far worse environmental conditions than we should and forget how much quieter the world could be. If nding peace and quiet becomes too dif cult, many, many children will grow up without the experience and I think its a very real problem, he said.
The warning came as other scientists reported health bene ts from listening to natural sounds. Speaking at the same meeting, Derrick Taff, a social scientist at Pennsylvania State University, described preliminary experiments which suggest that listening to recordings from national parks, of waterfalls, birdsong and wind, helped people recover from stressful events.
In one experiment, Taff told people who visited his lab to give an unplanned talk that would be judged by researchers standing behind a one-way mirror. Measurements of their heart rate and the stress hormone, cortisol, before and after the speech found that people calmed down faster when they listened to nature recordings than when the same soundtracks also contained noises from road traf c, aeroplanes and even normal conversation.
We know that natural sounds are very important to people. They are some of the main reasons people visit protected areas. They want to hear the natural quiet, the birdsong, and the wind and water, Taff said. We may be losing this as people are listening to their iPods all the time. My advice is to go to your protected areas and experience what you are missing.
Why natural sounds might be calming to people is unclear but Fristrup thinks that, over millions of years of evolution, we may have come to associate the more tranquil sounds of the natural world with safety. I suspect theres something about these sounds that reminds our brains of a place thats safe, he said. | 1int
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Intermediate
Governments across Europe dream of nding a magic solution to rising unemployment. But, in the hardest-hit parts of the EU, unemployment continues to rise and the talk does little to reduce the number of people without work.
Now, in a corner of Italy, one mayor thinks he has found an answer to his towns serious lack of work. Valter Piscedda, the mayor of Elmas, a small town near Sardinias capital, Cagliari, wants to pay residents to leave. The council will pay for ten unemployed locals to take intensive English lessons, get on a cheap ight and look for jobs elsewhere in Europe.
This idea is a result of common sense and experience, the mayor told the Guardian. Over the past year and a half especially in the past few months I have been seeing young people, almost every day, who are despairing about their search for work. Some ask for help in nding it here. Others have tried everything and are so discouraged that they no longer want to stay and wait. And they want to go and gain work experience abroad; life experience, too.
So, my idea was this: put everything in place so that those who want to gain experience abroad are able to, he said.
As the national economy continues to falter, Sardinia, along with much of southern and central Italy, is struggling with high unemployment. Unemployment was at 17.7% in the second quarter of 2014, according to Italys National Institute of Statistics, Istat. More than 54% of people under 25 are out of work.
For the Adesso Parto (Now Im leaving) programme, Elmass council will give 12,000 on a rst-come, rst-served basis to applicants aged between 18 and 50. They just have to be out of work and have lived in the town for three years. They do not have to be university educated and their annual income must be no more than 15,000.
The idea of encouraging people to leave is sensitive at a time when huge numbers of Italians many of them bright young graduates are leaving their country every year. But Piscedda, who belongs to the Democratic Party of the Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, believes that the people he is sending away might return and give me back 100 times what they were given. More importantly, he wants the scheme to help those most in need.
Its a programme for those with no other resource; its the last-chance saloon. It will allow them the dignity of not having to ask a friend for money or put burdens on families, he said.
Earlier in 2014, he added, the council launched a scheme for businesses they were given nancial incentives to hire young workers from Elmas. We advertised 20 of these positions, he said. We got 120 applications.
In Elmas, the scheme has got mixed reactions. The reality is that there is little work here, said Alessandro Macis. The opportunity to go abroad to learn about the workplace and experience other cultures can be very worthwhile. The son of a friend of mine who didnt study much is in London and hes really nding his way. He started as a waiter. Now, hes a cook and hes learning English.
Others were perplexed. I heard about it but I thought it was strange. If you have that money to pay for people to go away, why dont you use that money to keep them here? said Consuelo Melis, who works behind the bar in a local cafe. On Twitter, one of many reactions was disbelief. The states admission of defeat, commented Marco Patavino. Institutions are raising the white ag, remarked Carlo Mazzaggio.
Piscedda, however, says of his online critics: Probably, they are people that arent in need ... Every day, I deal with peoples problems and I have to do something to try to solve them. These people, if they had an alternative, they wouldnt be asking for help.
The work I can create, as mayor, is temporary. I can have a piazza cleaned. I can have it cleaned again. I can have the streets cleaned. But these are all temporary things that give nothing beyond that little bit of money for a few months. I want to go beyond that. | 1int
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Intermediate
Robert Mys_ajek stops. Between two paw prints on a muddy mountain track, the scientist nds what he is looking for. Droppings! he says happily. It is so rare to see a wolf that seeing faeces makes it a good day.
But it is getting easier. There are now about 1,500 wolves in Poland. The number has doubled in 15 years. Wolves are along with the brown bear, the lynx and the wolverine Europes last large predator carnivores. Conservationists from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands are coming here to nd out how the country has saved wolves who are criticized even in fairy tales.
Bits of bone and hair stick out from the black faeces. It ate a red deer, says Mys_ajek, the University of Warsaw biologist. In my lab, I can tell you all about this wolf not only its diet but its gender, sexual habits, age, state of health and family connections.
DNA tests have shown that Polish wolves are travellers. One wolf reached the Netherlands, where unfortunately it was hit by a car. They have a very big range. They need space. The average territory required by a Polish pack is 250 square kilometres, says Mys_ajek.
Can we ever reintroduce wolves to Scotland? asks student Alex Entwisle, 23, on a study trip to southern Poland from the UK. He and other animal science students have spent the day looking for droppings and paw prints in the Beskidy mountains of the Polish Carpathians.
Their hot discussion topic is whether to reintroduce wolves to the British Isles for the rst time since the 18th century.
Mys_ajek toured the Scottish Highlands in 2015 for the Wolves and Humans Foundation and answered questions from villagers about the Polish experience. The big difference between Scotland and Poland is that we eat pork. We do not have many sheep here.
The similarity is that we have a lot of animals 300,000 red deer and more than 800,000 roe deer. In Poland, we also have too many wild boar about 200,000 and these are eating and destroying farmers cereal crops. Here, wolves are part of the solution, he says.
The scientist says wolves can move up to 30 kilometres during a single hunt. The Beskidy pack is a strong unit, eight or nine animals. This year, we have recorded ve cubs, two young wolves and two adults.
We track them using motion cameras in the forest and by following their prints in the mud and snow. In each family group, only one pair of adults has cubs each year. All pack members care for the young.
Mys_ajek, the son of a shepherd, doesnt understand wolves bad reputation. Why did we have to have the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, with its big bad wolf?
He is fascinated by these aloof animals who remained in the wild 33,000 years ago when others decided on a much more comfortable life as domestic dogs.
Mys_ajek says only scienti c arguments the need to regenerate forests and control the wild animal population can save Europes wild carnivores, especially the unpopular wolf. Natural predators balance the ecosystem. They reduce the number of herbivores, which allows trees to grow tall for birds to nest in.
The ban on wolf hunting in the western Carpathians became law in 1995 and in the whole of Poland in 1998. There are now wolf packs in nearly all the countrys major forests where the wolves coexist with humans.
The Polish government pays compensation for farm animals killed by wolves. Mys_ajek advises farmers to put up electric fences. He has helped bring back the use of two deterrents that, for reasons no one understands, wolves nd very scary: strings of small red ags (that you hang around sheep pens) and the Tatra Mountain Sheepdog.
Polands wolves have been helped by the countrys late infrastructure development. In 1989, when the communists left power, Poland had only one motorway. Major road projects began after Poland joined the European Union in 2004 and they are required to consider wild animals.
Attitudes have also changed. For many years, hunting was cultural. In 1975, there were fewer than 100 wolves in Poland. From the 1950s, hunting wolves was encouraged by the authorities. They paid a reward for killing a wolf worth a months salary. It was carnage.
Mys_ajek says that Polish wolves are much safer now but they are not completely safe. Packs of wolves cross country borders and hunting still happens in neighbouring Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Slovakia.
He says Polands new government, elected in October 2015, doesnt like wolves. The Environment Minister, Jan Szyszko, is a hunter. There are 120,000 licensed hunters in Poland and they have a lot of in uence.
Being a wolf advocate is not easy. You cant argue to the politicians that wolves are a big tourist attraction. Most tourists want to see the animals but wolves stay away from humans. They have a very sensitive sense of smell.
The 12 British animal science students leave the Polish Carpathians without seeing a wolf. Entwisle does not believe that Scotland will ever be able to match Polands success.
It would be amazing for the environment to have wolves back in Scotland because of the problem of too many deer. But it would just not be possible because of the roads and sheep.
There would be problems with farmers, too. In Britain, we like predators to be far away and to watch them on television, said Entwisle. | 1int
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Intermediate
Organic food has more of the antioxidants linked to better health than regular food, and lower levels of toxic metals and pesticides, according to the most comprehensive scienti c analysis so far. The international team behind the work suggests that switching to organic fruit and vegetables could give the same bene ts as adding one or two portions of the recommended ve a day fruit and vegetables.
The team, led by Professor Carlo Leifert, concludes that there are statistically signi cant differences, with a range of antioxidants being substantially higher between 19% and 69% in organic food. It is the rst study to demonstrate clear differences between organic and conventional fruits, vegetables and cereals.
The researchers say the increased levels of antioxidants are equivalent to one to two of the ve portions of fruits and vegetables recommended to be consumed daily and would therefore be signi cant in terms of human nutrition.
The ndings will add to the controversy over organic food and whether it is better for people. Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition at Kings College London, said the research did show some differences. But the question is are they within natural variation? And are they nutritionally relevant? I am not convinced. He added, Leifert has had a lot of disagreements with a lot of people. He also said that research showed organic cereals have less protein than conventional crops.
The results of the research are based on an analysis of 343 studies from around the world more than ever before which examine differences between organic and conventional fruit, vegetables and cereals. The important thing about this research is that it shatters the myth that how we farm does not affect the quality of the food we eat, said Helen Browning, chief executive of the Soil Association, which campaigns for organic farming.
Leifert and his colleagues conclude that many antioxidants have previously been linked to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and certain cancers. The researchers also found much higher levels of cadmium, a toxic metal, in conventional crops. Pesticide residues were found on conventional crops four times more often than on organic food.
The research is certain to be criticized: the inclusion of so many studies in the analysis could mean poor-quality work makes the results unreliable. Also, the higher levels of cadmium and pesticides in conventional produce were still far below recommended limits. But, the researchers say cadmium accumulates over time in the body and that some people may wish to avoid this, and that pesticide limits are set individually, not for the cocktail of chemicals used on crops.
A further criticism of the research is that the differences seen may result from different climates, soil types and crop varieties, and not from organic farming. The greatest criticism, however, will be over the suggestions of possible health bene ts. The most recent major analysis, which included 223 studies in 2012, found little evidence. The published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are signi cantly more nutritious than conventional foods, it found.
This was also the conclusion of earlier, smaller studies published in 2009 in a scienti c journal and by the UK Food Standards Agency. The 2012 study did note that eating organic food might help people avoid pesticide residues. Sanders said he was not persuaded by the new work. You are not going to be healthier if you eat organic food, he said. What is most important is what you eat, not whether its organic or conventional. Its whether you eat fruit and vegetables at all.
Opinion polls show healthy eating (55%) and avoiding chemical residues (53%) are key reasons given by shoppers for buying organic produce. But, many also say care for the environment (44%) and animal welfare (31%) are important, and also taste (35%). Browning said: This research con rms what people think about organic food. In other countries, there have, for a long time, been much higher levels of support and acceptance of the bene ts of organic food and farming. We hope these ndings will bring the UK into line with the rest of Europe. | 1int
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Intermediate
To a traditional navigator like Tua Pittman from Raratonga in the Cook Islands, a canoe is much more than just a means of transport. The canoe is our island, the crew members are the community and the navigator is the leader, Pittman says. He continues, On a canoe, you are not just going from one destination to another using the stars, the moon, the sun and the birds. Navigation is using the philosophies of being a leader to show your crew members the light of life.
It has been a busy week for the crews of four sailing canoes since arriving in Sydney for the start of the World Parks Congress. Tuas journey began at the Cook Islands on 25 September. The islanders sailed to Samoa, then Fiji, Vanuatu and onto the Gold Coast, before sailing south to Sydney. Around 100 crew members were involved in the voyage and they aimed to travel using only traditional navigation techniques. Unfortunately, said Tua, the crews had to rely on modern navigation equipment at times to reach Australia in time for the Congress.
The of cial title of the expedition is the Mua Voyage. It is a partnership between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Oceania Regional Of ce and ve Paci c Island countries: Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and Fiji. The main goal of the 6,000-nautical-mile (11,000km) trip was to deliver a special message to the World Parks Congress.
The message said: We see the signs of overexploitation. We no longer see the sh and other marine creatures in the size, diversity or abundance of the past. We witness the change as foreign shing eets take our resources. Our coral reefs, the greatest in the world and our spawning grounds are disappearing. Our ocean is vast but not limitless. Growing global populations and unsustainable development are reducing the ability of our ocean to sustain life.
The Paci c Islanders have put a lot of effort into their urgent message to the delegates of the Congress. But, despite this, the Congress has spent much of its time trying to set a revised target for the amount of the ocean that needs to be protected in marine sanctuaries. According to the IUCN, in 2013, the amount of the worlds oceans in marine protected areas was not even three per cent and less than one per cent of that is no take (no shing). This was despite a target of 20-30% no-take areas set by the last World Parks Congress in 2003.
Marine scientist Professor Callum Roberts was one of the scientists who helped set the 20-30% target in 2003. But he said it was not enough. The IUCN should now lift its target from 30 to 33%. New research shows that we need to raise the 30% target. Any reduction in efforts at this stage and moment in history would be disastrous for our oceans.
After dif cult negotiations, the World Parks Congress delegates passed a motion that will dramatically change the goals for global marine management. Instead of the 20-30% target, the IUCN now says that each marine habitat should include strictly protected areas of at least 30%. These areas should address both biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Tua Pittman was delighted with the news that a strong resolution on the planets oceans had passed the Congress. Its a huge reward for all the effort that we made to be here and to be heard. To hear they made that resolution is fantastic. Its a step in the right direction.
He said he was 55 and, in his lifetime, he was already beginning to see that it was much harder to catch sh on the open ocean. He also said that pollution was getting worse, particularly as the canoes approached big cities such as Sydney. And climate change is already beginning to have a serious effect on Paci c Islanders. The decisions of the big countries impact on the small countries twice, three times, four times more than they impact on developed, large nations.
The Mua Voyage had been a massive logistical undertaking, said Tua. Years of preparation and navigational planning went into such a trip and it was critical to the voyagers that the world listened to their message and acted. He said that the leaders of wealthy countries need to start to think more like traditional navigators who recognize that their boats are just specks in an enormous sea. Most importantly, and spoken like a true navigator, Tua says politicians must seek a different route. The world needs to nd a different path. | 1int
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Intermediate
Angry waiters are asking for public support in a battle to keep their tips. PizzaExpress branches are to be targeted by protesters, in an attempt to get the restaurant chain to stop taking a proportion of tips for staff that have been paid on credit and debit cards. Campaigners have also started an online petition in the hope that restaurant-goers will support their demands.
PizzaExpress keeps, as an admin fee, 8p out of every 1 paid when tips are given by card. This is a policy that has made some employees angry. The chain, which has 430 branches around the UK and is particularly popular with families, makes around 1m a year from the practice, according to the union Unite.
We believe this 8% fee is unfair and that, if the chain values its staff, it should be paying them the total tips they are given by customers, said Chantal Chegrinec of Unite. We are starting with PizzaExpress but they are not the only ones and we will turn our attention to other companies after this.
The protests are being organized by local branches of Unite. The rst is taking place at the British Museum branch of PizzaExpress in London. The union has also written to the restaurant chains CEO. Unite began the campaign following a survey of its PizzaExpress members after the chain was sold to a Chinese company in 2014. One of the top issues was the 8% deduction from their tips.
One disgruntled PizzaExpress employee, who wants to remain anonymous, said that the admin fee was costing her 3 a night. I have worked at PizzaExpress for 15 years, she said in a letter to Unite. After all this time, Im still only paid the national minimum wage of 6.50 an hour. So you see my colleagues and I are very reliant on customer tips to top up our low wages. I work hard and am good at my job but, when PizzaExpress thinks it can get away with taking a percentage of our hard-earned tips left on a card, I get upset.
Ask and Zizzi, two other restaurant chains, also deduct 8% of the tips paid by card. But other chains deduct even more. Cafe_ Rouge, Bella Italia and Belgo deduct 10%; so do Strada and Giraffe.
A spokesperson for PizzaExpress said that its admin charge was to cover the cost of running a tronc a pay arrangement used to distribute tips among staff. We made big efforts to set up this tronc system, which is run by staff. They independently decide how tips made by electronic card payment are distributed between the restaurant teams; it is a system run by employees for the employees, she said.
The chain, which sells 29m pizzas a year in its UK restaurants, denied that it pro ts from the admin fee. But other restaurant groups do not deduct an admin fee from tips. Wagamama, Pizza Hut and TGI Friday all take nothing. Frankie & Bennys, Chiquitos and Garfunkels used to charge 10% but they stopped doing this several years ago.
Unite recently targeted ten PizzaExpress restaurants in south London they distributed lea ets to customers who were shocked and disgusted by the practice. PizzaExpress says the charge is mentioned in small print at the bottom of its menus. But the employee who wrote to Unite said that, when she mentioned the charge to customers, they were always surprised. Most customers would then pay the tip in cash. Almost 6,000 people have signed Unites online petition.
One waiter, who doesnt work for PizzaExpress but has worked for 11 years for another restaurant chain, said that at least a third of his income is from tips. He doesnt want to be identi ed because he is scared there will be reprisals. I work in a busy London branch and, on an average night, I serve 150 people and earn 40 to 50 in tips, he says. That might sound like a lot but that money is crucial to me because my basic pay is only 6.50 an hour.
Conservative MP Andrew Percy has asked for a change in the law that would give restaurant staff more control over tips. He said he plans to raise the issue in parliament. | 1int
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Intermediate
According to a new scientific study, temperature rises caused by uncontrolled global warming could be at the high end of current estimates. The scientist who led the research said that, unless emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced, the planet will heat up by a minimum of 4C by 2100. This is twice the level the worlds governments consider to be dangerous.
The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, which means less sunlight is reflected back into space. This forces temperatures up even higher. The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery in the study of future climate change.
Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who led the new work, said that the study broke new ground in two ways. First, it identified what controls the cloud changes and, second, it rejected the lowest estimates of future global warming and favoured the higher and more damaging estimates.
4C would be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous, Sherwood said. For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet, with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.
The research reduces the uncertainty about how much warming is caused by rises in carbon emissions, according to scientists commenting on the study, published in the journal Nature. Experts at Japans National Institute for Environmental Studies said the explanation of how fewer clouds form as the world warms was convincing and agreed that this indicated future climate change would be greater than expected.
Scientists measure the sensitivity of the Earths climate to greenhouse gases by estimating the temperature rise that would be caused by a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere compared with pre-industrial levels which is likely to happen within 50 years. For two decades, those estimates have run from 1.5C to 5C: wide range. The new research narrowed that range down to between 3C and 5C, by closely examining the biggest cause of uncertainty: clouds.
Computer climate models are the only tool researchers have to predict future temperatures and it was important to make sure that the way clouds are formed was represented accurately in those models. When water evaporates from the oceans, the vapour can rise over nine miles to form rain clouds that reflect sunlight; or, it may rise just a few miles and drift back down without forming clouds. In reality, both processes happen and climate models that included the second possibility predicted significantly higher future temperatures than models that only included the nine-mile-high clouds.
Climate sceptics like to criticize climate models for getting things wrong and we are the first to admit they are not perfect, said Sherwood. But what we are finding is that the mistakes are being made by the models that predict less warming, not those that predict more. He added: Sceptics may also point to the hiatus of temperatures since the end of the 20th century, but there is increasing evidence that this hiatus is not seen in other measures of the climate system and is almost certainly temporary.
Global average air temperatures have increased quite slowly since a high point in 1998, which was caused by the ocean phenomenon El Nin_o. But, observations show that heat is continuing to be trapped in increasing amounts by greenhouse gases, with over 90% disappearing into the oceans. Furthermore, a study in November 2013 suggested the pause may be mainly an illusion a result of the lack of temperature readings from polar regions, where warming is greatest.
Sherwood accepts his teams work on the role of clouds cannot definitely rule out that future temperature rises will be at the lower end of projections. But, for that to be the case, there would need to be some major missing ingredient for which there is currently no evidence. He added that a 4C rise in global average temperatures would have a serious impact on the world and the economies of many countries if emissions were not reduced. | 1int
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Intermediate
A new report has warned that up to a billion people will remain in extreme poverty by 2030 unless countries confront the social, economic and cultural forces that keep them in poverty. The report by the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network says that many people may rise above the poverty line of $1.25 a day, but slip back again when they experience problems such as drought or illness and insecurity or con ict.
The report found that, in parts of rural Kenya and in South Africa, 30 to 40% of people who escaped from poverty fell back again, rising to 60% in some areas of Ethiopia between 1999 and 2009. Even in successful countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, the proportion was 20%.
Individual examples show how easy it is for people to slip back into poverty. Amin, from rural Bangladesh, has seen his livelihood gradually decline, due to his own and his wifes illnesses, the cost of his sons marriage, the death of his father and loss of goods such as shing nets. Lovemore, from Zimbabwe, has become one of the poorest people in his village. He recently lost his job due to bad health and had to take in his ve grandchildren after the death of his daughters.
We need to ensure that people who are lifted out of poverty remain above the poverty line permanently. Too many families are slipping back into poverty because they struggle to recover from personal or bigger setbacks. Governments shouldnt assume that, just because somebodys income reaches $1.25, that means job done, said Andrew Shepherd, lead author of the report.
A UN high-level panel said it was possible to achieve the goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. The report, however, argues that more of the same will not get to zero. Despite a drop in extreme poverty from 1.9bn in 1990 to 1.2bn in 2010, the report says that progress in the next 15 years will be much harder. The big gains in China are unlikely to be matched by similar progress elsewhere, while climate-related shocks and deep poverty in parts of sub-Saharan Africa will slow down progress.
The report says the focus should be on the chronically poor those who are poor for many years or their entire lives and on stopping the descent into poverty. Governments have been quite good at moving people over the poverty line because that is relatively easy. But they have shied away from the more dif cult job of trying to solve chronic poverty, said Shepherd.
The report says progress on poverty reduction has had less of an impact on the chronically poor than on those who were already closer to the poverty line. It will not be possible to get to zero unless development policies focus on the chronically poor, it adds. The report suggests three policies, all of which require massive global investment.
The rst is social assistance to bring the poorest people closer to a decent standard of living. The second is education, from early childhood to the start of work, to enable people to escape and stay out of poverty. The third is economic growth policies that ensure that the bene ts of increasing national prosperity reach the very poorest people.
All this will cost money and the report says one obvious implication is that countries will need greater tax revenues. Aid will also be needed for the start-up costs for social assistance, universal health coverage and to nance education, including scholarships for the poorest children. There remains a huge role for aid in the next 20 years, as many developing countries spend less than $500 on each of their citizens a year. Even Nigeria, with its oil wealth, spends only $650 per person, Shepherd said.
With the current crises in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, the report says it is essential that governments try to reduce the risk of con ict and to create peace.
The report also argues that, if the inequalities which affect the poorest people such as access to land, labour markets and the power relationships between men and women are addressed, this would tackle two goals at the same time: reducing chronic poverty and inequality.
The authors urge governments to develop an inclusive national development plan and to work with civil society to ensure that the poorest people are represented politically as well as trying to stop dif cult social norms, such as dowries and witchcraft, that contribute to extreme poverty: This often means challenging parts of the status quo. | 1int
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Intermediate
After being told again that the beer she wanted would be too dark and too strong for you have something sweeter, Rebecka Singerer was really annoyed.
No, I dont want a fruit beer. Women can drink whatever they want, she says.
Now Singerer, a childminder, has joined FemAle, a group of like-minded drinkers in Gothenburg, to make and sell Swedens rst beer made by women.
We Can Do It, a bottled pale ale, has just gone on sale in stores across Sweden. Its label is similar to Rosie the Riveter, the creation of a US Second World War propaganda campaign that became a symbol of womens power at work.
The groups founder is Elin Carlsson, 25, who paints cars at the Volvo factory outside the city. We Can Do It is not a female beer but a beer brewed by women that anyone can drink, she says. Its nothing to do with feminism; its about equality we wanted to show we can do it.
FemAle is up against decades of prejudice in the beer world. Carlsberg and other big brewers have spent millions in recent years trying to sell beer to women, attempting to appeal to what the companies believe women want. Carlsbergs Eve and Copenhagen beers, Fosters Radler and Coorss Animee were some of the lighter, avoured and even bloat-resistant beers that were unsuccessful.
FemAles approach is different. They have women-only tastings that allow potential customers to experiment with avours and styles of beer that they may not normally try. This education process is the way to get more girls into the beer world, the group says. Bring your mother, sister, girlfriend, aunt and grandmother so we all can learn more about beer.
The idea for FemAle came after the women kept seeing each other at beer festivals.
We Can Do It was the brainchild of Felicia Nordstro_m, a bar worker who says she was fed up with male beer snobs telling her: What do you know about beer, sweetie? She talked to FemAle, and they teamed up with Ocean, a local independent micro-brewery. One weekend they came up with the recipe and the next weekend they brewed 1,600 litres.
This is not a beer that is aimed at women its our hoppiest brew, says Thomas Bingebo, the head brewer at Ocean. When the big breweries target women, it usually fails. This is something completely different.
The rstbottlesofWeCanDoItweresoldout almost before they were brewed. FemAle has already been approached by other breweries who want to brew new beers with them.
Women choose a glass of wine because they dont know what beer is all about; they dont know what to order, says Carlsson. We open up new worlds to them."
The women are part of a brewing explosion in Sweden, which is developing a passion for craft beers. The standard stor stark (large strong) lager is now almost extinct in Gothenburg, the women say, as pubs and bars replace the big brands with a choice of specialist beers.
All the girls are different there is no typical woman beer-lover. Anyone can do it, says Emma Henriksson, 22, a group member who works in a garden equipment company.
Every pub wants to learn how to reach women, adds Singerer. And Elin has found the way. Its awesome. We feel so proud. | 1int
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Intermediate
From all across Rwanda, and even parts of neighbouring Burundi, people are coming to the southern town of Butare to a little shop called Inzozi Nziza (Sweet Dreams). They come for a taste of the unknown, something most have never tasted before sweet, cold ice cream.
Here, at the central African countrys rst ice- cream parlour, customers can buy scoops in sweet cream, passion fruit, strawberry and pineapple avours. Toppings include fresh fruit, honey, chocolate chips and granola. Black tea and coffee are also on sale.
The shop, which has ice cream, coffee, dreams written on its signs, is taking advantage of local curiosity about the dessert and changing lives in the process, says Inzozi Nzizas manager, Louise Ingabire.
Ice cream is important, she says between mouthfuls of a honey- avoured offering. Some Rwandans like ice cream, but its a new thing. We still have some work to do, to tell others that theyll enjoy it.
The shop can certainly make dreams come true. I didnt have a job before: I just stayed at home. Now, I have a vision for the future. I am making money and I can give some of it to my family, says the 27-year-old.
Butare, which has 89,600 residents and is located 135km south of the capital, Kigali, is the home of the National University of Rwanda. Inzozi Nziza has become a meeting place for tired students looking to treat themselves to something cool and different.
Its something uniting people here, Kalisa Migendo, a 24-year-old agriculture student, says. If you need to go out and talk to a friend, a girl or a boy, you come to Inzozi Nziza for an ice cream.
Most of the ingredients are from local sources and the milk comes from nearby Nyanza. The vanilla beans and cocoa are imported.
Inzozi Nziza was opened by the theatre director Odile Gakire Katese. She met Alexis Miesen and Jennie Dundas, co-founders of Blue Marble Ice Cream in Brooklyn, New York, and formed a partnership to open the shop in 2010.
An ice-cream shop, Katese said, might help to put the human pieces back together by rebuilding spirits, hopes and family traditions, Miesen says.
At the start, Miesen and Dundas owned the shop in partnership with its staff and had shares in the business, which is a cooperative and non-pro t. After 18 months, they transferred their shares to the women, who had by then proved they could run the business.
Ice cream is new to Rwanda. Making the business successful requires a lot of skills and changing peoples way of thinking because selling and eating ice cream is not part of Rwandan culture.
The Butare shop employs nine women, who spend their spare time practising with Ingoma Nshya, Rwandas rst and only female drumming group, which was established by Katese ten years ago.
The musicians are Hutu and Tutsi women. Some are survivors of the 1994 genocide, during which almost a million Tutsis and Hutus were killed. Some members of Ingoma Nshya are widows, some orphans.
Historically, says Ingabire, Rwandan women were forbidden to drum and many people considered the drums too heavy for women to carry. But its something which brings unity.
Ingabires father, two siblings and many cousins were killed in the genocide. When Im drumming, it gives me power because were still alive and survivors, she says.
The ice-cream parlour is in a documentary by lm-makers Rob and Lisa Fruchtman. Sweet Dreams, which tells the story of how the women have made a promising post-genocide future, also includes the female drummers.
The lm has been shown in more than a dozen countries, including the US, UK and several African states. We feel the lm is about resilience, hope, bravery, resourcefulness and the ability to change the course of your own life, says Lisa Fruchtman. | 1int
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Intermediate
Former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation Roger McKinlay says that our use of GPS (global positioning system) technology could be damaging our innate ability to nd our way. If we do not look after them, our natural navigation abilities will deteriorate as we rely more and more on technology, he wrote.
McKinlay believes we need huge investment before navigation systems will be good enough for technologies such as autonomous vehicles to take off. In the meantime, he says, we need better research into systems for navigation. Also, children should be encouraged to learn how to nd their way around by more traditional means. Schools should teach navigation and map reading as life skills, he wrote.
According to Ofcom (the Of ce of Communications), around 66% of adults in the UK owned a smartphone in 2015, up from 39% in 2012 so GPS technology is widely available. But McKinlay, a satellite communication and navigation consultant, believes that we should be careful not to leave our navigational needs to our devices. If we dont practise using our navigation skills, well lose them he wrote.
Not many scienti c studies have explored the issue, but research from 2009 supports his ideas. We looked at a group of current London taxi drivers and a group of London taxi drivers that had been retired for about four years, said neuroscientist Dr Hugo Spiers of University College London, who is an author of the study. The results showed that the retired taxi drivers performed worse on navigation tests than the current taxi drivers. We were able to show that their abilities dropped away if they werent using their knowledge.
Spiers also believes there is a danger in relying on technologies like GPS but he points out that the biggest problem is that technologies can lead drivers into dangerous situations. One of the deaths caused by satnavs (satellite navigation devices) was of a driver whose car plunged into a lake in Spain in 2010. There is a genuine potential danger in relying on a satnav, said Spiers. But the health risk of not using your brain effectively is not known.
The way in which navigational technology is used could also affect its impact on our own abilities, says Spiers. Audio instructions to drivers remove the need to think about navigation, he says, but the use of smartphone apps as digital maps is very different. When you use a digital map, you have to think hard about where you are going and interact with this device, he said. The modern technology isnt just dumbing us down completely."
McKinlay believes there have to be big improvements in navigation technologies before futuristic scenarios of driverless cars and smart cities become a reality. For really important jobs like landing aircraft or navigating aircraft GPS is still not good enough, he said.
Spiers believes the development of arti cial intelligence based on machine learning could lead to a new wave of navigational aids, but McKinlay is sceptical. We will see ever-smarter machines which are very, very task speci c, but the big breakthrough will be when they understand what we are thinking and what we want to achieve, he said.
Ultimately, McKinlay believes, its essential that humans remain able to take control of their navigation. Do you really want to encourage people to a point where, when it disappears or when the battery goes at, they are in total shock and can do nothing? he said. Technology isnt magic it is just a tool. | 1int
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Intermediate
Scarlett Johansson is suing a French novelist for 50,000. She says that his work of ction makes fraudulent claims about her personal life.
La premiere chose quon regarde (The First Thing We Look At) by Gregoire Delacourt tells the story of a French model who looks so similar to the American actor that the books lead male character thinks it is Johansson herself. In the novel, the models looks mean that men see her only as a sex object, while women are jealous of her. She has a series of adventures as Johansson and, in the end, dies in a car crash.
Johansson does not feel attered by the best- selling book. Her lawyer, Vincent Toledano, told Le Figaro that Delacourts novel illegally used Ms Johanssons name, her reputation and her image. He said the novel contains defamatory claims about her private life. He has now gone to court to try to stop the book being translated or adapted for cinema.
Delacourt tried to explain that he chose to mention Johansson because she is the archetype of beauty today. He said: I wrote a work of ction. My character is not Scarlett Johansson.
On French radio, the author recently said the legal action was rather sad. He said: It freaks me out to think that when you talk of a character in a novel, judges can get involved.
Delacourt is one of Frances best-loved authors; his previous novel, My List of Desires, was translated into 47 languages and is now being adapted into a lm. But he said he was speechless when he found out Johansson was suing him.
I thought shed get in contact to ask me to go for a coffee with her. I didnt write a novel about a celebrity, he said. I wrote a real love story about feminine beauty, especially interior beauty.
If an author can no longer mention the things that surround us a brand of beer, a monument, an actor its going to be complicated to produce ction.
Im not sure shes even read the novel because it hasnt been translated yet.
Emmanuelle Allibert, spokeswoman for publisher JC Latte_s, said taking legal action was crazy. We have never known anything like it. It is all the more surprising because the novel is not even about Scarlett Johansson. It is about a woman who is Scarlett Johanssons double.
Ironically, the authors legal situation would be far easier if he had published the book in Johanssons home country, rather than France. Lloyd Jassin, a New York lawyer, said that the case would most likely not go to court in the United States because the book would be protected by the First Amendment.
He said that, if theres signi cance and literary merit to using her name in the book, the First Amendment would protect the authors right to do so. However, in France, the legal position is more complicated and personality rights are taken much more seriously, Jassin says.
I thought she might send me owers as the book was a declaration of love for her, but she didnt understand, Delacourt said. | 1int
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Intermediate
Do you want your child to be good at sport, play for the school team and, maybe one day, even compete in international competitions? Well, try to make sure that your future Olympian or World Cup winner is born in November or October. A study by one of the UKs leading experts on childrens physical activity has found that school pupils born in those months are tter than everyone else in their class.
November- and October-born children were tter, stronger and more powerful than those born in the other ten months of the year, especially those whose birthdays were in April or June. Dr Gavin Sandercock of Essex University and colleagues found that autumn-born children had a clear physical advantage over their classmates.
The research involved 8,550 boys and girls aged between ten and 16 from 26 state schools in Essex. All were tested between 2007 and 2010 on three different measures of tness: stamina, handgrip strength and lower-body power. The results revealed that a childs month of birth could make signi cant differences to their levels of cardiovascular tness, muscle strength and ability to accelerate, all of which predict how good someone is at sport.
November-born children were the ttest overall as they had the most stamina and power and were the second strongest. Those born in October were almost as t, scoring highest for strength and coming third for power, with December children close behind.
The gap in physical ability between children in the same class but born in different months was sometimes very wide. For example, we found that a boy born in November can run at least 10% faster, jump 12% higher and is 15% more powerful than a child of the same age born in April. This is, potentially, a huge physical advantage, said Sandercock. Such gaps could decide who became a top-level athlete because, as the paper says, selection into elite sports may often depend on very small margins or differences in an individuals physical performance.
The study, which has been published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine, found that, when scores for the three kinds of tness were combined, those born in April were the least t, then those in June. That could see those children excluded from school teams and becoming sporting underachievers, Sandercock said.
The ndings seem to show that children born in the early months of the school year enjoy a double autumn advantage they are already known to have an academic advantage and, now, they also appear to be better equipped for sport, too. The results show that something other than the relative-age effect the greater maturity of those born early in the school year is the cause, especially as the ttest children were not the tallest or heaviest, he added.
The authors believe that autumn-born childrens greater exposure over the summer months, towards the end of pregnancy, to vitamin D is the most likely explanation. Seasonal differences in vitamin D concentrations in the womb seem most plausible, they say. John Steele, chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust, said the quality of a young persons introduction to sport at school can be a major factor in their sporting development. Children that get a high-quality rst experience are those that will have greater agility, balance and coordination, and are more likely to develop an enjoyment of physical activity and excel in sport as they grow up, he said.
UK Sport could not say if a disproportionate majority of the 1,300 athletes across 47 sports it funds were born in November and October. Natalie Dunman, its head of performance, said that while the differences highlighted in the new ndings were borne out by teenagers competing in junior-level competitions, they had disappeared by the time sportspeople were taking part in adult competitions. She said: With elite, senior athletes, there are many factors that make a champion and our work hasnt uncovered anything to suggest that month of birth is one of the key ingredients. | 1int
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Intermediate
As soon as the children at one primary school in Stirling, Scotland, hear the words daily mile, they put down their pencils and leave the classroom to start running around the school eld. For three-and-a-half years, all the pupils at St Ninians Primary School have walked or run a mile each day. They do it at different times during the day and, despite the rise in childhood obesity across the UK, none of the children at the school are overweight.
The daily mile has done so much to improve these childrens tness, behaviour and concentration in lessons that many other British schools are doing the same. They are getting pupils to get up from their desks and take 15 minutes to walk or run round the school or local park.
Elaine Wyllie, headteacher of St Ninians, said: I get at least two emails a day from other schools and local authorities asking how we do it. The thought of children across the country running every day because of something weve done is phenomenal.
One in ten children are obese when they start school at the age of four or ve, according to the Health & Social Care Information Centre, and, in the summer of 2015, a study found that schoolchildren in England are the least t they have ever been. Primary schools therefore accept the bene ts of the daily mile. It has been introduced in schools in various parts of the UK and other schools are planning to launch the initiative during the 2015-16 academic year. In Stirling alone, 30 schools have already started or will soon start the daily mile.
Its a common-sense approach to childrens tness, which is free and easy. The most important thing is that the children really enjoy it; otherwise, you couldnt sustain it. They come back inside bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, how children used to look, said Wyllie. At St Ninians, teachers take their pupils out of lessons to a specially built circuit around the schools playing eld for their daily mile whenever it best suits that days timetable. Only ice or very heavy rain stop them.
The extent of the bene ts isnt known yet but researchers from Stirling University have launched a comparative study to look for evidence of the physical, cognitive and emotional bene ts of the daily mile. Dr Colin Moran, who is leading the study, said: The children dont seem to have problems with obesity; they seem happier and staff say they settle into lessons faster so we designed a study that would test all of these things. St Ninians pupils will be compared with children from another school in Stirling that hasnt yet started the scheme.
Kevin Clelland, a primary school teacher from Leeds, visited St Ninians and, then, convinced his colleagues it was a great idea. He said: Its such a simple thing to do but seems to have such an amazing impact. Were really committed to improving the tness of our pupils. His school is now building a track.
Active Cheshire, a sports and tness organization in Cheshire, is taking a group of senior people from the local authority up to Scotland to assess the results of the daily mile. The hope is to introduce it across the 450 schools in their region if a pilot programme is successful.
Paralympian, Tanni Grey-Thompson, chair of ukactive, a health organization for physical activity, said: All children need to achieve 60 active minutes every day, whether in a lesson, on the walk to school or in the playground. Its fantastic to see initiatives like the daily mile, showing real leadership from the education sector to improve childrens tness levels and their cognitive behaviour, and make a real difference to schools, teachers, parents and young peoples lives. We know sitting still kills; not sitting still helps children build skills that will stay with them for life.
The Scottish government also supports the initiative. A spokesperson said: Learning in PE is enhanced by initiatives like the daily mile, which can encourage and support parents in fostering healthy habits with their children from a young age. We are pleased to see so many Scottish schools are taking part or planning to do so. | 1int
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Intermediate
A subway system has billions of inhabitants: the bacteria of Swiss cheese and kimchi, bubonic plague and drug-proof bugs and human skin. Now, for the rst time, scientists have started to catalogue and map the bacteria in a citys subway and they have found many interesting results.
Dr Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical College, led a team that, for 18 months, tested the New York City subway system for the microscopic life forms that cover its turnstiles, seats, ticket booths and stations. His team found meningitis at Times Square, a trace of anthrax on the handhold of a train carriage and bacteria that cause bubonic plague on a rubbish bin and ticket machine at stations in uptown Manhattan.
The team have strongly downplayed the ndings of plague and anthrax. They say that there is only an extremely small trace of the latter, that rats likely carried the former and that no one has fallen ill with plague in or around New York for years.
The results do not suggest that plague or anthrax is prevalent, the study says. Nor do they suggest that New York residents are at risk.
In fact, most of the bacteria identi ed by the team are either harmless to humans or bene cial in the citys thriving world of microorganisms.
Some of the results were expected and should be a gentle reminder for people to wash their hands, Mason said. He also said that they found many bacteria of the same sort as those that are bene cial and helpful, like the one used for making cheese.
Bacteria appeared to re ect the eating habits of various neighbourhoods. All around the subway, bacteria associated with cheeses brie, cheddar, parmesan and the mozzarella found on New York pizza appeared. The distinctive bacteria of Swiss cheese were more limited to midtown Manhattan and the nancial district, and the bacteria used to ferment cabbage for kimchi and sauerkraut showed up in the nancial district and Bay Ridge.
Bacteria associated with illness and infections were extremely common. Species that cause diarrhoea and nausea, as well as E.coli, and the bacteria that can cause skin infections and urinary-tract infections were common all over the city. The species that produces tetanus appeared in Soho and bacteria that cause dysentery appeared at a station in the Bronx and another in Harlem.
Mason and his team collected more than 1,000 samples at all of New Yorks 466 open subway stations. They put the organic materials through a DNA sequencer and, then, through a supercomputer. They identi ed 15,152 distinct species, nearly half of which were bacteria.
The good news, the researchers said, is that these potentially infectious bacteria are not spreading sickness or disease throughout New York. They seem to be normal co-habitants of a city.
In short, the researchers conclude, the subway and city are about as safe as everyone thought.
Mason said people should not be concerned about getting urinary-tract infections from subway seats. You should wash your hands, he said, and probably get some sleep, eat salads and go to the gym, and thats about the same today as it was yesterday.
In fact, he added, Ive become much more con dent riding the subway.
Many findings made sense: stations like Grand Central and Times Square, where there are more people, had more bacteria and more diversity among them. The Bronx, with its diverse neighbourhoods and stations, had the greatest diversity of bacteria; Staten Island, with just three stops, had the lowest.
The researchers found marine bacteria at South Ferry, a station that ooded during Hurricane Sandy but they were surprised to note the species included some normally associated with Antarctica and fish.
The next steps, Mason said, are studies of other cities, which have begun in Paris, Sa_o Paolo and Shanghai, and continued studies of New York, for instance to see how the results change with the seasons. He said he hoped the research would provide a baseline of research for health of cials and geneticists, and could help health of cials to prevent and track diseases and pathogens. | 1int
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Intermediate
The UK prime minister, David Cameron, has declared a clear result in the Scottish independence referendum Scotland voted by a 10.6-point margin against ending the 307-year- old union with England and Wales. The prime minister promised a devolution revolution in Great Britain, as he welcomed Scotlands decision to remain inside the UK. There can be no disputes, no reruns we have heard the will of the Scottish people, he said in a statement.
Earlier, Scotlands rst minister, Alex Salmond, remained de ant at a Scottish National Party rally in Edinburgh he said he accepted Scotland had not, at this stage, decided to vote for independence. He said the referendum was a triumph for democratic politics and he would work with the government in London in the best interests of Scotland and the rest of the UK. We have touched sections of the community who have never before been touched by politics, he said.
The yes campaign won four big successes it won 53% of the vote in Scotlands largest city, Glasgow, 57% in Dundee and 51% in North Lanarkshire. However, the no campaign was victorious in 28 authorities. It won easily in areas where it was expected to do well, including Edinburgh, Aberdeenshire and Borders, but also in areas that could have gone to the yes campaign, including the Western Isles. In the nal count, the no camp won 2,001,926 votes (55.3%) and the yes camp won 1,617,989 votes (44.7%).
In his speech, Cameron made clear that there would be constitutional reforms, including in Scotland, but not until after the general election. He also said that Scottish measures would happen in tandem with changes in England. We have heard the voice of Scotland and, now, the millions of voices of England must be heard, he said.
Cameron added: The people of Scotland have spoken and it is a clear result. They have kept our country of four nations together and, like millions of other people, I am delighted. As I said during the campaign, it would have broken my heart to see our United Kingdom come to an end. And I know that feeling was shared by people not just across our country but around the world because of what we have achieved together in the past and what we can do together in the future. So, now, it is time for our United Kingdom to come together and to move forward. A vital part of that will be a balanced settlement, fair to people in Scotland and, importantly, to everyone in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as well.
Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party, said the referendum was a vote from the Scottish people for change. We know our country needs to change. We will deliver stronger powers for a stronger Scottish parliament, a strong Scotland. But he said that would go beyond Scotland. We will also meet the desire for change across England, across Wales, across the whole of the United Kingdom.
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said the referendum was not only a new chapter for Scotland within the UK but also wider constitutional reform across the union. He said a vote against independence was not a vote against change. We must now deliver on time and in full the radical package of newly devolved powers to Scotland, he added.
Yet that result raises the risk of further problems MPs from Camerons Conservative Party are threatening to vote against the prime ministers promise to quickly increase the Scottish parliaments powers and protect its spending.
The UK Independence Party leader, Nigel Farage, said Camerons offer of more devolution for England did not go far enough. The English are 86% by population of this union. Theyve been left out of all of this for the last 18 years. We still have a situation where Scottish MPs can vote in the House of Commons on English-only issues. I think what most English people want is a fair settlement, he said.
Cameron will try to calm tensions when he makes another statement on the result. The prime minister will explain how he will deliver further devolution to Scotland, including giving greater powers over tax and welfare to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. The prime minister wants to move fast to show that the three main UK party leaders will meet the commitments they made during the referendum campaign.
For the no campaign, there was relief: a number of opinion polls in the nal days of the campaign had said the vote was on a knife-edge. This brought Yes Scotland within touching distance of victory after a dramatic surge in support. | 1int
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Intermediate
SeaWorld has suffered an 84% collapse in pro ts customers have deserted the controversial aquatic theme park company because of claims that it mistreated orca whales.
The company trains dolphins and killer whales to perform tricks in front of stadiums full of people. They have suffered declines in attendance, sales and pro ts because people think they dont treat their animals well.
SeaWorld has been in the news since the 2013 documentary Black sh said that its treatment of orca whales made the whales act violently and that this caused the deaths of three people. After the documentary was shown, attendance collapsed and the company lost more than half of its market value on Wall Street. Its former CEO also had to leave the company.
Animal rights activists say that orcas kept in tanks die at a younger age than wild whales. SeaWorld started a marketing campaign to show that this isnt true.
It cut ticket prices and spent $10m on marketing but SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby had to admit that the company is still struggling to convince the public that it treats its whales well.
We realize we have much work ahead of us, Manby said. Talking about the companys reputation, he said, Early feedback on our campaign has been positive. However, we recognize that solving our image problems in California will be challenging.
We will continue to ght with the facts because the facts are on our side, he said.
Manby, who joined the company as CEO in 2015 to help the company recover, said he would give a presentation on his vision for the future of the company at a special event on 6 November.
There are already plans for a new shark exhibition in Orlando and an attraction in San Antonio that will allow customers to swim with dolphins in a naturalistic setting.
The companys nancial report, released on 6 August, showed pro ts in the second quarter dropped from $37.4m in 2014 to $5.8m in 2015. This is an 84% decrease. Revenue fell from $405m to $392m. Attendance dropped by more than 100,000 from 6.58 million to 6.48 million.
Analysts will now be closely watching SeaWorlds sales and attendance numbers in the third quarter, which is traditionally the companys most pro table and covers the summer holiday season. Attendance may suffer from a fresh scandal in July 2015 it was alleged that a SeaWorld employee had in ltrated animal rights protest groups against the company.
Jared Goodman, director of animal law for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said: SeaWorld has a spying scandal, animals are dying in its tanks and tens of thousands of people are against its plan to build a new orca prison. Families just dont want to buy tickets to see orcas going insane inside tiny tanks. SeaWorlds orcas wont recover and SeaWorlds pro ts wont recover either until it empties its tanks and builds sanctuaries by the coast.
SeaWorlds shares, which were worth $39 in 2013, fell to just under $18 in August 2015. | 1int
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Intermediate
The world shares him and London claims him but Stratford-upon-Avon intends to spend 2016 celebrating William Shakespeare as their man: the bard of Avon, born in the Warwickshire market town in 1564, who died there 400 years ago.
Stratford remained hugely important during Shakespeares life, says Paul Edmondson, the head of learning and research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. People often see Shakespeare as someone who turned his back on Stratford and his family, went to London to earn his fortune and only came back to die, he said. But Stratford is where he bought land and property, where he kept his library, where he lived and read and thought. We are going to spend the year re-emphasizing the importance of Shakespeare, the man of Stratford.
The anniversary of the death of the man from Stratford, the most famous and the most performed playwright in the world, will be celebrated across Britain and the globe. Macbeth will open in Singapore, Romeo and Juliet in Brussels. Shakespeares Globe is completing the rst world tour in the history of theatre. It has taken Hamlet to every country except North Korea. In London, they are also creating a 37-screen pop-up cinema, one screen to showcase each of Shakespeares plays.
The National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and nearly every other theatre production company in the country will celebrate the anniversary. Interpretations of the plays will range from the highly traditional to the experimental. There will also be hundreds of lectures, recitals, international academic conferences, lms, concerts, operas and major exhibitions.
For a man famous in his own lifetime, there is little documentary evidence for Shakespeares life and times. The plays would probably not have survived if his friends and fellow actors had not gathered together every bit of every play they could nd drafts, prompt scripts, scribbled actors parts and 17 plays not known in any other version into the precious First Folio published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeares death.
The actor Mark Rylance has called it his favourite book in the world and most of the surviving First Folios will be on display including those belonging to the British and Bodleian libraries, and a tattered copy recently discovered in France. Some of the most precious surviving documents will be collected together in an exhibition at Somerset House in London, including four of his six known signatures, which are all slightly different.
The exhibition, By Me, William Shakespeare, will include his will, the court papers relating to the audacious move when Shakespeare and his fellow actors dismantled a theatre on the north side of the Thames and rebuilt it as the Globe on the South Bank, and accounts showing payments from the royal treasury for Boxing Day performances for James I and Queen Anne.
The director of the Globe, Dominic Dromgoole, recently jokily claimed Shakespeare was a true Londoner. Stratford, however, will be insisting that the town made and educated Shakespeare. They are restoring his old school room. It will open as a permanent visitor attraction.
Shakespeare bought the splendid New Place, the second best house in the town, where he died, according to literary legend, on St Georges Day, 23 April, the same day as his birth. You dont buy a house like New Place and not live there, Paul Edmondson said. The general public and many academics have consistently underestimated the importance of Stratford to Shakespeare.
Edmondson believes that, after Shakespeare bought the house in 1597, all his thinking time was spent there and that the late plays, including The Tempest, were at least planned in his library and probably written there. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust describes New Place as the jewel in the crown of the 400th anniversary celebrations.
However, Shakespeares house was demolished 300 years ago and the house that replaced it was demolished in 1759 by a bad-tempered priest, Francis Gastrell, in an argument over taxes. He had already cut down Shakespeares mulberry tree, under which the writer is said to have sat and worked, because he was irritated by all the tourists peering into his garden.
The gap where the house was has never been lled. But the news that Shakespeares kitchen had been found in the partly surviving cellars went round the world. The whole site is being displayed for the anniversary, with the oundations marked and the garden restored. Without Stratford, Edmondson said, there would have been no Shakespeare. | 1int
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Intermediate
Noise from ships may disturb animals such as killer whales and dolphins much more than people previously thought. New research shows that underwater noise could disturb the animals communication and ability to nd prey. The low rumble of passing ships has, for a long time, been connected to the disturbance of large whales. But, US researchers have also found noise at medium and higher frequencies, including at 20,000Hz where killer whales, also known as orcas, hear best.
These noises could be disturbing the ability of killer whales to communicate and use echo to nd their prey. Dolphins and porpoises, which also hear at higher frequencies, may have the same problems. The ndings suggest that the noise could affect the endangered population of killer whales that are found near the shipping lanes up the west coast of the USA.
The main concern of this is that even a slight increase in sound may make echolocation more dif cult for whales, said Scott Veirs, who led the research. Echolocation is the process of using sound to bounce off objects such as prey and identify where they are. Thats worrying because their prey, chinook salmon, is already quite scarce. Hearing a salmons click is probably one of the most challenging things a killer whale does. Hearing that subtle click is harder if theres a lot of noise around you.
The researchers used underwater microphones to measure the noise created by about 1,600 ships as they passed through Haro Strait, in Washington State, USA. The two-year study recorded the sound made by 12 different types of vessel, including cruise ships, container ships and military vehicles, that passed through the strait about 20 times a day.
Some ships are quieter than others but the average intensity of noise next to all the ships was 173 underwater decibels, equivalent to 111 decibels through the air about the sound of a loud rock concert. Whales are not usually right next to ships and so would hear noise of about 60 to 90 decibels around the level of a lawnmower or a vacuum cleaner.
Veirs said scientists already knew about the impact of underwater noise on large whales. But, the new research shows the threat to smaller whales, dolphins and porpoises. Ships have been thought of as low-frequency sources of noise, like the rumbling of lorries or trains, he said. Most noise is at that low frequency but the background noise of the ocean is raised even in the high frequencies. This could be causing a signi cant problem that we need to look into more
There are several further consequences of a noisy underwater environment. Whales may have to group together more closely in order to hear each other. And, if they fail to nd prey as effectively, they will need to use up their stores of extra blubber. This is a problem because this blubber often contains manmade pollutants that are toxic to whales if they are released fully into their systems.
Veirs said more work needs to be done to identify how badly the noise is affecting whales and also to quieten the ships that pass near them. It should be easy to reduce noise pollution, he said. Military ships are quite a bit quieter and there could be simple ways of transferring that technology to commercial ships. Another way to reduce noise is to slow down. Decreasing speed by six knots could decrease noise by half.
While some whale species, such as blue whales, the largest mammal on Earth, are safer now because whaling has declined, others are still under threat from a range of factors. The US federal government has recently protected nearly 40,000 square miles of the Atlantic to try to avoid losing a species of whale with just 500 individuals left.
In Europe, killer whales are carrying dangerously high levels of banned chemicals in their blubber. Scientists are still trying to nd out whether pollutants caused the deaths of ve whales that were found on beaches on the east coast of Britain in January 2016. Meanwhile, around the coast of Australia, whales face an increased threat from ship strikes and oil and gas drilling, as well as Japans recent decision to start whaling again in Antarctic waters. | 1int
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Intermediate
What surprised researchers was not how hard people found the challenge but how far they would go to avoid it. The task? To sit in a chair and do nothing but think.
Some found it so unbearable that they took the safe but alarming opportunity to give themselves mild electric shocks to break the tedium.
Two-thirds of men pressed a button that gave them a painful shock during a 15-minute period of solitude.
Under the same conditions, a quarter of women pressed the shock button. The difference, scientists suspect, is that men are typically more sensation-seeking than women.
The report from psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities tries to answer the question of why most of us nd it so hard to do nothing.
In more than 11 separate studies, the researchers showed that people hated being left to think, regardless of their age, education, income or the amount of time they spent on smartphones or social media.
Timothy Wilson, who led the work, said the ndings were not necessarily due to the pace of modern life or the spread of mobile devices and social media. Instead, those things might be popular because of our constant need to do something rather than nothing.
In the rst experiments, students were taken alone, without phones, books or anything to write with into a room and told to think. The only rules were that they had to stay seated and not fall asleep. They were told that they would have six to 15 minutes alone.
The students were questioned when the time was up. On average, they did not enjoy the experience. They struggled to concentrate. Their minds wandered even with nothing to distract them.
In case the unfamiliar setting reduced the ability to think, the researchers did the experiment again with people at home.
They got similar results. In fact, people found the experience even more miserable and cheated by getting up from their chair or checking their phones.
To see if the effect was found only in students, the scientists tested more than 100 other people, aged 18 to 77, from a church and a farmers market. They also disliked being left to their thoughts.
But, the most surprising result was yet to come. To check whether people might actually prefer something bad to nothing at all, the students were given the option of giving themselves a mild electric shock.
They had been asked earlier to say how unpleasant the shocks were, compared to other options, such as looking at pictures of cockroaches or hearing the sound of a knife rubbing against a bottle.
All the students chosen for the test said they would pay to avoid mild electric shocks.
To the researchers surprise, 12 of 18 men gave themselves up to four electric shocks and six of 24 women did the same.
The scientists said that the most surprising thing was that being alone with their thoughts was so hard for many people that they gave themselves an electric shock something the participants had earlier said they would pay to avoid.
Jessica Andrews-Hanna at the University of Colorado said many students would probably give themselves an electric shock to cheer up a tedious lecture. But, she says we need to know more about the motivation of the shockers in Wilsons study.
Imagine a person is told to sit in a chair with wires attached to their skin and a button that will deliver a harmless but uncomfortable shock, and they are told to just sit there with their thoughts, she said.
As they sit there, their mind starts to wander and it naturally goes to that shock was it really that bad? | 1int
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Intermediate
Behind the bright lights and mirrored panels, cameras are watching you. If you pick up a boot, a camera will make sure you dont put it into your bag. Enter a department store and you will be watched. But new technology is less focused on shoplifting and more interested in your age, sex and shopping habits.
A few months ago, IT company Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) wrote a report that said around 30% of stores use facial recognition technology to track customers in-store. Facial recognition is a technology that can identify people by analysing and comparing facial features from a database. It uses devices such as Intel RealSense cameras, which are able to analyse everything from particular expressions to the clothing brands someone is wearing.
Intel spokesman Joe Jensen says that the aim of using RealSense technology in shops is not to create databases of speci c peoples lives but to build generalized models of peoples lifestyles and shopping habits. We dont need to know a particular customer. We need to know that this shopper has these characteristics and that, when those characteristics are present, this is what a person tends to do.
If you combine recognition technology with databases of previous customer patterns, you can start to predict a lot about what a person may or may not do in a shop. If, for example, theres a woman walking quickly towards the sock section, you can use that data to predict she wants to buy socks. That could allow a store to automatically put targeted ads on screens aimed speci cally at that person. If she looks like the type of person who wants to buy socks, they will show her adverts for socks.
If it sounds familiar, its because the online world has been using techniques like these for years. If you search for something on Amazon, youll get targeted ads for similar products on other sites. But its not easy to bring these systems into the physical world. People do not react to cameras in the same way as they do to browser cookies.
Hoxton Analytics, a team of data scientists in London, has developed a technology that uses machine learning and arti cial intelligence to categorize people based on the shoes they are wearing. By analysing the style and size of peoples footwear as they walk past the sensor, the system can identify a customers gender with 75-80% accuracy.
Owen McCormack, Hoxton Analytics CEO, says that the focus of the system was partly a reaction to facial recognition. My idea was, why dont we simply consider the clothes someones wearing? he said. If I just showed you a photo of someones body, you could probably tell me what gender they are. However, pointing a camera at someones chest or hips feels just as creepy as facial recognition. The idea was what about peoples shoes?
People use the word creepy a lot during discussions of in-store tracking. For stores and data scientists, the aim is to nd a way of getting information without seeming intrusive.
For McCormack, the argument is based on the fact that personal information isnt collected. Right now, shops are doing lots of incredibly invasive things but we just dont know about it. What we say is that, if you know someones a male or a female, then your advertising will be much more ef cient. If you know that everyone in your shop right now is a male, youll be advertising PlayStations not hairdryers.
From the perspective of stores, its understandable that physical shops want some of the information online shops collect. We allow this to happen online so why not of ine? Online, you get a pop-up asking you to accept cookies. But you cant ask for peoples consent in the same way when they move from one physical shop to another.
But its also true that the generation that is growing up with online shopping does not see online advertising as so invasive. In the CSC report, a survey showed that 72% of people aged 55 or more said they were very uncomfortable with these types of technologies in physical shops. But only 51% of 16-24 year olds said they were uncomfortable.
Are younger people more open because they are more familiar with digital technology or do they believe in the honesty of organizations offering free services? Is this kind of technology always creepy or does it depend? In any case, there are a growing number of eyes between the shelves and they care a lot about what youre wearing. | 1int
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Intermediate
They may not know who Steve Jobs was or even how to tie their own shoelaces, but the average six-year-old child understands more about digital technology than a 45-year-old adult, according to a new report.
The arrival of broadband in the year 2000 has created a generation of digital natives, Ofcom (which checks standards in the UK communications industries) says in its annual study of British consumers. Born in the new millennium, these children are learning how to operate smartphones or tablets before they are able to talk.
These younger people are shaping communications, said Jane Rumble, who is head of media research at Ofcom. As a result of growing up in the digital age, they are developing completely different communication habits from older generations, even compared to the 16-to-24 age group.
800 children and 2,000 adults took Ofcoms digital quotient, or DQ, test, which attempts to gauge awareness of and self-con dence around gadgets from tablets to smart watches, knowledge of superfast internet, 4G mobile- phone networks and mobile apps.
Among 6- to 7-year-olds, who have grown up with YouTube, Spotify music streaming and online television, the average DQ score was 98, higher than for those aged between 45 and 49, who scored an average of 96. Digital understanding peaks between 14 and 15 years old, with a DQ of 113, and then drops gradually throughout adulthood, before falling rapidly in old age.
People can now test their digital knowledge with a short version of the questionnaire that will give anyone a DQ score, along with advice on how to improve their understanding and protect themselves and their families online.
The ways in which millennial children contact each other and consume entertainment are so different from previous generations that forecasters now believe their preferences to be a better indication of the future than the preferences of trendsetting young adults.
The most remarkable change is in time spent talking by phone. Two decades ago, teenagers spent their evenings monopolizing the home telephone line, talking about love affairs and friendships in conversations that lasted for hours.
For those aged 12 to 15, phone calls account for just 3% of time spent communicating through any device. For all adults, this rises to 20% and, for young adults, it is still three times as high at 9%. Todays children do the majority of their remote socializing by sending written messages or through shared photographs and videos. The millennium generation is losing its voice, Ofcom claims.
Over 90% of their device-time is message based, chatting on social networks like Facebook, sending instant messages through services like WhatsApp or even sending traditional mobile- phone text messages. Just 2% of childrens time using devices is spent emailing, compared to 33% for adults.
Away from their phones, 12- to 15-year-olds have a very different relationship with other media, too. A digital seven-day diary shows live television accounts for just half of viewing for this age group, compared to nearly 70% for all adults. They spend 20% of their time viewing short video clips, for example on YouTube, or news clips on Facebook and other social sites. The rest of their viewing is shared between DVDs, streamed content through Net ix or iTunes and recorded television programmes.
Young adults aged 16 to 24 are big media consumers. However, they consume hardly any live radio or print-based media.
Younger people are also moving away from live television and moving to streaming and catch- up services. Even among adults, television is becoming less important. Television viewing among 16- to 24-year-olds has been dipping each year since 2010, but 2013 was the rst year that researchers found that viewing fell in all age groups. The theory is that easy-to-use tablet computers with large screens have brought many older people online. | 1int
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Intermediate
They call him the Robin Hood of the banks, a man who took out many loans worth almost half a million euros with no intention of ever paying them back. Instead, Enric Duran gave the money to projects that created and promoted alternatives to capitalism.
After 14 months in hiding, Duran is unapologetic, even though his activities could put him in jail. Im proud of what I did, he said in an interview by Skype from a secret location.
From 2006 to 2008, Duran took out 68 commercial and personal loans from 39 banks in Spain. He gave the money to social activists, who used it to pay for speaking tours against capitalism and TV cameras for a media network. He said he saw that these social movements were building alternatives but that they didnt have enough money. Meanwhile, constant growth was creating a system that created money out of nothing.
The loans he swindled from banks were his way of regulating and denouncing this situation, he said. He started slowly. I lled out a few credit applications with my real details. They said no, but I just wanted to understand what they were asking for.
From there, the former table-tennis coach began to set up a confusing web of accounts, payments and transfers. I was learning constantly. By the summer of 2007, he had discovered how to make the system work he applied for loans under the name of a false television production company. Then, I managed to get a lot. 492,000, to be exact.
Duran was arrested in Spain in 2009, on charges brought against him by six of the 39 banks that had lent him money. He spent two months in prison before being let out on 50,000 bail. In February 2013, threatened with up to eight years in prison, he decided to ee rather than stand trial because, he said, he doesnt recognize the authority of the judicial system.
His actions, he said, were an important part of a worldwide debate on the economic crisis. The timing pushed the anti-capitalist movement into the light, just as many Spaniards were looking for alternatives to a system that has caused chaos in their lives.
In todays Spain, the anti-capitalist movement, and groups such as the Indignados, are supported by thousands of Spaniards.
Duran is now widening his focus to include Spains justice system, by promoting restorative justice. The people in Spain who believe that banks dont work, they think that I dont owe anything. Ive already done my work, he said. But there is a part of a population that is not in agreement with us and I think I should respond to that.
In his case, he said, he could offer banks the insight he got from years of obtaining bank loans fraudulently. He could share his thoughts on which best practices work and the bad ones that dont, he suggested, for the general population and for bank workers. | 1int
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Intermediate
The view from the visitors centre at the southern edge of Donana National Park in southern Spain is an ornithologists dream: 200,000 hectares of wetlands vital for the birdlife of western Europe. Dozens of Britains most loved migratory birds rest here every year on their migrations from Africa. Donana is also home to some of Europes rarest birds, including the Spanish imperial eagle.
It is a glorious, vibrant landscape but it exists on a knife-edge. In 1998, almost two billion gallons of acidic water, mixed with waste metals, poured into the park from the Los Frailes mine 45km away. A toxic tsunami of waste poured down the Guadiamar river into the park. More than 25,000 kilos of dead sh were collected afterwards and nearly 2,000 adult birds, chicks, eggs and nests were killed or destroyed.
It was Spains worst environmental disaster and the clean-up cost 90m. Suddenly aware of Donanas status as the nations most important natural site, Spain decided to spend a further 360m, some of it EU money, on restoring the landscape. In the 1950s and 60s, some parts of this landscape had been drained to create rice and cotton elds. Some of this farmland is now being returned to its original wetland state.
It has been a costly but positive process. But Donana is still in trouble thanks to the increasing pressures of modern life. There are plans to build an oil pipeline through Donana and other developers want to build new hotels and golf courses, which would need enormous water supplies. Sand and soil washed from nearby farms is also blocking the channels that cross Donana.
However, the real body blow for conservationists has been the recent decision of the Andalucian government to reopen the Frailes mine that nearly destroyed Donana in 1998. This is Europes most precious bird sanctuary, for indigenous species and also as a resting place for birds that migrate between Africa and Britain and other parts of north-west Europe, says Laurence Rose of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). Donana already faces a large number of threats, but now they want to bring back the very cause of the disaster 16 years ago. It is extremely worrying.
The state of the local economy provides an explanation for the governments decision. The crash of Spains banks in 2008 had a catastrophic effect on the region and unemployment in some parts of Andalucia is now more than 30%. Reopening the mine would provide more than 1,000 jobs.
There are riches here, riches that are badly needed by local inhabitants, said energy spokesman Vicente Fernandez Guerrero. We think mining is a good way to make it possible to allow local people to continue to live in the area. This is a mining area. People have been digging metals here since Roman times.
Fernandez said that the mine licence would only allow modern mining techniques, which avoid the creation of poisonous wet waste. Also, the Canadian company that ran Los Frailes when the disaster happened cannot run it again. The best technology in the world will be used here, Fernandez insisted. Liquid will not be used. We are going to insist on that.
The plan has some support in the area, but it also has a lot of opposition. Carlos Davila, who works for the Spanish Ornithological Society in Donana, was also alarmed at the plan. This is a very, very bad idea, he said. They say the new mine will be safe, but they said it was safe in 1998 and look what happened. We got the worst ecological disaster in the history of Spain.
Almost every visitor at a local restaurant had a camera and telescopic lens or a pair of binoculars. There is a big tourist trade because of the birdlife of Don_ana. This is not surprising because this is a very special place. A huge sky hangs over this at but certainly not boring landscape. Birds of every shape and size ll the air and sometimes the road. At one point on my visit, a stork calmly stood in front of our car until it felt ready to y off.
The trouble is that Spain does not have the public resources it had 16 years ago. A repeat of the toxin spill today would have a much, much more damaging impact, said Rose. This point is supported by Davila. After the disaster, Spain realized that it had a place of real ecological importance and did a lot to clean it up and protect it, he added. Now, we seem to be forgetting that lesson. It is very depressing. | 1int
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Intermediate
A long time ago, cinema audiences were transported to a galaxy far, far away.
That was 1977 but, in 2015, as the franchise plans to release its seventh lm, interest in Star Wars shows no sign of slowing down. Now, there is news of a new lm about Han Solo and of a reappearance for Darth Vader.
Many fans around the world are constantly waiting for the release of new poster art, new trailers and other information, said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst. Its hard to imagine any other movie franchise that could cause this much enthusiasm and excitement.
The latest Star Wars mania started after Disneys purchase of Lucas lm from the lms creator, George Lucas, in 2012. Disney paid $4bn for Lucas lm and very soon announced that there would be three more Star Wars episodes VII, VIII and IX plus plans for spin-off movies and standalones.
Details of the second spin-off have now been made public. It is a story about Han Solo, the intergalactic smuggler played by Harrison Ford in the rst three lms. This second new lm will be released in May 2018.
It will follow the release in December 2015 of Episode VII, directed by JJ Abrams and titled Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The unnamed Episode VIII is due out in 2017 and a spin-off, Rogue One, will arrive in cinemas in 2016.
That movie will outline a rebel mission to steal the plans of the Death Star, a key part of the story in the rst lm in 1977. There was lots of interest in the rumour that Darth Vader, the black-clad villain of the original series, will reappear in Rogue One. The interest con rms the power of Star Wars nostalgia.
In creating a multi-storyline, multi-character cinema universe around Star Wars, Lucas lm-Disney are copying the phenomenally successful series of lms produced by Marvel Studios, which Disney also bought, in 2009.
Disney has increased the level of marketing savvy to a product that was already popular: Dergarabedian says the decision to make all six existing Star Wars lms available on streaming services is a brilliant way to build the excitement for the new lm and reinvigorate the idea of Star Wars in the minds of the fans.
But, it is not certain that it needs reinvigorating. The level of enthusiasm that has surrounded Star Wars for at least the last twenty years is shown by the huge number of novels, comic books, video games and merchandising that Lucas lm has created over the years.
Michael Rosser, news editor for Screen International, suggests that it is this shared universe of nostalgia that makes Star Wars the top lm franchise. The great thing about the original lms was that they created a huge universe of characters and possibility that sparked the imagination of viewers, he said.
For years, people have been wondering how the different parts of the story t together. This new lm goes back to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker so we hope it will reconnect with the original Star Wars lms. The prequels failed to do that.
Rosser is referring to the three lms Lucas directed between 1999 and 2005 The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith which were about the life of Luke Skywalkers father, Anakin, who becomes Darth Vader. Despite quite bad reviews, the prequels took $2.5bn at the worldwide box of ce.
It shows the power of Star Wars that, although they were disappointing, the prequels still made a lot of money, said Rosser.
In the world of lm, branding and a successful franchise are very important. Is there a risk that movie studios will simply become branding machines and lose their interest in cinema?
Rosser thinks not. They are desperate to keep the franchise going and make sure new lms are of good quality. They also want people to go to the cinema at a time when lots are staying home for entertainment. But you dont want to watch Star Wars on your iPhone.
Meanwhile, Dergarabedian expects massive business when The Force Awakens reaches cinemas in December 2015. We certainly expect a record opening for December and the lm should make at least a billion dollars worldwide. Truly, Star Wars is the ultimate movie brand. | 1int
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Intermediate
We may not yet be living in an age of ying cars, as predicted in the 1985 lm Back to the Future II, but the rise of smartphones and other new technologies is creating a reality that is just as exciting and almost as far-fetched. Experts agree that economic and demographic changes, technological advances, and environmental concerns are fundamentally changing transportation. Its a very dynamic time, said transport expert Robert Puentes. Theres a tighter connection between transportation and the economic health of cities and its impact on people.
As the transport infrastructure grows old, cities across the US are forced to rede ne what transportation is. Urban planners, transportation experts and scientists are now realizing that old methods focused on reducing traf c congestion arent enough to solve problems like population growth and carbon emissions, and transportation is now a key part of protecting the environment.
Big US cities like Los Angeles and Chicago are working to make better use of their streets by adding more bus lanes and pedestrian walkways, and expanding rail networks. At the same time, they are working on advanced technologies that will allow a vehicle to drive itself and communicate with other vehicles and its environment. The most sustainable places to live are places that have multi-modal transport systems, Puentes said
Here are three key ideas that experts predict will in uence transportation in the coming years.
Connectivity Ride-sharing services like Uber taxis booked via smartphone and apps like Waze, which uses real-time traf c data to nd the quickest routes for drivers, are dramatically changing how people move around and affecting the way traf c moves through a city. Communication between riders and drivers, between different vehicles and between cars and infrastructure is bringing transportation into a new era, according to Allan Clelland, an expert on transportation technology.
According to a recent study, car travel has reduced among people born in the 1990s compared to previous generations. According to the study, people born in the 1990s are making 4% fewer car trips and travelling 18% fewer miles per year, on average, than members of previous generations did at the same stage in their lives.
People still driving cars are dealing with less traf c thanks to Waze. Experts say the traf c app has reduced congestion on motorways and reduced travel times for drivers. But it has also led to a problematic rise in cars moving through residential neighbourhoods.
This trend could continue as vehicle-to-vehicle data communication, as well as communication between vehicles and the surrounding infrastructure, grows. Currently, a traf c light knows when a car is getting close but thats all. Companies are working to develop technology that will allow a vehicle to tell traf c control systems not only that it is present but also where it is going and how fast it is travelling.
Automation Driverless cars have been in the headlines ever since Google began road testing the vehicles back in 2012 but no-one really knows when driverless cars will become commonplace. However, the partial automation of cars is already underway. Automation will probably happen in stages: rst, there might be automated buses with their own lanes, then perhaps lorries in ports or mining towns: that is, vehicles that are connected electronically and travel in single le.
The idea of a fully automated transportation system is intriguing because it could improve safety by removing human error. It could also help reduce carbon emissions and traf c congestion, and allow more people access to cars. But, even if driverless technology were ready to use now, it would take a long time to get fully automated because the average age of cars on the road is 11.5 years old.
To see what driverless cars might look like in action, go to the video at: vimeo.com/37751380.
Environmental concern As the world races to avoid catastrophic climate change and countries and cities work to meet ambitious emissions goals, these policies could also have a big effect on the future of transportation. Concern about the environment could lead to everything from zero- and low-emission vehicles to apps that encourage more walking, biking and carpooling.
When considering the future of transportation, its also important to keep in mind why people travel: they may be going to work, to meet friends or family, or to do the shopping. Technologies that reduce the need for those trips for example, virtual meetings or telecommuting could also have a big effect on transportation.
In the past, the idea of a ying car represented the best in innovation but the technologies that people are imagining and developing now are possibly even more sophisticated and more useful in solving the social and environmental problems that we face in the coming decades. | 1int
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Intermediate
DNA taken from the wisdom tooth of a European hunter-gatherer has given scientists a glimpse of modern humans before the rise of farming. The Mesolithic man, who lived in Spain around 7,000 years ago, had an unusual mix of blue eyes, black or brown hair and dark skin, according to analyses of his genetic make-up.
He was probably lactose intolerant and had more difficulty digesting starchy foods than the farmers whose diets and lifestyles changed in the first agricultural revolution.
The invention of farming brought humans and animals into much closer contact and humans probably evolved stronger immune systems to fight infections from the animals. But scientists may have overestimated the impact farming had on the human immune system, because tests on the hunter-gatherers DNA found that he already carried genes that boost the immune system. Some of these gene mutations still exist in modern Europeans today.
Before we started this work, I had some ideas of what we were going to find, said Carles Lalueza-Fox, who led the study at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona. Most of those ideas turned out to be completely wrong.
The Spanish team started their work after a group of cave explorers found two skeletons in a deep and complex cave system high up in the Cantabrian Mountains of northwest Spain in 2006. The human remains, which belonged to two men in their early 30s, had been extremely well preserved by the cool environment of the cave.
Carbon dating put the remains at around 7,000 years old, before farming arrived in Europe from the Middle East. Other things were found at the site, including reindeer teeth that were strung and hung from the peoples clothing.
The scientists managed to put together one mans entire genome from DNA found in the root of a third molar. It is the first time researchers have got the complete genome of a modern European who lived before the Neolithic revolution.
The DNA brought some surprises. When Lalueza-Fox looked at the genome, he found that the man had gene variants that produce dark skin. This guy had to be darker than any modern European, but we dont know how dark, the scientist said.
Another surprise was that the man had blue eyes. The results suggest that blue eye colour came first in Europe and that the change to lighter skin happened throughout Mesolithic times.
On top of the scientific impact, artists might have to rethink their drawings of the people. You see a lot of reconstructions of these people hunting and gathering and they look like modern Europeans with light skin. You never see a reconstruction of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer with dark skin and blue eyes, Lalueza-Fox said.
The Spanish team compared the genome of the hunter-gatherer to those of modern Europeans from different regions to see how they might be related. They found that the ancient DNA most closely matched the genetic make-up of people living in northern Europe, in particular Sweden and Finland.
Martin Jones, professor of archaeological science at Cambridge University, said the immunity genes were the most interesting result. There has been the idea that the move from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming was bad for our health. There were a number of reasons for that, particularly living closely together with other humans and animals, which meant they competed for the same water supplies, he said. | 1int
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Intermediate
Two mothers in South Africa have found out that they are raising each others daughters after they were mistakenly switched at birth in a hospital in 2010.
But, while one of the women wants to correct the error and get her biological child back, the other is refusing to give back the girl she has raised as her own.
Henk Strydom, a lawyer for one of the mothers, described the swap as a travesty and tragedy that is unlikely to have a happy ending.
Both mothers gave birth at the Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, on the same day in 2010. Nobody suspected anything, Strydom said.
But, in 2013, one of the mothers, who is 33 and unemployed, sued her ex-partner for maintenance for her daughter. Strydom said: The man denied he was the father. A DNA test was done and it was found it was not his baby and not her baby. She was devastated. She didnt know what to do.
Eventually, she met the other mother and, since December 2013, they have been attending joint counselling sessions, arranged by the hospital. Here they have met their biological daughters
Strydom said of his client: She said there are resemblances to herself. She told me that it was traumatic. You can see its not easy for her. She has to care for a child that is not hers on her own while her child is with someone else.
The woman became unhappy with the process and asked the childrens court to give her custody of her biological child, but the other mother refused.
Its a tragedy. She wants the baby back, but its four years later: you can understand that the other mother doesnt want to give up her baby, Strydom said.
The High Court in Pretoria has asked the University of Pretorias Centre for Child Law to investigate what will now be in the best interests of the children.
Strydom added: I dont know what the court will decide. Your guess is as good as mine. But, whatever happens, someone wont be happy.
He said, at this point, he and his client do not want to sue the hospital or government health department, which is helping with the case and providing counselling.
The Centre for Child Law will interview the mothers and fathers, as well as any other person with a significant relationship with either of the girls. The children and mothers will have clinical assessments and may be seen by a psychologist.
Karabo Ngidi, a lawyer with the centre, said: Whats going to happen must be in the best interests of the children. Biology is an important aspect but not the only one.
The families are of Zulu ethnicity and so Zulu tradition, culture and customary law will be a factor, she added. It is also still possible the ex- partner of the mother who is taking legal action could be the biological father of the girl who was switched.
It is not the first child-swap case in South Africa. In 1995, two mothers were awarded damages after their sons, born in 1989, were accidentally switched at the Johannesburg hospital where they were born.
In 2009, in Oregon in the United States, Dee Ann Angell and Kay Rene Reed discovered that they had been mistakenly mixed up at birth in 1953 when a nurse brought them back from bathing.
In 2013, in Japan, a 60-year-old man swapped at birth from his rich parents to a poor family was given compensation. He grew up on welfare and became a truck driver, whereas his biological brothers and sisters and the boy brought up in his place attended private secondary schools and universities.
Bruce Laing, a clinical psychologist in Johannesburg, said the long-term effects of a baby swap could be profound, terrifying and incredibly traumatizing. He told The Times of South Africa: The parents might always be thinking What if? | 1int
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Intermediate
There are many quirky solutions to help make our cities more livable, such as glow-in-the-dark trees, underground bike sheds and solar-powered bins. City living has many upsides but a sustainable lifestyle is not always one of them. Pollution, traf c and loss of green spaces are just some of the daily problems that city-dwellers have to deal with. We look at ten quirky solutions to making our cities better places to live.
Pop-up parks Todays cities sometimes look like theyre built more for cars than people. The pop-up park is a simple idea. Take an empty car park, a small amount of money and a pot plant or two, and make yourself your own private park. The PARK(ing) project started as an arts experiment in San Francisco. It has since spread across the world. Temporary urban farms and ecology demonstrations are just some of the ideas that have come out of the project, which celebrates a day of action every September.
Subterranean storage Not all urban dwellers have cars. Bikes are becoming more and more fashionable. The question is: where to keep them safe? Tokyo-based engineering company Giken has a solution: an underground bicycle park. Just seven metres wide, the cylindrical storage facility buries deep into the ground and can hold 204 bikes. Owners can retrieve their bike at the touch of a button the automated system delivers it back above ground in around 13 seconds.
Glow-in-the-dark trees When most people think of trees that glow in the dark, Christmas trees usually come to mind. Not Daan Roosegaarde. The Dutch designer-artist has invented a bioluminescent plant. The experimental technology joins DNA from luminescent marine bacteria with the chloroplast genome of a plant to create a glow like a jelly sh. They are trying to create a version of the technology that Roosegaarde hopes could one day replace normal street lighting.
Footfall harvesting Every day, hundreds of commuters and shoppers in the east London neighbourhood of West Ham cross the elevated pedestrian walkway close to the underground station. Few people probably notice the springiness beneath their feet. Even fewer realize that the springy rubber surface powers the streetlights above. The oor has smart tiles that capture the energy from pedestrians footsteps and convert it into electricity. Pavegen, the UK company who had the idea, has installed a similar system at Londons Heathrow Airport and other international locations.
Supertrees It had to happen eventually: man-made trees. Singapores Gardens by the Bay has a group of them. Up to 50 metres high, these steel-framed supertrees not only have owers growing up them their metallic canopies absorb and disperse heat, too. And they collect rainwater, as well as provide air ventilation for two large conservatories below. Eleven of the 18 trees also have solar panels on their branches. | 1int
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Intermediate
The Greek island of Agios Efstratios is so remote, so forgotten by the banks, the government and most of the modern world that there isnt a single ATM or credit-card machine on the island. Before the economic crisis in Greece, residents of this tranquil island in the northern Aegean managed quite well. They did their banking at the post of ce and the few dozen rooms to rent were fully booked every summer with people who had heard by word of mouth of its spectacular empty beaches, clear seas and fresh seafood.
But, because the island still uses only cash, the closure of the Greek banks has been devastating. Residents have to make nine-hour round trips to the nearest big island to get cash and Greek visitors say they cant get hold of enough money to come. Tourist numbers have reduced by 80% this year, said Mayor Maria Kakali, in an of ce in the village where she grew up, with a population of around 200 people. Even people born here and living in Athens, who have their own places on the island, arent coming.
Kakali has badgered the government and a major Greek bank into promising an ATM within weeks but she still feels it may be too late for this season on an island where tourism is the main source of income: We have almost no reservations in August, when usually we have people calling us up asking to nd a room and we cant help them. A hard winter ahead may be slightly improved because 50 workers will live and work in the village to expand the harbour. But there is an even bigger crisis ahead because the government has said it will end a tax break for islands.
The tax break was created to help island communities survive the problem of mass emigration. The lower sales tax reduced the costs of living on the islands, where everything had to be imported and it made tourism more affordable. Tourist favourites such as Mykonos fear that losing the tax breaks will make it hard for them to compete with Turkey. But, for Agios Efstratios, it is a far greater problem. If we have to pay a tax of 23%, Im sorry to say it but we will all die on the island, says Kakali.
Food and fuel are already more expensive than on the mainland. Even in summer the island has only three shops, two restaurants and not a single of cial hotel. This is an expensive island. Everything, even milk or bread, has been bought and sold three or four times before it gets to us and everyone has to take a pro t, said Provatas Costas, a 58-year-old sherman.
For Agios Efstratios and its closest large neighbour, Lemnos, the timing of the crisis is particularly cruel. They were seen as remote for years partly because you could only reach the islands by slow and unreliable ferries. In 2015, the government had nally given the contract to a new, ef cient company and this has brought many new visitors to explore the islands charms. But, then, the bank controls hit. It started as the best season in 30 years and, in one week, it became the worst, said Atzamis Konstantinos, a travel agent in Lemnos.
Lemnos has dozens of wild beaches, where you can swim and sunbathe virtually alone, a small nightlife scene and many cultural sites. It is the eighth largest island in Greece so it is in line for the rst round of tax increases in autumn 2015 but it is far less wealthy than many smaller islands. It has just over 3,000 beds for visitors, compared with tens of thousands on an island such as Rhodes. We have been suffering economically in recent years and now we will suffer more, said Lemnos Mayor, Dimitris Marinakis. When there is not enough money, you reduce your consumption and the whole economy gets worse.
If taxes go up, even more young people will leave, warns Mayor Kakali, who has worked to improve education on the island to help keep it an attractive place for families. Because it is one of the smallest islands, Agios Efstratios has until 2017 before the tax rise comes in. Kakali hopes that, because things change very fast in Greek politics, the island might still avoid the tax. If not, though, she plans to travel to Athens to remind the distant government what the tax rise would cost.
The truth is the government doesnt pay much attention to the islands of the north Aegean, she said, so I would take all the kids from our school to the gates of parliament, to tell them: There is still life in these islands. | 1int
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Intermediate
The age of the big British summer music festival, including Glastonbury, is drawing to a close, according to the leading rock promoter and manager Harvey Goldsmith.
Goldsmith has produced and worked with most of the western worlds biggest music stars, from the Who, the Rolling Stones and Queen to Madonna, Bob Dylan and Luciano Pavarotti. He says the biggest problem is a serious lack of major new bands to follow on from the old ones.
The age of the festival peaked about two years ago, he said, speaking at the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts in Wales. There are too many festivals and there are not enough big acts to headline them. That is a big, big problem in our industry. And we are not producing a new generation of these kind of acts like the Rolling Stones, Muse, even the Arctic Monkeys that can headline.
There were about 900 music festival events in the UK between May and September 2014, he said, and there is no way they can all continue. There is going to be a growth in events where it isnt just music but with poetry or books or magic shows. There will be lots of small combination festivals that give something extra not people standing around in a big eld unable to go to the toilet because they might miss the band.
Clearly, the way music is delivered has changed, he said. People dont seem to want to listen to an album any more. And, most rock bands built their reputation on albums they might take three albums to become really good at their art, to become great, but young people dont want that.
Goldsmith, 69, also revealed that he is working with Robin de Levita, the Dutch producer of the Whos 1970s rock musical Tommy, at a new 1,100-seat theatre in Wembley, London, where the rst stage adaptation of the teen book and movie series The Hunger Games will be performed in June 2016.
Talking at Hay, Goldsmith also revealed some of the secrets from his long career in the music industry. He said that Keith Moon put dynamite down a Sydney hotel room toilet to unblock it. And, he said that John Lennon had stage fright just before an appearance at Madison Square Garden in 1974 he was pulled, vomiting, out of his dressing room and pushed out on stage. Its bizarre how common that is among artists. Its odd how afraid they get but, as soon as the rst chord is hit, theyre ne, he said.
He also gave the answer to a long-running rock n roll mystery: why Elvis Presley never performed outside North America. Presleys long-time manager, Colonel Tom Parker, admitted to him, he said, that the real reason why Goldsmiths attempts to bring the singer to London had failed was Parkers own uncertain immigration status.
He explained that it was because he was an illegal Dutch immigrant. He didnt want to risk leaving the US it was him, not Elvis, said Goldsmith.
And, his ultimate rock n roll performer? Freddie Mercury had to be our most powerful stage performer, the best live performer weve ever had. At Live Aid, he went out and saw that audience and just grabbed it.
But, nobody has found the next Queen yet, he said. Were not producing a new generation of this kind of act. Coldplay is probably the last one and that was ten years ago.
So, with no big acts to headline, there are no big shows. Glastonbury has got to the point where it cant nd any more big acts and thats the pinnacle of the festivals. They are really over. | 1int
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Intermediate
What is it like to look at the last of something? Sudan is the last male northern white rhino on the planet. If he does not mate successfully soon with one of two female northern white rhinos at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, there will be no more rhinos like them, male or female, born anywhere. And theres not much chance because Sudan is getting old at 42 and breeding efforts have so far failed. Apart from these three animals, there are only two other northern white rhinos in the world, both in zoos, both female.
It seems an image of human tenderness that Sudan is lovingly guarded by armed men who stand with him. But, of course, it is an image of brutality. Sudan is under threat from poachers who kill rhinos and cut off their horns to sell them for medicine in Asia. Sudan is still in danger even though he has had his horn cut off to deter the poachers.
Sudan doesnt know how precious he is. His eye is a sad black dot in his massive wrinkled face as he wanders the reserve with his guards. His head is a marvellous thing. It is a majestic rectangle of strong bone and leathery esh, a head of pure strength. How terrible that such a powerful head can, in reality, be so vulnerable.
Sudan does not look so different from the rhinoceros that Albrecht Durer portrayed in 1515. Durer was a Renaissance artist picturing an exotic beast from exotic lands. In 1515, a live Indian rhinoceros was sent by the ruler of Gujarat in India to the king of Portugal. The king sent it to the Pope but, on the way, the ship sank and it died.
Human beings we always kill the things we love. We have been doing so since the Ice Age. There are beautiful pictures of European woolly rhinos in caves in France that were painted up to 30,000 years ago. These ancient relatives of Sudan share his power and his gentle appearance. A woolly rhino in Chauvet Cave seems agile and young, a creature full of life. But the same people who painted such sensitive portraits of Ice Age rhinos helped to kill them off.
Today, many people really love rhinos but they are being killed in greater and greater numbers. The northern white rhino is the rarest species of African rhino. There are more southern white rhinos and black rhinos. But the demand in some countries for rhino horn as a traditional medicine is increasing the poaching. Many people believe that rhino horn can cure everything from u to cancer. In 2007, 13 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa. In 2014, 1,215 rhinos were killed for their horns in South Africa.
The vulnerable northern white rhino has been hunted very nearly to extinction in spite of every precaution, in spite of the guards and their guns. Other varieties of African rhino are being hunted by poachers the situation is totally out of control. The Javan rhinoceros is also on the verge of extinction. India has successfully protected the Indian rhinoceros but here, too, poaching is a problem. What a majestic creature Sudan is. Have we learned nothing since the Ice Age? | 1int
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Intermediate
Cathal Redmond was swimming off the Greek coast and he was sure he had taken some great photos of colourful sh with his rst underwater camera. But, when he looked at the results later, the photos were brown and murky. He took the pictures while holding his breath underwater and blamed the limited time he had to set up the shots. All he needed, he thought, was a little more time to photograph the sh in their natural environment.
He decided to invent something to make that little extra time a reality and the result is his invention of the Express Dive a re llable air storage device, which is held in the mouth and lets people swim underwater for two minutes. It bridges the gap between snorkelling, with its limitations, and scuba diving, which gives divers the freedom to breathe underwater but requires heavy and expensive gear. The prototype of the invention looks like a combination of a scuba mouthpiece and a water bottle.
I wanted to enable people to do more. So, rather than just go underwater and spend 30 seconds holding their breath, I wanted people to do a little bit more, says Redmond, 27. In 2006, the Irish designer completed a scuba-diving course and loved the feeling of being able to breathe underwater and observe sh in their natural environment. Less enjoyable, however, was all the equipment he needed
I was very aware of the fact that I had about 50kg of equipment on me and going under the water felt strange when you are used to trying to keep yourself at the surface. It was a very surreal experience, he says. The real problem is that scuba diving is very limiting. Although it allows you to stay underwater for longer, you have to plan your whole day around it. You have 20kg to 50kg of gear with you you cant be walking on the beach and decide you want to go in. Planning is a very big part of it.
It was during a nal-year project for his product design degree that Redmond produced the Express Dive. The device has two main parts. When above the surface, the unit sucks in air through a vent in the mouthpiece. The air is compressed through valves and stored in the tank. The tank has a light that ashes green when it is full. When air is no longer being taken in, the vent shuts off and, as the person dives, air is fed back via the mouthpiece.
The light turns from green to red when the air start to run out. The device can take in enough air for two minutes of diving and takes approximately the same amount of time to re ll. When you put the compressor into the unit with all of the rest of the stuff, the batteries and the electronics, the dif cult thing was to make it small enough so that people could hold it in their mouths, Redmond says.
Redmond says the mouthpiece feels similar to using a snorkel. He compares it to an extension of the lungs in that the user is taking a deep breath and then using it underwater. It is an extension of the bodys ability to store air, he says. The prototype has been tested in parts. Redmond says he has shown that the motor can compress two minutes worth of air into the unit and that the design can be held in the divers mouth.
What he has not yet done is test the device on a diver, fully submerged for two minutes. But, with enough testing, Redmond is con dent he can get a fully working device that will not endanger swimmers underwater. The device will probably cost 280, he says, and it is likely to weigh from 1kg to 3kg depending on the safety features needed.
To anyone who thinks two minutes of air is no more than a very small improvement on snorkelling, Redmond says it could make a big difference underwater. The typical swimmer can hold their breath for about 40 seconds while underwater, he says. Two minutes is not a lot of time but it is a lot longer than that, he says. | 1int
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Intermediate
It is no secret that millennials use technology a lot. More than eight in ten say they sleep with a mobile phone by their bed, almost two thirds admit they text while driving, one in ve has posted a video of themselves online and three quarters have created a pro le on a social networking site. But there is a small percentage of millennials who dont use social media at all. Here are four of them.
Celan Beausoleil, 31, Oakland, California Beausoleil is a social worker and has had an on and off relationship with Facebook. She last deactivated her account in December 2015 because she found the amount of personal information shared by others too heavy to deal with in addition to her work demands.
In my job, I spend a lot of time listening to peoples lives all day, every day and it started to feel so overwhelming to go on social media and see every single detail of everybodys lives, including people that I dont really have a relationship with, she said. Im involved a lot with people in my work life and sometimes it felt like it was too heavy to do in my personal life also.
But Beausoleil loves the way social media connects the world in a truly unique way. One thing I really liked about Facebook was that I could sit for hours and click on a friend and then click on one of their friends and one of their friends and one of their friends and end up on someones Facebook page from the other side of the world, she said. I used to do that all the time.
Jason Mathias, 26, Baltimore, Maryland One day, I realized: Im spending so much time doing this. These little seconds add up. I wonder what it would be like if I didnt spend these seconds here and spent them doing something else. What if I was doing other things with these seconds? What would they become? Would I enjoy it?
Mathias had Facebook and Twitter accounts for years before deleting them both in November 2012. But he quickly forgot that Facebook existed after his impromptu decision to end his social media presence. He can still appreciate the bene ts that come with having social media accounts, for example how easy it is to organize large events online. He now relies on friends for party invites.
But now he loves his extra free time. He spends his lift rides and spare moments at work reading news articles and books. And with no friends accounts to follow online, he has to pick up the phone and call them, something hes come to enjoy.
Lauren Raskauskas, 22, Naples, Florida Raskauskas describes herself as a pretty private person. So social media is not that appealing to her. My privacy is important to me and I have concerns about giving out my data, she said. She recently deleted her Twitter account and deactivated her Facebook account two years ago when she realized that she didnt like everyone knowing what I was doing. But she can see the positive sides of social media. When a friend of hers that shed lost track of moved to Naples for a month, Raskauskas didnt even realize she was there until after shed left, which was a bummer.
But in the end, her privacy concerns outweighed any bene ts social media could give her and she saw a de nite upside when she went through a recent break-up. The last time a relationship of hers ended and she was online, it was not pleasant. One time, I broke up with somebody while I was on Facebook and I was like Oh my gosh, should I change my pro le photo? Should I change my status? And, this time, I dont have to worry about any of that, she said.
Hariharan Rajagopalan, 18, Boston, Massachusetts Rajagopalan, a student at Boston College, doesnt see any problem with not using social media. He claims that he hasnt seen any effect at this point. Even though classmates post about parties and events on Facebook, they make sure to send him a text message, too, he said.
The only time Rajagopalan used social media was when it was unavoidable: it was the only way to reach his new roommate at college. Before starting his rst year at college, he signed up for his rst, and only, social media account. He joined Facebook in order to contact his future roommate and talk about their plans for that year.
He still has the account but he admits: I dont use it. I dont check it or anything like that. He has avoided other social media accounts but, as a sports fan, he acknowledged that Twitter is where most of the news rst appears. But he refused to get an account because, he says, I dont really need one to read tweets. | 1int
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Intermediate
Much of BB Kings best work was blues but he was always open-minded about and interested in other kinds of music. He bridged musical and cultural differences with warmth and skill. Perhaps it is too early to speak of the last of the bluesmen but it is hard to imagine that any future blues artist will match King. He in uenced thousands of musicians and millions of music fans in a career that lasted 65 years.
Riley B King (the B did not seem to stand for a name) was born in Mississippi, the son of African-American farm workers. He learnt the basics of guitar from a family friend and perfected his singing with a quartet of gospel singers. In his early 20s, he moved to Memphis.
Within a couple of years, he was playing regularly at a bar in West Memphis and he also became a disc jockey, presenting a show on a Memphis radio station. His billing, The Beale Street Blues Boy, was shortened to Blues Boy King and then to BB. After a single session in 1949 for a Nashville label, King began recording for the West Coast-based Modern Records in 1950.
He had his rst hit in 1952, with Three OClock Blues, which was number one in the R&B chart for 15 weeks; it was the rst of many hits. On these and his dozens of other recordings, most of them his own compositions, King developed a style that was innovative but had its roots in blues history. He was always ready to praise the musicians who had in uenced him he would usually mention T-Bone Walker rst. He would also cite the earlier blues guitarists Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson and the jazz players Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt.
He once explained that his guitar technique was partly based on his lack of skill: I started to bend notes because I could never play in the bottleneck style. I loved that sound but just couldnt do it. He was modest about his singing, too, a mixture of the style of ballad singers such as Nat King Cole and blues shouters such as Joe Turner and Dr Clayton. Probably his favourite composer and singer was Louis Jordan, whose music he commemorated in the 1999 album Let the Good Times Roll.
Throughout the 1950s, King was the leading blues artist on an endless series of one-nighters. In 1956, he played 342 gigs. In 1962, he tried to change that working pattern by signing with a major label, ABC, but the rst records under that contract were rather unsuccessful, both with his fans and with the record company.
The 1965 album Live at the Regal, however, has become iconic, a turning point in the early listening of many younger musicians. He had further R&B hits with blues numbers including How Blue Can You Get and Paying the Cost to Be the Boss, and, in 1969, he got near the top of the pop charts where no blues artist had been for many years with The Thrill Is Gone.
It took him a while to establish himself with a rock audience but he was brought to their attention by musicians who admired him. About a year and a half ago, he said in 1969, all of a sudden, kids started saying to me, Youre the greatest blues guitarist in the world. And Id say, Who told you that? And theyd say, Mike Bloom eld or Eric Clapton. I owe my new popularity to these youngsters.
From then on, King was rmly established as a leading blues artist. Guided by his manager, Sidney Seidenberg, he went on international concert tours that took him to Japan, Australia, China and Russia. He also gave concerts to prisoners at the Cook County jail in Chicago and at San Quentin, which led to his long involvement in rehabilitation programmes.
In 1990, King was diagnosed with diabetes and cut back his touring but his followers outside the US could still see him every year or two. He would now deliver most of his act sitting down but the strength of his singing and the uency of his playing were almost as good as ever. The celebrations for his 80th birthday, in 2005, included an award-winning album of collaborations with Clapton, Mark Knop er, Roger Daltrey, Gloria Estefan and others, tributes from musicians as diverse as Bono, Amadou Bagayoko and Elton John, and a goodbye tour that was not a goodbye at all.
In 2009, King received a Grammy award, for best traditional blues album, for One Kind Favor. In 2012, he performed at a concert at the White House, where the US President, Barack Obama, joined him to sing Sweet Home Chicago. King was twice married and twice divorced. He is survived by 11 children by various partners; four others died before him. | 1int
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Intermediate
We often see our colleagues and friends smoking an e-cigarette. But has vaping started to become less popular? Statistics suggest that vaping among smokers and recent ex-smokers, who are the vast majority of vapers, may already be declining. The gures will be studied closely by the major e-cigarette companies, which have put millions of pounds into a technology that they thought was growing in popularity.
Figures released in 2014 by the health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) reveal that usage among adults in Britain of electronic cigarettes which do not contain tobacco and produce vapour, not smoke has tripled from 700,000 users in 2012 to 2.1 million in 2014.
However, gures collated by the Smoking Toolkit Study, a research organization that provides quarterly updates on smoking trends, show vapings appeal may be declining. Vaping rates among smokers and ex-smokers rose steadily until the end of 2013, when 22% of smokers and ex-smokers were vaping. But this proportion stopped rising in 2014 before dropping to 19% during the nal quarter of the year. The drop is described as statistically signi cant by Professor Robert West, who collates the gures for the Toolkit.
Smokers are the key group for e-cigarette companies because seven out of ten vapers are smokers. Only around 1% of people who have never smoked have tried an electronic cigarette. Numbers who use e-cigarettes while continuing to smoke are going down, West said. Weve only been studying vaping for just over a year, so its a short time period, but we are not seeing growth in the number of long-term ex-smokers or never smokers using e-cigarettes. Vaping rates might change but, at this stage, it looks like theyre staying the same.
The fact that vaping has stopped growing in popularity in the UK seems to be at odds with what is happening in the US, where the technology has been promoted aggressively and where reports suggest it is growing in popularity. However, West questioned the interpretation of US data, which made little distinction between people who had once tried an e-cigarette and those who regularly vaped.
Experts believe it is unlikely that vaping will become fashionable among young non-smokers. Only 1.8% of children are regular users, the ASH study found. Instead, e-cigarettes seem to be most popular among adults who want to quit. While the gures published this month by Smoking In England show that the use of electronic cigarettes by smokers has stopped rising, their data also shows the huge increase in use since May 2011, said James Dunworth, of ecigarettedirect.co.uk. Our customers are still very happy with the product, and technology and innovation in hardware is improving user experience and helping them to switch from traditional cigarettes.
E-cigarettes behave like a sort of nicotine patch, West agreed. They are more popular than nicotine patches and may or may not be more effective. One-third of quit attempts use e-cigarettes, which makes them by far the most popular method of stopping.
Hazel Cheeseman, director of policy at ASH, said it was too soon to say whether vaping had peaked. Although there are indications that the market hasnt grown in the UK for about a year, there doesnt seem to be a decline in the number of people using electronic cigarettes to help them quit smoking.
The European Commission (EC) is looking at increasing taxes on e-cigarettes, which could have an impact on their popularity. A new EC tobacco directive comes into force in 2016 that will limit the amount of nicotine in e-cigarettes to below their current levels. This may mean vapers will have to increase their usage to get the same effect, again something that may make e-cigarettes more expensive.
West suggested that policymakers should see e-cigarettes as an aid to stopping smoking and not have the same regulations for them as for smoking. There is a tendency among some local authorities and organizations to treat e-cigarettes as cigarettes and ban them in public places and outdoors, he said. It just sounds like youre having a go at vapers and that undermines the public health messages were trying to get out. We have to be careful not to stigmatize e-cigarettes. | 1int
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Intermediate
Vienna is the worlds best city to live in, Baghdad is the worst and London, Paris and New York do not even enter the top 35, according to international research into quality of life.
German-speaking cities dominate the rankings in the 18th Mercer Quality of Life study, with Vienna joined by Zurich, Munich, Dusseldorf and Frankfurt in the top seven.
Paris has dropped down the table it has fallen ten places to 37th, just ahead of London at 39th, mostly because of the terrorist attacks on the city.
The study examined social and economic conditions, health, education, housing and the environment. It is used by big companies to decide where they should open of ces and factories and how much they should pay staff.
Helena Hartlauer, 32, from Vienna, said she was not surprised at her citys top position. The citys social democratic government has a long tradition of investing money in high-quality social housing, which makes Vienna less expensive than other major cities.
I live in a 100sq-metre apartment in a good area about 20 minutes walk from the city centre. But my rent is just 800 (625) a month. A similar apartment in London would cost over 2,000 and even more in New York, ranked 44th in the table.
US cities perform relatively badly in the study, mostly because of issues around personal safety and crime. The highest ranking city in the US is San Francisco, at 28th; Boston is 34th. Canadian cities, led by Vancouver, do much better than their US rivals in the table.
You dont realize how safe Vienna is until you go abroad, said Hartlauer. We also have terri c public transport, with the underground working 24 hours at weekends and it only costs 1 per trip.
Vienna bene ted enormously from the fall of the Berlin Wall, becoming the gateway to Eastern European countries that often have historic connections to the former Austro-Hungarian empire.
Our big USP (unique selling point) is our geographical location, said Martin Eichtinger, Austrian ambassador to London, who lived in Vienna for 20 years. The fall of the Berlin Wall helped make Vienna a hub for companies wanting to do business in Central Europe.
According to the World Bank, Austria has one of the highest gures for GDP (gross domestic product) per person in the world, just behind the US and ahead of Germany and Britain, although below neighbouring Switzerland.
Mercer says Zurich in Switzerland has the worlds second highest quality of life but the Viennese say their city is far more fun. There are more students in Vienna than any other German-speaking city, said Hartlauer. Its a very fast growing, young and lively city, she added.
Vienna has long been overlooked by British weekend city break tourists, who instead go to Barcelona or Berlin and tend to think of Austria as somewhere for skiing, lakes and mountains.
But, after an increase in budget ights from British cities such as Manchester and Edinburgh, Vienna is becoming a more popular destination. In 2015, there were 588,000 British visitors to Vienna, 18% more than the year before.
Vienna has ranked top in the last seven surveys, said Mercer. It scores highly in a number of categories; it provides a safe and stable environment to live in, a high standard of public transport and good recreational facilities.
London has never been in the quality-of-life top ten, says Mercer, damaged by its poor scores for air pollution, traf c congestion and climate. After London, Edinburgh is the next-ranking British city, in 46th place.
Paris has suffered the biggest fall in the most recent rankings. Paris has remained stable for several years but has, this year, dropped ten places, said Mercer. The drop was mostly due to the terrorist attacks in 2015 because safety is a very important factor in the survey.
Auckland in New Zealand was the highest ranking English-speaking city in the survey, in third place, followed by Vancouver in fth. Australian cities also do well in the survey, with Sydney 10th and Melbourne 15th.
War and political unrest are behind all the worst- ranked cities in the world. Surprisingly, Damascus is named as only the seventh worst, ranked better than Baghdad, Bangui in Central African Republic, Sanaa in Yemen, Port-au-Prince in Haiti, Khartoum in Sudan and NDjamena in Chad. | 1int
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Intermediate
Introduction Did you know that, in the UK, there is no legal requirement for restaurants to pass on tips to staff?
For a new government report, workers, employers and customers were asked about their views on tipping. After reading the report, government ministers said they wanted to change the rules and make sure low-paid workers get the money left for them by happy customers.
The report said that some waiters are charged up to a 15% administration fee on tips that are left when customers pay by credit or debit cards. The government said it would consider not allowing employers to charge workers an administration fee.
The government also said that it wanted customers to know that tips are voluntary and they want the system to be more transparent, with restaurants clearly displaying their tips policy.
We asked waiters around the UK what they think of the tipping process (including how much they take home from tips and whether its fair) and what would improve it for them.
1. Rodri, 37, London: Around 50% of a waiters income is tips Average tips: 60 per eight-hour shift I think they treat waiters best in ... the US
Everything has got fairer since the tipping scandal was exposed in the summer of 2015. This is when dozens of restaurants were exposed for taking money from tips for administration fees. However, you still hear horror stories from new employees at some chains. Some restaurants take 4% of all sales to pay the chefs and as an admin fee. It doesnt matter how much you make in tips. This means that, if a table has a 100 bill and doesnt tip, the waiter has to pay 4 of their own money. This leads to bad service. If a table doesnt tip, the waiter feels as if the company is stealing their money and resents the customers.
I get an average of around 60 of tips per shift. On a good night, this can go up to over 100 and, on a poor night, its around 40. Around 50% of a waiters income is tips. All restaurants should have to publicly state their exact tipping policy. America has it pretty good everyone tips.
2. Elle, 22, Edinburgh: We never know whether its fair Average tips: 20 per eight-hour shift I think they treat waiters best in ... France
I have three part-time catering jobs. My main day job is in a cafe where the small number of staff work both in the cafe and in the kitchen so all our tips go in a pot and they are shared equally. My main evening job is at a restaurant where we dont get our tips but our wages are minimum wage plus an extra 2.50 per hour. My third job is events catering and nobody ever tips.
In restaurants, because a lot of customers add tips through card payments, the staff never see how much the tip is so we dont know whether what we get is fair or not. The system seems better in France, where they dont tip much but being a waiter is seen as a proper job, with job security and a decent income.
3. Ashley, 22, London: Tips go towards customer breakages Average tips: 10-15 per eight-hour shift I think they treat waiters best in ... Australia
I work in a London pub in the evenings and I do day shifts at a local restaurant. In both places, all the tips are collected and shared out at the end of the night. Money is also taken from the tips to pay for breakages by either staff or customers.
It is incredibly unfair that our tips are shared out, especially when one member of the team doesnt work hard enough. Or, when a member of the team does incredibly well, they dont get what theyve earned. Its really unfair that tips go towards breakages made by customers. The managers should have ways to pay for broken glasses and plates without taking our tips. I make around 20 a shift in tips but often I only get 10-15 of that money.
I really rely on tips because I am only paid 7 an hour. Id rather we earned a good basic wage (like in Australia) and didnt have to rely on tips.
4. Tom, Manchester: A big night of tips can help pay the rent Average tips: 40 per eight-hour shift I think they treat waiters best in ... Italy
Where I used to work, waiters kept 80% of cash tips and 40% of card tips. The other 20% of cash went into a pot for the commis waiters and bar staff. The 60% from the card tips went to the kitchen staff.
Its hard to say how much I earned a shift; maybe around 40. It can make a massive change to your weekly nances. Sometimes, the waiters needed a good night to pay their rent.
They have got tipping right in Italy, where customers dont add a service charge but usually round up their bill so, if their meal is 19, they leave a 20 note and dont ask for change. They respect the staff. In Italy, people often make a career as a waiter and the experience these waiters have shows in the service the customers get. | 1int
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Intermediate
On one day in August, one in seven people on Earth, 1 billion people, used Facebook, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg. In ten years, the social network has completely changed peoples relationships, privacy, their businesses, news media, helped to end regimes and even changed the meanings of common words.
A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities and a stronger society, wrote Zuckerberg.
These are just some of the ways his company changed everything for better or worse.
1 Facebook has changed the de nition of friend To friend is now a verb. And, unlike in real life, it is easy to unfriend someone, a word invented to describe ending a Facebook friendship when that person is no longer improving your Facebook newsfeed.
Although the meanings of the words share and like are basically the same, Facebook has made the terms more important to us.
School and university reunions are unnecessary you already know whose career is going well, whether the perfect pair have split and youve seen pictures of your schoolmates babies. You wont be surprised to see an ex in the street with a new girlfriend or boyfriend: you already know theyre dating someone else from the romantic sel es.
But, unlike in real life, on Facebook, all your friends have the same importance. A classmate from university who you havent seen for 15 years, a friend-of-a-friend from a party or a colleague youve never actually spoken to in person they are all Facebook friends in the same way as your closest friend or your spouse or your mum.
It doesnt necessarily mean we see them the same way. Professor Robin Dunbar is famous for his research that suggests a person can only have about 150 people as a social group. Facebook hasnt changed that yet, he believes. But Dunbar says he fears it is so easy simply to end friendships on Facebook that, eventually, people may not need to learn to get on with each other.
2 We care less about privacy The surprising thing is that Facebook users happily hand over their information.
Pew Research Center found that most young people are more than willing to hand over their details. Ninety- one per cent post a photo of themselves, 71% post the city or town where they live, more than half give email addresses and a fth give their phone number.
But, because so much of a persons life is shared online, Facebook gives people a way to create an image and a fanbase. Academics have described a new phenomenon: the Facebook self.
More than 80% of Facebook users list their interests, which allows brands to target them effectively. But most younger users limit who can see their pro les, with 60% allowing friends only.
3 Facebook has created millions of jobs but not in its own of ces Facebook provides indirect employment for people whose job it is to make Facebook work for their brand.
It is a tool like no other, said Michael Tinmouth, a social media strategist who has worked with brands such as Vodafone and Microsoft. Marketers have an understanding of a brands customers like they have never had before. The data available is extraordinary. You know who your customers are, who they are friends with and how they engage with your brand.
And advertisers pay a lot for that. Facebook reported advertising revenue had increased by 46%, reaching $3.32bn.
Facebook is also a mine eld for brands. Suddenly, customers dont simply complain on the phone to a customer service representative or on a small specialist internet forum angry customers can post their complaints for hundreds of their friends to see or even on the brands own page.
4 Facebook has been the tool to organize revolutions Organizing demonstrations and direct action has been revolutionized by Facebook. Manchester Universitys Olga Onuch found Facebook had been the key way for reaching half of all the Euromaidan protesters in Ukraine.
Many of the people interviewed in Onuchs research said they relied on Facebook for the truth about what was happening they dont trust traditional media.
5 Facebook makes news, breaks news and decides what is news About 71% of 18- to 24-year-olds say the internet is their main news source and 63% of users overall, according to the Pew Research Center. About a third of Facebook users post about politics and government.
Most people will rst read an item of breaking news via Facebook or other social media, mostly on mobiles.
Facebook has also changed the ways journalists write stories. It is a resource many reporters cannot now live without. For better or (often) worse, it is a place to nd information on almost any ordinary person, who might suddenly nd themselves at the centre of the days biggest news story.
6 Users are changing Facebook It used to be a site for students of top US universities.
In 2014, ten years after its launch, 56% of internet users aged 65 and older have a Facebook account. And 39% are connected to people they have never met in person.
More than ever, the site is a gateway not just to your friends but to the rest of the internet.
We may as well get used to it, said David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect. It might very well go away further down the road but something this big takes a long time to disappear, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. Facebook has proven its ability to change and it will continue to be a very, very major player. | 1int
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Intermediate
If the amount of food wasted around the world were reduced by just 25%, there would be enough food to feed all the people who are malnourished, according to the UN. Each year, 1.3bn tonnes of food, about a third of all that is produced, is wasted. This includes about 45% of all fruit and vegetables, 35% of sh and seafood, 30% of cereals, 20% of dairy products and 20% of meat. Meanwhile, 795 million people suffer from severe hunger and malnutrition.
The UN identi es the problem of food waste as one of the great challenges to achieving food security. By 2050, food production will have to increase by 60%, compared to 2005 levels, to feed a growing global population. Reducing food waste would help to meet future demand.
The problem is global but appears in very different ways. In developing countries, there is a lot of food loss, which is unintentional waste, often due to poor equipment, transportation and infrastructure. In wealthy countries, there are low levels of food loss but high levels of food waste, which means food is thrown away by consumers because they have purchased too much or by retailers who reject food because of strict standards of appearance.
In developed countries, consumers and retailers throw away between 30% and 40% of all food purchased, whereas, in poorer countries, only 5% to 16% of food is thrown away.
In the developing world, food waste is almost non-existent, says Robert van Otterdijk, coordinator of the UN Food and Agriculture Organizations Save Food programme. Food waste is happening in countries where people can afford to throw away food. But, on the other hand, there are a lot of food losses in developing countries because of the underdeveloped conditions they have.
The environmental impact of food loss and waste is high. The carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 gigatonnes of CO2 this means that, if food waste were a country, it would be the third highest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. About 30% of available agricultural land is used to grow or farm food that is subsequently wasted. And more surface and groundwater is used to produce wasted food around the globe than is used for agriculture by any single country, including India and China.
Climate change is caused by our economy of production and consumption because it is out of balance with what the Earth can provide, says van Otterdijk. Production of food is one of the biggest production sectors in the world and, if one-third of all this is wasted, you can imagine what a huge effect this has on the natural resources on land, water, energy and greenhouse gas emissions.
The places that waste the most food are the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where consumers waste 39% of all food purchased. Next is Europe, where about 31% of all food purchased by consumers is thrown away. In the UK, 15m tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year. British consumers throw away 4.2m tonnes of edible food each year. This means that 11.7% of all food purchased is wasted, which costs each family 700 a year.
The foods most commonly found in British bins are bread, vegetables, fruit and milk. The most wasted food in the UK by weight is bread, with consumers throwing away 414,000 tonnes (22.4%) of all bread purchased. By percentage, the most wasted food is lettuce and leafy salads, of which consumers throw away 38% (64,000 tonnes) of all they buy.
The UK has made progress in the past ten years after a campaign to reduce waste. Van Otterdijk says the UK has been very successful in combating food waste. Between 2007 and 2012, the amount of food waste produced by UK households decreased by 21%, from 5.3m tonnes to 4.2m tonnes, largely due to greater awareness.
Van Otterdijk says there has been a very encouraging, unexpected, continuing interest in food waste and this enables campaigns around the world to gain momentum. We have to do much more and it needs the participation of public and private sectors, he says. But, if it continues like this, maybe, after ten years, well have globally signi cant results. | 1int
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Intermediate
Clay Cockrell is sitting in his of ce across the street from 1 Central Park West, the address of the Trump International Hotel and Tower. In front of the tower is Central Park, where Cockrell holds his popular walk and talk therapy sessions.
Cockrell, a former Wall Street worker who is now a therapist, spends large parts of his days walking through Central Park or the Battery Park in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street, as a con dant and counsellor to some of New Yorks wealthiest people
Many of the extremely wealthy the 1% of the 1% feel that their problems are really not problems. But they are, he says.
So, what issues do Americas 1% have? There is guilt because they are rich, he said. There is the feeling that they have to hide the fact that they are rich. And, then, there is the isolation being in the 1% can be lonely.
Counsellors argue that things have become worse since the nancial crisis and the discussion about income inequality brought on by movements like Occupy Wall Street.
The Occupy Wall Street movement was a good one and had some important things to say about income inequality but it singled out the 1% as something negative, said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a wealth psychologist and founder of the Wealth Legacy Group. The media, she said, is partly to blame for making the rich feel like they need to hide or feel ashamed.
Traeger-Muney runs a global business and specializes in working with inheritors, who often get a bad reputation in the press. Sometimes, I am shocked by things that people say. You would never refer to another group of people in the way that it seems perfectly normal to refer to wealthy people.
Its really isolating to have a lot of money. Peoples reactions to you can be scary, said Barbara Nusbaum, an expert in money psychology. We are all taught not to talk about money. Its not polite to talk about money. But its harder to talk about having money than it is to talk about not having money. Its much more socially acceptable to say I am broke. Things are hard. You cant say I have a ton of money. You have to keep a lot of your life private.
As a result, Cockrell says, the rich usually hang out with other rich Americans who understand them and their problems.
In the US, over the last three decades, the number of extremely wealthy people has been increasing. According to research from Spectrem Group, in 2014, the number of US households with $1m or more excluding the value of their main home increased by 500,000 to 10.1m. Households worth $5m or more reached 1.3m and 142,000 households are now worth $25m or more.
Since the 2008 nancial crisis, the income gap has grown and the situation has gotten worse for the wealthy, Cockrell said. The main reason? Not knowing if your friends are friends with you or with your money.
Someone else who is also a billionaire they dont want anything from you. Never being able to trust your friendships with other people, I think that is dif cult, said Cockrell. As the gap has widened, the rich have become more and more isolated.
These are real fears of the richest of the rich. In 2007, the Gates Foundation and Boston Colleges Center on Wealth and Philanthropy started to document what it felt like to be in Americas 1%. For the next four years, researchers surveyed 165 of Americas richest households 120 of those households have at least $25m. The report, The Joys and Dilemmas of Wealth, was 500 pages long and seemed to prove the old saying that money cant buy happiness.
Wealth can stop you from connecting with other people, said the wife of a tech entrepreneur who made about $80m. Some Americans keep their wealth secret. We talk about it as stealth wealth. There are a lot of people that hide their wealth because they are worried about negative judgment, said Traeger-Muney. If wealthy Americans talk about the problems that come with their wealth, people often say Oh, poor you. There is not a lot of sympathy there, she said.
Speaking in his soft, soothing voice that makes you want to tell him all your worries, Cockrell said that a common mistake that many of his wealthy clients make is letting their money define them.
If you are part of the 1%, you still have problems and they are real to you. Even when you say, I dont have to struggle for money, there are other parts of your life. Money is not the only thing that de nes you, he said. Your problems are real. | 1int
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Intermediate
Is this the moment when streaming goes truly mainstream? According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), there were only 41m subscribers using music streaming services around the world in 2014. It might be the area with the biggest revenue growth for the record business but it is still quite small. Not only that, but many of those subscribers have streaming as part of a mobile phone package so it is uncertain exactly how active its users are. Some sources suggest that Apple is aiming to reach 100m subscribers, which, based on a subscription fee of $120 per year, would generate $12bn annually. To put that in context, the entire global worth of recorded music in 2014 was just under $15bn. Apple is good at making products go mainstream but its not that good.
Is this the end of downloading? The iTunes Store arrived in 2003 (2004 in Europe) at a time when piracy was widespread. Apple managed to persuade consumers to pay for downloads and grew a huge business with an estimated 70% market share. Downloads were still 52% of the total digital income in 2014, according to IFPI. Apple holds the lions share of this it is biggest music retailer in the world. But download revenue reached a peak in 2013 in the UK at 283m and fell to 249m in 2014. The decline in download sales hit the US in 2013 so Apple bought Beats in 2014 for $3bn in order to get into the premium headphone market and, also, to make the transition from music ownership (downloads) to music access (subscription streaming). Apple, and the record industry, cannot afford to get rid of the download market just yet so streaming and downloading will have to coexist under the Apple brand. The vast majority of people like music but dont love it enough to pay $120 a year to listen to it. The average spend of a music buyer in the UK in 2014, for example, was just 39.52. Even Apple will nd it very dif cult to make most of those people triple their annual spend on recorded music.
Has Apple Connect made Apple the most artist-friendly service? Apple have previously tried to be artist-friendly via iTunes. It didnt work. Apple Connect is something very different, somewhere in the middle of YouTube, Facebook and SoundCloud. It lets artists post music, videos, photos and more to their pro le pages. Apple has generally had strong relations with the music industry and, also, artists themselves and, generally, it has a good reputation among artists. Compare that to Spotify, which has been criticized by artists from Radioheads Thom Yorke to Taylor Swift. There is the smell of revolution in the air and Apple is making sure its on the right side of the battle.
Where are the artist exclusives? This is going to be the interesting bit when the service goes live. Getting exclusives for big albums will be crucial to streaming. Spotify paid a lot of money to get Led Zeppelin and Metallica exclusively. Apple was watching this carefully and making notes. It already has AC/DC and the Beatles catalogues for download on iTunes. But can it persuade these two to enter the world of streaming? It also managed to get the surprise Beyonce album in 2013 before anyone else so it is inevitable that it will want more like that. It was an easy decision for artists to give iTunes the download exclusive on an album because iTunes controls so much of the download market. But trying to do that in streaming is not the same thing. It is also important to remember that streaming now counts towards the album chart in markets like the UK and US and artists, who still want to succeed in the charts, will not want to limit their audience by limiting themselves to one service.
Is this going to kill Spotify? Some people are already saying that Apple Music will destroy rivals like Spotify. However, its not that simple. Apple is entering a market where others have been working and gaining experience for many years. It has a lot of catching up to do. The winner of this battle will not be the company with the best service; it will be the company with the most money. Apples competitors have a head start in the market but they are losing huge amounts of money. Spotify, for example, lost 93.1m in 2013. Apple, on the other hand, started 2015 by becoming the most pro table company in corporate history, with $178bn in the bank. If Apple Music loses Apple money, the company will not continue it for long but it will not stop investment without at least trying to beat the competition. | 1int
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Intermediate
Apart from volcanoes, hurricanes and earthquakes, there are two key things that can make a city disintegrate or even totally disappear water and sand.
A century ago, Venice one of the most beautiful and low-lying cities in the world used to ood around ten times a year. Nowadays, its lowest point, Piazza San Marco (only three feet above sea level) is inundated with water approximately 100 times a year.
But rising sea levels are not the only cause. In many parts of the world, the land is also sinking. In Venice, subsoil compaction (a result of industrial exploitation of the surrounding area) lowered the city by 20cm between 1950 and 1970. Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam is also sinking by about 2cm a year but thats nothing compared to Jakarta, which is dropping 10 to 20cm each year. In the past three decades, the city has sunk roughly four metres.
Unfortunately for the Indonesian capital, it has pumped out so much groundwater to support its population that the land above is drying out and compacting this has created a bowl. Rivers that used to ow through the city down to the sea have had to be diverted because they cannot drain uphill.
While there are many plans to save Venice and Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta are taking the problem seriously the same cannot be said for Miami, where politicians refuse to admit the city has a serious environmental problem.
There are three problems in Miami. It is less than ten feet above sea level; an increasing number of tropical storms are inundating the city; and it is built on porous rock, which is absorbing the rising seawater. This water then lls the citys foundations and comes up through drains and pipes, forcing sewage upwards and polluting its fresh water. It is possible that Miami may one day become uninhabitable.
In the Maldives, the populations of whole islands are now considering abandoning their homes. The capital, Male_, population 153,379 and only four feet above sea level, has built a ten-foot sea wall at a cost of $63 million but, long term, only a stabilization of rising sea levels will save it and the rest of the islands.
In Africa, deserti cation is causing the Sahara to spread south at a rate of 30 miles per year, threatening settlements in northern Mauritania. Over the past 20 years, for example, the desert has grown by more than 260 acres around the trading and religious centre of Chinguetti, where the population has declined from 20,000 people in the mid-twentieth century to just a few thousand now. Trading has almost completely stopped as sand piles up in the streets.
Likewise, the Californian resort of Rancho Mirage, near Palm Springs, may have to be abandoned in the next decade. This city is just one example of a problem caused not so much by global warming as human over-expansion. Californias dream of farming the desert made sense while its total population remained around half a million (in 1870) but now the state is home to 38 million people, who own 32 million vehicles.
The daily water use in Rancho Mirage is more than 200 gallons per person, which is causing a man-made drought. A 25% cut in water use has been implemented but this is unlikely to stabilize the resort, which is surrounded by sand and dust. The long-term answer in Californias desert is likely to be the abandonment of some cities.
Fire is a growing threat to urban settlements in America in fact, forest res cause the most damage after severe storms, with 800 major re disasters there between 1953 and 2014. A new report by the USDA Forest Service maps the increasing number of urban locations that are particularly vulnerable to wild re.
Similarly in Australia, some of Victorias resorts and several Melbourne suburbs have been placed on a list of the states 52 most vulnerable bush re spots because long-term droughts are making trees highly combustible. Its unlikely that a forest re will ever destroy an entire city but a succession of res could make it uninhabitable.
Many cities are ghting a losing battle against nature but is it possible to identify the worlds most vulnerable city? Natural events are very dif cult to predict but Males future looks particularly bad because, even if its new sea wall continues to be effective, the islands around the Maldives capital are going to disappear before too long. And, if they disappear, Males raison detre disappears, too. | 1int
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Intermediate
How long can you hold your breath? Im trying it right now. The rst 30 seconds are easy. Im ready to give up at 45 seconds but I continue and it seems to get easier for a while. But, as the second hand ticks past a minute, my heart is pounding. I let out a tiny breath and this helps. Eventually, I give up, releasing the air in my lungs and taking a huge breath. I manage one minute and 12 seconds. Im quite impressed with myself.
The ability to hold your breath is extremely important in some sports, particularly freediving. In 2006, I was lming a programme about the anatomy and physiology of the lungs for a BBC series. I was lucky to meet Sam Amps, who was captain of the UK freedive team. At a pool in Bristol, she taught me some simple exercises to help me hold my breath for longer while swimming underwater. By the end of the session, Id managed 90 seconds of breath-holding, enough to let me swim a width. Sam swam three widths easily. She could hold her breath for ve minutes, while swimming. Five!
I asked how she did it: very slow breathing for several minutes before each dive, then a big, deep breath before diving in. She also said that training helped her resist the urge to breathe for far longer than most people.
Some have suggested that the ability to voluntarily hold your breath is evidence that, at some point during our evolution, we lived in water. Some even say that humans have an ability to lower their heart rate in order to breath-hold for even longer. Other facts our hairlessness, the distribution of our subcutaneous fat and even that we walk on two legs have been linked to an aquatic phase of our evolutionary development. But, unfortunately, the aquatic ape hypothesis is not true.
Looking at voluntary breath-holding, we are, in fact, not the only non-aquatic mammals that are able to hold their breath. (But its a dif cult thing to investigate in other mammals because, unlike humans, its dif cult to get them to hold their breath.) And evidence shows that our heart rate doesnt drop during breath-holding. At least, it doesnt if youre breath-holding on land. When youre in cold water, its different: this leads to a slower heart rate in most people. But, once again, this isnt evidence of an aquatic ape ancestry. This reduction in heart rate is just one of the physiological responses that are sometimes called the mammalian diving re ex. But physiological responses that are useful in diving are also and, perhaps, even more importantly useful for not drowning.
While our ability to breath-hold may not be special, when we compare ourselves with other animals, its now becoming very useful in one particular area of medicine. Radiotherapy for breast cancer involves pointing radiation, very precisely, at the tumour. This may require several minutes of radiation and, so, its usually done in short periods, between breaths. But, if the patient can keep her chest perfectly still for several minutes, it means that the entire dose can be given, in the right place, in one go. The problem, of course, is that most people, just like me, cannot hold their breath for much longer than a minute. But doctors at University Hospital Birmingham have shown that, if patients are given oxygen-rich air before holding their breath, they can hold it for ve-and-a-half minutes.
Surprisingly, the trick seems to be the ability to fool the diaphragm. When you breathe in, youre pulling the muscle of your diaphragm at so that the volume of your chest increases and air is pulled into your lungs. When you hold your breath, you keep your diaphragm like that. If you arti cially raise oxygen levels and reduce carbon dioxide levels before a breath-hold, as in the Birmingham radiotherapy experiments, you may be able to delay tiredness in the diaphragm. So, its your diaphragm, the main muscle of breathing, that is in charge when it comes to holding your breath. Eventually, even if youve fooled it for a while, the signals from the diaphragm are just too strong and you have to give up and take a breath. | 1int
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Intermediate
Unless we win, it doesnt mean a damn thing, said billionaire Donald Trump, the man who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee, at a campaign rally in South Carolina. He said this despite nishing his fourth month in a row at the top of the opinion polls. I want to pick my date for the election. I want it next Tuesday, he con ded to the crowd of 11,000 people. He has a lot of grassroots support, which he needs to continue until March 2016 for him to win the nomination to be the presidential candidate in Novembers general election.
Trump is not the only one beginning to think it possible that his surprising campaign can go the distance, particularly because recent controversy only seems to have con rmed his lead over his rivals. Usually, any one of these outbursts would have destroyed a politician by now.
First, he outraged prisoners of war by doubting the heroism of Vietnam veteran John McCain because he allowed himself to be captured. Then, there was the rst television debate, where he insulted Fox News moderator, Megyn Kelly, because she asked him dif cult questions.
It seems that making prisoners of war, Fox News and women angry was not enough. Trump has also insulted Mexican immigrants to the US, claimed that a Black Lives Matter protester who was violently thrown out of a rally deserved to be roughed up, appeared to laugh at a New York Times journalist for his disability and falsely accused Muslim Americans of supporting the 9/11 attackers.
Trump has complained that many of these incidents were exaggerated by the political media, 70% of whom, he says, are scum. But, he has refused to retract any of the comments.
Some rivals still hope that, eventually, even Trumps supporters will get tired of his attacks on minorities. One poll shows his support among Republicans has reduced by 12 points although, at 31%, he is still in the lead.
He is an egomaniac; hes a narcissist. Hes not a conservative, hes not a liberal he believes in himself, former presidential rival, Bobby Jindal, told the Guardian, before he left the race.
But, there is more to Trump than attention- grabbing outrage. As he is happy to tell supporters, the three things that he is most against immigration reform, free-trade deals and Barack Obamas national security policy have become perhaps the most important issues of the election.
His policies for deporting every undocumented immigrant in the US and demanding that Mexico pays for a border wall A real wall. A very tall wall, taller than that ceiling. might sound unrealistic but they have destroyed the campaign hopes of Jeb Bush, who favours immigration reform.
So what can stop Trump? One reason for hope among opponents is the strong evidence that polls this far away from election day can be incorrect, simply because most people have not made up their minds how to vote yet. Among Americans who say they are Republicans, current polls suggest he has 25-30% of the vote.
In the political battle for hearts and minds, converting Trumps passionate supporters will be hard. It is hard to imagine anyone being a better Trump than Trump.
This scenario can be best understood by looking at responses to the question: Which candidates would you de nitely not support for the Republican nomination for president? While 20-30% of voters say they would support Trump, another 20-30% say they de nitely would not.
Steve Deace, an Iowa conservative, said that Trumps behaviour is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it produces loyal fans that are attracted to his personality. On the other hand, it limits his ability to grow beyond that.
Top Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, believes Trump speaks for voters who, for the rst time, feel as if they have a mouthpiece and like the fact that they feel like they are heard. He says, Trump says what theyre thinking and, the more outrageous he is, the more they agree with him. Hes saying what no politician would say and thats another reason they like him.
That is certainly the feeling among ordinary supporters who have attended his increasingly packed campaign events recently.
I like the way he speaks, says Sandra Murray of Dubuque, Iowa. This country is a big mess and, honestly, he could be the man to help us.
Other supporters offer a simpler explanation. Hes not afraid of anybody or anything. Thats pretty cool. | 1int
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Intermediate
Sometimes life isnt fair. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and is now worth an estimated $48bn. James Goodfellow also invented something used by millions of people around the world every day the cash machine but it didnt make him rich. In fact, he earned just 10 from the patent and has not made a penny more from it since.
You can imagine how I feel when I see bankers getting 1m bonuses. What have they contributed to the banking industry, compared to me, to merit a 1m bonus, Goodfellow says. He invented something that generated billions of pounds and he got nothing.
There have been arguments for years over who is the inventor of the ATM and, in 2005, a man called John Shepherd-Barron received a UK honour as the inventor of the automatic cash dispenser. But, the UK government is now saying it was Goodfellow who invented the ATM so it seems that, after all the arguments, he now has his place in history.
Back in the mid-1960s, Goodfellow was working as a development engineer and was asked to devise a way to allow customers to withdraw cash from banks on Saturdays. Most people worked during the week and couldnt get to the bank. They wanted a solution. The solution was a machine which would give cash to a recognized customer, he remembers. I wanted to develop a cash-issuing machine and, to make this a reality, I invented the PIN [personal identi cation number] and a coded token.
This token was a plastic card with holes in it. The patent documents described a system with a card reader and buttons mounted in an external wall of the bank. After Goodfellow produced a model that showed how the machine would work, prototypes were built and the rst machines were installed in 1967. At around the same time, Shepherd-Barron was developing a rival machine. His machine didnt use plastic cards instead, it used cheques containing carbon-14, a mildly radioactive substance. The machine detected the carbon-14, matched the cheque against a PIN and paid out the cash.
It is widely accepted that the Shepherd-Barron ATM was the worlds rst to be installed and used by the public; the rst one, at a bank in north London, was opened on 27 June, 1967 a month before Goodfellows ATM appeared. However, the patent for Goodfellows machine was lodged on 2 May, 1966, 14 months before Shepherd-Barrons ATM machine was first used.
Shepherd-Barron received an of cial honour for his achievement and Goodfellow says: My one big regret is that I never said anything about it until John Shepherd-Barron received the OBE in 2005 for inventing the automatic cash dispenser. That really stuck in my throat and I kicked up a fuss.
Shepherd-Barron is no longer alive but, in a 2005 interview, he was quite critical of his rival: I dont know him but its clear that the difference between Goodfellow and us was that we thought through the whole system concept and that was important to the banks who bought it. His invention reminds me of the hovercraft, an elegant failure."
The cash machine is now used all over the world and nothing the contactless revolution, bitcoin, wearable technology, etc is slowing its growth: there are now 3m ATMs worldwide and, by 2020, there will probably be 4m.
The good news for Goodfellow is that he is beginning to be recognized for his invention. The website ATMInventor.com says: Who invented the idea of an ATM? We believe it was Luther George Simjian. Who invented the ATM as we know it? We have to think it was James Goodfellow for holding a patent date of 1966. Who invented the ATM design we recognize today? We think it was John D White in the US.
Even better for Goodfellow, his achievement has been of cially recognized in the latest edition of a 180-page guidebook called Life in the United Kingdom. In the section about great British inventions of the twentieth century, it states: In the 1960s, James Goodfellow (1937-) invented the cash-dispensing automatic teller machine (ATM) or cashpoint.
So after all these years, Goodfellow is nally among a group of famous British inventors with John Logie Baird (the television), Alan Turing (the Turing machine), Sir Frank Whittle (the jet engine) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the World Wide Web). Asked what he did with the 10 he received in the 1960s, Goodfellow says he thinks he blew it on a night out. He added: It didnt change my life. | 1int
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Intermediate
Our new international survey across 33 countries shows how wrong people around the world are about key social realities.
British people think the top 1% wealthiest households own 59% of their countrys wealth, when they actually only own 23%. Americans think that 33% of their population are immigrants, when in fact it is only 14%.
Brazilians think the average age in their country is 56, when it is only 31. Russians think that 31% of their politicians are women, when it is only 14%.
In Britain, people think that 43% of young adults aged 25-34 still live at home with their parents, rather than the actual 14%. In India, the online population think 60% of the whole country also has internet access, when in fact only 19% do.
Why are people across the world so often clueless about these realities?
It is partly that we just struggle with basic maths and some of us clearly misunderstand the questions or interpret them differently. For example, most countries hugely overestimate how many people are not religious: across the 33 countries, respondents think that 37% are not religious but the average is actually just 18%. This is because we are thinking of how many people practise their religion, rather than how many people see themselves as having a religion.
People also take mental shortcuts, where they take easily available information even if it doesnt quite t the question. Our huge overestimates of the rural populations in most countries will be affected by how large rural areas are, rather than a careful calculation of how many people live in them. In Daniel Kahnemans terms, answers to these sorts of questions are classic examples of fast thinking, rather than slow.
We see things from our own perspective and struggle to imagine the variety in our countries. This was highlighted by our Indian respondents who massively overestimated their populations access to the internet. Our study was mostly carried out through an online survey and, in developing countries, this will be representative of a more wealthy, connected group rather than the general population. What we nd throughout the study is that people generalize from their own situations and forget how unrepresentative they are.
We suffer from what social psychologists call emotional innumeracy when we are estimating realities: this means we are sending a message about what is worrying us as much as trying to get the right answers.
For Britain, worries are part of the explanation for peoples huge overestimates of how much the wealthiest own, how many young people are still living at home and what proportion of the population are immigrants (the guess is 25%, when it is really only 13%). People are worried about these things and, because of this, they overestimate how big the problems are.
But, the survey suggests there are also some issues where people are not as worried as they should be. For example, most countries hugely underestimate how much of their population is overweight or obese. The worst case is Saudi Arabia, where people think only 28% are, when 71% are. Britons think it is 44% when it is actually nearly half as much again 62% are either overweight or obese.
And, in many ways, it is not our misperceptions but these realities across different countries that are the most interesting and important aspects of the study. The top 1% in Russia own 70% of the nations wealth while the top 1% in New Zealand only own 18%. Half of Italians aged 25-34 still live with their parents, when it is only 4% in Norway. The average age in India is 27; it is 47 in Japan. Only 10% of politicians are women in Brazil, Hungary and Japan, when 44% are in Sweden.
When the reality is so strange and varied, it is no wonder were so wrong. | 1int
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Intermediate
James Hamblin, senior editor of The Atlantic magazine, recently did an experiment. As part of his series, If Our Bodies Could Talk, Hamblin took on a no-showering challenge to examine the effect of over-cleansing the body. He reduced the number of showers he had and did not use shampoo or soap when he had a shower.
He discovered what thousands of others have: the more we try to clean ourselves with soaps and body washes, the harder our skin works to restore its balance and this encourages us to begin the whole process again. Showering removes oil and bacteria from the skin. Many would say That is the reason I shower! But, apparently, this sometimes works a little too well, especially when you add hot water and cleansing products.
You know that feeling after a shower when you feel like your skin is tight? Thats because much of your skins natural moisture has been washed down the drain. Also, our skin, like our gut, has millions of bene cial bacteria. Showering destroys these bacterial colonies; theyre completely destroyed by all our frequent rubbing and scrubbing. And, when the bacteria washed off by soap return, they usually favour microbes which produce an odour yes, showering too often may actually make you smell more. However, when you stop showering and using soap, your skin goes through an initial (probably gross) adjustment period and, then, after that, the skin typically restores balance, oil production slows and healthy bacteria ourish.
By doing the challenge, Hamblin realized what other no-soap/no-shower fans have known for years: that the human body, working on its own, is actually quite lovely. And, its not just scent and aesthetics although skin experts suggest that using less soap can improve skin conditions like eczema. Reducing the frequency of showers (and the number of cleansing products used) has implications for our environment. The average shower lasts seven minutes and uses 65 litres of water. Thats 65 litres of clean, drinkable water that were lling with soap and washing down the drain each day sometimes more than once.
The vital importance of clean water is becoming harder and harder to ignore, as California enters another summer of drought. Its becoming clear that clean water is one of the most valuable things in the world and we soon wont have enough. Add the environmental effect of all those body wash bottles and you have a number of very good reasons to let your body be a bit more natural.
If the idea of showering less and using less soap is giving you the heebie-jeebies as you remember the last time you were close to people who already dont shower enough, relax. Many people who have decided to shower less still use deodorant if they nd it necessary (everyones natural scent varies in intensity and it can be affected by a number of things including diet, hydration and exercise). And, hand-washing with soap is still recommended as a vital way to reduce the spread of infectious diseases.
You dont need to give up completely, as Hamblin did, but you dont need to shower three times a day either. There is something in the middle. Our familiar, simple advice is: reduce. Skip a few showers, put down the soap and let those lovely little bacteria ourish a little. | 1int
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Intermediate
Many of us know we dont get enough sleep but imagine if we could x it with a fairly simple solution: getting up later. In a speech at the British Science Festival, Dr Paul Kelley of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University said schools should stagger their starting times to work with the natural biological rhythms of their students. It would improve cognitive performance, exam results and students health (lack of sleep can cause diabetes, depression, obesity and immune system problems).
In 2014, he published a paper in which he noted that, when children are around ten, their biological wake-up time is about 6.30am; at 16, this rises to 8am; and, at 18, someone you may think is just a lazy teenager actually has a natural waking hour of 9am. The normal school starting time works for 10-year-olds but not for 16- to 18-year-olds. For the older teenagers, it might be more sensible to start the school day at 11am or even later. A 7am alarm call for older teenagers, Kelley and his colleagues wrote in the paper, is the equivalent of a 4.30am start for a teacher in their 50s.
He says the solution is not to persuade teenagers to go to bed earlier. The bodys natural rhythm is controlled by a particular kind of light, says Kelley. The eye contains cells that report to a part of the brain that controls our circadian rhythms over a 24-hour cycle. Its the light that controls it. Its like saying: Why cant you control your heartbeat?
But it isnt just students who would bene t from a later start. Kelley says the working day should be more linked to our natural rhythms. Describing the average sleep loss per night for different age groups, he says: Between 14 and 24, its more than two hours. For people aged between 24 and about 30 or 35, its about an hour and a half. That can continue up until youre about 55 when its in balance again. The 10-year-old and 55-year-old wake and sleep naturally at the same time.
This might be why, he adds, the traditional nine to ve is so ingrained; bosses control working hours and many of them are in their mid-50s and older so it is best for them. So, should workplaces have staggered starting times, too? Should those in their 50s and above come in at 8am, while those in their 30s start at 10am and the teenage apprentice be encouraged to start at 11am? Kelley says that synchronized hours could have many positive consequences. The positive side of this is peoples performance, mood and health will improve. Its very uplifting because its a solution that will make people less ill, and happier and better at what they do.
There would probably be fewer accidents because drivers would be more alert, he says. It could mean the end of rush hour as people staggered their work and school-run times. A later start to the day for many, says Kelley, is something that would bene t all people, particularly families. Parents go and try to wake up teenagers who are waking up three hours too early. It creates tensions for everybody.
So, what time does Kelley start work? I am 67 so that means Im like a 10-year-old and I get up just after six. I wake naturally. And, yes, he says he nds the start of his working day much easier now than he did when he was younger. | 1int
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Intermediate
Will we soon live in a world where drones deliver packages? If you believe Amazon, the answer is yes. Others are not so sure: we need to make more technical progress in this area but there is also the problem of public safety.
Amazon spokesman Paul Misener told a US congress hearing recently that his company would be ready as soon as all the rules were in place. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) will nally have regulations on the commercial use of unmanned aircraft by June 2016. But the technology has a long way to go before then and larger machines arent legal yet only drones up to 25kg will be legal. And the FAA says that, if youre going to crowd the skies with radio- controlled ying robots, they must all use different radio frequencies that nobody can jam or hijack.
Professor Sajiv Singh, who runs a cargo delivery company called NearEarth, said that, to pilot a state-of-the-art drone, you simply give it some basic instructions: go to this altitude, perform this short task, go back home. But even short ights from a mobile landing pad could cause serious logistical problems, he said.
Theyre not going to deliver from one uninhabited place to another uninhabited place; theyre going to deliver from a warehouse to the consumer, which will probably be an urban area or a suburban area, he said. In those particular cases, there are going to be hazards that the vehicle is going to have to see. Maybe there will be terrain that the map doesnt know about. Then, maybe theres construction equipment that wasnt there before but is there now. Maybe GPS signals are blocked, in which case its going to have an incorrect idea about where it is. All these problems can be solved, he said but its dif cult.
One major problem is maintaining radio contact with a drone and planning for what happens if that contact breaks. If you have an off-the-shelf UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], itll just keep going and crash into the ground, said roboticist Daniel Huber.
Furthermore, you cant do everything with a 25kg aircraft, said Jay McConville, director of business development for unmanned systems at Lockheed Martin. People in the aircraft business have to remind ourselves that the operator doesnt really care about every little thing about the aircraft and wants instead to focus on the end result, he said. Operators want to see vehicle status information; they want to see video on their handheld device or their laptop.
Technologically, most of the things that we need for this are in place, said Huber. He is working on a program to allow drones to inspect infrastructure pipelines, telephone lines, bridges and so on. Weve developed an exploration algorithm where you draw a box around an area and it will y around that area and look at every surface and then report back.
Huber, who works on 3D systems imagery, said about Amazon: I have heard them say that many packages are lightweight a drone can carry a kilogram for 15 minutes. If you have a vehicle that can go into a neighbourhood, it can deliver from that base. You need a 15-minute distance and typical off-the-shelf drones have that distance. Its one way, he said, of making sure the surrounding population is relatively safe. The larger you get, the more dangerous you get.
Problems with the use of drones can be solved in some very dramatic ways, Huber said. At a recent conference, he said, a disaster relief drone company demonstrated a robot that could take off and, when it got tired, land on its own charging station and exchange its batteries.
Of course, safety is still a major concern Singh says that, for a commercial aircraft to be allowed to y, it has to prove a rate of one serious failure every one million hours. Drones, he said, are a long way from that. The Reaper drone has one failure in 10,000 hours, Singh said. But they dont consider an oil leak a catastrophic failure something has to fall out of the sky.
Part of the reason for this is that air travel is dangerous so standards are much higher. If you y commercial airlines, they often say, Oh, a component has failed we have to go back to the gate, Singh said. And thats an established industry with 60 years of legacy! I hate to think that a drone might come down on a busy road. Part of the solution, Singh said, is planning for every situation: If things fail, the vehicle has to do something reasonable. | 1int
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Intermediate
Maria is sitting on a black plastic chair in a community centre on a cold Tuesday afternoon waiting for someone to call her number. She is number 34.
When its her turn, Maria goes to pick up a brown paper bag lled with essentials including pasta, eggs and corn akes, and can choose between butternut squash or carrots as this weeks vegetables.
Maria is the 34th client so far today at East Hampton Food Pantry, just streets away from some of the most expensive houses in the world.
Each day at this time of year, more than 400 families collect their weekly food parcel from the food pantry. This food helps them survive the cold, dark Long Island winter.
The Hamptons are historic oceanfront towns and villages 100 miles from Manhattan. In the summertime, they are a billionaires playground. But, in early September, when the rich and famous shut up their mansions and go back to Manhattan or Beverly Hills, the glamour ends and the gritty reality of life begins for the mostly immigrant community who live here all year.
The people who come here are rich and famous but we who live here are not, says Maria, who works 14-hour days in the summer cleaning mansions but often has no work at all in the winter.
Maria laughs when asked if she has enough money. There is no work in the winter, only in the summertime, says Maria, who is from Latin America, like many of the workers in the Hamptons. Here, lots of people live in a single room because they cant pay the rent.
She says some families with up to ve children have to live in basements and still pay more than $1,000 a month in rent. People come here looking for work but, in the winter, there is nothing.
Lots of her friends cant pay for heating or medication and many would go hungry if the East Hampton Food Pantry didnt exist, she says. It is just one of several food pantries in the town.
Vicki Littman is chairperson of the East Hampton Food Pantry, which provided more than 31,000 food parcels in 2015. She says there are more and more people coming to the food pantry.
Littman says that, when she talks to the people who come for the summer about the food pantries, they are always shocked because they know only the glamorous side of the Hamptons where there are big parties and the beaches and mansions.
But, what people dont realize is that there is that service industry. Its the landscapers, the nannies, the waitresses they all rely on what they earn in the summer to survive the winter.
Littman says the town has lost too many people who do important jobs such as teachers, police of cers and even doctors and dentists because they cant afford to live in the community.
Housing is the biggest cost in the Hamptons. Larry Cantwell, who has lived in East Hampton all his life, says homes regularly change hands for more than $25m. Finding your rst home is a challenge in an area like this, Cantwell says. If you can nd a home to buy anywhere in East Hampton for $500,000, youre very lucky.
Cantwell says more than half the towns homes are empty for most of the year this causes the population to go from 80,000 in August to 10,000 in the winter months.
Theres certainly a lot of wealth here but almost all of that wealth is in second homes only used in the summer, says Cantwell, the son of a sherman father and a house-cleaner mother. But, the rest of us live here year round.
There are famous and very wealthy people but also hard-working and poor people who struggle to get by. Youve got to remember that this community used to be a farming and shing community of people who lived off the land and the water a real working-class community.
Eddie Vallone, 22, says, People see the Hamptons as some sort of rich town but there are a lot of problems here, especially drugs. Its hard to grasp OK, the summer is ending. What am I going to do for the winter? Vallone says. I want to work but theres no work to do.
Vallone, who works cleaning pools and doing odd jobs on luxury estates, says that, if he saves well, his summer earnings can last until November. But, work doesnt start again until May or the beginning of June. | 1int
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Intermediate
There are worse things to do in life than stroll along Rios Copacabana beach in the sunshine on the way to watch a World Cup match, so it was perhaps not surprising that England fan Anthony McDowell from Liverpool was in a good mood. The place is lovely. The people are great. Theres a party atmosphere, said McDowell. The only thing that could be better is the England team.
He and half a dozen friends are among the thousands of supporters from around the world who have made the beach into a party zone of national colours and chants. Some danced, some posed for photos, some drank, but mostly they just walked and talked football, waiting for the next game to begin on the nearby big screen. The last time there were so many people here during the daytime, the pope was visiting.
The cheerful, largely peaceful mood was very different from the protests, transport chaos and stadium problems during the preparations for the World Cup. But, now the football is under way, visiting supporters are determined to enjoy the experience. If I had known, when I started planning, how complicated and costly it would be, I wouldnt have come. But, now that were here, its great, said Brian Hill, an England fan from Sunderland.
The trip has not been without its problems. Hill travelled for more than 20 hours to get to Rio. His son, Andrew, had his sunglasses stolen almost as soon as he sat on the beach. And, they have been surprised that many bars do not have big screens for the games. But, like many fans, they said they loved the atmosphere of this tournament, which has got off to a spectacular start on the pitch.
Everyone must have been thrilled by Robin van Persies extraordinary diving header for the Netherlands against Spain. And, there have been lots of goals: 28 in the rst eight games almost three times as many as at the same stage in South Africa in 2010. Adding to the carnival mood on the streets, where the majority of fans are from neighbouring nations, Latin-American teams have been very successful so far.
Up to now, the tournament has avoided the worst Doomsday scenarios, though it is far from trouble free. The stadiums may have been delivered late and in some cases not fully nished, but there have been no reports of structural problems or dif culties entering the grounds since the kick off.
As at previous World Cups, ticketing has been a problem, with many empty seats at several games. FIFA spokesman Saint-Clair Milesi con rmed that only 48,000 of the 51,900 seats at the Netherlands versus Spain game were filled.
The Globo newspaper listed a number of problems in the 12 host cities. Almost all suffered worse traf c congestion than usual. The worst transport problems were in Natal, where bus drivers were on strike. In Salvador, some journey times were ve times longer than usual. Traf c was already bad but this week it is chaotic, said Jecilda Mello, a local resident.
But, protests have diminished since the opening day, when small demonstrations took place in several cities and police used tear gas and pepper spray. Since then, the only security threat has been petty theft and overexcited fans. A spontaneous street party of Argentinian fans was dispersed with pepper spray after the fans blocked roads.
The huge distances have led to some very different World Cup experiences. The tournament has made only a small mark on Sa_o Paulo, South Americas most populous city, but far away in Manaus the remote Amazonian city where England played Italy visitors said there was World Cup fever with brightly decorated streets and ags on many cars.
The FA chairman, Greg Dyke, said there was a big difference in atmosphere. Weve had a really warm welcome in Manaus. Its a big thing for them, even if it is a bit strange to spend so much on a stadium with no one to play in it. But we were in Sao Paulo for four or ve days before the opening match and you wouldnt have known until the last day that there was even a World Cup on. It was weird. | 1int
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Intermediate
McDonalds is the worlds biggest burger chain and a global emblem of American consumer capitalism. But, these days, the golden arches of McDonalds are looking a little tarnished. After a decade of expansion, customers around the world dont seem to be lovin it any more. McDonalds has revealed that worldwide sales dropped by 3.3% from 2013. The set of results were described as awful.
The company has problems almost everywhere. In China, sales fell by 23% because local media showed workers at a local supplier claiming to use out-of-date beef and chicken in McDonalds and KFC products. In Europe, sales are down by 4%, mostly because of problems in Ukraine and the anti-western mood in Russia. Around 200 of McDonalds 450 restaurants in Russia are being investigated by health inspectors and ten have been closed.
But it is in the US, where McDonalds has around 40% of its restaurants, where the crisis is deepest. Almost 60 years since Ray Kroc opened his rst restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, consumers are losing their appetite for a Big Mac and fries.
McDonalds has seen 12 straight months of falling sales in its massive home market, with sales down 4.1% in the latest quarter. Younger diners are deserting the restaurant in droves to eat out at rivals such as Chipotle Mexican Grill. The number of 19-to-21-year-olds visiting McDonalds once a month has fallen by 13% since 2011.
To add to the companys problems, McDonalds hamburgers were recently named the worst in America in a poll of more than 32,000 American diners, who said they would rather eat a burger at Five Guys, Smashburger or Fuddruckers. McDonalds is also widely perceived as less healthy than most of its rivals, especially Chipotle, with its antibiotic-free meat and locally sourced, seasonal produce although local can mean 350 miles away.
The depth of consumer mistrust of McDonalds was exposed by a consumer outreach exercise the company launched in the US in October. Have you ever used pink slime in your burgers? was one question on the Our Food Your Questions website this refers to the controversial beef ller used for dog food that is sprayed with ammonia to make it t for human consumption. McDonalds has not used the meat product since 2012 but Chief Executive Don Thompson acknowledged the company had a job to do in addressing misconceptions about the freshness and quality of its ingredients.
Yet, just as McDonalds has been losing the customers who will pay a bit more for food they think is fresher and healthier, it has also lost its edge in fast-food essentials: speedy service at low prices. Ever since it introduced $2 items on its dollar menu, it has gained a reputation for being more expensive than its rivals, while many consumers complain that service is slower.
The expensive tag was unjusti ed, said Mary Chapman at food analysts Technomic. Prices have indeed gone up but they havent gone up as quickly as the rest of the fast-service chains in the US. Prices at McDonalds have increased by 4.8% since 2009, well below the fast-food average (up 19.4%), and the cost of fast casual eating, a category that includes Chipotle, is up 16.9%. US consumer prices rose 11% over the same period.
But critics are not wrong about the longer queues. McDonalds has a bigger menu than some, with more complicated items its chicken McWrap takes 60 seconds to make. I think it is worth waiting but the guy behind me who wants his double cheeseburger for a dollar might not, said Chapman.
In the UK, McDonalds has turned around its business, which makes Britain a rare bright spot for the company. A competitive breakfast menu, improved coffee and free wi- have given McDonalds a broad appeal in the UK, said consultant Peter Martin, adding that 56% of British adults have visited a McDonalds restaurant at least once in the last six months.
Executives are promising to fight misconceptions about its food in its home market. Thompson has promised more organic food and custom-made burgers but, to cut down queues, he also wants to introduce simpler menus. Analysts are not sure how the company can solve the problem of simpler menus and greater choice over filings.
They want to simplify the menu but enhance its ability to customize and that sounds tricky, said Mark Kalinowski at Janney Capital Markets. Only four out of McDonalds 14,000 US restaurants had so far tested build your own burger, he said. Right now, we are sceptical; we would like to see more detail.
Meanwhile, despite the declining sales, the chain continues to expand globally: by the end of 2014, it expects to have 1,400 new restaurants. Kalinowski expects McDonalds market share will continue to shrink but he, too, warned against writing off the company. We think it will be number one for not just years but decades to come. | 1int
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Intermediate
In typical bad-boyfriend style, Dan Sullivan was late to breakfast with the Guardian because he got pulled over on his motorcycle.
Sullivan works too much, he says. He misses dinner dates. He forgets to give presents.
And so, like many others in Silicon Valley, the 27-year-old venture capitalist has come up with a start-up: BetterBoyfriend.me, a service that sends girlfriends and wives a present every month for about $70.
Sullivan, who works in finance, has been testing the service and has signed up about 350 boyfriends. Most members, he says, are his friends from Harvard and other friends who are either venture capitalists, founders of start-ups or employees of companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. The girlfriends of these friends have been getting presents from Sullivan for the last year.
Each month, Sullivans members choose from a list of seven possible gifts (chocolate, tea sets, manicures). The package is sent to the boyfriend unbranded and unlabelled.
He tests his ideas by buying Facebook ads to see what kind of interest they get. BetterBoyfriend.me took off. People seemed to like BetterBoyfriend, Sullivan said.
Another start-up, called InvisibleBoyfriend, allows users to design and build a believable partner who is everything you want and is always available to talk, whenever you want. The end result is a boyfriend who can text with you all day.
Founder Kyle Tabor launched it to give users a fake boyfriend to deter unwanted advances but has found people have grown attached to their imaginary partners: Many more users are looking for companionship through conversation rather than external proof of a relationship.
For Sullivan and Tabor, the surprise was the real relationships that they have formed with their customers. Sullivan says he has begun to see himself as a sort of relationship consultant for the boyfriends.
Sullivan admits hes made mistakes. Early on, the packages he sent included receipts that had his name on them, Dan Sullivan. One of the boyfriends wrote to me and said, Listen, shes not mad but Cynthia found out.
Of all the women BetterBoyfriend.me deliver packages to, about 50% know about Dan Sullivans involvement in their relationships: Its connected with age. I think, after youve been married for a while, you dont keep many secrets.
And over the year, the young founder says hes got to know the boyfriends really well. Theyve even sent a package to a hospital delivery room. The key, he said, is to remember that his relationship is with the boyfriend.
When he first started his company, he attached tags that said BetterBoyfriend.me to flower bouquets and set off for Dolores Park in Mission District, San Francisco.
I looked for couples and gave the bouquet to the girl but the boyfriends didnt like that. Not at all. I understood why. It was cool, he said. So I changed my idea and started handing out the bouquets to the boyfriends. | 1int
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Intermediate
Thousands of people protested on Australias beaches against a shark cull that is being carried out in Western Australia. They called on the states prime minister to end the policy, and RSPCA Australia and Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson spoke out against it. The catching and killing of sharks longer than three metres began after what the state government called an unprecedented number of shark attacks on Western Australias coast. A 35-year-old surfer, killed in November 2013, was the sixth person to die from a shark attack in two years.
However, the whole of Australia has had an average of just one shark-related death a year for the last 50 years. Kate Faehrmann, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said from a protest in the state capital, Perth: Weve always said that this policy wont work. Drumlines used to catch the sharks kill sharks whether theyre one, two, three metres or more, as well as dolphins, turtles and other things. Thats why the community doesnt want it.
Thousands of people protested on beaches in the cities of Perth, Sydney and Adelaide, and at beaches in Victoria and Queensland. Faehrmann said the protests had shown that Australians wanted sharks protected: Whats amazing is so many people in Australia love sharks. This has demonstrated something about the national psyche; that, despite all the fear, thousands of people are coming out across the country to say, Thats their ocean. We respect them, we love them and we dont want them killed. Anthony Joyce, a surfer who once had his foot caught in a sharks mouth, said: The number of sharks they are going to kill is going to make no difference.
The state government has refused to say how many sharks have been killed, though there have been reports of sharks smaller than three metres being released after getting caught on drumlines, oating drums xed to the sea bed with bait hanging on hooks underneath them. Conservationists say there is no evidence the cull will reduce the number of shark attacks on humans, because no previous cull has only used drumlines. Researchers at the University of Western Australia say the increased number of shark attacks in the state is probably because the state has the fastest-growing population in Australia, not because of a rising number of sharks.
Richard Peirce, of the UK-based conservation charity, the Shark Trust, said that the cull would be ineffective and could bring more predators towards the coast. The activity in Western Australia is compounding the human tragedy of shark attacks. It is very sad that a government has ignored the best advice and chosen an approach that is ineffective and counterproductive, he said. People often dont consider that that drumlines are indiscriminate even if monitored through the day, leaving the lines in at night has the potential to attract other predators into the area, attracted by those sharks and other species hooked and injured.
Worldwide, in 2012, there were 80 attacks by sharks, seven of which were fatal, compared to nearly 100m sharks killed by humans each year. RSPCA Australia said in a statement that it believes the cull is unjusti ed. There is no evidence that the increase in attacks is a result of increasing shark numbers. Instead, it is consistent with a changing population and human behaviour; that is, there are greater numbers of people in the water, it said.
Richard Branson said the policy was not working. Im sure one of the reasons Western Australia Premier, Colin Barnett, did it was because he was thinking it would encourage tourism. Its going to do quite the reverse, I think. Youre advertising a problem that doesnt exist in a major way and youre deterring people from coming to Perth and your beautiful countryside around it. All youre going to achieve, I think, is to worry people unnecessarily. | 1int
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Intermediate
Race engineer A race engineer liaises between the driver and the mechanics.
Typical salary: New graduates start at 25,000 to 30,000 and quickly progress to junior engineer roles, earning more than 40,000 with just a few years experience. Senior race engineers earn 50,000 to 90,000.
What the job involves: A race engineer is the interpreter between the race-car mechanics and the driver, says race engineer Jamie Muir. The engineer takes feedback from the driver, analyses the data and makes decisions about the set-up needed for maximum performance, then passes this on to the mechanics.
Quali cations: A university degree, typically in automotive/mechanical engineering or motorsport technology. Hands-on experience is essential.
To succeed as a race engineer, you need ... to be able to deal with pressure.
Worst thing about the job: The long hours. Race engineers work 24/7, says Chris Aylett, CEO of the Motorsport Industry Association.
Ethical hacker Typical salary: A newly quali ed hacker can expect a minimum salary of 35,000 to 50,000. This rises to 60,000 to 90,000 at team-leader level.
What the job involves: A company will pay an ethical hacker to hack into its computer system to see how well it might resist a real attack.
Quali cations: You dont necessarily need a degree in computer science. The industry accepts individuals with a very wide range of academic quali cations and skills.
To succeed as an ethical hacker, you need ... a passion for technology and detail. You should also enjoy solving dif cult problems.
Worst thing about the job: When you are called in to test the security of a new customers network and you discover that they have already been hacked.
Bomb-disposal diver Typical salary: In the private sector, you can earn up to 100,000 working just two months out of every three.
What the job involves: Descending to the sea bed and searching for unexploded bombs, shells, grenades and landmines, then either safely recovering and collecting the weapons or securely disposing of them.
Quali cations: To dive offshore, you must have diving quali cations. To be able to dispose of the bombs safely, youll also need an explosive- disposal quali cation and years of experience.
To succeed as a bomb-disposal diver, you need ... to stay calm in stressful situations. You work alone under water, with zero visibility and, if you dont like living in small con ned spaces with lots of other people, forget it.
Worst thing about the job: Expect to be away from home at least six months of the year.
Social engineer Typical salary: Graduates start on 25,000 but salaries increase rapidly with quali cations and experience, rising to between 50,000 and 80,000, on average.
The job: Companies pay a social engineer to try to trick employees into giving them con dential information that allows the engineer to access sensitive company data or the companys computer network.
Quali cations: Typically, social engineers have a degree in IT, although an understanding of psychology is useful.
To succeed as a social engineer, you need ... the con dence to lie convincingly and the ability to t in almost anywhere without looking too out of place. You also need a strong sense of personal ethics and an understanding of the law.
Worst thing about the job: Other people may misunderstand your job: social engineers are not spies but most people think they are.
Power-line helicopter pilot Typical salary: 65,000
The job: To y close to high-voltage power lines in a helicopter so that the lines can be inspected with a camera and any potential faults and issues can be identi ed by the power company.
Quali cations: A private-helicopter-pilot licence, a commercial pilots licence and around 2,000 hours of experience ying at low levels.
To succeed as a power line helicopter pilot, you need ... a steady hand and a cool head. Typically, pilots must y beside the power line, sometimes as little as 20 feet away and just 30 feet off the ground.
Worst thing about the job: There are no negatives, says helicopter pilot Robin Tutcher.
Private butler Typical salary: 60,000 to 90,000
The job: A private butler can be called on by his or her employer to do anything from wardrobe management to chauffeuring and pet care. Typical duties include managing other staff, serving at every meal, running errands, looking after guests, booking restaurants, house security, housekeeping, cooking and anything else the household needs.
Quali cations: You dont need any speci c quali cations but you can do a special course.
To succeed as a butler, you need ... to enjoy looking after other people.
Worst thing about the job: Long hours and an unpredictable work schedule mean its dif cult to have a family life. Butlers also suffer from isolation, cultural differences with their employer and having to work for people who arent always nice. | 1int
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Intermediate
More than one million British workers might be employed on zero-hours contracts, a new poll shows. This suggests that British businesses are using the controversial employment contracts far more than previously thought.
After the results which come from a poll of more than 1,000 employers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) people began asking the government to launch a full inquiry into the use of the contracts. Recently, many organizations from retail chains to Buckingham Palace have been criticized for hiring staff but offering no guarantee of work and pay each week. Employees on zero-hours contracts often get no holiday or sick pay and have to ask permission before looking for additional work elsewhere.
The CIPD found that 38% of zero-hours contract workers describe themselves as employed full-time, typically working 30 hours or more a week. One-third of voluntary sector employers use the contracts and one in four public sector organizations.
Peter Cheese, from the CIPD, said: There does need to be a closer look at what is meant by a zero-hours contract. And this needs to consider both the advantages and disadvantages for businesses and employees.
Retailer Sports Direct recently became the focus of controversy on zero-hours when it was reported that the company employs around 20,000 of its 23,000 staff on the contracts. The retailers use of the contracts was followed by details of many other companies using the contracts, including cinema chain Cineworld and Buckingham Palace, which uses them for its 350 summer workers. Pub group J D Wetherspoon has 24,000 of its staff 80% of its workforce on zero-hours contracts.
Vidhya Alakeson, from the Resolution Foundation, added: If its true that there are around one million people on zero-hours contracts, then that would be a substantial portion of the workforce this could no longer be dismissed as an issue affecting only a tiny minority.
Unions and poverty campaign groups have accused employers of pressuring staff into signing the contracts so that they can avoid their responsibilities and reduce staff bene ts.
Dave Prentis, of the trade union Unison, said: The vast majority of workers are only on these contracts because they have no choice. They may give exibility to a few, but the contracts favour the employers and make it hard for workers to complain.
Workers on zero-hours contracts are often only told how many hours they will work when weekly or monthly rotas are created, but are expected to be on call for extra work at short notice. They should get holiday pay, but they do not get sick pay.
The charity National Trust, which employs many of its seasonal workers on zero-hours contracts, said it offered the same pay and bene ts to those workers, pro rata, as full-time staff, but needed some workers to be on more exible contracts.
We believe zero-hours contracts are essential in our organization, as we are very weather-dependent, a spokeswoman said. Its important to be able to reorganize staff rotas quickly to respond to the weather and zero-hours contracts allow us to do this.
Politician Chuka Umunna said the contracts should be the exception to the rule. While some employees welcome the exibility of such contracts, for many, zero-hours contracts leave them insecure and unsure of when work will come, he said.
Some people have argued that the exibility of zero-hours contracts may have allowed the UK to avoid higher levels of unemployment during the economic crisis.
Figures from the poll suggest that 17% of employers in the private sector use zero-hours contracts, considerably lower than the 34% of organizations in the voluntary sector and 24% in the public sector.
Industries where employers were most likely to have at least one person on a zero-hours contract were hotels, catering and leisure (48%), education (35%) and healthcare (27%). | 1int
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Intermediate
Low-income countries will continue to be the most affected by human-induced climate change over the next century. They will experience gradual sea-level rises, stronger cyclones, warmer days and nights, more unpredictable rainfall, and larger and longer heatwaves, according to a recent report.
The last major United Nations (UN) assessment, in 2007, predicted temperature rises of 6 C or more by the end of the century. That is now thought unlikely by scientists, but average land and sea temperatures are expected to continue rising throughout this century, possibly reaching 4 C above present levels enough to devastate crops and make life in many cities unbearably hot.
As temperatures rise and oceans warm, tropical and subtropical regions will see sharp changes in annual rainfall, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released in Stockholm and published online in September.
East Africa can expect increased short rainfalls and west Africa should expect heavier monsoons. Burma, Bangladesh and India can expect stronger cyclones; elsewhere in southern Asia, heavier summer rains are anticipated. Indonesia may receive less rainfall between July and October, but the coastal regions around the south China Sea and Gulf of Thailand can expect increased rainfall extremes when cyclones hit the land.
In the long term, rainfall patterns will change. Northern countries, such as those in Europe or North America, are expected to receive more rainfall, but many subtropical arid and semi-arid regions will likely experience less rain, said the reports authors.
They added that the monsoon season is likely to start earlier and last longer.
Scientists in developing countries and commentators have welcomed the report, which they said supported their own observations.
The IPCC says that climate change is real and happening much more strongly than before. We are already seeing the effects of climate change in Bangladesh and across south Asia. Its not news to us. Most developing countries are facing climate change now. They do not need the IPCC to tell them that the weather is changing, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development.
Scientists have also lowered their projections of sea-level rises. Depending on future greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels will rise an average of 4062 cm by 2100. Nevertheless, there will be signifi cant geographical variations; many millions of people living in the developing worlds great cities, including Lagos and Calcutta, are threatened.
Weather disasters are also more likely in a warmer world, the report suggests. Although the global frequency of tropical cyclones is expected to decrease or remain unchanged, they may become more intense, with stronger winds and heavier rainfall.
Life in many developing-country cities could become unbearable, especially as urban temperatures are already far above those in surrounding countryside. Much higher temperatures could reduce the length of the growing period in some parts of Africa by up to 20%, the report said.
The charity Oxfam predicted that world hunger would worsen because climate changes inevitably hurt crop production and reduce incomes. They said the number of people at risk of hunger might rise by 10% to 20% by 2050.
The changing climate is already jeopardizing gains in the fi ght against hunger, and it looks like it will get worse, said Oxfam. A hot world is a hungry world. | 1int
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When you see the word Amazon, what’s the first thing that springs to mind – the world’s biggest forest, the longest river or the largest internet retailer – and which do you consider most important?
These questions have risen to the fore in an arcane, but hugely important, debate about how to redraw the boundaries of the internet. Brazil and Peru have lodged objections to a bid made by the US e-commerce giant for a prime new piece of cyberspace: “.amazon”.
The Seattle-based company has applied for its brand to be a top-level domain name (currently “.com”), but the South American governments argue this would prevent the use of this internet address for environmental protection, the promotion of indigenous rights and other public interest uses.
Along with dozens of other disputed claims to names, including “.patagonia” and “.shangrila ”, the issue cuts to the heart of debates about the purpose and governance of the internet.
Until now, the differences between commercial, governmental and other types of identity were easily distinguished in every internet address by “.com”, “.gov” and 20 other categories.
But these categories – or generic top-level domains (gTLDs) as they are technically known – are about to undergo the biggest expansion since the start of the worldwide web.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – a US-based non-profit organization that plays a key role in cyberspace governance – has received bids (each reportedly worth almost $200,000) for hundreds of new gTLDs to add to the existing 22.
Amazon has applied for dozens of new domains, including “.shop ”, “.song”, “.book” and “.kindle . But its most contentious application is for its own brand.
Brazil and Peru have called for the “.amazon” application to be withdrawn, saying a private company should not be assigned a name that denotes an important geographical area that spans their territories and is also used for certain regions and cross-border organizations. “Allowing private companies to register geographical names as gTLDs to reinforce their brand strategy or to profit from the meaning of these names does not serve, in our view, the public interest,” the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology said.
Brazil said its views were endorsed last month by other members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela).
Dozens of other protests have also been registered over proposed top-level domains that take geographical, cultural or contested brand names.
Argentina has lodged an expression of its unhappiness that the US outdoor clothing retailer, Patagonia, is claiming a domain name that has been known far longer as a region of spectacular beauty that also has its own parliament. “Argentina rejects the “.patagonia” request for a new generic top-level domain,” the government notes in an appeal. “Patagonia is a relevant region for the country’s economy because it has oil, fishing, mining and agriculture resources. It is also a region with a vibrant local community and it is a major tourist destination.”
Less convincingly, China has disputed the domain “.shangrila”, which is proposed by a hotel group of the same name. The authorities in Beijing say the “shangri-la” label belongs to a region in Yunnan province, although it was only renamed as such in 2001 (long after the hotel group was formed) so that the local community could cash in on the fame of the fictional paradise depicted in the novel, Lost Horizon, by British author James Hilton.
At a conference in April in Beijing, ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee – the primary voice of national governments within the institution – recommended a freeze on disputed proposals. They are expected to be discussed again at a meeting in Durban in July. The first approved domain names should be in use before the end of 2013. | 2adv
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Amsterdam still looks liberal to tourists, who were recently assured by the Labour Mayor that the city’s marijuana-selling coffee shops would stay open despite a new national law tackling drug tourism. But the Dutch capital may lose its reputation for tolerance over plans to dispatch nuisance neighbours to “scum villages” made from shipping containers.
The Mayor, Eberhard van der Laan, insists his controversial new £810,000 policy to tackle antisocial behaviour is to protect victims of abuse and homophobia from harassment. The camps where antisocial tenants will be rehoused for three to six months have been called “scum villages” because the policy echoes proposals from Geert Wilders, the far-right populist, who last year demanded that “repeat offenders” be “sent to a village for scum”.
But Bartho Boer, a spokesman for the Mayor, denies that the plans are illiberal. “We want to defend the liberal values of Amsterdam,” he says. “We want everyone to be who he and she is – whether they are gay and lesbian or stand up to violence and are then victims of harassment. We as a society want to defend them.” According to Boer, the villages are not for “the regular nuisance between two neighbours where one has the stereo too loud on Saturday night” but “people who are extremely violent and intimidating, and in a clear situation where a victim is being repeatedly harassed”.
Those deemed guilty of causing “extreme havoc” will be evicted and placed in temporary homes of a “basic” nature, including converted shipping containers in industrial areas of the city. “We call it a living container,” says Boer. Housing antisocial tenants in these units, which have showers and kitchens and have been used as student accommodation, will ensure that they are not “rewarded” by being relocated to better accommodation.
Dutch newspaper the Parool has pointed out that in the 19th century troublemakers were moved to villages in Drenthe and Overijssel, which rapidly became slums. But Boer insists that the administration has learned from past mistakes and is not planning to house the antisocial together.
It would be more accurate to call them “scum houses” than scum villages, says Boer, “because we don’t want to put more than one of these families in the same area”. After up to six months in these houses, scattered around the city, the tenants will be found permanent homes. The city government anticipates moving around ten families a year into this programme, which starts in 2013.
The temporary dwellings will be heavily policed, but antisocial tenants will also have access to doctors, social workers and parole officers. “They are taken care of so the whole situation is not going to repeat at the new house they are in,” says Boer. | 2adv
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Brazil’s latest funk sensation, Anitta, has won millions of fans by taking the favela sound into the mainstream, but she is at the centre of a debate about skin colour.
Anti-discrimination campaigners and social commentators say the music industry’s fastest rising star has had to sacrifice her blackness to make it into the predominantly white middle- class market.
The controversy was prompted by the publication of then-and-now photographs that show a dramatic lightening of Anitta’s skin tone since she signed a deal with Warner.
In the first, when she was relatively unknown, she looked darker. In the second – a marketing shot after she became famous – she seems paler. Whether this was the result of whitening products and cosmetic surgery or – more likely – Photoshop tweaks, the contrast has rekindled discussion about whether you need to be pale to get ahead in Brazil.
Jarid Arraes, a psychology student and blogger, wrote a post criticizing the latent discrimination in media and marketing that she felt Anitta’s image change represented. “People refuse to accept that they are racist and they think they live in a multiracial democracy, but the statistics show that is far from the case. The whitening shows us a profoundly intolerant society that doesn’t support diversity. White is the image of the rich, the nice, the successful, the good, while people see black as the opposite of all that.”
Born Larissa de Macedo Machado, the diva-to-be was a church chorister in her childhood. In her teens, she made a name for herself in Rio de Janeiro’s baile funk scene as a dancer and singer.
She has now exploded into the public consciousness with an album and a huge hit single, Show das Poderosas , which topped the charts and attracted 52 million YouTube views.
Though adored first and foremost as a pop idol with a strong message and some catchy tunes, her backers project her as a cultural bridge between the predominantly black and mixed-race shanty towns on Rio’s hillsides and the wealthier and whiter communities below.
She has toned down the suggestive dancing, gangsta references and explicit lyrics of baile funk. Now, however, questions are being asked about whether she – or her marketing team – have gone too far in re-tailoring her image to attract a more lucrative demographic. “If pop stars have curly hair, they are going to feel coerced into straightening it. If they have a big nose, they will be coerced into getting rhinoplasty,” said Arraes. “It creates a vicious cycle for self-esteem.”
This is a sensitive topic in this largely mixed-raced nation. Brazil – one of the last big countries in the world to ban slavery – has the largest population of African descent outside Africa, but race and ancestry are less important here than colour. And, despite the nation’s goal of being a multiracial democracy, there is a clear link between skin tone and inequality.
In Brazilian cities, white workers earn roughly twice as much as those of African descent. Up until 2011, black or mixed-race students also spent two years less at school on average.
The government says the gap is closing thanks to quota systems for university places and other forms of affirmative action. But the gulf remains glaringly apparent. The vast majority of business and government executives are white, while most menial jobs are done by black and mixed-race workers. Walk through Ipanema, Gávea or other upmarket districts and you are far more likely to see black nannies pushing strollers with white toddlers than a white nanny pushing a black child.
Defining colour is complex. People who define themselves as white were in the minority for the first time in the most recent census in 2010. Among the 197 million population, 82 million said they were “pardu” (mixed race), 15 million black, two million Asian and 0.5% indigenous.
Sylvio Ferreira, a psychology lecturer at the Federal University of Pernambuco, believes Anitta has won the hearts of the middle class by taking a rebellious sound and making it tamer and more palatable to everyone.
“Was this achieved by racial whitening? No,” he said. “What happened was a change of the social space where Anitta produced her art: from the periphery to the centre.”
Others agree that the issue of colour is overblown. Maycon de Mattos Batista, a financial analyst who worked with Anitta while she was an intern, said there had been a huge change in Anitta’s image, but not of her colour.
“I don’t believe it’s whitening; it’s more the way they are producing her with makeup, hairstylists and the way she dresses,” he said. “I don’t think that was because of pressure being put on her. She always liked to show off, sing and dance. That was a natural thing for her. I believe that it is because of this naturalness that she is where she is today.”
Leandro Silva de Souza, a racial equality activist in the north-eastern city of Salvador, said the prejudice lay not with society but with music producers and media executives. The public, he said, proved they were interested in music for its own sake by choosing Ellen Oléria – a black lesbian – as the recent winner of the talent show The Voice Brazil .
The Guardian was unable to reach Anitta for comment. But, in a recent interview, she described the need for identity to be self-defined.
“All-powerful is a woman who doesn’t need to be beautiful, but she has so much attitude that she is marvellous, she is powerful. What I try to pass on in my work for everyone is that we can be who we want.” | 2adv
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It has charted the world’s highest peaks, the ocean floor, the Amazon rainforest and even provided a glimpse into North Korea. But Google’s mission to map the world has largely steered clear of the inhospitable Arctic.
Now, however, the search-engine firm is embarking on what might be the most significant update to centuries of polar cartography – and one it hopes will help provide a better understanding of life on the permafrost for millions of web users. Google has flown a small team to Iqaluit, the largest town in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, armed with their warmest winter gear, a stack of laptop computers and an 18kg backpack- mounted telescopic camera.
Helped by an Inuit mapping expert, and stalked by curious locals, the team spent four days trudging through the terrain and collecting the images and information that will give the isolated community on the tundra of Baffin Island what urbanites across the globe now take for granted.
The town of 7,000 people will go on display via Google’s popular Street View application in July 2013.
Aaron Brindle, project leader, said: “I live in Toronto and I absolutely take for granted that everything is where it should be and that this map is kind of my world, but for so long that hasn’t been the case in the north.”
Unlike more populous and accessible parts of the world, which have been mapped using a special camera mounted on a car roof, the Iqaluit project had mappers hiking the town’s snow-packed roads and traversing little-known trails, some of which are made of ice and disappear in the brief summer months.
The team also cut a path along part of a 15km cul-de-sac known as the Road to Nowhere, despite warnings about the risk from polar bears and other wildlife.
Mayor John Graham said the digital cartographers were, however, hunted by a herd of excited and curious locals, or Google stalkers.
Graham understands the enthusiasm. The Street View project, he said, follows in the footsteps of the English explorer Martin Frobisher, who in 1576 sailed into the bay where Iqaluit now sits while searching for the Northwest Passage, and the 1941 flight of Captain Elliott Roosevelt, a reconnaissance officer and son of the US President, which led to the site being chosen for a military airbase. His exploration led to the founding of the modern town of Iqaluit, which is the seat of government as well as a transport and communications hub for Nunavut.
One of the initial challenges Google faced was gathering the raw data needed to fill in their existing map. What they had created using satellite images was fairly accurate, although the rapid pace of the town’s growth, which has been fuelled by a mining boom, meant they were missing one road that had been created in the past year, said Arif Sayani, the town’s Director of Planning.
Another difficulty was how to situate many businesses and homeowners that have mail sent to the local post office rather than delivered to their address. Plotting the PO box addresses would result in a map with firms, banks and schools clustered around the Canada Post building in the centre of town.
About 30 Inuit elders, entrepreneurs and high-school pupils turned out one night to help correct such problems. They were provided with a laptop computer and instructed how to ensure their homes, shops and meeting places would show up accurately on the map.
The project is more than a novelty or cultural philanthropy. Sayani, 32, said the town would be able to use the maps as a promotional tool for those thinking of visiting or moving to the area. It may also speed up planning decisions that will affect Iqaluit’s growth.
The test run for the Iqaluit mapping exercise occurred last summer in Cambridge Bay, a much smaller Nunavut town of about 1,500 people located 1,700km and a time zone west of Iqaluit.
The gravel roads and muddy puddles that can now be seen online, however, give little sense of life in a land usually covered in snow, which is one reason why Google selected the less- hospitable month of March to travel to Iqaluit.
Brindle said he hoped to see the work continue in other northern towns, though the high costs of shipping and airfares to move people and equipment around the vast Arctic territory appears to be weighing on Google’s ambitions.
The next northern site has not yet been identified but, when it is selected, Brindle said the company might simply send one of its hi-tech backpacks and rely on volunteers to literally put themselves on the map.
“I’m hoping that three, four, five years from now we’ll look back and see a very different map of Canada’s north,” Brindle added. | 2adv
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The controversial auction of a Banksy mural that disappeared from the wall of a north London shop in mysterious circumstances was dramatically halted just moments before it was due to go under the hammer.
Slave Labour, a spray-painted artwork depicting a child making Union Flag bunting and seen as a critical social commentary on last year’s diamond jubilee, was expected to sell for about $700,000 in a sale of street and contemporary art in Florida.
But auctioneer Frederic Thut, the owner of the Fine Arts Auction Miami art house, who had refused all week to divulge the identity of the seller or how it came to be listed for sale through his gallery, announced that the piece, along with a second work by the secretive British street artist, had been withdrawn.
He would not give a reason, but community leaders in Haringey, who led a vocal campaign to stop the sale of the artwork that was prised from the wall of a Poundland in Wood Green, were jubilant.
“One of our two demands was that it doesn’t sell and the other was that we get it back again, so we’re halfway there,” said Alan Strickland, a Haringey councillor.
“I will be writing to the auction house as a matter of urgency to clarify what happened and what will happen next, but for now we are really pleased that because of the pressure and the strong views of the people of Wood Green, a community campaign in London has had an impact in the US. It’s a real victory for the people.”
Claire Kober, Leader of Haringey Council, wrote to Arts Council England and the Mayor of Miami, Tomás Regalado, to ask them to intervene to stop the sale but it appears the decision to withdraw the item came from the gallery owners in consultation with their lawyers. The FBI refused to confirm reports they were asked to investigate.
Several hours after the conclusion of the auction, the auction house issued a brief statement claiming it had persuaded the owners of the two Banksys to pull them from the sale. “Although there are no legal issues whatsoever regarding the sale of lots six and seven by Banksy, FAAM convinced its sellers to withdraw these lots from the auction.”
About 30 potential buyers attended the sale of 106 lots listed in the catalogue for the modern, contemporary and street art sale in Miami’s trendy Wynwood neighbourhood. The three-hour auction continued with other early lots selling in excess of their asking prices.
Critics have accused the auction house of dealing in stolen property but Thut insisted earlier in the week that the seller, who he described as a “well known collector ”, was the rightful owner and that the sale was legal.
He added that his gallery had been inundated with emails and phone calls from the UK, saying that many of them were abusive or offensive, but said he supported the inclusion of the pieces in the sale because it would preserve them.
The second Banksy due to be auctioned, a 2007 artwork entitled Wet Dog that was removed from a Bethlehem wall and is estimated to be worth up to $800,000, disappeared from the auction house’s online catalogue at lunchtime on Saturday, but Slave Labour was still listed for sale right up to the 3pm start time.
Thut said the two pieces, supplied to him by separate owners, neither of them British, were important works in the street art scene and deserved buyers “whose first interest is in art and its preservation ”.
He said he would maintain the privacy of the collector who put it up for sale. “We respect our clients and their confidentiality. It’s not our decision to have [the Banksy] returned. We only sell it. We do not have control of it.”
A spokesperson for Poundland said it had no idea who removed the 4ft x 5ft slab from the side of the shop it rents in Turnpike Lane. Lawyers for the owner of the building, a company called Wood Green Investments Ltd, have refused to confirm if it had anything to do with the episode.
Banksy himself has not commented on the Slave Labour furore, but has previously condemned those who have tried to sell his artwork, speaking out before the proposed sale of five of his pieces at a 2011 auction in New York. None found a buyer.
Stephan Keszler, the dealer behind that auction, believes selling Banksy’s works without his permission is legitimate.
“He does something on other people’s property without asking. The owner of the property can do whatever they want with it,” Keszler said. | 2adv
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The vast fortunes made by the world’s richest 100 billionaires are driving up inequality and hindering the world’s ability to tackle poverty, according to Oxfam.
The charity said the accumulation of wealth and income on an unprecedented scale, often at the expense of secure jobs and decent wages for the poorest, undermined the ability of people who survive on aid or low wages to improve their situation and escape poverty.
Oxfam said the world’s poorest could be lifted out of poverty several times over if the richest 100 billionaires would give away the money they made in 2012.
Without pointing a finger at individuals, the charity argued that the $240bn net income amassed in 2012 by the richest 100 billionaires would be enough to make extreme poverty history four times over.
It is rare for charities to attack the wealthy, who are usually regarded as a source of funding. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are among a group of 40 US billionaires who have pledged much of their wealth to aid projects, but there is little detail about the level of their annual donations. Their actions have also not been matched by Russian, Middle Eastern or Chinese billionaires.
In the report, The Cost of Inequality: How Wealth and Income Extremes Hurt Us All , published just before the World Economic Forum in Davos, the charity calls on world leaders to curb income extremes and commit to reducing inequality to at least 1990 levels.
The report found that the richest 1% had increased their incomes by 60% in the past 20 years, with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process.
Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s Chief Executive, said extreme wealth was “economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive and environmentally destructive”.
She said studies show that countries suffer low levels of investment and growth as workers are forced to survive on a smaller share of total incomes.
She said: “We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many – too often the reverse is true.”
The report said the issue affected all parts of the world. “In the UK, inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles Dickens [the nineteenth-century novelist]. In China, the top 10% now take home nearly 60% of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa, which is now the most unequal country on Earth and significantly more unequal than at the end of apartheid.”
In the US, the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20%, the report says. For the top 0.01% the share of national income is above levels last seen in the 1920s.
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have argued that extreme income inequality undermines growth and both organizations have attempted to tie their loans to programmes that limit the growth of inequality.
Members of the richest 1% are estimated to use as much as 10,000 times more carbon than the average US citizen.
Oxfam said world leaders should learn from countries such as Brazil, which has grown rapidly while reducing inequality.
Stocking said: “We need a global new deal to reverse decades of increasing inequality. As a first step, world leaders should formally commit themselves to reducing inequality to the levels seen in 1990.”
She said closing tax havens, which the Tax Justice Network says hold as much as $31 trillion, or as much as a third of all global wealth, could yield $189bn in additional tax revenues. | 2adv
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Back in 2005, when BlackBerry brought instant messaging to the mobile phone, the company was just entering its boom times. While the iPhone was still a gleam in Steve Jobs’s eye, BlackBerry’s innovations ensured its smartphone was one of Canada’s biggest exports.
Six years later, in the summer of 2011, as violence engulfed London and spread to Birmingham, Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester, so effective was BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) at mobilizing the rioters that politicians called for the service to be temporarily shut down. But two years later, it is the users themselves who are pulling the plug. As demand for BlackBerry handsets fades, the once noisy BBM grapevine is falling silent. Dozens of alternatives have sprung up to take its place, from Facebook’s and Apple’s own-brand instant messaging applications to independent start-ups such as WhatsApp and Kik (which is also Canadian). Free to download and use, they use the internet to swap text messages, pictures, voice clips,’stickers’, and even videos in WhatsApp’s case, between most types of phones.
In an attempt to retain its following, BBM has been released on Android and Apple phones. Despite the competition, the response has been overwhelming, with an announcement that there have been more than 20 million downloads. But, despite the initial interest, many believe BBM’s wider release will do little to save the service.
“The move to bring BlackBerry to the iPhone is four or five years too late,” says James Gooderson, an 18-year-old student who blogs on technology. “WhatsApp has removed the reason why young people would use a BlackBerry.” BBM claims 80 million monthly users after its upgrade, but WhatsApp has 300 million. Other services expose BBM’s limitations: unlike Skype and Viber, it does not yet offer video or voice calls; unlike Path, it does not do location sharing; there is no video sharing, as on iMessage; and the stickers (a more sophisticated version of the smiley face), adored by kids the world over, are also unforgivably absent. Even the contacts and calendar sharing that BBM made possible on BlackBerry handsets have not migrated to the Apple and Android versions.
Messaging is moving from verbal to visual. Photos uploaded to Instagram trigger a wave of comments and Snapchat’s pictures, which self-delete after ten seconds, have opened a world of other possibilities. Like BBM, all of these services are free for any phone with an internet connection. Yet as recently as 2011, BBM was so powerful it was credited with starting a revolution in Egypt; and, at the time of the London riots, it was a more urgent source of news than the television screen.
“We could see on our BlackBerry messages where the rioters were going next; TV news would catch up four hours later,” said Jean- Pierre Moore, 28. He manages a youth club in Stockwell, south London, an area with some of the highest levels of crime and economic deprivation in Britain. Moore mainly communicates on an iPad now. He dismisses the notion that the BBM curfew urged by some MPs would have stopped the looting. “The social networking wasn’t the reason,” he says. “I know a lot of people who were out rioting. People had been angry for a long time. Mention the words 'stop and search' around here and you immediately have a room full of angry young men.”
Nearly 80% of young smartphone owners regularly use a social networking application, says the research firm Enders Analysis, but two-thirds use more than one. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, 60% use Facebook every day but 46% use alternatives. “It’s a much more complex, multifaceted environment,” says Benedict Evans, a digital media specialist at Enders. “The smartphone itself has become the platform. All of these apps plug into your phone book and your photo library. Apps rise and fall like fireworks. Some, like Instagram, last; others disappear into thin air.”
Thirteen-year-old Bennett has three devices, all hand-me-downs from family members. He keeps his BlackBerry for messaging, uses an iPhone over wi-fi to play games and makes phone calls on an HTC-branded Android phone. His friends are still on BBM – the four phone thefts at his school so far this term were all BlackBerrys. At the touch of a few buttons, a single BlackBerry message can be sent to the phone owner’s entire contacts book – several hundred people in some cases; on WhatsApp, the limit for a broadcast message is 50. But, for Bennett, Instagram is now a major social network. “Instagram is Facebook without parents,” he says. “Facebook has been taken over by the older generation. Once I saw my mum on Facebook, I deleted my account.”
For families that may struggle to pay their heating bills this winter, the low price tag attached to buying and communicating on a BlackBerry retains its appeal. Unlimited BBM messages are available to anyone with a second-hand device and a £7-a-month deal from T-Mobile. But trust in the privacy of BBM’s system has been eroded. Part of the attraction to business people, revolutionaries, demonstrators and rioters was a belief that encrypted words sent over the company’s secure servers could not be traced back to their writers. Prosecutions after the riots put an end to that belief.
Across town from Stockwell, outside the gates of a private school in well-heeled South Kensington, the older pupils all have Apple logos on their handsets. They all use WhatsApp. For many, BBM is a distant memory. “I still have a Blackberry, but I’m the only one,” says a teenager standing with a circle of friends. And how does that make him feel? “Isolated,” he replies. | 2adv
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A major international row with wide-ranging implications for global drugs policy has erupted over the right of Bolivia’s indigenous Indian tribes to chew coca leaves, the principal ingredient in cocaine. Bolivia has obtained a special exemption from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the framework that governs international drugs policy, allowing its indigenous people to chew the leaves.
Bolivia had argued that the convention was in opposition to its new constitution, adopted in 2009, which obliges it to “protect native and ancestral coca as cultural patrimony” and maintains that coca “in its natural state … is not a narcotic”.
South American Indians have chewed coca leaves for centuries. The leaves reputedly provide energy and are said to have medicinal qualities. Supporters of Bolivia’s position praised it for standing up for the rights of indigenous people. “The Bolivian move is inspirational and groundbreaking,” said Danny Kushlick, Head of External Affairs at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which promotes drug liberalization. “It shows that any country that has had enough of the war on drugs can change the terms of its engagement with the UN conventions.”
However, the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which monitors implementation of the global drug treaties, has accused Bolivia of threatening the integrity of the international drug control regime. A number of countries – including the UK, the US, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Russia – opposed Bolivia’s demands.
The UK’s submission to the UN, which oversees the convention, said that it “acknowledges and respects the cultural importance of the coca leaf in Bolivia”, but it adds: “The United Kingdom is … concerned that the reservation could lead to increases in coca production and – crucially – the amount of coca diverted to the cocaine trade. As such, the reservation would weaken international law as it relates to the global effort to tackle the drugs trade and could weaken the international community’s response to that trade.”
The right of indigenous communities in South America’s Andean region to chew coca leaf was removed in 1964 when Bolivia was under a dictatorship and it signed up to the convention. But, under the terms of the agreement, Bolivia was given 25 years to implement the ban. This expired in 1989 and since then the issue has been under dispute.
In 2011, Bolivia – whose President, Evo Morales, is a former coca producer – formally notified the UN of its withdrawal from the convention. On Friday it reacceded to the convention, but with an exemption from the prohibition on the chewing of coca leaves.
The move is the first of its kind in the history of UN drug-control treaties and has sparked concerns that other countries may apply for amendments. The Russian government has argued that the move will lead to “an increase in illegal circulation of cocaine” and warned that “it also sets a dangerous precedent that could be used by other states in creating a more liberal drug-control regime”.
The British parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee has recommended that Bolivia’s request should be backed by the UK government, arguing that it was important that countries remained within the single convention. Bolivia’s re-accession could be blocked only if a third or more of the 184 countries that have signed up to the convention opposed its request. There are suspicions that the US and UK are frantically lobbying other countries to gain sufficient numbers to block Bolivia’s request.
Nancie Prud’homme, Projects Director at the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, criticized the co-ordinated opposition to Bolivia’s demands. “These objections are legally questionable,” she said. “They support an arbitrary and over-broad provision and apply international drug laws in a vacuum. This is not appropriate. No state has paid any attention to decades of developing international norms on cultural and indigenous rights, which support Bolivia’s efforts.”
The decision to ban coca chewing was based on a 1950 report produced by the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Coca Leaf, which proponents of drug liberalization say was not based on supporting evidence. In an interview in 1949, the head of the Commission, Howard B Fonda, signalled his opposition to the chewing of coca leaves before his inquiry had begun. Fonda told an interviewer: “We believe that the daily, inveterate use of coca leaves by chewing … is not only thoroughly noxious and therefore detrimental, but is also the cause of racial degeneration in many centres of population, and of the decadence that visibly shows in numerous Indians … Our studies will confirm the certainty of our assertions and we hope we can present a rational plan of action … to attain the absolute and sure abolition of this pernicious habit.”
The growing of coca leaves is legal and licensed in Bolivia. The policy has been credited with a fall in cocaine production in the country, leading some experts to see the Bolivian model as a way forward for other countries. | 2adv
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Male bosses are being paid bonuses double the size of those given to female colleagues in identical jobs – a disparity that means men enjoy salary top-ups of £141,500 more than women over the course of a working lifetime.
The figures, released by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), reveal that men in UK management roles earned average bonuses of £6,442 in 2012 compared with £3,029 for women. In the most senior roles, female directors received bonuses of £36,270 over the past 12 months, compared with £63,700 awarded to male directors.
The latest figures highlighting the inequitable nature of pay in British business led to calls for action from campaigners on workplace equality. Ann Francke, the CMI’s chief executive, said: “It’s time to move this issue into the mainstream management agenda.
“This is about changing our approach to management to allow for greater flexibility, less masculine cultures, more emphasis on outcomes rather than time in the office and greater transparency around performance and rewards. “In solving this issue, we would actually raise the performance of organizations and the well-being of individuals at work. What are we waiting for?” Dr Ruth Sealy, a senior research fellow at Cranfield School of Management, added: “It is not surprising. Bonuses are a method of payment that can be used with discretion. As to what should be done about it, these things should be made more transparent.”
While statisticians warned that some of the data may be skewed by factors such as women entering occupations where there is less of a culture of bonus payments, the discrepancies in the sizes of awards do appear to be aggravating Britain’s pay gap, which the government says is closing but still sees full-time male employees earn 10% more than women.
Maria Miller, the Minister for Women and Equalities, said: “The CMI figures are yet another damaging example highlighting that, in the world of work, women still lose out to their male counterparts and that the playing field is far from level. “Changes in the workplace are happening and it’s good that the pay gap is closing – but there is still more to do before we see full equality in the workplace.
“The government is playing its part: we have made pay secrecy clauses illegal, given tribunals the power to force employers who break equal pay laws to carry out equal pay audits and signed 120 companies up to our Think, Act, Report scheme, which encourages companies to improve the way they recruit, promote and pay women. “We’ve also looked at other pay gap causes, such as having to juggle work and family responsibilities, by introducing shared parental leave and the right to request flexible working to all employees.”
Large companies such as Tesco, BT, Unilever and the international law firm Eversheds are among those signed up to Think, Act, Report. The scheme has only attracted 120 supporters in nearly two years of existence, having risen from 54 participants in November 2012. However, the CMI’s data did provide some evidence to support Miller’s contention that the overall pay gap is narrowing: the difference between the average salaries earned by male and female bosses has appeared to shrink, decreasing from an average of £10,060 in 2012 to £8,502 in the CMI’s most recent figures. However, the institute cautioned against direct comparisons between the 2012 and 2013 samples – which both polled around 40,000 managers – as they are not identical.
A sub-set of 17,000 individual managers, whose salaries and bonuses have been tracked over a number of years, showed that male managers’ earnings are rising faster than women’s for the first time in five years, with men enjoying total increases of 3.2% compared with 2.8% for women, when salaries and bonuses are combined.
At the most senior level, male directors’ earnings rose by 5.3% over the past 12 months, compared with just 1.1% for female directors. | 2adv
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Brazil experienced one of its biggest nights of protest in decades as more than 100,000 people took to the streets nationwide to express their frustration at heavy-handed policing, poor public services and high costs for the World Cup.
The major demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasilia, Belem, Belo Horizonte, Salvador and elsewhere started peacefully, but several led to clashes with police and arson attacks on cars and buses.
The large turnout and geographic spread marked a rapid escalation after previous, smaller protests against bus price increases led to complaints that police responded disproportionately with rubber bullets, tear gas and violent beatings.
Coinciding with the start of the Confederations Cup – a World Cup test event – the rallies brought together a wide coalition of people frustrated with the escalating costs and persistently poor quality of public services, lavish investment in international sporting events, low standards of health care and wider unease about inequality and corruption.
While the vast majority of demonstrations in Rio were peaceful, several police were injured in clashes at the city’s legislative assembly, at least one car was overturned and burned, and windows were smashed in the offices of banks and notary offices.
The unrest escalated during the night as a large crowd set several fires outside the legislative assembly, smashed the building’s windows and painted graffiti on the walls proclaiming “Revolution”, “Down with Paes, down with Cabral [the mayor and state governor]” and “Hate police”. Police inside responded with pepper spray and perhaps more – the Guardian saw one protester passed out and bleeding heavily from a wound in the upper arm.
The causes pursued by the protesters varied widely. “We are here because we hate the government. They do nothing for us,” said Oscar José Santos, a 19 year old who was with a group of hooded youths from the Rocinha favela.
“I’m an architect but I have been unemployed for six months. There must be something wrong with this country,” said Nadia al Husin, holding up a banner calling on the government to do more for education.
At a far smaller rally in Brasilia, demonstrators broke through police lines to enter the high-security area of the national congress. Several climbed onto the roof.
In Belo Horizonte, police clashed with protesters who tried to break through a cordon around a football stadium hosting a Confederations Cup match between Nigeria and Tahiti.
In Porto Alegre, demonstrators set fire to a bus and, in Curitiba, protesters attempted to force their way into the office of the state governor. There were also rallies in Belem, Salvador and elsewhere.
In São Paulo, which had seen the fiercest clashes the previous week and the main allegations of police violence, large crowds gathered once again but initial reports suggested the marches passed peacefully.
Reflecting the importance of social networks in spreading the message about the protests, some in São Paulo – where numbers were estimated at between 30,000 and 100,000 – carried banners declaring “We come from Facebook”.
Most protesters were young and, for many, it was their first experience of such a giant rally. “My generation has never experienced this,” said Thiago Firbida, a student. “Since the dictatorship, Brazilians never bothered to take over the streets. They did not believe they had a reason to. But now Brazil is once again in crisis, with a constant rise in prices, so people are finally reacting.”
Comparisons have been drawn with rallies in Turkey and elsewhere. Another global link was evident in the handful of demonstrators who wore Guy Fawkes masks, associated with Anonymous and the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Brazil’s demonstrations are being referred to as the “vinegar revolution” (after police arrested people for carrying vinegar to counter tear gas), as well as the “20-cent revolution” (due to the bus price rise) and the Passe Livre (after the demand for free public transport).
Some said the protests felt un-Brazilian but liberating. “Our politicians need to see the strength we have as one people. Brazilians tend to be too nice sometimes – they enjoy partying rather than protesting – but something is changing,” said Deli Borsari, a 53-year-old yoga instructor.
Following widespread news coverage of the costs of new and refurbished stadiums, the Confederations Cup football tournament has been one of the focuses of the protests. Before the opening match in Brasilia, crowds of demonstrators were dispersed by riot police. Footage showed frightened Japanese supporters rushing from the area holding their children, as the sound of shots – perhaps rubber bullets or tear gas – was heard.
Another protest march, near Rio’s Maracana Stadium, was met with a similarly heavy police response.
Most of the rallies appeared to start peacefully until they confronted the security forces, who are largely organized at a regional level. President Dilma Rousseff condones the protests, according to her aides. “The president believes peaceful protests are legitimate and proper for a democracy, and that it is natural for young people to demonstrate,” said Helena Chagas of the president’s office.
However, the president was booed at the opening ceremony for the Confederations Cup. With the economy in bad shape and social unrest on the rise, she faces a serious political challenge, both now and in 2014, when Brazil will not only host the World Cup but also have a presidential election. | 2adv
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Health warnings covering nearly two-thirds of cigarette packs and a ban on menthol cigarettes across the EU have come a step nearer following a vote in the European Parliament. Menthol and other flavours will be banned from 2022, but, in a blow to the UK government, MEPs decided that most electronic cigarettes, increasingly popular as alternatives to tobacco products, need not be regulated in the same way as medicines.
Health officials and the e-cigarette industry in Britain are seeking to clarify what this mean – for instance, whether companies in the fast-expanding market face the same bans on sponsorship and promotion at sports events as tobacco firms.
The Department of Health would not comment on the advertising issue until officials had studied the MEPs’ decisions. But, in a statement, the DH said: “We are very pleased to see the move towards tougher action on tobacco, with Europe-wide controls banning flavoured cigarettes and the introduction of stricter rules on front-of-pack health warnings. “However, we are disappointed with the decision to reject the proposal to regulate nicotine-containing products (NCPs), including e-cigarettes, as medicines. We believe these products need to be regulated as medicines and will continue to make this point during further negotiations.
“Figures show smoking levels in England are at their lowest since records began – 19.5 per cent – but we are determined to further reduce rates of smoking and believe this important step will help.”
The UK e-cigarette industry, which broadly welcomed the parliament’s vote, said it was already in talks with the Advertising Standards Authority, but added that it would not be “sensible, proportionate, reasonable or useful” to ban all advertising.
MEPs decided e-cigarettes should only be regulated as medical products if manufacturers claimed they could prevent tobacco smoking – a decision criticized by the government’s main medicines regulator.
They want to put the products, used by an estimated 1.3 million people in Britain by 2014, on the same legal basis as gums, patches and mouth sprays aimed at helping smokers to quit, but the industry says the expensive process of licensing would help force alternatives to tobacco off the shelves.
The MEPs voted to put health warnings on 65% of each cigarette pack, as opposed to a proposed 75%. At present, the warnings cover at least 30% on the front and 40% on the back. The UK government has delayed a decision on whether to follow Australia by introducing standardized packaging until there is evidence that such measures cut tobacco use.
The MEPs’ votes in the first reading of the draft tobacco directive, which could become law in 2014, will be followed by negotiations with the EU Council of Ministers.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority had already invited manufacturers to cooperate by opting for voluntary regulation in June 2013 in advance of what it still hopes will be compulsory across Europe. “The legislative process is still not complete and there will be further negotiation. The UK continues to believe that medicinal regulation of NCPs is the best way to deliver a benefit to public health,” said a spokesman.
Linda McAvan, Labour MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber and spokesperson on tobacco issues for the parliament’s Socialists & Democrats group, said: “We know that it is children, not adults, who start smoking. And, despite the downward trend in most member states of adult smokers, the World Health Organization figures show worrying upward trends in a number of our member states of young smokers.
“We need to stop tobacco companies targeting young people with an array of gimmicky products and we need to make sure that cigarette packs carry effective warnings.”
Martin Callanan, the Conservative MEP for North East England, said: “Forcing e-cigs off the shelves would have been totally crazy. These are products that have helped countless people stop smoking more harmful cigarettes and yet some MEPs wanted to make them harder to manufacture than ordinary tobacco.”
Katherine Devlin, president of ECITA, the e-cigarette industry association, said “the really important” decision by MEPs not to support medicines regulation meant that was now off the table.
British American Tobacco claimed the larger health warnings demanded by MEPs went “well beyond” what was needed to inform consumers of health risks from smoking, while a ban on mentholated cigarettes would increase demand for black-market goods. | 2adv
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Coal is likely to rival oil as the world’s biggest source of energy in the next five years, with potentially disastrous consequences for the climate, according to the world’s leading authority on energy economics.
One of the biggest factors behind the rise in coal use has been the massive increase in the use of shale gas in the US.
New research from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that coal consumption is increasing all over the world – even in countries and regions with carbon-cutting targets – except in the US, where shale gas has displaced coal. The decline of coal consumption in the US has helped to cut prices for coal globally. This has made it more attractive, even in Europe where coal use was supposed to be discouraged by the Emissions Trading Scheme.
Maria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the IEA, said: “Coal’s share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year and, if no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade.”
Coal is abundant and found in most regions of the world, unlike conventional oil and gas, and can be cheaply extracted. As a result, coal was used to meet nearly half of the rise in demand for energy globally in the past decade. According to the IEA, demand from China and India will drive world coal use in the coming five years, with India likely to overtake the US as the world’s second biggest consumer. China is the biggest coal importer, and Indonesia the biggest exporter, having temporarily overtaken Australia.
According to the IEA’s Medium-Term Coal Market Report the world will burn 1.2bn more tonnes of coal per year by 2017 compared with today – the equivalent of the current coal consumption of Russia and the US combined. Global coal consumption is forecast to reach 4.3bn tonnes of oil equivalent by 2017, while oil consumption is forecast to reach 4.4bn tonnes by the same date.
With the highest carbon emissions of any major fossil fuel, coal is a huge contributor to climate change, particularly when burned in old-fashioned, inefficient power stations. When these are not equipped with special “scrubbing” equipment to remove chemicals, coal can also produce sulphur emissions – the leading cause of acid rain – and other pollutants such as mercury and soot particles.
Van der Hoeven said that, without a high carbon price to discourage the growth in coal use and encourage cleaner technologies such as renewable power generation, only competition from lower-priced gas could realistically cut demand for coal. This has happened in the US, owing to the extraordinary increase in the production of shale gas in that market in the past five years.
She said: “The US experience suggests that a more efficient gas market, marked by flexible pricing and fuelled by indigenous unconventional resources that are produced sustainably, can reduce coal use, carbon dioxide emissions and consumers’ electricity bills. Europe, China and other regions should take note.”
That would mean producing much more shale gas, as conventional gas resources are running down in their easily accessible locations.
In Europe, the Emissions Trading Scheme was supposed to discourage high-carbon power generation by imposing a price on carbon dioxide emissions. This was done through issuing generators and energy-intensive companies with a set quota of emissions permits, requiring them to buy extra permits if they needed to emit more than their allowance. But an over-allocation, coupled with the effects of the financial crisis and recession, has led to a large surplus of permits on the market, which has in turn led to a plunge in permit prices. At current levels – a few euros per tonne of carbon – there is little incentive to seek out lower carbon fuels, and coal is enjoying a renaissance in Europe.
That means one of the world’s only regulatory market mechanisms aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions is failing in its key goals. The world faces the likelihood of an increased risk of climate change as a result of this runaway consumption of the highest carbon fossil fuel. | 2adv
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Illegal downloading is a kind of “moral squalor” and theft, as much as reaching in to someone’s pocket and stealing their wallet is theft, says author Philip Pullman. In an article for Index on Censorship, Pullman, who is president of the Society of Authors, makes a robust defence of copyright laws. He is highly critical of internet users who think it is OK to download music or books without paying for them.
“The technical brilliance is so dazzling that people can’t see the moral squalor of what they’re doing,” he writes. “It is outrageous that anyone can steal an artist’s work and get away with it. It is theft, as surely as reaching into someone’s pocket and taking their wallet is theft.”
His article comes after music industry leaders met British Prime Minister David Cameron in Downing Street, where the issue of web piracy was discussed.
Pullman, writer of the His Dark Materials trilogy, says authors and musicians work in poverty and obscurity for years to bring their work to the level “that gives delight to their audiences and, as soon as they achieve that, the possibility of making a living from it is taken away from them”. He concludes: “The principle is simple, and unaltered by technology, science or magic: if we want to enjoy the work that someone does, we should pay for it.”
Pullman is writing in the next issue of the campaign group’s magazine in a dialogue with Cathy Casserly, chief executive of Creative Commons, which offers open content licences “that lets creators take copyright into their own hands”. Casserly argues that there is much wrong with copyright, which was created “in an analogue age”. She writes: “By default, copyright closes the door on countless ways that people can share, build upon and remix each other’s work, possibilities that were unimaginable when those laws were established.”
She says artists need to think creatively about how they distribute and monetize their work, quoting the science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, who said: “My problem is not piracy, it’s obscurity.”
Index on Censorship agrees. The magazine’s editor, Rachael Jolley, said: “Existing copyright laws don’t work in the digital age and risk criminalizing consumers. We need new models for how artists, writers and musicians earn a living from their work.”
The debate is a lively one and the scale of illegal downloading vast. Data collected by Ofcom (the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) suggests that, between November 2012 and January 2013 in the UK, 280 million music tracks were digitally pirated, along with 52 million TV shows, 29 million films, 18 million ebooks and 7 million software or games files.
Ofcom has said 18% of internet users aged over 12 admit to having recently pirated content, and 9% say they fear getting caught. Pullman writes in his article: “The ease and swiftness with which music can be acquired in the form of MP3 downloads is still astonishing to those of us who have been building up our iTunes list for some time.”
One thing to emerge from the Downing Street meeting was Cameron’s appointment of the Conservative MP Mike Weatherley to be his adviser on the subject. A spokesman for the BPI, the record industry trade body, said: “Mike Weatherley is a strong champion of copyright and the artists and creative producers it’s there to protect. We hope his influence and the prime minister’s endorsement of copyright will be brought to bear on the approach of the UK’s intellectual property office.” | 2adv
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It could be the best thing since Trevor Baylis’s wind-up radio in the pre-internet 1990s – a cheap light that draws free power from gravity and could end the use of dangerous kerosene-fuelled lamps in Africa and India.
But when British designer, Patrick Hunt, went down the conventional route of bank or venture capital finance to get his invention kickstarted commercially, he hit a problem. “We tried to get funding to make it happen, but it’s slow and complex and it’s unproven and nobody wants to take a risk,” he said.
So he tried crowdfunding on a US website, Indiegogo, which had recently opened up in the UK. Within five days, he had hit his target and raised £36,200. So popular was his campaign at the end of 2012 to entice donations from the public that within 40 days he had raised a colossal £400,000.
The LED light is powered by a dynamo driven by the descent of a 10kg bag of rocks. The weight is attached to the light, lifted to a height of about 2m, and while it is allowed to slowly fall to the ground it will generate enough power for half an hour of light.
Hunt is preparing for production in China and will test the market again by delivering 1,000 of the lights to Africa before the full mass production of what he hopes will be millions of units.
He is one of a new wave of entrepreneurs turning to the fast-growing crowdfunding industry for finance. Another new site is InvestingZone, which matches wealthy individuals with start-up entrepreneurs.
Indiegogo does not offer shares but allows users to offer “perks” for different levels of donation – those helping to fund Hunt’s innovative light not only got to feel good about helping the less well off but also got their own light.
For Danae Ringelmann, co-founder of Indiegogo, the “gravity light” is a perfect example of how meritocratic crowdfunding can be and how it can test an entrepreneur’s idea. “It is the first time that finance has been fast, efficient and meritocratic, because it is not about 'How do I get access to the decision makers in that bank?' or 'Who do I know in that venture capital outfit?' This is all about proving your worth to your customers and fans, getting them to validateyour idea and fund it.
“Even ideas that aren’t deemed worthy to get funding are worth testing, because you will have saved yourself a whole bunch of time finding out it wasn’t a good idea and getting smarter faster,” she says.
Ringelmann, who is based in the US, started her career as a Wall Street analyst. In 2008, she decided to quit and use her skills to try and help friends who worked in the arts to raise money.
The site was originally focused on the film business and launched at the Sundance Film Festival that year.
Five years on and it is raising about $2m a week for new businesses in start-up and growth stages. In December 2012, it launched a euro and a sterling service to get a foothold this side of the Atlantic and says Britain is its third biggest market. International activity is up 41% since December.
There is no shortage of competitors, be it Kickstarter, Seedrs or Funding Circle, but, unlike rivals, says Ringelmann, Indiegogo is the only crowdfunder where anyone can launch a campaign. No project is deemed too wacky.
The site levies a 4% fee for successful campaigns. For those that fail to raise their target amount, users have the option of either refunding all money to their contributors at no charge or keeping all money raised but with a 9% fee.
A British woman, Lauren Pears, raised £100,000 to open a “cat café” in London through the site.
Known as Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium, it is yet to open but is billed as somewhere people can “come in from the cold to a comfortable wingback chair, a hot cup of tea, a book and a cat”.
“We’ve seen campaigns that go to venture capitalists get rejected because the venture guys say, 'Great idea but no idea if the market actually wants it; it could be a gadget that no one cares about,'” said Ringelmann.
“The entrepreneurs do an Indiegogo campaign – they don’t even actually launch the project, but the campaign itself is enough market proof for venture capitalists to say there is a market for this.
“It allows you to test your market, test your pricing, test your features, discover new revenue streams, get vital feedback,” says Ringelmann.
With her Wall Street background and the experience of helping 100,000 businesses and services raise finance, Ringelmann has fine-tuned her advice for the budding entrepreneur.
“Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s all about the execution and, if you are afraid that your idea will be stolen by someone who could execute it better and faster than you, then you are not the right person to execute that idea. It’s all about confidence to move fast and to learn,” she says.
For Ringelmann, the expansion into Europe and a deal with a web transaction provider, which will allow payments to be made through local card services like Maestro in the UK and Carte Bleue in France, as well as PayPal, are part of a dream to democratize finance. More than 7,000 campaigns for finance are live on the site.
While crowdfunding as an alternative to banks has grown, it has limited appeal to big-bucks investors, who don’t settle for anything less than a stake in a promising business. That could start to change in the UK with the launch of InvestingZone. | 2adv
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Serial dater Emmanuel Limal was tired of meeting women who weren’t ready to start a family, or at least wouldn’t admit that they were. The 43-year-old actor, originally from France, had spent 20 years living in Copenhagen and looking for love in the hope of raising children. He recently took his quest online but was dismayed by the results.
“I got frustrated with everyone trying to sell themselves as really active, always travelling or with a long list of hobbies, but no mention of children,” Limal said. “On some sites, there was an option to click, saying: 'I’d like kids someday,' but you would read the person’s profile and think: 'You will never have time!' If someone’s going to the gym eight times a week and travelling every month, they are not putting a family first.”
Limal has a six-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, but coming from a big family – his father is one of 11 – he has always wanted more children. “I couldn’t seem to meet anyone willing to prioritize starting a family and struggled with when to mention wanting kids any time I met someone new. It’s the ultimate dating taboo,” he said. “Then one day I read a profile from a 38-year-old who said she knew it was 'really bad to admit' but she wanted children. And I just thought: 'You shouldn’t be ashamed of this.'”
Limal remortgaged his apartment to fund the setting up of Babyklar.nu – or 'baby-ready now' in English. It functions like a normal dating site but every potential dater is asked to be honest about their wish to start a family soon. “We ask people if they are OK with someone who already has children as well as wanting another baby,” Limal said. “But we don’t make them specify how many children they’d like. That would be a bit too much like grocery shopping online.”
The response to the site has been overwhelming, he said. “We had 50 sign-ups an hour when we launched in June and we are already hearing from couples who have met through the site and are now together. I’m fully expecting the first Babyklar.nu baby by next summer.” More men have signed up than women (53% to 47%), with testimonials such as “It’s so lovely to be able to say this out loud” and “I finally dare to be honest about what I want.”
The site has come at an opportune time for the country of five million people. Danes are not having enough babies, according to a report from the Copenhagen hospital Rigshospitalet, and the current rate of 1.7 children per family is not enough to maintain Denmark’s population. The usual suspects are being blamed for the new low – women leaving it “too late” and couples cohabiting and waiting to start families.
“Now, I hope, men and women who want to start a family but haven’t met the right person yet will have another option,” says Limal. He’s keen to point out that this isn’t just about baby farming: “I want this to be about children and love. My goal is to pair up people who really want a family and a partner – and who’ll stay together. I’m a romantic at heart.”
There are plans to roll out the site in France and the UK later in 2013, but for now it is the Danes who are reaping the benefits. “Danes have no problem having children before marriage so things can move fast and, because the country’s so small, a Jutlander can date a Copenhagener without too much travel,” Limal said. What’s more, Limal has finally found love. “I’ve met a nice woman and she wants a baby too – so we shall see.” | 2adv
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Unusually for someone who likes to chat, Kenton Cool can barely speak. Exerting himself at high altitude has left his voice a throaty growl. He is now in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, having flown down from Everest base camp that morning. Cool is reflecting on a startling sequence of climbs completed over the course of the previous weekend. Early on Saturday morning, he reached the summit of Nuptse, the first and lowest of the three main summits in the Everest “horseshoe” that surrounds the glaciated valley called the Western Cwm.
That same day, he climbed up to the summit of Everest itself, reaching the top in complete darkness early on Sunday. He and his climbing partner then continued on to the summit of Lhotse, the third of this spectacular three-peaks challenge, on Monday morning.
“It was a snatched opportunity,” he says. “For the first time since the late 1990s, there were fixed ropes on all three mountains. That doesn’t take away the physical achievement of what I did. I’ve set the bar at a certain level. But whoever comes along next will move the bar further and do it without ropes or bottled oxygen.”
Sixty years after Everest was first climbed, much of the coverage is looking back to Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay and their age of innocence from the modern era of commercialism and environmental degradation. I’ve asked Cool to look forward and imagine what top climbers might be doing 60 years from now.
“I hate to think,” he says, but mentions the Swiss climber, Ueli Steck, who fled the mountain in April following what Cool terms “an altercation” with a crowd of Sherpas at Camp 2. Steck, he says, was planning to climb Everest’s west ridge, first done in 1963, descend to the South Col and then immediately climb Lhotse via a new route, all without fixed ropes. “Ueli had been training like a machine,” Cool says. “He’s a climber in a class all his own. He’s technically brilliant but he had also taken his physical condition to an astronomic level. It would have been amazing to see what he could have done.”
What tourism will look like is another matter. One clue is in the stunning helicopter rescue performed by Simone Moro, Steck’s climbing partner, whose intemperate language provoked the confrontation at Camp 2. Moro flew back to Everest on Tuesday at the controls of a high- powered helicopter to rescue a stricken climber at an altitude of 7,800 metres.
It was the highest rescue yet performed on Everest and highlights the exponential rise in helicopter flights in recent years. By 2073, the infrastructure on the mountain could include a helipad on the South Col, bringing tourists breathing bottled oxygen. In the meantime, they are transforming the potential for rescuing both climbers and the far more numerous trekkers heading as far as base camp.
Whether the Everest region can continue to cope with a booming tourism sector remains to be seen, according to mountain geographer and environmentalist, Alton Byers. The combination of climate change and tourism, he says, is creating new stresses on the Sherpa homeland. The retreat, and in some cases disappearance, of glaciers in the Everest region are having a major impact already. “Everywhere you go, people are talking about how there’s less water. There’s less water for agriculture and less water for all the new lodges that are getting built.”
In the Sherpa town of Namche Bazaar, he says, a new five-mile pipeline is being laid to bring water to service the growing tourist demand for showers and flush toilets. The local stream has become contaminated with human waste and does not provide enough water for a place that, in high season, is bursting at the seams. “Every village is digging a pit just beyond the houses for garbage. Khumbu has the highest landfill sites in the world,” he says. Human waste at base camp is now managed well and removed in plastic barrels. But, according to Byers, these barrels are emptied into a huge pit a few hours down the valley that could leak into the region’s watercourses.
“These problems can be solved, but we need to get serious about it,” he says. “One climber can spend $85,000 climbing Everest. And that’s fine. But at some point we’re going to have to address these other priorities. For half a million dollars a year, you could solve most of them.”
Climate change is another matter. Byers works with local conservation committees to identify and plan for the impacts of climate change, most usually finding new water sources or introducing rainwater harvesting. The rapid build-up of glacial lakes that threaten to burst and flood the Sherpa homeland is a constant threat. “There’s going to come a time when people are going to have to get out of their way.”
Changing weather patterns are also having an impact on tourism. Increased cloud cover in periods of normally clear weather is closing Lukla Airport, the gateway to the Everest region, more often. A new road for 4x4s is being built to Lukla to guarantee the flow of tourists and their money, but Byers is concerned that the rapid spread of the road network in Nepal is being done on the cheap, with disastrous consequences in terms of soil erosion and landslides.
“Everest is the icon everyone knows,” he says. “It’s the canary in the coalmine that everyone understands. It’s the perfect laboratory for figuring out how to address some of these problems, like the impacts of climate change and tourism.” | 2adv
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Fit in four minutes. It sounds like a headline from a health magazine; an unattainable promise on late-night satellite TV. Then you attempt Dr Izumi Tabata’s training protocol – 20 seconds of all-out effort, 10 seconds of rest, repeat eight times – and between sounding like Darth Vader as you desperately suck in oxygen and collapsing in a messy bundle of sweat and defeat, you realize just how wrong you were.
Tabata has seen it all before. “They were dead!” he chuckles as he recalls the first time he inflicted the system that bears his name on his university students in the early 1990s. “After four minutes’ hard exercise they were wiped out. But after six weeks they saw the results and were surprised. We all were.”
His research followed extensive monitoring of Japan’s speed skating team in the early 1990s when he – along with the team’s coach Irisawa Koichi – noticed that short bursts of brutally hard exercise seemed to be at least as effective as hours of moderate training. Tabata set out to show this with a simple experiment. One group of moderately trained students performed an hour of steady cardiovascular exercise on a stationary bike five times a week. The other group did a ten-minute warm-up on the bike, followed by four minutes of Tabata intervals, four times a week – plus one 30-minute session of steady exercise with two minutes of intervals.
The results were startling. After six weeks of testing, the group following Tabata’s plan – exercising for just 88 minutes a week – had increased their anaerobic capacity by 28% and their VO 2 max, a key indicator of cardiovascular health and maximal aerobic power, by 15%. The control group, who trained for five hours every week, also improved their VO 2 max, but by 10% – and their training had no effect on anaerobic capacity. “We have also measured increases in heart size after three weeks of doing the protocol,” says Tabata. “And there is also forthcoming research that shows that it lowers the risk of diabetes in humans, something we have already shown in rats.”
But there are no half-measures here. You can’t go steady on a cross trainer, chewing gum and reading the latest issue of HELLO! The regimen demands head-down bursts on a stationary bike or rowing machine; explosive bodyweight exercises, sprints or suchlike. Remember how you felt after doing a 100m sprint at school? Imagine doing eight of them with only a ten- second break to recover.
“All-out effort at 170% of your VO 2 max is the criterion of the protocol,” says Tabata. “If you feel OK afterwards you’ve not done it properly. The first three repetitions will feel easy but the last two will feel impossibly hard. In the original plan the aim was to get to eight, but some only lasted six or seven.”
As one commenter on the popular exercise forum T-Nation puts it: “When done correctly you should meet God. Most people are incapable of doing it correctly and shouldn’t even try.”
Tabata doesn’t completely agree. “Everyone can do it but beginners should start with educated trainers so that they can work at the correct intensity for them,” he explains. He says that he will soon publish research showing that doing the programme just twice a week, less than half the volume in the original research, still provides significant health benefits.
Another soon-to-be-published finding, which Tabata describes as “rather significant ”, shows that the Tabata protocol burns an extra 150 calories in the 12 hours after exercise, even at rest, due to the effect of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. So while it is used by most people to get fit – or by fit people to get even fitter – it also burns fat.
It’s slightly surprising, therefore, that the plan is still the preserve of the serious athlete and musclehead crowd – although that may change now that Tabata has agreed a deal with Universal Studios that will lead to a network of instructors and a DVD range released towards the end of the year. “I decided to do this because I often go on YouTube and, while I am honoured that people are doing it, some are doing it wrong because they don’t realize the intensity you need to work at,” says Tabata.
So should we all start incorporating this plan into our fitness regimens? Richard Scrivener, a former Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach at Northampton Saints Rugby Club, says that while the benefits are clear, Tabatas are an addition, not a replacement, to a favoured sport or training method. “Runners, for instance, need a high level of running economy, which comes from skill acquisition and putting in the miles,” says Scrivener, “But they could effectively ease off the long runs and reduce the overall mileage by introducing Tabata training. This will unload the skeleton and give joints the chance to rest and recover, especially if one is prone to niggles or has a history of injuries – and you would probably therefore get more out of the long runs when you do undertake them.”
Gym rats can benefit by doing three strength sessions and three Tabatas a week. And the rest of us can build up session by session, week by week, all the time knowing that it will never get easier because every session calls for maximum effort. That’s the cruel genius of the protocol: it is unrelenting – and effective. | 2adv
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Facebook has lost millions of users per month in its biggest markets, independent data suggests, as alternative social networks attract the attention of those looking for fresh online playgrounds.
As Facebook prepares to update investors on its performance in the first three months of the year, with analysts forecasting revenues up 36% on last year, studies suggest that its expansion in the US, UK and other major European countries has peaked. In the last month, the world’s largest social network has lost 6m US visitors, a 4% fall, according to analysis firm Socialbakers. In the UK, 1.4m fewer users checked in in March, a fall of 4.5%. The declines are sustained. In the last six months, Facebook has lost nearly 9m monthly visitors in the US and 2m in the UK.
Users are also switching off in Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Japan, where Facebook has some of its biggest followings. A spokeswoman for Facebook declined to comment.
“The problem is that, in the US and UK, most people who want to sign up for Facebook have already done it,” said new media specialist Ian Maude at Enders Analysis. “There is a boredom factor where people like to try something new. Is Facebook going to go the way of MySpace? The risk is relatively small, but that is not to say it isn’t there.” Alternative social networks such as Instagram, the photo-sharing site that won 30m users in 18 months before Facebook acquired the business, have seen surges in popularity with younger age groups.
Path, the mobile phone-based social network founded by former Facebook employee Dave Morin, which restricts its users to 150 friends, is gaining 1m users a week. It has recently topped 9m users, with 500,000 Venezuelans downloading the app in a single weekend.
Facebook is still growing fast in South America. Monthly visitors in Brazil were up 6% in the last month to 70m, according to Socialbakers, whose information is used by Facebook advertisers. India has seen a 4% rise to 64m – still a fraction of the country’s population, leaving room for further growth.
But in developed markets, other Facebook trackers are reporting declines. Analysts at Jefferies bank have developed an algorithm that interfaces directly with Facebook software and it “suggests user levels in [the first quarter] may have declined from peak”.
Jefferies saw global numbers peak at 1.05bn a month in January, before falling by 20m in February. Numbers rose again in April. The network has now lost nearly 2m visitors in the UK since December, according to research firm Nielsen, with its 27m total flat on a year before.
The number of minutes Americans spend on Facebook appears to be falling, too. The total was 121 billion minutes in December 2012, but that fell to 115 billion minutes in February, according to comScore.
As Facebook itself has warned, the time spent on its pages from those sitting in front of personal computers is declining rapidly because we are switching our screen time to smartphones and tablets.
While smartphone minutes have doubled in a year, to 69 a month, that growth is not guaranteed to compensate for dwindling desktop usage.
Facebook is the most authoritative source on its own user numbers, and the firm will update investors on its performance for the quarter. Wall Street expects revenues of about $1.44bn, up from $1.06bn in 2012.
Shareholders will be particularly keen to learn how fast Facebook’s mobile user base is growing, and whether advertising revenues are increasing at the same rate.
Mobile usage represented nearly a quarter of Facebook’s advertising income at the end of 2012, and the network had 680m mobile users a month in December.
The company warned in recent stockmarket filings that it might be losing “younger users” to “other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook”.
Wary of competition from services that were invented for the mobile phone rather than the PC, founder Mark Zuckerberg has recently driven through a series of new initiatives designed to appeal to smartphone users. The most significant is Facebook Home, software that can be downloaded onto certain Android phones to feed news and photos from friends – and advertising – directly to the owner’s locked home screen. | 2adv
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Scientists have implanted a false memory in the brains of mice in an experiment that they hope will shed light on the well-documented phenomenon whereby people ‘remember’ events or experiences that have never happened. False memories are a major problem with witness statements in courts of law.
Defendants have often been convicted of offences based on eyewitness testimony only to have their convictions later overturned when DNA, or some other corroborating evidence, is brought to bear.
In order to study how these false memories might form in the human brain, Susumu Tonagawa, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and his team encoded memories in the brains of mice by manipulating individual neurons. Memories of experiences we have had are made from several elements, including records of objects, space and time. These records, called engrams, are encoded in physical and chemical changes in brain cells and the connections between them.
According to Tonagawa, both false and genuinememories seem to rely on the same brain mechanisms. In their work, Tonagawa’s team used a technique known as optogenetics, which allows the fine control of individual brain cells. They engineered brain cells in the mouse hippocampus, a part of the brain known to be involved in forming memories, to express the gene for a protein called channelrhodopsin. When cells that contain channelrhodopsin are exposed to blue light, they become activated. The researchers also modified the hippocampus cells so that the channelrhodopsin protein would be produced in whichever brain cells the mouse was using to encode its memory engrams.
In the experiment, Tonagawa’s team placed the mice in a chamber and allowed them to explore it. As they did so, relevant memory-encoding brain cells were producing the channelrhodopsin protein. The next day, the same mice were placed in a second chamber and given a small electric shock, to encode a fear response. At the same time, the researchers shone light into the mouse brains to activate their memories of the first chamber. That way, the mice learned to associate fear of the electric shock with the memory of the first chamber.
In the final part of the experiment, the team placed the mice back in the first chamber.
The mice froze, demonstrating a typical fear response, even though they had never been shocked while there. “We call this ‘incepting’ or implanting false memories in a mouse brain,” Tonagawa told Science.
A similar process may occur when powerful false memories are created in humans. “Humans are very imaginative animals,” said Tonagawa. “Independent of what is happening around you in the outside world, humans constantly have internal activity in the brain. So, just like our mouse, it is quite possible we can associate what we happen to have in our mind with bad or good high-variance ongoing events. In other words, there could be a false association of what you have in your mind rather than what is happening to you.”
He added: “Our study showed that the false memory and the genuine memory are based on very similar, almost identical, brain mechanisms. It is difficult for the false memory bearer to distinguish between them. We hope our future findings along this line will further alert legislatures and legal experts to how unreliable memory can be.”
Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, is a leading researcher in false memories in people. He said that the latest results were an important first step in understanding their neural basis.
“Memory researchers have always recognized that memory does not, as is often assumed, work like a video camera, faithfully recording all of the details of anything we experience. Instead, it is a reconstructive process, which involves building a specific memory from fragments of real memory traces of the original event, but also possibly including information from other sources.” He cautioned that the false memories created in the mice in the experiments were far simpler than the complex false memories that have generated controversy within psychology and psychiatry – for example, false memories of childhood sexual abuse, or even memories for bizarre ritualized satanic abuse, abduction by aliens, or “past lives ”. “Such rich false memories will clearly involve many brain systems and we are still a long way from understanding the processes involved in their formation at the neuronal level,” said Professor French.
Mark Stokes, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said the experiments were a “tour de force” but that it was important to put them into perspective. “Although the results seem to imply that new memories were formed by the artificial stimulation (rather than the actual environment), this kind of phenomenon is still a long way from most people’s idea of memory,” he said. Rather, he said, it was equivalent to implanting an association that perhaps someone cannot place but that makes them wary of a specific environment for no apparent reason. “It is unlikely that this kind of pairing could lead to the rich set of associations related to normal memories, although it is possible that, over time, such pairing could be integrated with other memories to construct a more elaborate false narrative.”
The mouse models created by the MIT team will help scientists ask ever more complex questions about memories in people. “Now that we can reactivate and change the contents of memories in the brain, we can begin asking questions that were once the realm of philosophy,” said Steve Ramirez, a colleague of Tonagawa’s at MIT. “Are there multiple conditions that lead to the formation of false memories? Can false memories be artificially created? What about false memories for more than just contexts – false memories for objects, food or other mice? These are the once seemingly sci-fi questions that can now be experimentally tackled in the lab.”
As the technology develops, said French, scientists need to think about its uses carefully. “Whatever means are used to implant false memories, we need to be very aware of the ethical issues raised by such procedures – the potential for abuse of such techniques cannot be overstated.” | 2adv
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Sir Alex Ferguson will retire as Manchester United manager at the end of the season in the 27th year of a tenure that has made him the most successful manager in British football. While he will become a United director and ambassador, the club will now have to find someone to replace a man who has won 13 English Premier League titles, two Champions Leagues, the Cup Winners’ Cup, five FA Cups and four League Cups.
Regarding his decision, Ferguson said: “The decision to retire is one that I have thought a great deal about and one that I have not taken lightly. It is the right time. It was important to me to leave an organization in the strongest possible shape and I believe I have done so. The quality of this league-winning squad, and the balance of ages within it, bodes well for continued success at the highest level whilst the structure of the youth set-up will ensure that the long-term future of the club remains a bright one.
“Our training facilities are amongst the finest in global sport and our home, Old Trafford, is rightfully regarded as one of the leading venues in the world. Going forward, I am delighted to take on the roles of both director and ambassador for the club. With these activities, along with my many other interests, I am looking forward to the future. I must pay tribute to my family; their love and support has been essential. My wife, Cathy, has been the key figure throughout my career, providing a bedrock of both stability and encouragement. Words are not enough to express what this has meant to me.
“As for my players and staff, past and present, I would like to thank them all for a staggering level of professional conduct and dedication that has helped to deliver so many memorable triumphs. Without their contribution, the history of this great club would not be as rich. In my early years, the backing of the board, and Sir Bobby Charlton in particular, gave me the confidence and time to build a football club, rather than just a football team.
“Over the past decade, the Glazer family have provided me with the platform to manage Manchester United to the best of my ability and
I have been extremely fortunate to have worked with a talented and trustworthy chief executive in David Gill. I am truly grateful to all of them. To the fans, thank you. The support you have provided over the years has been truly humbling. It has been an honour and an enormous privilege to have had the opportunity to lead your club and I have treasured my time as manager of Manchester United.”
The sudden nature of Ferguson’s departure is in keeping with how the Scot stated he would leave the post after he mentioned a first retirement during the 2001/2 season before performing a U-turn. It is understood he gathered the players in the first-team changing room shortly after they arrived for training on Wednesday morning. In an emotional speech, he announced he was to step down. He then took his backroom staff aside before finally addressing the rest of the staff in the canteen.
Joel Glazer, joint owner of Manchester United, said: “Alex has proven time and time again what a fantastic manager he is but he’s also a wonderful person. His determination to succeed and dedication to the club have been truly remarkable. I will always cherish the wonderful memories he has given us, like that magical night in Moscow.”
Avie Glazer, his brother, said: “I am delighted to announce that Alex has agreed to stay with the club as a director. His contributions to Manchester United over the last 27 years have been extraordinary and, like all United fans, I want him to be a part of its future.”
David Gill, the outgoing chief executive, said: “I’ve had the tremendous pleasure of working very closely with Alex for 16 unforgettable years – through the treble, the double, countless trophy wins and numerous signings. We knew that his retirement would come one day and we both have been planning for it by ensuring the quality of the squad and club structures are in first-class condition. Alex’s vision, energy and ability have built teams – both on and off the pitch – that his successor can count on as among the best and most loyal in world sport.
“The way he cares for this club, his staff and for the football family in general is something that I admire. It is a side to him that is often hidden from public view but it is something that I have been privileged to witness in the last 16 years.
What he has done for this club and for the game in general will never be forgotten. It has been the greatest experience of my working life being alongside Alex and a great honour to be able to call him a friend.”
First-team coach René Meulensteen revealed how Ferguson broke the news to his backroom staff on Wednesday morning. “I found out this morning when I came to the club,” he said. “He called us into his office and told us what decision he had taken. It’s always been on the cards – there’s speculation every season. I think the manager kept his cards close to his chest. I think he felt the time was right now and he made a decision.
“He’s obviously a man who thinks very, very hard so I’m sure he’s put a lot of thought into making this decision. I wish him well. He’s been fantastic for this club and I hope all the fans give whoever’s going to come in the same support that he gets.” | 2adv
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Not nearly enough exercise classes have a tea break halfway through. But Margaret Allen’s does. After a gentle warm-up and a few pulse-raising numbers, the 93-year-old great-grandmother lets her charges rehydrate with a cup of tea and a quick sit down.
Some of the eight-strong class look as if they need it more than others. Allen herself, wearing a thick turquoise shirt, navy knitted waistcoat, black slacks and sensible shoes, has not broken into a sweat. Despite an “excruciating” trapped nerve in one leg and a knee in need of replacement, she looks as though she could go on for hours.
The general rule is that eating directly before sport is not the best idea, let alone part way through. But, on the afternoon I visit Allen’s class at a church hall in Saltburn-by-the-Sea near Middlesbrough, slices of fruitcake are being passed around during the break. The cake has been baked in honour of Allen’s recent birthday by her 89-year-old sister, Joan, known locally as the “scone queen of Saltburn”.
The ladies have barely swallowed their last crumb when Allen is up again, leading the group through a jaunty Scottish number involving lots of toe pointing and leg kicking. Forty-five minutes later, the class is finally over.
Allen, a former volunteer with the Red Cross, has been leading classes in the north-east seaside town for 45 years. Not particularly sporty at school, she started playing the piano for a keep-fit class during the second world war – “just for something to do during the blackouts, really” – and eventually took over in her 40s when the previous instructor retired. At its peak, Allen’s class had more than 18 regulars, each paying £1 a time. But, these days, her flock is diminishing fast – during the teabreak, the ladies discuss a funeral that most of them had attended that week for one of the younger members of the group who had just died, aged 68, from motor neurone disease.
Allen is the oldest, followed by her sister. The baby of the group is 60-year-old Jean Cunion, who credits the group with supporting her through a difficult time when her mother died. She is somewhat embarrassed to admit that she is perhaps the least fit of the group. “I remember, the first time I came, Margaret said: 'Who’s that huffing and panting?' and I had to admit it was me.” Ruth Steere, 76, marvels at how Allen never misses a trick, despite always having her back to the class: “She always shouts at us if we go wrong. She’s remarkably good at knowing what we are doing.”
Allen, a keen dancer, has never done any formal training to be a fitness instructor. Instead, she choreographs her own moves based on five tapes from the BBC’s first ever fitness guru, Eileen Fowler, who died in 2000 when she was 93, Allen’s age now. Allen thinks her good health is largely down to keeping busy, especially since her husband Joe died in 1997. She took up writing poetry when she was 80.
“I write poems about everything. I’m a prolific writer. I just can’t stop,” she says, phoning me a few days after the interview to read out a ditty she has written about the joys of exercise. One of the class, 84-year-old former teacher Winnie Robertson, thinks the secret to staying fit is never letting yourself go: “Use it or lose it, that’s what I say.”
Allen still plays the piano and gives speeches. She is president of the Women’s Fellowship at the local methodist church and is one of three 90-plus year olds at the scrabble club of the University of the Third Age. She did a computer course when she was 88 and tried to get online, but it didn’t work out.
Ageing is no fun, she admits, reading me a few lines from a poem she has written called 'That Beast Called Age'. She happily recalls a doctor who saw her for the first time a few years back, who said she couldn’t possibly be more than 78: “I said, 'Thank you, doctor. You can go now.'”
She also has a no-nonsense attitude to weight gain: “I just think people shouldn’t eat too much. Whenever I hear someone saying, 'Oh, I can’t lose weight’, I say:’ Sellotape.'” She mimes taping her mouth shut. “I said this just the other day to a big fat man. Everything in moderation is my motto.”
Earlier in 2013, Allen was watching the news and saw a woman being given the British Empire Medal. I think she means Margaret Chartwood from Horley, who was given the honour in January, at the age of 77. “She was saying: 'I’m 80 and I’m the oldest fitness instructor in the country!' I was thinking: 'No, you’re not.' But I shan’t be writing to Buckingham Palace.” | 2adv
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Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world’s population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet by 2050 to avoid catastrophic shortages.
Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra two billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world’s leading water scientists.
“There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected nine-billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations,” the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.
“There will be just enough water if the proportion of animal-based foods is limited to 5% of total calories and considerable regional water deficits can be met by a reliable system of food trade.”
Dire warnings of water scarcity limiting food production come as Oxfam and the UN prepare for a possible second global food crisis in five years. Prices for staples such as corn and wheat have risen nearly 50% on international markets since June, triggered by severe droughts in the US and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia. More than 18 million people are already facing serious food shortages across the Sahel.
Oxfam has forecast that the price spike will have a devastating impact in developing countries that rely heavily on food imports, including parts of Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. Food shortages in 2008 led to civil unrest in 28 countries.
Adopting a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in an increasingly climate-erratic world, the scientists said. Animal protein-rich food consumes five to ten times more water than a vegetarian diet. One third of the world’s arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals. Other options to feed people include eliminating waste and increasing trade between countries in food surplus and those in deficit.
“Nine hundred million people already go hungry and two billion people are malnourished in spite of the fact that per-capita food production continues to increase,” they said. “With 70% of all available water being in agriculture, growing more food to feed an additional two billion people by 2050 will place greater pressure on available water and land.”
The report is being released at the start of the annual world water conference in Stockholm, Sweden, where 2,500 politicians, UN bodies, non-governmental groups and researchers from 120 countries meet to address global water supply problems.
Competition for water between food production and other uses will intensify pressure on essential resources, the scientists said. “The UN predicts that we must increase food production by 70% by mid-century. This will place additional pressure on our already stressed water resources, at a time when we also need to allocate more water to satisfy global energy demand – which is expected to rise by 60% over the coming 30 years – and to generate electricity for the 1.3 billion people currently without it,” said the report.
Overeating, undernourishment and waste are all on the rise and increased food production may face future constraints from water scarcity.
“We will need a new recipe to feed the world in the future,” said the report’s editor, Anders Jägerskog.
A separate report from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said the best way for countries to protect millions of farmers from food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia was to help them invest in small pumps and simple technology, rather than to develop expensive, large-scale irrigation projects.
“We’ve witnessed again and again what happens to the world’s poor – the majority of whom depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and already suffer from water scarcity – when they are at the mercy of our fragile global food system,” said Dr Colin Chartres, the Director General.
“Farmers across the developing world are increasingly relying on and benefiting from small-scale, locally-relevant water solutions. [These] techniques could increase yields up to 300% and add tens of billions of US dollars to household revenues across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.” | 2adv
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