Beer drinkers have more chance to have sex on first date : Study finds..
Both men and women who enjoy a pint are 60 per cent more likely to sleep with someone early in a relationship, statistics show.According to Christian Rudder, a Harvard graduate who set up dating website OKCupid, this applies to both gay and straight people.
After analysing the profiles and interactions of hundreds of millions of users, Rudder found that beer-drinking was the most useful indicator of whether people are likely to have casual sex, the Daily Mail reported.
Only the "beer test" works to predict a woman's possible interest in casual sex, according to theOKCupid data, but the site claimed these also work for men.
He also found the three questions that best predicted whether couples would actually go on to have a long-term relationship.
While many people thought the best questions to ask would be about someone's views on sex,smoking and God, he found that you could predict compatibility more than twice as well by asking these three questions:
1. Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?
2. Do you like horror movies?
3. Have you ever travelled around another country alone?
The data suggests that compatibility on sensation-seeking may be even more important than more obvious compatibility testers such a date's opinion on religion, sex, and smoking, observedPsychology Today.
The mathematics graduate also looked at how a woman's way of describing her body correlates with self-confidence and sex drive.
He discovered that a woman's sex drive rises dramatically till her late 30s, then drops just as dramatically, whereas her self-confidence steadily rises with age.
Women who said they were "curvy" were more interested in sex, and more self-confident, than women who said they were "skinny" - a trend that applies across all ages.
His blog also contains graphs that show that women who don't like exercise are twice as likely to have trouble achieving orgasm than women who do; that frequent tweeters have shorter real-life relationships than everyone else; and that people living in richer areas are more likely to want casual sex.
In a recent article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, scientists at Victoria University of Wellington, Harvard Medical School and Plymouth University explain that there is a “phenomenon of suggestion,” whereby the mere suggestion of something — a lucky rabbit’s foot, a glass of wine or a pill — can have an effect on the outcome of a situation. It’s similar to the “placebo effect,” whereby patients take a dummy pill but think it’s the real thing and actually start to feel the desired effect of the real drug.
These researchers call it “response expectancies.”
For example, a normally shy person who thinks a glass of wine or two will help him relax and be more sociable at a party is more likely to feel less inhibited, approach more people and engage in more conversations at that party. He may tell you it was the wine, but the researchers say “it is clear that his expectations of how the wine would make him feel played a major role.”
"If I bring my rabbit's foot to the midterm, I will do well; if I drink this vodka tonic, I will be more sociable; If I take this pill, I will fell less depressed — these are just a few examples of response expectancies,” the researchers wrote in the article.
“Once we anticipate a specific outcome will occur, our subsequent thoughts and behaviors will actually help bring that outcome to fruition,” the researchers said.
Now, lest you think this is all just an excuse to start drinking more – or thinking about drinking more – there’s a nugget in here for the bosses. The researchers said this power of expectation goes beyond an internal anticipation. It can come from someone else. For example, just observing people or otherwise making them feel more special could also lead to the desired outcome — perhaps making people work harder or sticking to a task longer.
So, here are your key takeaways: Employees, start thinking about wine. And bosses, start making the employees feel special!
Then we’ll all actually be special and relaxed. And we’ll live happily ever after …
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| Siri |
While Android already has, though slightly limited, a voice assistant in the form of Android Voice Actions system, this new product which has been code-named Majel is expected to be a significant one.
HTC on Saturday hinted at a possible Siri rival through its Twitter and Facebook page, Samsung already has something called S-Voice recently released on the Samsung Galaxy SIII, even LG week revealed Quick Voice, a personal voice-control assistant which features natural-language processing technology, to let its smartphone users search, write emails and so on-with built-in support for interactivity with 11 apps at its start, though right now it's confined to Korea. Even our home grown Micromax has rolled out something called AISHA.
HTC on Saturday hinted at a possible Siri rival through its Twitter and Facebook page.
While Siri on iPhone is by far most praised voice assistance service, if Google manages to use its resources well, this new product will have fabulous capabilities.
Google has capabilities in almost all the spoken language in the world and a deep understanding of them thanks to its Translation engines and ample research that has already gone behind this capability.
But then knowing a language and using that knowledge to devise a new application are two entirely different things.
But given Google's track record in creating technologies, we are very hopeful of a well made and useful application that can potentially be a game changer especially given the fact that it will bring voice activation tech to the masses as Android phones are much cheaper than that of iPhone.
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| Stephen Hawking |
70-year-old Hawking has been working with scientists at Standford University of the US who are developing iBrain - a tool which picks up brain waves and communicates them via a computer, the Daily Mail reported.
Hawking has been unable to speak for the last 30 years due to the motor neurone disease which is ravaging his body and weakening his muscles.
He currently uses a computer to communicate with a robot-like voice, but is losing the ability as his condition is worsening by the day.
Hawking was fitted with a black headband which has a series of neurotransmitters inside it and was told to think about scrunching his right hand into a ball.
He was able to create a pattern which the researchers hope they can one day convert into letters, words and sentences, the report said.
The iBrain has been developed by Philip Low, a professor at the university.
It is about the size of a matchbox and is very light so does not weigh down Hawking's head.
Professor Low said he hopes that it will be able to monitor him in real time, regardless of what he is doing. "We'd like to find a way to bypass his body, pretty much hack his brain. This is very exciting for us because it allows us to have a window into the brain," Low said.
"We're building technology that will allow humanity to have access to the human brain for the first time. "The emergence of such biomarkers opens the possibility to link intended movements to a library of words and convert them into speech, thus providing motor neurone sufferers with communication tools more dependent on the brain than on the body," he said.
Low will unveil his latest findings next month at a conference in Cambridge, and Hawking may demonstrate the technology.
It could also be used to treat sleep disorders and possibly help to quickly diagnose autism, the report said.
-China has grown by 10% per annum over the last 30 years, bringing 500 million people out of poverty. It is now the world's second largest economy, and its largest manufacturer and exporter.
-The two key two factors behind this have been the transformations from a rural, agricultural society to an industrial, urban one and from a command based economy to a market-based one. The initial conditions for change in 1978 were near perfect , with the spark coming from agricultural reforms which included the key introduction of the household responsibility system.
-Even if China grows at a third (6.6%) of its growth rate over the last three decades (9.9%) it should become a high-income economy by 2030, even though its per capita income will be a fraction of that in advanced economies.
-"Growing up is hard to do". Many countries have rapidly developed into middle-income economies but few have made it to high-income levels.
-Factors like low-cost labour and easy technology adoption which caused rapid growth in these countries, disappeared when they reached middle-income status.
-As countries reach middle-income levels, the underemployed rural labour force dwindles and wages rise, eroding competitiveness and productivity growth from resource reallocation and technology catch-up. If these countries cannot increase productivity through innovation (rather than relying on foreign technology), they find themselves trapped. There are many examples of Latin American and Middle East countries which have stagnated since the 1960s and 1970s.
- The report featured a fascinating chart which classified countries as high-income if their per capita GDP, measured at purchasing-power parity, exceeds 43% of America's. It plots each country's income per person (adjusted for purchasing power) relative to that of America, both in 1960 and in 2008. If every country had caught up, they would all be in the top row.
-Of the 101 middle-income countries in 1960, only 13 passed that threshold to become high-income economies by 2008 – including Greece(?), Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Portugal, Korea, Spain, Singapore and Taiwan.
- For China to achieve this transformation, critical reforms need to be undertaken to ensure a smooth transition - covering land, labour, power, competition, banking, capital markets, state-owned enterprises, taxes and spending.
Fascinating report with a wealth of information and provides an insight into what are the key requirements for economies to achieve high-income status. What is particularly revealing is the list of the 13 countries which have made the transition successfully from middle-income to high-income status. Countries with world-class multinational companies like Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Israel stand out – while countries without any national champions like Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are currently floundering. (It is interesting to observe, that for all its problems, India already has a robust list of world-class multinational companies giving it the base to eventually move into a high-income status.) This will be the critical test for China over the next decade or so – whether it is able to nurture a stable of world class multinational companies which are able to successfully compete and innovate in global markets? I think they will achieve this transformation successfully as they have built a tremendous industrial infrastructure around their manufacturing base, presenting a generationally attractive buying opportunity for their stock market which has significantly lagged their economic performance over the last decade.
-The country which stands out in the above chart is Greece – contrary to current popular opinion, Greece has not always been a basket case. As The Economist blog points out:
-"Greece's per capita income was only 28% of America's in 1960, (that is very roughly where China stands today). Over the next 12 years, however, the Greek economy grew at an Olympian pace of 8% a year on average. Greece then suffered a quarter century of inflation and stagnation, before resuming its convergence after 1996. By 2008 it had caught up to 52% of America's income level"- As Paul Krugman notes-" Fifteen years ago Greece was no paradise, but it wasn't in crisis either. Unemployment was high but not catastrophic, and the nation more or less paid its way on world markets, earning enough from exports, tourism, shipping and other sources to more or less pay for its imports."
- "A balance sheet recession struck the German economy on bursting of the IT bubble, which hit Germany hard. The Nasdaq-like Neuer Markt plunged 96 per cent in value. As Germans increased savings, aggregate demand decreased. With fiscal policy somewhat constrained by the Stability and Growth Pact, the ECB had to step in.
-Germany's actual fiscal deficits modestly exceeded that threshold on several occasions, but the resulting fiscal stimulus was far from sufficient to prop up the economy. The ECB therefore took its policy rate down from 4.75% in 2001 to a postwar low of 2% in 2003 in a bid to rescue the eurozone's largest economy.
-But those ultra-low rates still had little impact on Germany, where balance sheet problems were forcing businesses and households to minimize debt. The money supply grew very slowly, and house prices continued to fall. Naturally there was only minimal inflation in wages or prices.
-The countries of southern Europe, which had not participated in the IT bubble, enjoyed strong economies and robust private sector demand for funds at the time. The ECB's 2% policy rate therefore led to sharp growth in the money supply, which in turn fueled economic expansions and housing bubbles and wage inflation.
-In other words, there would have been no need for such dramatic easing by the ECB—and hence no reason for the competitiveness gap with the rest of the eurozone to widen to current levels—if Germany had used fiscal stimulus to address its balance sheet recession.
-The creators of the Maastricht Treaty made no provision for balance sheet recessions when drawing up the document, and today's "competitiveness problem" is solely attributable to the Treaty's 3% cap on fiscal deficits, which placed unreasonable demands on ECB monetary policy during this type of recessions. The countries of southern Europe are not to blame.
2012 World Wealth Report: Passion Investments Gain in Popularity by Lauren Foster
When the 2012 "World Wealth Report" from Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management was released on Tuesday, the growth of Asian millionaires led the news because it was the first time that Asia-Pacific had more millionaires than North America. But behind the headlines were a few more interesting bits of data for private wealth managers.
According to the report, so-called "investments of passion," including art, jewelry, and memorabilia, attracted interest as substitute investments in 2011, especially among the emerging-market crowd. So if you don't know the difference between, say, a Monet and Manet, or hadn't heard that Joan Miro's 1927 work Peinture (Etoile Bleue) sold for a record US$36.9 million at a London auction this week, it may be time to brush up on some of the finer things in life — including art history — so you can keep up with your clients' interests.
Abstract
In the end, superior investing is all about mistakes . . . and about being the person who profits from them, not the one who commits them.
Mistakes are a frequent topic of discussion in our world. It's not unusual to see investors criticized for errors that resulted in poor performance. But rarely do we hear about mistakes as an indispensible component of the investment process. In short, in order for one side of a transaction to turn out to be a major success, the other side has to have been a big mistake.
In the end, superior investing is all about mistakes . . . and about being the person who profits from them, not the one who commits them.
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| PFC India |
Power finance corporation investment report, research report, price target, outlook...
Pratibhuti_PFC_InitiatingCoverage-ver8-Final
Pervez Hoodbhoy, nuclear physicist and prominent commentator on current issues, showed the examples at a seminar in the King's College on the role of education in combating terrorism, organised by the Democracy Forum.
The examples showed by Hoodbhoy included images and text from a primer that mentioned the Urdu equivalent of A as 'Allah', B as 'bandook', T as 'takrao', J as 'jehad', H as 'hijab', Kh as 'khanjar' and Ze as 'zunoob'.
Hoodbhoy, whose presentation title was 'How education fuels terrorism in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan', also showed a college that is seen as going up in flames, containing images of things considered sinful - kites, guitar, satellite TV, carom board, chess, wine bottles and harmonium.
Examples cited by Hoodbhoy from another curriculum document for Class V students included tasks such as discussion on: 'Understand Hindu-Muslim differences and the resultant need for Pakistan', 'India's evil designs against Pakistan', 'Make speeches on shehadat and jehad'.
"There has been a sea change in Pakistan in the last six decades. The poison put into education by Gen Zia-ul-Haq was not changed by subsequent regimes. And attitudes have changed over the years, makes my country alien to me," Hoodbhoy said.
Recalling his growing up years in Karachi, he said the city was home to Hindus, Parsis and Christians: "They are all gone. The same is true of much of Pakistan. Minorities have no place in Pakistan today".
He held madarsas partly responsible for the situation, and regretted that efforts initiated during the regime of General Pervez Musharraf to reform them did not go far.
After the 2007 Lal Masjid incident, liberal voices were also less welcome in Pakistan's news media, he said. "Every attempt at education reform has failed to remove the hate material in curriculum, but there is a minority that wants change. The situation will remain in freefall, until something drastic is done to change the situation," he said.
Stressing on the need for pluralism and secularism in education, former Indian diplomat G Parthasarathy said tensions began when education did not foster respect for diversity and for other religions.
There was more to terrorism than education, because some of the recent perpetrators were well educated, he said. "The most important part of education is that diversity should be cherished, that unity does not mean uniformity."
Other speakers included King's College experts Professor Jack Spence from the Department of War Studies and Shiraz Maher from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.
