New Samsung's Galaxy Gear Smartwatch (by Ricard Porta)

Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch offers a glimpse into the future. Unfortunately, it's just not ready yet.

For a watch, the Galaxy Gear sports some pretty impressive technology: It has a tiny but useable 1.6-inch touchscreen, 4 gigabytes of storage, 24 hours of battery life, a 1.9 megapixel camera, a speaker and a microphone. Samsung essentially shrunk a smartphone down until it was functional as a wristwatch.

It even does a number of smartphone-like things: Galaxy Gear displays updates, including texts, calendar appointments and other notifications. It has apps, it takes pictures, and it even makes phone calls.

But the Galaxy Gear isn't a replacement for a smartphone. In fact, you still need a smartphone or tablet to use most of the smartwatch's features. Complicating matters further, the Galaxy Gear currently works with just two devices: the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and the latest edition of the Galaxy Note 10.1. Not included is Samsung's wildly popular Galaxy S smartphone series, though Samsung has hinted that those devices might be supported in the future.

Is this what we really want from a smartwatch?

And just because Galaxy Gear functions like a phone doesn't mean it's a particularly good one.

You can make calls in a pinch, but only on speakerphone. And you awkwardly have to hold up your wrist within a couple of feet of your mouth for the mic to pick up your voice. The speaker is loud enough in a quiet setting, but can get a little drowned out when you introduce some background chatter.

You can also speak commands to the smartwatch, but the feature is mostly a dud. You can use it to set an alarm, send a message, place a call or check the weather. But that's about the extent of it. Launching the "hands-free" interface still requires a considerable amount of finger action.

The camera isn't bad at all for what it is. But I mostly found myself asking what purpose it serves, considering I still have to carry around a phone -- with a better camera. Galaxy Gear is no faster at taking photos, and being strapped to my wrist, there was less freedom in getting the right angle.

The home screen turns on when you turn your wrist to look at the watch. It would be a neat trick -- if it worked. It turned on in response to random movements of my arm.

The selection of apps was particularly disappointing. Evernote lets you upload photos and look at to-do lists. Path offered a somewhat useful app. Samsung offers a suite of generic apps, including a clock, timer, voice memo taker and pedometer. And that's about it.

The Galaxy Gear also isn't a particularly attractive piece of armwear. It is somehow both utilitarian and gaudy at the same time.

The smartwatch offered just a few nice touches.

The internal processor is fast enough and the screen was responsive. The battery got me through an entire 24 hours, and a little extra -- fine if you're OK with having another device to remember to charge every day.

And the connection between the phone and the watch is solid as it should be, and notifications arrived in real time. Even if it's not totally life-altering, getting constant updates without having to take your phone out of your picket is maybe the best case to make for owning a Galaxy Gear.

But the Gear ultimately doesn't do enough that a smartphone can't. Using the Galaxy Gear is like having a maid who only takes out the trash: It's a high price to pay for something that doesn't offer much added benefit

The Afro as a natural expression of self, by: Inés Serratosa

The Afro as a Natural Expression of Self

Dante de Blasio’s towering Afro, a supporting player in his father’s mayoral campaign, riveted attention once more last week when it caught the eye of President Obama. Introducing Bill de Blasio at a Democratic fund-raiser in Midtown, Mr. Obama digressed to point out, “Dante has the same hairdo as I had in 1978. Although I have to confess my Afro was never that good.”

As 16-year-old Dante implied in an interview with an online local news source, hair is just hair. “Some people want to take photos and I’m really just happy,” he said. Others want to reach out and touch it, and some did at last week’s fund-raiser, their enthusiastic petting prompting the elder de Blasio to joke that he might have to call security.

The mayoral candidate was doubtless aware that Dante’s outsize hair placed him in a league with a current generation that has adopted what once was a badge of revolt as an emblem of style’s cutting edge.

Images like those of Halle Berry’s tightly coiled halo or Nicki Minaj’s poodly pink Glamfro on the cover of Allure last year have played a part in resurrecting the hallmark style. Even the customarily conventional Oprah Winfrey stepped out to front the September issue of O, the Oprah magazine, in a 3.5-pound wig that spanned its cover nearly edge to edge above the cover line: “Let’s talk about HAIR!”

The style’s current iteration bears little kinship to the anti-gravity hair flaunted in the late 1960s by Angela Davis, Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver and other icons of the Black Power movement. “In the ’60s the Afro was looked upon as ‘Wow, you’re stepping out there, you’re really going against the grain,’ ” said Andre Walker, the man who fluffed Ms. Winfrey’s wig into its umbrella-size proportions. In contrast, “When I talk to a lot of the kids from this generation,” he said, “the whole civil rights movement, it’s very vague to them. “I don’t think they really know the meaning of how radical an Afro was in the day,” Mr. Walker added. “It’s a different time now.”

Reluctant to treat her hair with potentially damaging lye, a Brooklyn resident who identified herself only as Tamar A., declared: “This is just how my hair grows out of my head. I’m not trying to make a statement. I’m just more comfortable being who I am.” “I don’t wear my hair natural because I’m strictly Afrocentric or don’t believe in the white man’s perm,” Sofia Loren Coffee said. “I wear my hair this way because I truly think I look adorable with natural hair.”

Though it has become increasingly popular, especially in hipster enclaves like Brooklyn, the Afro has yet to claim the status of a widespread trend.

At the time of its genesis some 50 years ago the Afro was far from acceptable. Both white and older black Americans viewed it as a threat to the prevailing social order.

Willie Morrow, a pioneer of the blowout, as the Afro was known in the ’70s, and one who popularized the Afro-pick, the oversize comb that many wore like diadems, recalled, “When you walked down the street it made a firm statement, much like saggy pants make a statement today. Black parents would say to their youngsters, ‘Don’t wear that comb; it sends a message.’ ”

Nowadays, though, a few designers are embracing the style. They include Marc Jacobs, who introduced sky-high Afros on his runway in 2009, and Rick Owens, who released a parade of Afro-wreathed models at his show in Paris last week. Mr. Owens said his models — dancers of varying physical types selected from campuses across the country — were pointedly rejecting conventional notions of beauty.

“We’re creating our own beauty,” Mr. Owens said.

 

Posted by: Lucía de Gispert

THE TELEGRAPH 

Time's up for siestas, delayed meetings and late nights, Spaniards told in effort to make them work better

Spaniards should ditch their siesta culture, stop being late for meetings and get to bed earlier, MPs have been told.

A carriage driver in Seville taking a siesta

By Martin Roberts in Madrid

Their three-hour lunch breaks have long been the envy of workers in neighbouring countries, their business meetings often start late and millions of them rarely get to bed till well after midnight.

But now Spaniards face growing pressure to give up their siestas, bring their working day into line with the rest of western Europe - and switch their clocks to the same time zone as Britain.

A parliamentary commission has called for fundamental reform to traditional working hours and practices as part of Spain's effort to break out of recession and reduce the chronic unemployment that has dogged its economy for the best part of a decade.

The review, by the National Commission for the Rationalisation of Working Hours, is expected to win the backing of a panel of MPs on Thursday.

"We need more flexible working hours, to cut our lunch breaks, to streamline business meetings by setting time limits for them, and to practise and demand punctuality," says the report.

Long lunch breaks are a throwback to the time when working outdoors became unbearable in midday temperatures of 40C or more but have persisted - along with the habit of working till 9pm, then socialising until late at night - despite the advent of air conditioned factories, offices and shops.

The result is that even though Spaniards put in more hours in total than equivalent workers in Germany, they waste more time and produce far less. They also have on average one hour less sleep per night.

"In these difficult and critical times, Spain urgently needs more humane working hours," the Commission says. "This would raise productivity, lower absenteeism and accidents, as well as reducing drop-out rates from school."

The report also recommends ditching the use of Central European Time which - since Madrid is further west than Plymouth - means daylight and working hours are out of synch. Spain adopted Berlin time in 1942, at the height of the Second World War, when it was sympathetic to Nazi Germany.

The Commission has told MPs that a shorter, sharper and better timed working day would improve Spaniards' quality of life, raise the country's low birth rates and reduce the rate of marriage breakdown.

Smokers Die Ten Years Sooner Than Non-Smokers (by María Valero)

We all know that smoking is bad for our health. But how bad is bad? The answer is very bad, life changing in fact. But everyone also knows someone who has smoked all their adult life, never gotten lung cancer or a respiratory disease of any kind and lived to a ripe old age. George Burns, the famous comedian, who lived to be 100 hundred years old, often remarked "I smoke ten to fifteen cigars a day. At my age I have to hold on to something".

So, true enough - but in the discussion ahead you will find that these individuals are very much the rare exception and certainly not the rule. It is important to know that, on average, smokers die twelve years sooner than non-smokers. Twelve years! That's more than a decade! It means life for smokers is more than ten percent shorter than for non-smokers. These are big numbers.

Is this just fear mongering or is there substance to such a statement? It is real. The data is in and it is very strong.

No other preventable cause of illness or death is more important than smoking. This is the clear message of two new studies that investigated the overall impact of smoking across a very large cohort of Americans. The studies, conducted by Jha et al¹ and by Thun et al ² along with an editorial by Schroeder³, were published by the New England Journal of Medicine on January 24, 2013. They support earlier studies that came to similar conclusions based on smaller numbers of observed individuals.

So, here are the facts of the matter. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), tobacco is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the United States and that, in 2011, an estimated 19 percent of U.S. adults were cigarette smokers.⁴ This is down from over 40% a few decades ago. Good progress. But for those who do smoke, diseases leading to death are common.

Smoker's mortality rates are nearly 3 times greater than those of nonsmokers and essentially equal between men and women. People who smoke are up to six times more likely to suffer a heart attack than nonsmokers, and the risk increases with the number of cigarettes smoked. Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 443,000 deaths each year, including approximately 49,000 deaths due to exposure to secondhand smoke.

Smoking also causes most cases of chronic obstructive lung disease. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women in the United States, and 90 percent of lung cancer deaths among men and approximately 80 percent of lung cancer deaths among women are due to smoking currently or in the past. Certain diseases, such as ischemic heart disease (heart attacks and related coronary artery disease), stroke, chronic lung disease and lung cancer, have been clearly linked to smoking and were found to be the cause of death in approximately 60% of the smokers' in these studies.

Smoking causes or predisposes to many other types of cancer, including cancers of the throat, mouth, nasal cavity, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and cervix, and acute myeloid leukemia.

The chance that a young person will live to age 80 is about 70% for nonsmokers but only 35% for smokers. Stated differently, a smoker loses about 11(women) to 12 (men) years of life compared to nonsmokers. Sadly, the NCI's 2011 report confirms that nearly 16 percent of high school students smoke cigarettes.

The vertical lines at 80 years of age represent the 99% confidence intervals for cumulative survival probabilities, as derived from the standard errors estimated with the use of the jackknife procedure. Survival probabilities have been scaled from the National Health Interview Survey to the U.S. rates of death from all causes at these ages for 2004,13,16 with adjustment for differences in age, educational level, alcohol consumption, and adiposity (body-mass index). Source: NEJM.

 The Thun Study

The Thun study compared data from three time periods reaching back 50 years. Overall, mortality rates during this fifty year period declined by 50%; largely as a result of the progress against heart disease. However, this was a benefit enjoyed solely by the nonsmokers.

Thun made some key observations:

• Smoking deaths continue to increase among women because women who smoke now smoke as much as men do


• Death from all causes is at least 3X higher for smokers than for nonsmokers with at least two thirds of all deaths in smokers directly related to smoking


• The rate of death from chronic lung disease (COPD) is rising among both men and women. They hypothesize that this rise in incidence is related to the changes in cigarettes over the years that encourage deeper inhalation; consequently delivering more toxins to the deep, peripheral regions of the lungs - the alveoli or air sacs.
  
  Using the same reasoning, they suggest that deeper inhalation than in the past may be causing the increased incidence of peripheral lung cancers, especially adenocarcinomas, versus the more centrally located and mostly squamous cell cancers that were more common in the past.


• Quitting smoking lowers death rates quite substantially and quitting before the age of 40 can eliminate the relative risk of early death.

Economic Implications

The economic realities of smoking do not stop there, either. The cost of smoking-related disease is a significant cost burden on the Gross Domestic Product of the US economy. Of the $2.2 trillion the US spends on health care, annually, $1.1 trillion of that spend is related directly to the cost burdens of chronic non communicable diseases. Of this $1.1 trillion cost burden pulmonary disease and lung cancer account for $154 billion. Nearly 15%! The cost of heart disease and stroke accounts for a $444 billion cost burden.

A quick extrapolation of the statistics from Thun et al and Jha et al would relate that smoking related diseases, associated with just lung, heart and vascular ailments, pose an economic cost burden to the US GDP in the hundreds of billions of dollars, annually. So, both the humanitarian and financial consequences of smoking and tobacco certainly cannot be overstated.

The Value of Quitting

It is well understood that tobacco is addictive and that smoking is easy to start and hard to quit. Many try each year only to go back on. If someone has smoked for a long time, does it make any difference or is it just too late? What value does quitting smoking have, if any in these circumstances? The answer is that quitting is exceptionally valuable and it is never too late to have a meaningful effect.

Those who quit smoking will gain back substantial years of life, with more years gained the sooner one ceases smoking. For example, in Jha's analysis, those who quit in the age range 25-34 reverted almost to the nonsmoker status - they gained back 10 years of life. Stopping between 35-44 years of age gained 9 years and between 45-54 years of age the gain was 6 years. So it is always a good time to quit.

The total and excess risks of death are shown for NHIS participants who continued smoking, as compared with those who quit smoking. CI denotes confidence interval. Source: NEJM.

 Quitting today is the single most important step a smoker can take to improve their health over the years to come. Some argue that if they quit they will gain weight and that will make them more susceptible to diabetes mellitus or coronary artery disease. A possibly logical argument, but the data is in - quitting may lead to some weight gain, but it is hardly enough to have a significant or serious impact and so does not - by far - overcome the benefits of smoking cessation. Moreover, it is an argument that fails in comparison to the extension of one's life.

Quitting is difficult. No question. Nevertheless, it is well worth it! The best approach is to use a combination of techniques all at once. Counseling by the patient's physician and augmented by a professional cessation counselor can have a major impact. Nicotine patches can help slowly and gently ease one off of the nicotine addiction. Support groups, whether they be real or virtual, in person or via social media can be very helpful; after all, each person in the group is going through the same difficult transition. Incentives help as well as a strong family and friends' support system. Workplace tobacco cessation programs are very useful and if one is not available many health departments can make a referral. The success of quitting goes way up when these and other techniques are used together, rather than just trying to quit "cold turkey" on one's own.

To assist an individual, the provider (physician, nurse, nurse practitioner) needs to follow the Public Health Service "5As" model:

1. Ask each patient if they smoke
2. Advise all smokers to quit
3. Assess the smoker's willingness to quit (readiness)
4. Assist with the quitting
5. Arrange appropriate follow-up contact both with the provider and others such as counselors

This all takes some time, but it is essential to high rates of success.

A concept called self-efficacy is important here. Those with low self-efficacy are those with low personal expectations that they will be successful at quitting. Their relapse rate is higher so they need to be identified early and offered special assistance.

Often not recognized by the general population is the value of smoking cessation before a surgical procedure. Smokers have higher rates of complications during and after surgery than do nonsmokers. For elective procedures many surgeons now insist on cessation for some month's pre surgery. This is a good idea which needs to be augmented post-surgery to prevent later relapse.

Fortunately, there have been active efforts for many years to warn of the dangers of smoking and to assist individuals to quit. However, smoking has become a stigmatized behavior so that those who smoke are shunned and those who develop smoking related illnesses like lung cancer are stigmatized ("you brought it on yourself") as well.

Lung cancer kills more women than breast cancer, but there is no "Pink Ribbon" Campaign or "Race for the Cure." Women have proven themselves to be the best advocates for a healthy society. Women's leadership in the fight against breast cancer has been the single best disease advocacy and funding initiative ever seen. The reality is that lung cancer killed 74,000 women in 2010 as compared to the 38,000 lost to breast cancer. Nearly twice as many women were lost to lung cancer in 2010 than breast cancer.

So, where are the voices? There is a compelling case to be made for a renewed focus on prevention and treatment of pulmonary disease and lung cancer, in particular. Over 96 million Americans have admitted to smoking for at least six months during their lifetime, an exposure rate that puts one third of America's population at least at some level of risk.

So, why be prejudiced toward those with pulmonary disease and lung cancer? The fact is that we are all paying for the cost burden of smoking on our society in real dollars and in real lives. There is a significant need for a nonjudgmental attitude toward those who are afflicted. Getting past the "blame game" removes the stigma and allows a more constructive approach to tobacco cessation and disease prevention and treatment.
( from :http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/261091.php )

September 30th, 2013

04:16 PM ET

Equal work for equal pay? Posted by your teacher

http://worldsport.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/30/equal-work-for-equal-pay/?hpt=hp_c4  

Usually the practice of equal work predates the debate for equal pay. In tennis, the practice of equal pay pre-dated the debate for equal work.

In the 40 years since Billie-Jean King’s historic victory over Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes,” which lit the fuse for the global expansion of women’s tennis, the game has become the biggest women’s sport on the planet, with the stars of the game known on a first name basis the world over.

Eventually, the financial rewards slowly followed suit, culminating in 2007 when Wimbledon become the last of the four grand slam events to award equal prize money to both the men and women.

While this would seem like a non-controversial sign of gender equality and progress, opposition to equal prize money at the grand slams is not isolated to the misogynistic fringe of the tennis community. Their argument is simple; men play best-of-five sets whereas the women just best-of-three.

Blog: Are Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic boring?

Back in 2009, former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt weighed in on the subject, saying, "The training you have to do to last five sets, especially seven best of five-set matches, it's a lot more than three-set matches. There would obviously be question marks [over whether] a lot of them could last."

Former world No. 3 Nikolay Davydenko has also spoken out publicly against this perceived injustice, citing the extra physical demands of playing five sets.

The latest player to make headlines in the debate was Wimbledon champion Andy Murray who recently gave his two cents, stating, “I’m not saying the men work harder than the women, but if you have to train to play five sets, it’s a longer distance.

"It’s like someone training to be a 400-meter runner and someone training to be a 600-meter runner.

"I think either the men go three sets or the women go five sets. I think that’s more what the guys tend to complain about, rather than the equal prize money itself."

The discrepancy between time spent on court was highlighted during last month’s U.S. Open, when Serena Williams walked away with the trophy after just nine hours and 54 minutes on court, as opposed to Rafael Nadal who took 16 hours and 19 minutes to claim the same honor.

Last week, when asked why women do not play best-of-five sets at the grand slams, Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Chairman and chief executive officer Stacey Allaster insisted that her players were, “Ready, willing and able… all you have to do is ask.”

So the men say they want it, and the women say they’re ready for it. So what’s stopping it?

The primary issue is the logistical nightmare of having to schedule 128 first-round matches, each with the potential of going five hours long.

Blog: Can Serena become the greatest ever?

One proposed suggestion would be to have both the men and women play best-of-three sets for the opening rounds, and best-of-five for the latter. This would allow for the more competitive matches featuring the biggest names to generate the greater drama.

After all, drama is what brings in the money.

Looking retrospectively, this format would not have impacted the epic best-of-five set finals, such as the classic Bjorn Borg-John McEnroe clash in 1980, or the remarkable Roger Federer-Nadal final from 2008. However, early round battles such as the 11+ hour marathon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut would have been over in under two hours.

These gladiatorial battles underscore the exceptional mental and physical demands of a grand slam, in a way conventional tennis tournaments do not. The excitement of a best-of-five set marathon is a unique and special experience in tennis, and one denied to half the grand slam participants.

Doesn’t Maria Sharapova deserve the opportunity to fight back from two-sets down to clinch victory from the jaws of defeat? Doesn’t the New York crowd deserve to see Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka go the distance over five sets, testing their physical and mental superiority to the max?

As Murray continued to say in his recent interview, playing best-of-five sets “is what makes [grand slams] different.”

Maybe this is the point. During the regular season, both men and women must win five best-of-three set matches over a week in order to take home the title. During a grand slam, the men must win seven best-of-five set matches over two weeks, whereas women need only to win seven best-of-three set matches over the same two weeks.

Added pressure aside, the physical demands for women during a grand slam are actually less than during the regular season.

By allowing women to play best-of-five, you are separating the grand slam’s from the rest of the tour, making them special events, for special athletes.

The one major problem with assessing a tennis player’s fiscal worth by their length of play is assuming that their work day begins with the toss of the coin, and ends with shaking hands.

Playing matches is just a small part of the job of a full-time tennis professional, who train and travel year-round, and have done in most cases since they were too young to see above the airport check-in counter. This is just as true for the women as it is for the men.

Former world No. 6 Gilles Simon has been one of the more outspoken and controversial opponents of equal pay, suggesting that the men deserve more money, because they provide greater entertainment.

In response to this, Sharapova quipped, “I'm sure there are a few more people that watch my matches than his.”

And she’s right. People watch sports to see their favorite players, and for tennis, these fan-favorites are limited to just a few marquee names.

Serena Williams and Sharapova are just as a big draw for the fans as the top men are, and people tune in in the millions to watch them perform.

At this year’s U.S. Open, the women’s final pulled higher domestic television ratings than the men’s final, scoring a 4.9, with the men’s a comparatively low 2.8.

This can be attributed to Serena Williams being American, but that’s largely the point. People watch players they are rooting for, even if it’s only best-of-three sets, or “not as entertaining."

It’s much like when you choose to see a movie. You’re not looking at the showtimes to see which movie is longest. You choose the films featuring your favorite actors, by your favorite directors or producers. And you certainly would not expect to pay more if the movie was longer.

While the offer from the WTA's Allaster is generous, it is perhaps disingenuous. Of all the events her player participate in, the only events for which she is willing to make such an offer are the four events governed by the International Tennis Federation, where she has no jurisdiction over.

If the WTA were serious about playing best-of-five, they would incorporate it more into their own events.

An ideal time to test best-of-five sets for the women’s game would be at the annual end of year WTA Tour Championships. In fact, from 1984 to 1998, this event culminated in a best-of-five final, including an epic five-set thriller between Steffi Graf and Martina Hingis.

If these matches proved successful and popular, we’ll have a real debate on our hands.

But for now, the debate is essentially a none-starter. The media isn’t clamoring for it, the fans aren’t asking for it, and the players - despite what they say - don’t really want it.

If Andy Murray thinks that someone who trains for a 600 meter race deserves more than someone who trains to run 400 meters, maybe he should speak to Usain Bolt, the highest paid track star on the planet, who makes his money training for a race that lasts less than 10 seconds.