Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Crime doesn't rise in high immigration areas – it falls, says study | UK news | The Observer
Crime doesn't rise in high immigration areas – it falls, says study | UK news | The Observer
Marian Fitzgerald, a visiting professor of criminology at the University of Kent, said that the night-time economy, and the numbers of people who could afford to drink alcohol and socialise, was a key driver of violence.
"Most violent crime is associated with affluence. Most immigrants are not affluent so it's not surprising that immigration has no impact on that large proportion of total violence which is a function of affluence."
David Wilson, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Birmingham City University agreed that recession tended to reduce crime because less people could afford to go out and drink. However, he also said broader factors such as increased access to information had made people acutely sensitised to violence.
"Globalisation through the internet, through media images has meant that there is a greater intolerance to violence. There is more of a global acceptance that inter-personal violent crime is something that we should not be engaged in."
Wilson added a third factor also came into play, saying that the type of immigrant attracted to Britain tended to contradict the scrounger stereoptype.
"Historically, people who move from one nation state to another are the kinds of people who are more entrepreneurial. Far from coming to live off benefits, the people who tend to want to move are the ones who want to get a job and get ahead," he added.
Previous research by the LSE team revealed that enclaves with high numbers of immigrants experienced less crime than neighbourhoods with fewer arrivals from abroad. The research focused on neighbourhoods that had an immigrant population larger than 30%. Bell and his team found "strong and consistent evidence that enclaves have lower crime experiences than otherwise observably similar neighbourhoods that have a lower immigrant share of the population".
Saturday, April 27, 2013
The unseen force that drives Ouija boards and fake bomb detectors
The unseen force that drives Ouija boards and fake bomb detectors | Chris French http://gu.com/p/3feaq
Friday, April 26, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
Inside the mind of Eric Schmidt
Inside the mind of Eric Schmidt | Alan Rusbridger http://gu.com/p/3f9hh
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Why big IT projects go wrong, the mythical man month
Why big IT projects always go wrong | Technology | The Observer
Iin 1975, a computer scientist named Fred Brooks published one of the seminal texts in the literature of computing. It had the intriguing title of The Mythical Man-Month and it consisted simply of a set of essays on the art of managing large software projects. Between its covers is distilled more wisdom about computing than is contained in any other volume, which is why it has never been out of print. And every government minister, civil servant and chief executive thinking about embarking on a large IT project should be obliged to read it – and answer a multiple-choice quiz afterwards.
Gene wars: the last-ditch battle over who owns the rights to our DNA
Gene wars: the last-ditch battle over who owns the rights to our DNA
A US biotech company is fighting to protect the patents it took out on a test for a cancer-causing gene. Scientists say a win for the firm would set back a growing ability to detect diseases
http://gu.com/p/3f9pg
Your life in 2033
Your life in 2033 'You skim through the day's news on translucent screens while a freshly cleaned suit is retrieved from your automated closet…' An extract from Google chairman Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen's new book
http://gu.com/p/3f2y9
Friday, April 19, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Child Well-Being in Rich Countries
Child Well-Being in Rich Countries
Austria : 18th overall
Material well-being 7th
Relative child poverty rate 9th
Child poverty gaps 8th
Child deprivation rates 13th
Percentage of children reporting low family affluence 14th
Health and safety 26th
Infant mortality rate 16th
Low birthweight 20th
Child and youth mortality rates (aged 1 to 19) 19th
Immunization rates 34th'
Educational well-being 23th
Educational achievement by age 15th
Preschool enrolment rates 15th
Participation in further education 28th
NEET rate 15th
Behaviour and risks 17 -
Exposure to violence
Fighthing 18th
Being bullied 25th
Health behaviours
Overweight 15th
Eating fruit 10th
Eating breakfast 23th
Exercise 3th
Risk behaviours
Teenage births 16th
Smoking 25th
Alcohol 16th
Cannabis 8th
Housing and environment 12th
Environmental safety
Homicide rate 2th
Air pollution 15th
Housing
Rooms per person 15th
Multiple housing problems 13th
Austria : 18th overall
Material well-being 7th
Relative child poverty rate 9th
Child poverty gaps 8th
Child deprivation rates 13th
Percentage of children reporting low family affluence 14th
Health and safety 26th
Infant mortality rate 16th
Low birthweight 20th
Child and youth mortality rates (aged 1 to 19) 19th
Immunization rates 34th'
Educational well-being 23th
Educational achievement by age 15th
Preschool enrolment rates 15th
Participation in further education 28th
NEET rate 15th
Behaviour and risks 17 -
Exposure to violence
Fighthing 18th
Being bullied 25th
Health behaviours
Overweight 15th
Eating fruit 10th
Eating breakfast 23th
Exercise 3th
Risk behaviours
Teenage births 16th
Smoking 25th
Alcohol 16th
Cannabis 8th
Housing and environment 12th
Environmental safety
Homicide rate 2th
Air pollution 15th
Housing
Rooms per person 15th
Multiple housing problems 13th
Umami: why the fifth taste is so important | Life and style | guardian.co.uk
Umami: why the fifth taste is so important | Life and style | guardian.co.uk
Some extracts:
Umami has been variously translated from Japanese as yummy, deliciousness or a pleasant savoury taste, and was coined in 1908 by a chemist at Tokyo University called Kikunae Ikeda. [searching for its root he eventually pinpointed] glutamate, an amino acid, as the source of savoury wonder. He then learned how to produce it in industrial quantities and patented the notorious flavour enhancer MSG.
What gives good glutamate?
A quintessential example of something umami-tasting, says Paul Breslin of Monell University, who was among the first scientists to prove the existence of umami taste receptors, is a broth or a soup: "Something that has been slow-cooked for a long time." Raw meat, he points out, isn't that umami. You need to release the amino acids by cooking, or "hanging it until it is a little desiccated, maybe even moulded slightly, like a very good, expensive steak". Fermentation also frees the umami ? soy sauce, cheese, cured meats have it in spades. In the vegetable kingdom, mushrooms are high in glutamate, along with those favoured by children such as petit pois, sweetcorn and sweet cherry tomatoes. Interestingly, human milk is one of the highest MSG-containing mammalian milks.
When you combine ingredients containing different umami-giving compounds, they enhance one another so the dish packs more flavour points than the sum of its parts. This is why the cooked beef, tomato and cheese in a cheese burger form a ménage à trois made in heaven.
Why umami?
Just as humans evolved to crave sweetness for sugars and, therefore, calories and energy, and loathe bitter to help avoid toxins, umami is a marker of protein (which is made up of amino acids, which are essential for life). This begs two interesting questions. First, why is our innate penchant for umami best served by cooked or aged foods? Breslin's answer is that cooking or preserving our main protein sources detoxifies them.
Force for good
Lacing cheap, fattening, non-nutritious foods with MSG to make them irresistible is clearly not responsible, but some argue that glutamate can be used responsibly to good effect. Breslin says one of his key motivations is finding ways through taste research to feed malnourished people. "What you want," he says "are things that are very tasty that kids will eat, that will go down easy and will help them."
Some extracts:
Umami has been variously translated from Japanese as yummy, deliciousness or a pleasant savoury taste, and was coined in 1908 by a chemist at Tokyo University called Kikunae Ikeda. [searching for its root he eventually pinpointed] glutamate, an amino acid, as the source of savoury wonder. He then learned how to produce it in industrial quantities and patented the notorious flavour enhancer MSG.
What gives good glutamate?
A quintessential example of something umami-tasting, says Paul Breslin of Monell University, who was among the first scientists to prove the existence of umami taste receptors, is a broth or a soup: "Something that has been slow-cooked for a long time." Raw meat, he points out, isn't that umami. You need to release the amino acids by cooking, or "hanging it until it is a little desiccated, maybe even moulded slightly, like a very good, expensive steak". Fermentation also frees the umami ? soy sauce, cheese, cured meats have it in spades. In the vegetable kingdom, mushrooms are high in glutamate, along with those favoured by children such as petit pois, sweetcorn and sweet cherry tomatoes. Interestingly, human milk is one of the highest MSG-containing mammalian milks.
When you combine ingredients containing different umami-giving compounds, they enhance one another so the dish packs more flavour points than the sum of its parts. This is why the cooked beef, tomato and cheese in a cheese burger form a ménage à trois made in heaven.
Why umami?
Just as humans evolved to crave sweetness for sugars and, therefore, calories and energy, and loathe bitter to help avoid toxins, umami is a marker of protein (which is made up of amino acids, which are essential for life). This begs two interesting questions. First, why is our innate penchant for umami best served by cooked or aged foods? Breslin's answer is that cooking or preserving our main protein sources detoxifies them.
Force for good
Lacing cheap, fattening, non-nutritious foods with MSG to make them irresistible is clearly not responsible, but some argue that glutamate can be used responsibly to good effect. Breslin says one of his key motivations is finding ways through taste research to feed malnourished people. "What you want," he says "are things that are very tasty that kids will eat, that will go down easy and will help them."
Friday, April 5, 2013
Thursday, April 4, 2013
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