Women’s News: Cohabitation Is Lasting Longer, Becoming More Common, Report
The Huffington Post | By Emma Gray
Forget marriage? Not exactly, but according to a new survey, cohabitating with a significant other is practically a prerequisite for walking down the aisle later on.The survey also showed that younger women are more likely to be living with a significant other than they are to be living alone or living with a spouse, reported the Los Angeles Times. If you’re a member of this demographic, this data may seem like common sense, but it represents a marked change over the last 20 years.
The report, which was released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on April 4th, used data collected from phone interviews with 12,279 women between 2006 and 2010 for the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). All of the women surveyed were between the ages of 15 and 44. Men were interviewed as well, but…
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People’s True Colours Always Come Out, No Matter How or What Happens
In life, nothing is better than being honest with yourself and honest with other people who have trust in you and who have always believed in you. I truly believe that no matter how much you hide behind a curtain and no matter how it happens, people’s true colours always come out. No matter how it happens, it happens. I truly believe in that analogy. People can go years with hiding things from people, but no matter the outcome, it always comes out. So start being honest with yourself, start being honest with other people, and don’t try to hide who you really are. It is not good. I mean why hide yourself? Why hide your talents? I know some people can be shy and some people don’t want to share their true selves, but its something that gives us a sense of individuality, it gives us a time to…
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Defeating the Super-Bug
(Guest Post: Written by A. Sri Mukesh)
India is now the host of a new disease which is capable of causing an epidemic. The disease is called CRE (Carbapenem Resistant Enterobacteriaceae). The term ‘Enterobacteriaceae’ refers to the family of bacteria that are present as pathogens.
Infections are often caused by the action of microbes. To control the infection, these microbes must either be killed or made dormant. Hence ‘antibiotics’ came into existence. The term was coined in 1942 by Selman Walksman and the first antibiotic to be discovered was Penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928. Amoxicillin and Cephalosporin are the other antibiotics that are commonly used all over the world. As the use of these antibiotics became rhetoric, the microbes developed resistance to these compounds. Hence ‘Carbapenem’ came into existence.
All the antibiotics including Carbapenem, have beta-lactam ring in their structure. The newly discovered Super-Bug releases a protein…
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I Want To Like This, I Really Do
Reading Linux Format (Photo credit: redjar)
We are reading more online than ever, services like Flipboard can make you a personalised magazine on your tablet, online newspapers have appeared with mixed levels of success and of course there are many blogs out there, out here, wherever.
This has led to some unusual crossovers where people lose the distinction between digital and analogue when they go back to paper – we’ve seen videos of kids trying to swipe or pinch-zoom a picture in a magazine and recently someone told us how he’d tried to swipe the page of a paper book he was reading because he’d got so used to reading on his iPad.
Another thing I’ve found myself is when you’re reading something on a site that doesn’t support comments, you scroll down to see what people are saying about the article but there’s nothing, no login button, no comment box. “But how can I say how I feel about this, I have an opinion, there’s not even a Like button”, you think before closing the tab and reading something else. It’s worse when you feel the same way about a magazine article, or TV show – maybe it’s only a matter of time before the appearance of “press the blue button to like this programme”.
The ability to reply to, comment on and interact with the media that was once such a one-way channel giving you their opinion only is becoming ingrained and expected. Writers online don’t have to wait for comments to appear in the limited forum of the letters page, the feedback is instantaneous and often not polite, depending on the subject, but it gives readers a sense of being part of a discussion, being engaged with the subject and the writers, instead of a being just a passive receiver and for the most part this is a good thing – as commenters add more information, weigh up arguments, correct details, correct grammar. There are times that the comments are better than the articles. Many news sites still don’t have comment sections on articles, many say it’s due to the problems of moderating them but with buttons to report misuse (as on Amazon’s forums) the good commenters can weed out the bad.
Of course the downside is that there are always those who just want an argument, we’ll never be free of trolls, but as part of an open and free internet these little havens of discussion should prosper.
Future Filters
English: Drop of water falling into a glass of water with a green paper background. Italiano: Goccia fotografata mentre cade in un bicchiere d’acqua su sfondo di carta verde (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have in my kitchen a Brita filter jug. I don’t use it for some health reason but because, generally, without it the water around here tastes awful. It’s a choice I make and a not particularly life and death one, the worst situation I’d find myself in is getting home gasping for a cuppa.
Elsewhere in the world clean water is more of a priority and recently a number of advances have been made in getting clean water to people who need it the most including a water carrier that cleans the contents via reverse osmosis – using the motion of the barrel as it’s rolled along the ground to force the water through membranes which allow water molecules to pass but stop larger impurities. Reverse osmosis processes to desalinate water typically need high pressures and much energy to operate.
The latest development though uses sheets of the 21st century wonder-material – graphene, which, at a single atom thick, are 500 times thinner than the best desalination filter on the market, allowing the process to operate with pressures 100 times lower. As Gizmodo reports these filters are being developed and rushed to production by Lockheed-Martin though as a commenter points out MIT has also been working on the same solution.
Some have said that the process also filters out minerals from the water but given the choice I think most people would choose mineral, and contaminant-free water over no water at all.
Be Careful What You Search For
Watching (Photo credit: Laddir)
You are being watched. No, calm down, I didn’t mean in the real world, sit back down and stop looking behind your sofa.
For many years people have simultaneously worried about how their browsing habits were being tracked and perhaps used to monitor their activities while marvelled at how Amazon suggests new products for them based on their previous choices – online data collection really is a double-edged sword. In the UK we have a law where websites have to visibly inform you about browser cookie use and give you either a choice or instructions on how to enable them or otherwise.
The data collected by browsers is not always sent to advertisers, much is used today to improve services, make useful suggestions for stuff to buy, places to visit, people to friend on Facebook etc. The data collected when you’re logged into Google’s many and varied services, for example, can be used by their Google Now service to provide real-time information relevant to you. I was impressed when without being told my Nexus 7 knew where I worked and how long it would take to get there, giving me weather and travel information too. My first reaction was “how did it know?” I don’t take it to work, has it been talking to my phone? Well, in a way, it used my contacts information, I think, I hope. These computerised personal assistants like Google Now and Apple’s Siri are a wonder of our time, intelligently finding, collating and presenting information in truly intuitive ways, I’m still impressed whenever I ask my Nexus 7 what the weather’s going to be like tomorrow.
But the other day I discovered something about Google Now that could, in the right, or wrong circumstances be interesting or awkward. I searched for Cromwell Weir on Google Maps on my laptop and later that evening noticed that my Nexus 7 was giving me, like the helpful little soul it is, travel information to Cromwell. Later still I searched for a shop in Lincoln and again it was there saying “are you wanting to go there now? I can show you where to go.”
Which is all very helpful until you’re searching for a hotel for a surprise weekend away for you and your other half on your PC while your tablet, in the hands of your beloved in the room next door is happily giving the game away.
So if you don’t want Google, or for that matter Siri if Apple’s assistant has similar abilities blabbing about your plans remember to log out before browsing.
Copyright Wrongs
Copyright Symbols (Photo credit: MikeBlogs)
Copyright law has protected creative people for hundreds of years but is often misunderstood as it can be a complicated area. Generally if you’ve created something original you have the copyright on it, you don’t have to put a (C) symbol on it, or register it, it’s automatic (in the UK at least).
The internet though has muddied the waters somewhat and numerous myths have popped up and as the recent kerfuffle about online service terms and conditions and what sites can do with your images showed there is still much confusion over the issue.
Recently I heard someone saying that images uploaded onto Facebook are copyright free, that if someone uploads something you can download it and do what you like with it. Big no-no there – even Instagrammed pictures of someone’s dog in the park are covered by copyright and belong to the person who took the photo, not Facebook, not even the person whose Facebook account they were uploaded to, unless the copyright is assigned to that person.
Where an online service says, in their terms and conditions, that they can use your images typically you’ve granted them a perpetual licence not the copyright to the image. When I signed up to Olympus’ Flickr group I granted them such a licence though as my images aren’t taken with a Pen camera they’re unlikely to use my images – the licence is that specific. This is why the recent flurry of people posting copyright notices on their Timelines was pointless.
The images I use on this blog are carefully selected from either a library of royalty-free images I have, sites which curate the millions of high-quality royalty-free images on the internet, and mostly via the content suggestion engine built into wordpress.com provided by Zemanta. The term royalty-free and the Creative Commons licence are important as they give you the right to use the creators work but not to claim that it’s your creation, even if you modify it. Lifehacker has a good article outlining how to avoid breaking the law here.
Whether we write blogs, books, Facebook statuses or tweets we need to respect the creativity of others and their wishes as to how their work is used, copyright law sometimes struggles to keep up with how technology is changing as we move further into the digital century but it’s still important.
Longfellow's 21st Century Lunch 
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