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TORONTO, Ontario / Globe and Mail / Science / April 21, 2009

It hasn't happened yet, but research suggests it is possible.

By Anne MCILROY
Science Reporter

The latest advances in stem-cell research mean someone could some day become a biological single parent, the source of both the egg and the sperm needed to make a baby.

"In theory, a single individual could be both mother and father to a child. The individual does not even have to be living if there is a stored sample of their cells," the University of Alberta's Tim Caulfield and his colleagues write in a paper in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

Tim Caulfield

Their paper, The Challenge of Regulating Rapidly Changing Science: Stem Cell Legislation in Canada, documents how the speed and unpredictability of scientific advances in the stem-cell field pose a challenge to policy makers.

For example, scientists in a number of countries are now able to turn adult skin cells into stem cells. Once they have been reprogrammed, these cells regain the superhero-like powers of embryonic stem cells and can be turned into many of the specialized cells that make up the human body, including blood, brain or muscle cells.

But what if some of the reprogrammed stem cells originally taken from an individual were coaxed into becoming sperm, while others were transformed into eggs?

It hasn't happened yet, but research suggests it is possible, Dr. Caulfield says.

Egg and sperm created from stem cells from one person could be used to create an embryo, which could then be transferred to the womb of the mom-pop, or in the case of a pop-mom, a surrogate mother.

Shinya Yamanaka.

The result could be something "very strange and dangerous," warns Shinya Yamanaka, the Japanese stem-cell pioneer who discovered how to reprogram adult skin cells to stem cells. His breakthrough made headlines around the world in 2007.

Dr. Yamanaka's work, recognized this year with a prestigious Gairdner award, offered an alternative to research involving stem cells from aborted fetuses, which some people find repugnant on moral or religious grounds.

But it also raised other troubling possibilities about where stem-cell science could be heading, questions that both scientists and ethicists are now considering. Should biological single parenthood be allowed if it proves possible? What are the risks to a child created in this way? Could skin cells from one child be used to create another son or daughter? Could someone steal a skin cell from someone famous and have their baby?

It is a hot topic, Dr. Caulfield says, and an example of how it is difficult to design legislation that keeps up with the unpredictable advances in fields such as stem-cell research.

It is unclear, he and his colleagues say, if Canadian legislation governing reproductive technologies and embryonic stem-cell research would prohibit making sperm and egg from skin cells.

Canada's legislation bans the genetic altering of sperm or eggs.

Until last month, researchers reprogramming adult cells into stem cells did so by inserting a number of key genes that orchestrated the transformation to an embryonic-like state. That's a genetic alteration.

But now, Canadian scientists have found ways to get rid of any trace of those genes - which can cause cancer - once they have done their work. Is that a genetic alteration? Would it be covered by legislation if a stem cell derived from an adult skin cell was turned into sperm or egg? It might circumvent the ban, Dr. Caulfield and his colleagues say.

"It really shows how the approach of rigid rules and rigid legislation inevitably isn't going to work," Dr. Caulfield says.

Canada has one of the most restrictive laws governing stem cell-research of any pluralistic society with a wide mix of religious beliefs - and non-beliefs.

He argues that it is better to have a clearly articulated set of principles that a regulatory body could interpret as research moves in new directions.

A child created with egg and sperm derived from one person wouldn't be a clone - or genetically identical to the parent - because of the mixing and matching in the chromosomes that takes place when egg and sperm are formed.

Researchers have made substantial progress in coaxing stem cells to become sperm or eggs, work that could provide new treatment for infertility but that also opens the door to biological single parenthood.

In mammals, the primordial cells that become egg and sperm appear to be the same. But some researchers argue it would be easier to make an egg from a man's skin cell then to make sperm from a female skin cell. That's because cells from a female wouldn't have a Y chromosome, which may carry genes involved in the production of sperm.

In 2006, researchers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in Britain reported that they had transformed human stem cells into what are called primordial germ cells, which give rise to sperm or eggs. In mice, sperm derived from stem cells produced live pups.

In China, researchers recently reported that they had generated eggs from stem cells taken from the ovaries of mice.

© Copyright 2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc

Seniors World Chronicle adds:

Link to World Stem Cell Policy information site




Click photo for discussion on Stem Cell Dilemma

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BEIJING, China / Bloomberg News / April 21, 2009

By Dune Lawrence in Beijing

Li Zhi Long, 72, smiles at the Beijing Sunshine International Care House in Beijing, on April 20, 2009. Photographer: StefenChow/Bloomberg News

Beijing Sunshine Care House opened in January 2008, seeking to attract the city’s elderly with a tropical conservatory, billiard room and calligraphy studio. By the end of this year, the retirement home will triple the number of beds to 700 -- and likely fill them all.

“It’s an industry with a great market,” says Zhao Liangling, Sunshine’s director, perched on a white leather armchair in her office.

Zhao’s expanding customer base reflects a potential threat to China far greater than the current economic slowdown. The world’s third-largest economy is aging so rapidly that by 2050, there may be only two working-age people for every senior citizen, compared with 13 to one now.

That increases the urgency of the government’s pledge to expand China’s social safety net and make retirement benefits and health care accessible to as many of its 1.3 billion citizens as possible. China’s graying also requires a cultural shift, as the tradition of families caring for aging relatives at home becomes more difficult.


Tian Yan, 90, sings from music chalked on a blackboard at the Beijing Sunshine International Care House in Beijing, on April 20, 2009. Photographer: StefenChow/Bloomberg News

“You can’t wait 20 years to start dealing with that problem,” says James Smith, director of Rand Corp.’s Center for Chinese Aging Studies in Santa Monica, California. “People will talk about Chinese culture having very strong reverence for people who are old, but relying on that is very, very dangerous, because in most places those values are really altered with rapid development.”

Baby Boom

A baby boom in the 1950s and 1960s was halted by draconian population control that began in 1979, reducing China’s birthrate to 1.7 children per woman from more than six in the 1960s. The first in that bulge of people in the prime working years --between 25 and 64 -- is beginning to retire, putting a strain that will continue for decades on the smaller generation born since the start of restrictions on family size.

China’s elderly, about 12 percent of the population now, will reach 30 percent by 2050, according to Smith, who has helped to develop surveys that track aging in 25 countries. He says China is unusual in confronting this problem before achieving developed-nation status, unlike other places with an aging population such as Japan.

Wang Xi Heng, 78, left, Liu Yu Ling, 80, Huang Ben Min, 80 and Tian Bao Fa, 76, right, play a game of mahjong at the Beijing Sunshine International Care House in Beijing, on April 20, 2009. Photographer: StefenChow/Bloomberg News

More than a fifth of Japan’s population is 65 or older and that may rise to more than 40 percent by 2050, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo. The country’s welfare ministry plans to cut pension benefits 20 percent by 2038, a larger reduction than the 15 percent projected in 2004 because of the increasing burden on the retirement system, the Asahi newspaper reported in February.

Confucian Tradition

China’s Confucian tradition places strong emphasis on the obligation to care for parents. Many older people live with sons or daughters and take the main responsibility for raising grandchildren, typifying the expression that “children around one’s knees is heaven.”

Fewer than 5 percent of the urban old and 2 percent of the rural elderly live in institutional facilities, according to Zeng Yi, a demographer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Peking University in Beijing. While such centers have mostly been a last resort of the childless or handicapped, that is changing.

Sunshine Care “is much better than living at home, there’s no comparison,” says Tian Baofa, 76, a former newspaper photographer. “I’ve learned to use the computer, I play billiards; I never in my life before played billiards.”

He and his wife, Ge Nianjiu, 67, moved in last month. Their daughter is busy with her job, and their grandson is cared for by their son-in-law’s parents.

A New ‘Path’

“As China develops, more and more people will walk this path,” says Tian, who pays Sunshine Care 2,300 yuan ($337) a month from his pension of more than 3,000 yuan.

He is among a lucky few. China’s pension system covered 205 million people as of March 2008, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, or about 15 percent of the population. The government aims to boost that figure to 223 million by the end of next year, it said April 13.

Rural areas where the system is less developed face the biggest risk, undermining government efforts to narrow the wealth gap between city and country.

A pension program started in the 1990s covers only about 10 percent of the rural labor force, the World Bank says. Participants dropped by a third between 1999 and 2004, a setback Zeng attributes to the government’s shortsightedness and an assumption that families would take care of rural elderly -- although he notes that official attitudes are changing. Family support is undermined partly by the migration of younger workers to cities, which has contributed so much to China’s economic growth.

Vague Targets

Premier Wen Jiabao pledged March 5 to expand urban and rural pension coverage and develop a system that allows migrant workers who change jobs frequently to shift retirement benefits. He didn’t specify how much will be spent on these efforts, and the government has left targets vague, saying only that the numbers covered by the rural plan will “expand year by year.”

Other initiatives include building four “demonstration bases” this year with investment of as much as 500 million yuan each in the cities of Beijing, Tianjin and Chongqing and in Jiangsu province, the English-language China Daily reported April 8. The centers will provide a model for the development of an elderly care industry, the report said. This year alone, Beijing plans to add 15,100 nursing-home beds, an increase of 43 percent.

Ma Li, deputy director of the government-linked China Population and Development Research Center, says the country still must do more.

“China is not yet ready for an aged society,” she told the official Xinhua News Agency March 10 “It does not have a complete old-age social-security system. There are not enough resources. Fiscal support is scarce. And the risk is ever rising.”

Dune Lawrence in Beijing
dlawrence6@bloomberg.net

© 2009 Bloomberg L.P.

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IKARIA, Greece / CNN / April 21, 2009

Story Highlights
* Yiannis Karimalis moved back to Greece in 1970 after learning he had months to live
* Karimalis returned recently to the U.S. to find all his doctors had died
* Karimalis' home -- Greek island Ikaria -- boasts among longest life expectancies
* Team of experts are exploring Ikarian longevity

By Dan Buettner
Special to CNN

Greek-American Yiannis Karimalis, 73, lives in Ikaria nearly 40 years after a diagnosis of stomach cancer.

In 1970, when doctors diagnosed Greek-American Yiannis Karimalis with stomach cancer and only gave him a few months to live, he decided to move back to Ikaria, his birth island. There, he reasoned, he could be buried more inexpensively among his fellow Greeks.

But when he moved back to the island he didn't die. He has lived nearly 40 years more. And when he returned to America on a recent visit, he discovered that his doctors were all dead.

The people on this 99-square-mile Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea smugly tell this story as yet another example of what they've always known and scientists are now discovering: People in Ikaria live longer than in just about any other place in the world. A recent study of 90-year-old siblings, conducted by the National Hellenic Research Foundation, discovered 10 times more 90-year-old brothers and sisters here than the European average.

Why is this important?

Most scientists agree that the average human should live to age 90. (You have to have won the genetic lottery to live to 100.) But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says life expectancy in America is 78.

Somewhere along the line, we're losing about a dozen years -- most of them to costly and potentially preventable chronic diseases such as heart attacks, diabetes and cancer. These diseases are dragging down our health care system and account for much of the reason why the National Institute on Aging says the average American suffers about three disabled end-of-life years during which they incur 90 percent of our lifelong health care costs.

Ikarians are avoiding these diseases and reaching age 90 at a rate of about four times the rate that Americans do. They are getting the good years we're missing, dying quickly and less expensively.

For the next two weeks, I'm leading "The Blue Zones" expedition, an AARP and National Geographic sponsored team of the world's best demographers, physicians, medical researchers and media specialists, to explore Ikarian longevity.

We already have a few clues. Since at least the sixth century B.C., Icaria was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as a health destination -- largely for its hot springs believed to relieve pain, joint problems and skin ailments. Our team has reviewed reports of high levels of radon in these baths and will be exploring a theory that chronic exposure to low-level radiation may help protect DNA against the ravages of aging.

For much of the ensuing two millenniums, people here lived in relative isolation. The people here evolved a unique diet that we believe is a more heart-protective version of the Mediterranean diet. We're doing pharmacological analyses of dozens of herbal teas and unique honey produced by bees that draw pollen of thyme, fir and erica. We think we'll find anti-cancer, anti-oxidant and probiotic properties in these locally produced products.

We also know that people here have a vastly different character than the rest of the Mediterranean. They have volcanic tempers that quickly subside. Despite living on harsh, steep terrain, they're known for relentless optimism and three-day parties. They don't get stressed by deadlines. They go to bed well after midnight, sleep late and take naps. Anecdotally, we know that most people over 90 are sexually active.

Do these people possess the true secret to longevity? We're not sure yet, but we'll certainly distill a few clues about living longer, better. Ikarian wisdom may not help you live to 100. But at least they may help you outlive your doctor.

Dan Buettner is the best-selling author of "The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest."

Watch Buettner's reports from Greece all week on "AC360°"

© 2008 Cable News Network

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NEW YORK, NY / TIME Magazine / Q & A / April 21, 2009

Donald Trump

By Andrea Sachs

You could have sold tickets: Bernie Madoff approaching Donald Trump in Palm Beach, asking whether Trump would like to invest some money with him. The Donald, as he recalls in his new book, Think Like a Champion, said no. He also calls Madoff "a scoundrel without par." And refers to himself as "a genius." For those who see Trump's blazing self-confidence as a perfect antidote for these depressing, recession-wracked times, the Donald also continues to buoy spirits with his hit NBC series, The Apprentice. TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs reached Trump at his Trump Tower office in Manhattan. (See the Top 10 TV feuds.)
 


You write that Bernie Madoff asked you to invest with him, and you turned him down. How did you know it wasn't a good deal?

Well, I didn't know too much about Bernie Madoff, other than so many people in Palm Beach were investing with him. But I just believe in investing my own money. I don't like paying fees to people to invest my money. I can invest my own money.
 


Why do you think Bernie Madoff did what he did? Was it about money, or something more?

I think it was greed, pure and simple. To do what he did on such a large scale and to so-called friends is reprehensible. He had to know what he was doing. I don't think he deserves any excuses for being a sleazebag. (See photos from the downfall of Bernie Madoff.)
 


Do you think he had accomplices?

Yes. One man operating on that level is not possible. 
 


You refer to yourself as a genius in the book. Most people aren't that confident! Where do you get all that self-confidence? 
 

Well, it's not a matter of self-confidence. You know you have a series of successes in life, and after a while, you start to say 'I guess you must be pretty smart." But I was being a little bit sarcastic and just friendly when I said that.
 


You've been called the world's most famous capitalist. How is the recession treating you?

We've been doing well. I finished many jobs a year ago, two years ago, sold things a couple of years ago — not because I had any great vision, but I guess in retrospect I did. But we have many great jobs that were finished a couple of years ago, as opposed to now. We really missed a large portion of the depression. 
 


What do you think of Obama's plan to rescue the economy?

He's trying very hard. You do have to either rescue or nationalize the banks, but other than that, I think that everybody should probably be on their own. 
 


Tell me about Celebrity Apprentice. Have you enjoyed it? Is it very different?

I like this format very much. The fact that the money goes to charity is especially rewarding. The celebrities are diverse and surprising. Seeing these very accomplished people work so hard for charity when they're already established is a terrific thing to be involved in. It's a great experience for everyone.
 


Do you have advice for people who have been fired or laid off in real life? 

Go to an area where the unemployment rate is the best. Go into a field that you love, but at the same time, that has potential. So many people study the wrong things, they go into the wrong fields, and no matter what they do, it's always going to be a battle throughout life. So find a great area, even if it means that you have to move your family. Find a great area, and a business that works. 
 


Is it a good time for people to try and start their own businesses?

Necessity is the mother of invention, but it's important to be careful. Cover your bases first, and then proceed from there. Creativity is important — what are the gaps that have been created by this situation? What will people need, what can they afford? The pieces of the economic puzzle have been changed — and we need some new edges. Entrepreneurs thrive in these situations, and it's a good time to look for the opportunities. Remaining positive is important — look for the solution rather than dwelling on the problem.
 


What do you think about investing in the real estate market now, while prices are so depressed?

It's a buyer's market and it's a good time to buy. If anyone is selling now it's probably due to one of the three D's: debt, divorce or death.
 


Do you think there will be a turnaround in real estate anytime soon?

Real estate is cyclical and it will even itself out, but it would help if the banks would lend some of the money they've received.
 


Is staying in the stock market now a mistake?

I'm sure some people will make a lot of money at a time like this, but you have to be very well informed as well as in a position to take risks. 
 


Are you getting more job applications these days?

We have always been inundated with them, but now more than ever.
 


Has the pool of applicants changed since the recession?

I don't deal with applications until the person has been screened and highly recommended to me, but my people tell me the caliber of applicants is significantly higher than ever.
 


What are the main qualities you look for in an employee?

Loyalty and a strong work ethic. I work hard and I get along with people very well provided they work hard too. Loyalty is important, and I like people to stay around, so I look for their work history. I have people who have been with me for 25, 30 years. Loyalty creates a solid base, and I need people who can keep up with me.

See pictures of Trump and others Most Likely to Succeed

See TIME's pictures of the week

© 2009 Time Inc

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TORONTO, Ontario / The National Post / The Financial Post / April 21, 2009

Aim high and you won't miss your target

By Jonathan Chevreau

A popular topic on every financial discussion forum is how much money you need to save in order to retire or achieve financial independence. It is often twinned with the related topic of what age can you achieve this. Both are hotly discussed at the recently launched canadianmoneyforum.com, of which I am a regular participant.

To answer the first question, the number ranges from about $500,000 to $2-million and everything in between. Obviously, there is no one-size-fits-all answer, although many have tried to assign one. But a frugal single person living in a rural community with an inflation-indexed defined-benefit pension may not need to save a dime. By the time they're 65, most Canadians will qualify for such basic government pensions as the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security, and the poorest seniors may also get the guaranteed income supplement to the OAS, although these are hardly anything to write home about.

However, the canadianmoneyforum.com is geared to younger folk, many decades from retirement. Few expect to get the traditional gold-plated DB pension and some are even skeptical about government programs like the CPP.

Knowing it would be controversial, I nevertheless went on the forum and posted my personal opinion that a$2-million nest egg would not be an unreasonable target for those without employer-sponsored pensions. That's for a married couple earning two incomes. If both spouses earned $50,000, they'd be accustomed to living on a pre-tax annual combined income of $100,000. Using a conservative 5% annual return, you'd need $2-million to generate that $100,000 of annual income.

Of course, you need to work, save and invest for a long time if you want to accumulate that much money. On my own blog, I always end each entry with my own target age for financial independence, which varies from age 58 to 62, depending on my mood and the stock market.

Predictably, my $2-million target was soon attacked by one forum member as being "ridiculous," the implication being that I was in cahoots with the mutual fund industry to scare people into saving more than they need. The name of actuary Malcolm Hamilton was invoked, who has famously insisted that once children are raised, mortgages paid off and working expenses no longer necessary, Canadians should be able to get by on a "replacement ratio" of 50% of their working income, less than the 70% used by many financial planners.

With a 70% replacement ratio, the couple that once enjoyed a $100,000 annual lifestyle should be able to get by on just $70,000 a year, which at 5% annual return, would require only a $1.4-million nest egg. If you agree with Mr. Hamilton, then a 50% replacement ratio means they could get by on just $50,000 a year and a $1-million nest egg.

Mr. Hamilton would also argue that with all those expenses out of the way, including the very act of saving for retirement, you wouldn't need to pay so much income tax to generate a living wage.

Naturally, the mutual fund industry thinks Canadians need considerably more than a 50% replacement ratio or even 70%. Fidelity Investments Canada believes an 80% replacement ratio is more realistic and believes that for some affluent consumers, more than 100% may be necessary. That's particularly the case in the early years of retirement, when couples have plenty of time to spend money and may be inclined to indulge their pent-up desires to travel or to take up expensive hobbies like golf or skiing.

Certified financial planner Diane McCurdy tackles this old chestnut in her book, How Much is Enough? She tends not to throw out a single figure, on the grounds some people are spenders, others are savers and others builders. But when I tried to pin her down on a rock-bottom minimum, she threw out a figure of $450,000.

Personally, I see no harm in aiming high. Overshooting would not be a catastrophe, but undershooting might be. Even with a paid-for home you still must pay ever-rising property taxes, which must be paid with after-income tax dollars.

Once retired, you may not have the same cushion against medical and dental expenses that you enjoyed as an employee with generous benefits -- and it's later in life when such expenses really start to mount up.

- Jonathan Chevreau is the author of Findependence Day and blogs at www.wealthy-boomer.ca.
jchevreau@nationalpost.com

© Copyright (c) National Post

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BERLIN, Germany / Reuters / April 20, 2009

Romanian prostitutes pose in the brothel "Pussy Club" in Schoenefeld. Germany is one of the few countries where prostitution is legal, and unusually transparent. The industry has responded with an economic stimulus package of its own: modern marketing tools, rebates and gimmicks to boost falling demand. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke



By Erik Kirschbaum

It did not take long for the world financial crisis to affect the world's oldest profession in Germany.

In one of the few countries where prostitution is legal, and unusually transparent, the industry has responded with an economic stimulus package of its own: modern marketing tools, rebates and gimmicks to boost falling demand.

Some brothels have cut prices or added free promotions while others have introduced all-inclusive flat-rate fees. Free shuttle buses, discounts for seniors and taxi drivers, as well as "day passes" are among marketing strategies designed to keep business going.

"Times are tough for us too," said Karin Ahrens, who manages the "Yes, Sir" brothel in Hanover. She told Reuters revenue had dropped by 30 percent at her establishment while turnover had fallen by as much as 50 percent at other clubs.

"We're definitely feeling the crisis. Clients are being tight with their money. They're afraid. You can't charge for the extras any more and there is pressure to cut prices. Everyone wants a deal. Special promotions are essential these days."

Germany has about 400,000 professional prostitutes. Official figures do not distinguish between the sexes and the number of male prostitutes is not known, but they account for a small fraction of the total and are treated the same under the law.

In 2002, new legislation allowed prostitutes to advertise and to enter into formal labor contracts. It opened the way for them to obtain health insurance, previously refused if they listed their true profession.

Annual revenues are about 14 billion euros ($18 billion), according to an estimate by the Verdi services union. Taxes on prostitution are an important source of income for some cities.

Prostitution is also legal and regulated in the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Greece, Turkey and in some parts of Australia, and the U.S. state of Nevada.

In other countries, such as Luxembourg, Latvia, Denmark, Belgium and Finland, it is legal but brothels and pimping are not.

"CREATIVE SOLUTIONS"

Berlin's "Pussy Club" has attracted media attention with its headline-grabbing "flat rate" -- a 70-euro admission charge for unlimited food, drink and sex between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Prostitutes stand in the corridor as they wait for their appearance at the "GeizHaus" brothel in the northern German town of Hamburg April 16, 2009. REUTERS/Christian Charisius

"You've got to come up with creative solutions these days," said club manager Stefan, who requested his surname not be published. "We're feeling the economic crisis, too, even though business has fortunately been more or less okay for us so far.

"Our offer might sound like it's too good to be true, but it's real. You can eat as much as you want, drink as much as you want and have as much sex as you want."

Stefan, who runs other establishments in Heidelberg and Wuppertal besides the Berlin club, said the flat rate had helped keep the 30 women working in each location fully employed.

Other novel ideas used by brothels and prostitutes include loyalty cards, group sex parties and rebates for golf players. Hamburg's "GeizHaus" is especially proud of its discount 38.50 euro price. The city has Germany's most famous red-light district, the Reeperbahn, in the notorious St. Pauli district.
Anke Christiansen, manager of the "GeizHaus," said the effects of the economic crisis were clear. "The regular customers who used to come by two or three times a week are only coming by once or twice a week now."

A "GeizHaus" client, who gave his name as Pascal, said: "Naturally we're all feeling the effects of the crisis." He added that he could no longer afford his usual two or three visits a week.

Guenter Krull, manager of the "FKK Villa" in Hanover, concurred. "The girls are complaining, too, because business is bad and I worry that it's all going to get even worse.

CONTINGENCY PLANS

Ecki Krumeich, manager of upmarket Artemis Club in Berlin, said he resisted pressure to cut prices, although senior citizens and taxi drivers get a 50-percent discount on the 80-euro admission fee on Sundays and Mondays.

"Naturally, we're keeping an eye on the overall economic situation and making contingency plans," said Krumeich, who said his "wellness club" is one of the largest in Europe with about 70 prostitutes.

"Our philosophy is: we provide an important service and even in a recession there are some things people won't do without. Other downmarket places might cut prices but we decided we won't do that. In fact, we raised prices by 10 euros in January."

Stephanie Klee, a prostitute in Berlin and former leader of the German association of sex workers, said even if a few luxury brothels were weathering the storm because of their wealthy regular clientele, many were struggling.

"Just about everyone's turning to advertising in one form or another," she said. "If the consumer electronics shop and the optician come out with rebates and special promotions, why shouldn't we try the same thing?"

While she and her colleagues might have had five or six clients per day a year ago that had fallen to one or even none.

Klee worries, however, that the crisis has led to "price dumping" in some cities -- fees have fallen as low as 30 euros in some parts of Berlin and elsewhere, she said.

"You'll find a lot of customers trying to negotiate prices down now," said Klee. "A 30-year-old came up to me and said 'I lost my job so will you give me a discount?'."

She and others said they were alarmed that amateur prostitutes -- mostly women with low-paid careers -- were increasingly turning to prostitution to make ends meet.

"More and more women are moonlighting on the weekends," said Ahrens. "They're not able to get by with their main job and are in pretty dire straights. For some it works out okay but it's tough for some others and they often don't stay very long.

Additional reporting by Bettina Borgfeld; editing by Andrew Dobbie

© Thomson Reuters 2009

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The 2009 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was held April 17-19 in Indio, Riverside County in Southern California's desert region.



LOS ANGELES, California / The Los Angeles Times / Entertainment / Music / April 20, 2009

The rumbling has been growing in recent years among longtime supporters of the weekend-long Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival that organizers are losing their indie credibility. The grousing began in earnest with Madonna's appearance three years ago: She's too commercial. Last year's inclusion of headliners Prince and Pink Floyd veteran Roger Waters amplified the chorus, and this year's booking of Paul McCartney, the man whose music largely defined mainstream rock in the 1960s and '70s, kicked the skepticism up another notch.

These were not the kinds of alternative music icons that helped launch the event a decade ago (though one such band, the Cure, returned to the desert to close out the mainstage Sunday). McCartney, in particular, was too old, many said, and possessed even less hip factor than Waters, who performed Pink Floyd's rock masterpiece "Dark Side of the Moon" in its entirety.

Well, pigs didn't fly this year -- as they did last time around when Waters’ giant inflatable animal prop took to the skies -- but a Beatle did, delivering an unusually emotion-drenched 2 1/2 -hour performance Friday on the 11th anniversary of the death of his wife Linda.

"It's an emotional day for us," McCartney, 66, told the sea of fans that stretched out before him. "But that's good; that's OK."

Perhaps aiming to ratchet up that hip quotient, McCartney started with "Jet" from "Band on the Run" and moved on to a good number of edgier pieces he doesn't typically play in concert, including a couple from "Electric Arguments," his latest album under the moniker of his experimental side project, the Fireman. At one point he even started riffing on Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady," in homage to that other great left-handed rocker from the '60s.

For those who worried that bringing in more Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members might taint the Coachella experience, this year's other '60s legend, Leonard Cohen, had attendees swaying arm in arm just after sundown Friday, loudly singing his signature anthem, "Hallelujah."

His show was considerably abbreviated from the remarkable 3 1/2 -hour marathon sets he turned in a week earlier at the Nokia Theatre, but it gained intimacy in the Outdoor Theatre, where the setup allowed fans to press close to the stage and to one another, magnifying the communal spirit within Cohen's trek deep into the human soul.

Instead of experiencing a loss of indie authenticity, the mostly young Coachella audience discovered a few things to begrudgingly admire from the culture of their parents and grandparents, beyond just the tie-dyed fashions and headbands that seemed to be the fashion statement of choice this year.

Not that the modern rocker generation wasn't willing to salute a godfather of its own in Morrissey's muscular set, which preceded McCartney's. The erstwhile Smiths singer tapped his new “Years of Refusal” album and reached back to the '80s, showing that even approaching 50, he can still brood with the best of them.

The Killers' gloriously tuneful, grand-scale rock closed out Saturday's mainstage offerings on an especially celebratory note, coming as it did on the heels of M.I.A.'s musically monochromatic hip-hop assault. But in her second year at Coachella, stepping in after Amy Winehouse canceled because of visa problems, singer Maya Arulpragasam was erratic, unable to focus the power of her best politically charged recordings.

But the Killers, like U2 and Bruce Springsteen, two of their key role models, capitalized on the promise of a truth that can transcend the troubles of temporal life with such songs as "All These Things That I've Done" from the band's 2004 debut, "Hot Fuss," to the no-surrender exhortation at the heart of "A Dustland Fairytale" from last year's "Day & Age."

Click to continue reading...

Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times

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MADRID, Spain / Agence France Presse / April 20, 2009

Young people largely drove the early stages of Internet growth but in recent years the sharpest rise in Web use in developed nations has been amongst people aged 70 and over, experts said Monday.

"Older adults are the fastest growing demographic on the Internet," said Professor Vicki Hanson of the School of Computing at Scotland's University of Dundee on the opening day of a global World Wide Web conference in Madrid.

An elderly woman gets training at a free Internet and computer school for aged people in Tokyo in 2000. In recent years the sharpest rise in Web use in developed nations has been amongst people aged 70 and over, experts said Monday.

While just over one-fourth, or 26 percent, of 70-75 year olds went online in the United States in 2005, the proportion was 45 percent last year, according to data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, she said.

The percentage of those aged 76 years and over who surf the Web rose during the same period from 17 percent to 27 percent.

Britain has experienced similar sharp gains in Internet use by people in this age group, said Andrew Arch of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organisation for the Web.

"They are basically doing the same things as everyone else. Using the Web for communication, then quickly moving to other activities like information seeking, online banking, shopping," said Arch who works to boost Web accessibility for older and disabled users.

Sending and receiving e-mail is the most popular online activity for Internet users age 64 and older, according to the Pew study.

Members of the Computer Grannies Society make computer graphics for their e-mails at an Internet cafe for elderly people in Tokyo in 2007. The sharpest rise in Web use in developed nations has been amongst people aged 70 and over, experts said Monday.

But older Internet users are less likely than younger Web surfers to do online banking and shopping -- and far less likely to use social networking sites, it found.

"They are not on Twitter," said Hanson, referring to the microblogging Web site whose popularity got a huge boost last week as US talk show diva Oprah Winfrey became the latest big name celebrity to join the craze.

With the percentage of the population aged 60 and over expected to reach 20 percent by 2050, experts said the numbers of older Web browsers is set to continue to rise.

And with many countries increasing the retirement age, being able to use the Web will become a requirement for an increasing number of older workers.

But the physical problems that come with old age still act as a barrier to getting online. Poor vision can make reading text on the screen a challenge. Arthritis and motor control problems can make manoeuvring a mouse difficult.

Web sites can make it easier for older surfers by using larger fonts, higher contrast and extra spaces at the end of sentences, said Arch.

"The typical web developer does not really understand that the world is ageing the way it is," he said, adding the changes he is suggesting would make it easier for people of all ages to use the Internet.

"It is like footpaths. They were initially set up for the disabled but then everyone found them very useful," he said.

The number of people going online has surpassed one billion for the first time, according to online metrics company comScore.

It counts only unique users above the age of 15 and excludes access in Internet cafes and through mobile phones.

© 2009 AFP

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NEW YORK, NY / The Wall Street Journal / Health Blogs / April 20, 2009

By Sarah Rubenstein

Some doctors in retirement who thought they had hung up their stethoscopes for the last time are taking a look at their shrunken investment portfolios and having second thoughts. But they’re finding that getting back in front of patients isn’t so easy.

American Medical News, published by the American Medical Association, reports that retired docs who want to make a comeback sometimes have to go through re-entry programs or catch up on continuing medical education, while at the same time having to contend with concerns that they won’t stick around for long. One gastroenterologist quoted in the piece said he couldn’t get liability coverage because he hadn’t done an endoscopy in three years.

“The few assignments I’ve gotten have been in rural settings,” 77-year-old radiologist C.W. “Bill” Rogers told the publication. “I believe when a prospective employer looks at my age, they think ‘this old bird isn’t up to the latest technology,’ and I’m not.” He said he took continuing education classes in mammography and read a number of mammograms under supervision of an active radiologist before coming back.

Primary care may be retired docs’ best hope, considering the shortage of these types of doctors, physician-search firm Merritt Hawkins & Associates told AM News. As we noted in a post about “locum tenens” positions — the fancy term for temporary doctor work — primary-care jobs are in the greatest demand.

Image: iStockphoto

Copyright ©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc

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A billboard in Times Square for Target
features an older woman on a bicycle.
Librado Romero/The New York Times

NEW YORK, NY / The New York Times / Business / Advertising / April 20, 2009

By Stuart Elliott

When Brian Gordon and his partners started ebeanstalk.com, which sells children’s learning toys online, they expected most of business to come from younger consumers starting families. But a recent customer survey found that up to 40 percent were actually older, mainly grandparents.

Grandparents.com intends to draw traffic from consumers who can still spend.

The Hallmark Channel, with shows like
“The Golden Girls,” has a solid boomer viewer base.

“If you’d asked me if 4 out of 10 people would be grandparents, I’d have said, ‘No, that’s not going to happen,’ ” Mr. Gordon said.

Also surprising, Mr. Gordon says, is that despite the economy, sales are up about 65 percent so far this year compared with a year earlier. He attributed that largely to older consumers, who “are our most demanding customers” but are more willing than their younger counterparts are to pay full price.

The experience of ebeanstalk.com illustrates a growing trend as the recession grinds on: an increasing interest in marketing goods and services to consumers age 50 and older. Among those aiming more at the older demographic are giants like Chrysler, Kraft Foods, L’Oréal, Procter & Gamble and Target.

The interest has also been a boon to media outlets that appeal to older viewers. CBS, home of “60 minutes” and the “CSI” franchise, is first in the network ratings, and while all magazines have had their advertising pages hammered, some titles for more mature readers, including AARP magazine and Family Circle, have suffered smaller downturns.

For decades, older consumers were largely shunned by marketers because they were deemed less wealthy, less likely to try new products and less willing to change brands. Campaigns directed at them were described dismissively as made for the “Geritol generation.” As much as older consumers were to be shunned, young consumers — ages 18 to 34, or 18 to 49 — were desired for what were deemed their free-spending ways, eagerness to sample new products and brand-switching proclivities. The idea that they were starting in life with a proverbial blank slate of marketing wants and needs was catnip to product peddlers.

“When you’re a 27-year-old media supervisor or a 32-year-old brand manager, what do you think the world looks like?” Jerry Shereshewsky, chief executive at Grandparents.com. “You think it looks like you.”

Those attitudes have been changing, for a couple of reasons. One is the recession, which makes older consumers who may have paid off mortgages seem a safer bet than younger ones who may get laid off in last-hired, first-fired downsizings.

“Especially in this economy, with marketers’ budgets under so much stress, they would prefer to spend dollars on today’s sales instead of thinking about establishing brand loyalty,” said Howard Shimmel, senior vice president for media product leadership at the Nielsen Company.

The other reason for the change is demographic. The estimated 78 million people born from 1946 to 1964 — who have long set the agenda for Madison Avenue because of their numbers — are aging. The first boomers are turning 63 this year, and the youngest are turning 45.

“It is a demographic that advertisers should be, and are, paying more attention to,” said Andy Donchin, director for media investments at Carat in New York, an agency of the Aegis Group that buys ad space and time for marketers like Adidas, Alberto-Culver and Pfizer.

Although “18 to 49 is going to remain the predominant buying demographic,” Mr. Donchin said, “this country is aging, and the boomers are an attractive demographic.”

That appeal is because of the size of the boomer market and because, as Mr. Donchin put it, “50 isn’t what it used to be.”

Older consumers today “are not as resistant to change” as older consumers previously may have been, Mr. Donchin said, summarizing their attitude as “Show me something better, and I’ll try it.”

And the boomers are even “comfortable with digital media,” he added.

All this has implications for media, digital or otherwise.

According to a study conducted by Mr. Shimmel of Nielsen and Jess D. Aguirre Jr., senior vice president for research at the Hallmark Channels unit of Hallmark Cards, boomer households account for unexpectedly high percentages of sales of products considered mainstays of younger consumers. That includes beer, 59.7 percent; carbonated beverages, 58.9 percent; and candy, 54.2 percent.

The boomers offer advertisers “an audience — and here’s your quotable quote — that has assets, not allowances,” said Henry Schleiff, president and chief executive at Hallmark Channels, composed of the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel cable TV networks.

“The recession has most conspicuously made advertisers far more focused on the return on their investment and more selective,” Mr. Schleiff said. “For those of us focused on the baby boomer, it’s a good time for us.”

Grandparents.com is planning to release on Monday the results of a study, “The Grandparent Economy,” which predicts that by next year, the highest median income will be among families led by men or women ages 55 to 64. By 2015, the study forecasts, 59 percent of American grandparents will be boomers.

“Someone once told me, ‘You can’t go broke chasing the boom,’ ” said Mr. Shereshewsky of Grandparents.com.

For instance, “grandparents spend about $400 million a year on diapers they inventory at home,” he added. “Not for themselves, for grandchildren who visit them.”

The “mythologies” about older consumers “are certainly out there,” Mr. Shereshewsky acknowledged, and “it’s very hard” to counter them.

“A young lady at a West Coast automotive marketer told me, ‘We never target the 50-year-old market because they don’t have many purchase cycles left to them,’ ” Mr. Shereshewsky said, laughing. “I said to her, ‘Excuse me, I’m not dead yet.’ ”Still, as boomers fill the ranks of older consumers, it may become unnecessary to refute the conventional wisdom. If they continue behaving as they did when they were the Pepsi Generation, beliefs about the upper age brackets may be rendered moot.

“I’m old enough to have experienced TV without remote controls, cable and commercial clutter,” said Mr. Donchin of Carat, “but my mindset and consumption patterns are very different from my parents’ at the same age.”

The changing of the guard among older consumers is even becoming part of the popular culture, he added, citing television shows about “cougars,” older woman who pursue younger men.

Indeed, the TV Land cable channel, which once specialized in vintage sitcoms like “I Love Lucy,” introduced a reality series last week called “The Cougar.”

Would anyone watch if it were called “The Boomer”?

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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KINGSTON, Jamaica / The Jamaica Gleaner News / April 20, 2009

By Petrina Francis, Staff Reporter

Seventy-nine-year-old Jephtah McIntosh and his 70-year-old wife, Olive, have kept true to the adage that one is never too old to learn, having signed up for literacy classes in their community.

The septuagenarians are among 14 participants and 13 facilitators in the 'Yes, I Can' programme' in western St Mary. The programme which was brought to the Gayle community by Member of Parliament Robert Montaque, began in January and is the English equivalent to the Spanish 'Yo Si Puedo' literacy programme in Cuba.

"It is easier to deal with something more than nothing at all," Mr McIntosh told The Gleaner of his reasons for signing up with the programme at such a late stage in life.

Eduardo O'Reilly Herrera (standing), teacher in the 'Yes, I Can' Literacy Programme in western St Mary, assists Jephtah McIntosh, one of the participants in the programme, with a question in the workbook.

At left is McIntosh's wife, Olive, who is also a participant in the programme.

Mrs McIntosh, who has had challenges reading her favourite book - the Bible, said she could not let the opportunity pass when she heard about the Yes, I Can programme.

"I did know some words, but to pronounce the bigger words was my trouble and I needed it because I want to read my Bible," she told The Gleaner during an interview at the Centre of Excellence in Gayle.

She added: "It is the best thing that happen to Gayle, but plenty of the people are ashamed, but me not shame."

The couple say they study together and have no problem helping each other out when doing their homework. For them, this is just another way of bonding.

"I have a young lady at home and some words that I don't know she spell it for me and I do the writing," Mrs McIntosh revealed.

She said her reading has improved since joining the programme. However, there is much more room for improvement, so she will continue for a few more months.

Mr McIntosh, on the other hand, will graduate from the programme next Sunday.

"I feel very good about that. I love it and the teacher very nice. They see to it that we learn. Them have patience," Mr McIntosh said enthusiastically.

He added: "It is never too old to learn. I remember the things that they teach me."

Mrs McIntosh, however, said her memory sometimes fails.

"Sometimes, I don't really remember and that kind of trouble me," she explained.

The couple got married in 1990. They have 18 children in total from previous relationships.

"The children feel good about what we are doing," Mrs McIntosh told The Gleaner with a smile.

Thirty-seven-year-old Glenford Smith, another participant in the programme, said his literacy level was 'zero' when he started in January.

"Today, I can read a little and I can write good now. I never know how to write and now I can identify every letter in the alphabet," Smith said while twiddling his thumbs.

He added: "I am a Christian and love church, but I did not know the words in the Bible and it used to bother me and a lot of people encouraged me, so I just jumped to the opportunity."

Smith, who will be the valedictorian at Sunday's graduation, said he plans to return to classes at the Centre of Excellence.

"I am just going to continue because every day you learn more and more," said the farmer.

Cuban national Eduardo O'Reilly Herrera, who was brought to Jamaica to teach the programme, said the participants' overall performance has improved.

"They are very good students. The big problem is attendance but they are interested and all have improved a lot," said Herrera.

Classes are held Mondays to Fridays. Herrera leaves in May but facilitators who have been trained will continue the programme which will be extended to other communities in the constituency.

The Yes, I Can programme has four components - workbook, participants, video lecture and facilitators.

petrina.francis@gleanerjm.com

© Copyright 1997-2009 Gleaner Company Ltd.

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AUCKLAND, New Zealand / The New Zealand Herald / Music / April 20, 2009

By Phoebe Falconer

Iris Jeffries has enjoyed music all her life. Now 80, she uses her skills and knowledge to share mandolin music with others.

She and about 12 others are in a group called Mandolynos and do the rounds of rest homes, senior citizens' clubs, libraries and even schools.

Iris Jeffries says music keeps her young. Photo / Richard Robinson

The idea is to entertain people who can no longer get out to concerts and who miss the experience of live music.

Mrs Jeffries not only plays the mandolin, she also arranges music for the little group, prepares the programmes, organises rehearsals, makes pikelets and drags a heater around on cold days.

This week they're off to the Caughey Preston Home in Remuera.

"We have three singers as well, but one can't come this week, so I'm having to ring around and email and find someone else.

"We try to have only one outing a week, no more than four a month. We are all retired and can visit places during the week when others are working. But we still have to find time to rehearse and learn new arrangements."

Age is no problem for Mrs Jeffries. "Music and being busy keep you young. I've no time to worry about myself. I do use a walking stick, though, which makes me look worse than I am."

Mrs Jeffries came to New Zealand from Perth in Western Australia as a bride in 1953. She had trained as a classical pianist, but decided she needed a change. She joined the School of Modern Music in New Zealand as a tutor to bring in a little extra cash.

She retired after 15 years and began playing the mandolin.

After a few lessons Mrs Jeffries was considered good enough to join the Auckland Mandolinata Orchestra and a year later, in 1985, she and friends formed the Mandolynos.

Diana Grant-Mackie, who nominated Mrs Jeffries for the Unsung Community Heroes series, has been a member of Mandolynos for nearly 10 years.

She and Mrs Jeffries believe music is important in the lives of older people. It comforts them and helps them cope with troubles, pain and sadness."

Copyright 2009, APN Holdings NZ Limited

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TORONTO, Ontario / The Star / Living / April 20, 2009

By Judy Steed
Special to the Star

"After one has lived a life of meaning, death may lose much of its terror,
for what we fear most is not really death but a meaningless and absurd life."
- Dr. Robert Butler, author of the Pulitizer Prize-winning book Why Survive? Being Old in America

He's probably the most influential gerontologist in the world.

The study of aging has been a lifelong passion for Dr. Robert Butler, who was raised by grandparents and went on to study medicine while advocating for the rights of older people.

Speaking in Toronto at the Ontario Gerontology Association conference next week – where he will talk about his new book, The Longevity Revolution: The Benefits and Challenges of Living a Long Life – Butler has a warning:

Boomers will once again be "transformative" as we age – our demographic clout is so massive that we change society as we move through the stages of life – but not soon enough to benefit ourselves.

This time, we've left it too late.

In an interview from his office at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York, where he is the founding president and CEO of the International Longevity Center, Butler notes that it takes time to shift health care toward older people, that geriatricians can't be produced overnight – there are only 216 in Canada, many close to retirement. The U.S. faces a similar shortage of medical specialists to treat the complex conditions of older people.

"We need thousands of geriatricians," says the founding director of the National Institute on Aging. "We can't set up facilities for people with Alzheimer's disease overnight." It's the same for home care – and caregivers (in a sector suffering chronic labour shortages) – for all the aging boomers who, in their 80s, will develop dementia. (Studies show one-third to one-half of people in their 80s will develop brain dysfunction and disease.)

Though the human species has added 30 years to lifespan in the last century – "a staggering development," Butler says, hence the title of his book, Longevity Revolution – in some parts of the world life expectancy is declining, including in the U.S.

"We've gone from 11th place in the world to 42nd over the last few decades," Butler says. "People in Jordan have a longer life expectancy than Americans."

The United Nations' longevity data lists Japan as No.1, with an average lifespan of 82.6 years. Canada is 8th at 80.7 (along with Israel and France), and the U.S. lags far down the list, beneath Cuba, at 78.2.

Why is that? "Well, 50 million Americans don't have health insurance. We have areas where people are very poor and live with severe social and economic disadvantages. And we're the fattest nation on Earth."

Yet Butler is an optimist. He says he grew up with "a sunny personality" thanks to the grandparents.

The significance of Butler's work, says Toronto gerontologist Margaret MacAdam, is that "he was one of the first medical people to call attention to how older people are being treated. He invented the concept of ageism, he wrote about how important his grandparents were to him, and he's one of the foremost practitioners of a comprehensive overview of aging. He doesn't just focus on the medical aspects; he looks at all of it – social, psychological, housing – to address how older people really live their lives."

He's had a huge influence globally, she says, "and, he's such a wonderful role model, personally, for living an active old age."

At the age of 82, Butler does not use the R-word. He did not retire and he does not recommend retirement. "It implies that you're no longer part of society." It's important to be productively engaged – and physically active. Butler's walking group meets every Saturday at 7:30 a.m. in Central Park, and they walk for at least six miles.

In his work, he has focused on "productive aging" and "successful aging," to reinforce that most of us will lead vibrant, vigorous lives into our 80s – in stark contrast to the ageist stereotype.

Ask him if ageism is still dominant and he points to New Orleans' Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Of the nearly 2,000 people who died, "most of them were old people," he says. They were left behind, often in nursing homes.

The message Butler works hardest to get out today, is that "the future belongs those who prepare for it." Don't be afraid of looking ahead, he says; make plans and figure out your best approach to "the big transition."

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2009

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CHEVY CHASE, Maryland / ScienceDaily / Psychology / April 20, 2009

Scientists have long been interested in the interplay of emotions and identity, and some have recently focused on cultural identity. One's heritage would seem to be especially stable and impervious to change, simply because it's been passed down generation after generation and is deeply ingrained in the collective psyche. But how deeply, exactly?

Psychologists Claire Ashton-James of the University of British Columbia, William W. Maddux from INSEAD, Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University, and Tanya Chartrand from Duke University decided to explore this intriguing question in the laboratory, to see if even something as potent as culture might be tied to normal mood swings.

European cultures are known to value independence and individuality, whereas Asian cultures prize community and harmony. This fundamental East-West cultural difference is well established, and so offered the researchers an ideal test.

The volunteers consisted of students hailing from a number of different countries and the researchers unconsciously raised or lowered their moods via two different methods. In one study, the volunteers listened to some upbeat Mozart on the stereo to lift their moods, or some Rachmaninov to bring them down. In another study, the volunteers held pens in their mouths: Some held the pen with their teeth, which basically forces the face into a smile, which improves mood. Others held the pen with their lips, forcing a frown.

Then the volunteers completed a variety of tests, each designed to measure the strength of their values. In one test, the volunteers were offered a choice of five pens, four blue and one red. In keeping with cultural values, Asians typically pick from the more common blue pens in this test — to be part of the group — while Westerners usually take the one red pen. In another test, the volunteers thought about the questions "Who am I?" and listed 20 answers. The lists were analyzed to see if they reflected predominantly individualistic or predominantly group values.

The results, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, were consistent for all of the tests: Feeling good did indeed encourage the volunteers — both European and Asian — to explore values that are inconsistent with their cultural norms. And elevated mood even shaped behavior, allowing volunteers to act "out of character." These findings suggest that people in an upbeat mood are more exploratory and daring in attitude — and therefore more apt to break from cultural stereotype. That is, Asians act more independently than usual, and Europeans are more cooperative. Feeling bad did the opposite: It reinforced traditional cultural stereotypes and constrained both Western and Eastern thinking about the world.

The researchers note these results suggest that emotions may serve an important social purpose. They surmise that positive feelings may send a signal that it's safe to broaden one's view of the world — and to explore novel notions of one's self. The researchers go on to indicate that negative feelings may do the opposite: They may send a signal that it's time to circle the wagons and stick with the "tried and true."

They conclude that the findings also suggest that the "self" may not be as robust and static as we like to believe and that the self may be dynamic, constructed again and again from one's situation, heritage and mood.

Journal reference:

1.Ashton-James et al. Who I Am Depends on How I Feel: The Role of Affect in the Expression of Culture. Psychological Science, 2009; 20 (3): 340 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02299.x
Adapted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Copyright © 1995-2009 ScienceDaily LLC

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LONDON, England / The Times / Books / Fiction / April 20, 2009

Shanghai-born award-winning novelist and short story writer was ill 'for several years',
his agent Margaret Hanbury said.

J.G. Ballard

Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent

The Times Obituary

Pinteresque, Dickensian, Shakespearean. Not many writers are so distinctive and influential that their name becomes an adjective in its own right. J. G. Ballard, who died yesterday morning after a long battle with cancer at the age of 78, was one of them.

“Ballardian” is defined in the Collins English Dictionary as: “adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (born 1930), the British novelist, or his works (2) resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels and stories, esp dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.”

His influence stretched across a modern world that he seemed to see coming years in advance.

Related Links
J. G. Ballard
J.G. Ballard: 'loved psychosis of suburbia'

His dark, often shocking fiction predicted the melting of the ice caps, the rise of Ronald Reagan, terrorism against tourists and the alienation of a society obsessed with new technology.

As Martin Amis once said of him: “Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different – a disused – part of the reader's brain.”

The bands Joy Division, Radiohead, The Normal, Klaxons and Buggles all wrote records inspired by Ballard stories.

Empire of the Sun, his best known book, was something of an anomaly for being an apparently straightforward account of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War, where he endured near starvation, death marches and regularly bore witness to death and brutality.

However just as the events it described (with considerable artistic licence) helped to mould his unique view of the world, so the book’s success proved to be a watershed in his career.

Born in Shanghai, Ballard was educated at Cambridge before becoming an RAF pilot, advert agency copy-writer, encyclopaedia salesman and assistant editor of the scientific journal Chemistry and Industry. In the first part of his career he was an underground writer who achieved some success in the 1970s with three novels – Crash, High Rise and Concrete Island – that he finessed and reconstructed from work he had written earlier.

Empire of the Sun, which won several literary prizes, brought him a main-stream following, which grew further when Steven Spielberg turned the memoir into a film in 1987.

After that he became superficially a different writer from the blazing visionary of his earlier work but attentive readers found that more recent novels such as Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes simply hid their subversiveness more carefully. His last book was Miracles of Life, an autobiography. The title refers to his three children. He raised them after his wife Mary died suddenly of pneumonia in 1964, dropping them at their suburban school every morning and then charging home to write twisted science-fiction or plan the “art exhibition” with wrecked cars and a topless model with which he roadtested the ideas in Crash.

In a memoir he wrote: “Alcohol was a close friend and confidant in the early days; I usually had a strong Scotch and soda when I had driven the children to school and sat down to write after nine. In those days I finished drinking at about the time today that I start. A friendly microclimate unfurled itself from the bottle of Johnnie Walker and encouraged my imagination to emerge from its burrow.”

Ballard shunned the gossipy London literary circuit, preferring the company of a few close friends and family.

He lived for most of his adult life at the same house in Shepperton on the Western fringes of London before moving in with his girlfriend Claire Walsh a few months ago. Margaret Hanbury, his agent for more than 25 years, said that he died there at about 7am yesterday.

“J. G. Ballard has been a giant on the world literary scene for more than 50 years,” she said. “Every week I was doing contracts with Poland, Russia, Japan or China. He was a global brand.”

Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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LONDON, England / Telegraph / Personal View / April 19, 2009

It may be a declining art, but we need visual jokes more than ever, insists Libby Purves

By Libby Purves

Forget Glastonbury, Glyndebourne and the Biennale. Next Friday is the start of the cultural weekend that strikes most closely to my heart: the sixth Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival. Exhibitions, workshops and children's sessions spring up, marker pen stains appear in shirt pockets, and artists invade the town.

Professional cartoonists – bearded and lumbering, small and lithe, tall and short, even, in some cases, female – converge on the historic Market Hall and graceful town square, drawing huge jokes on open-air boards throughout Friday and Saturday, offering free caricatures to bemused shoppers and inviting passers-by to

Libby Purvis dressed as the Giles Cartoon character 'Grandma' and Kenneth Baker also dressed in a similer way. Photo: DAVID HARTLEY

stick their heads in seaside-type holes and have a new body designed beneath them. Last year, I was an octopus.

In the evening, they gather in their hordes and form dodgy bands, and the cartoonist Bill Stott insists on singing Goodnight Irene. By midnight, the paper tablecloths, heavily scribbled by a dozen competitive and argumentative hands, are works of art. I know this because, at some hazy moment in the last few years, I seem to have become an official festival "Patron" and get to eat with them. That, to me, is the top table.

This year's theme pays tribute to Shrewsbury's son Charles Darwin, with the theme of "Science". It will, however, host just as many daft jokes as the previous themes of Business, Art, and Size. There will be mean political beasts there – notably Steve Bell, whose annual lecture is always billed as "almost certainly not suitable for children" – and the London Cartoon Museum sends cherished exhibits.

But on the whole, this is a celebration of an art form in which Britain has long excelled: the gag cartoon. Elegance, caricature and political bite are gifts we share with many nations, but the Anglo-Saxon world (for one must include the New Yorker tradition) leads in the visual joke – with a brief caption or none – whose only aim is a guffaw.

All my life they have meant a lot to me; perhaps it is because I live by words that I revere those whose pictures – often seeming to be deceptively quick scribbles – say as much in a second. Some become so precious that, if I can, I buy the original. A year or so ago, my home life seemed to be summed up, jeeringly, by a Martin Honeysett of a woman in curlers slumped in a chair surrounded by pizza boxes, remote controls and bottles. At the door, her husband is saying: "And another thing – that lifestyle guru of yours is a bloody waste of money". It hangs near my sofa. And only last week I was on the phone to Ed McLachlan begging to buy his cartoon about slobbish penguins being urged to tidy up for the tourists.

Over the Shrewsbury years I have come home broke from the galleries to line my walls with Penwill, Davey, Stott, Albert and the rest. Not only are they aesthetically graceful, but the mark of a good gag is that you smile every time. And that you have to show it to everyone – which is why the big boards in the Square at Shrewsbury are so lovely. Strangers bond, giggling.

A couple of years ago, I realised that I can trace this love of cartoons back through all my life, and that they have provided serious consolation in some very low times. Sometimes, comedy makes better sense of the world than pathos, tragedy or even history. An early memory is learning about the Second World War by turning the pages of the Giles wartime cartoon annuals which lay around the house: I knew his fictional family as well as my own – limp Auntie Vera, malevolent Grandma, the bun-faced babies and weary chubby Dad. And there were the same resigned British potato-faces looking up from the trenches at a flying bomb with, "Oh look, here comes your Easter Egg", or fiddling the ration books at home.

A diplo-brat carted round the world, I learned Britain from Giles. As an act of gratitude for this, at last year's Cartoon Art Trust awards I agreed to dress up as Giles' Grandma to present an award. And since I had got a second ghastly fox-fur with paws and head on an eBay deal, I built a spare Grandma hat and deceived poor Lord Baker of the Cartoon Museum into being another one. A former Tory home secretary cross-dressed as a twin Grandma: what's not to like?

After the Giles years, boarding-school was alleviated by Ronald Searle – Molesworth and St Trinian's – and when I was detailed off to mind the British Council Library in my boring holidays in foreign postings like Berne, I learned about life from leafing through old Punch and New Yorker collections, finding out what made adults laugh. Their irreverent glee was balm to an earnest, literary-minded, religious child. Cartoonists were my gods of misrule: in their world we were all clowns.

As a glum teenager I was sent caricatures of his monkish teachers by my brother, a sharp pen himself, and began drawing hedgehogs, rather badly, with punning captions. Hedgehogs remain the only thing I can draw. By the time I was a student, Private Eye was my bible, largely because of Bill Tidy's Cloggies, Willie Rushton's amazingly rude surrealism (sharks leaping from lavatories to goose fat men) and Barry Humphries and Nicholas Garland's beguiling Barry McKenzie, out of which joke grew his Australian grotesques Edna Everage and Les Patterson.

At nineteen, I saved up for the fare to Southport to interview Bill Tidy for a student rag, after falling in love with his gag about a polar bear turning up at the White Star shipping office after the Titanic, anxious to know what happened to the iceberg. The Tidys took pity and let me stay the night, and Bill drew a picture of me in a trilby as "Bill Spurve, ace reporter". It has gone on. Marriage, children, news jobs, writing novels – cartoons have been a life-support mechanism. How can a middle-class household get by without Posy Simmonds to puncture its pretensions? How could I have survived my daughter's pony-crazed years without Thelwell, or the alarums and humiliations of a sailing life without Peyton? Does not a Matt cartoon make the news less tragically toxic?

My favourite journalistic exercise was being sent to row a double-sculling skiff down the Thames with Mandy Rice-Davies as steerswoman and Merrily Harpur recording it in cartoons. The best moment was when, in our dishevelled camping dawn, Mandy was found on the riverbank delicately atomising Evian water on to her face. Harpur's caption said, "Could you just atomise some into the kettle?"

Oh, I love cartoonists. They often struggle these days because too many magazines cut costs by downloading boring photos off the internet. But a cartoon lifts and subverts and enlivens any page: I can think of no cultural and political trend these last 40 years that hasn't been skewered by a cartoon. Shrewsbury is a pilgrimage for me: a homage to their brevity, delicacy, and ability to see the joke which lies deep in the heart of everything.

The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival runs from April 24 to 26;
www.shrewsburycartoonfestival.com

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2009

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GEORGETOWN, Guyana / Stabroek News / Sunday Features / April 19, 2009

HEALTH - A weekly column prepared by Dr Balwant Singh’s Hospital Inc.

Living with Alzheimer’s
By Dr Ritesh Kohli, MD
Internal Medicine Specialist

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest of tasks. In most people with AD, symptoms first appear after the age of 60.
AD is the most common cause of dementia among older people. Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning — thinking, remembering and reasoning — to such an extent that it interferes with a person’s daily life and activities.

The Alzheimer’s Association has developed the following list of warning signs that include common symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Individuals who exhibit several of these symptoms should see a physician for a complete evaluation.

1. Memory loss
2. Difficulty performing familiar tasks
3. Problems with language
4. Disorientation to time and place
5. Poor or decreased judgment
6. Problems with abstract thinking
7. Misplacing things
8. Changes in mood or behaviour
9. Changes in personality
10. Loss of initiative

It is normal to have some degree of memory loss as you age. In fact, normal individuals at 50 years of age will recall only about 60% as many items on some kinds of memory tests as individuals thirty years younger. Furthermore, everyone forgets, and every twenty-year old is well aware of multiple times he or she couldn’t think of an answer on a test that he or she once knew.

What causes AD
Scientists don’t yet fully understand what causes AD, but it is clear that it develops because of a complex series of events that take place in the brain over a long period of time. It is likely that the causes include genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. Because people differ in their genetic make-up and lifestyle, the importance of these factors for preventing or delaying AD differs from person to person.

How AD is diagnosed
AD can be definitively diagnosed only after death by linking clinical course with an examination of brain tissue and pathology in an autopsy. But doctors now have several methods and tools to help them determine fairly accurately whether a person having memory problems has ‘possible AD’ (the symptoms may be due to another cause) or ‘probable AD’ (no other cause for the symptoms can be found). To diagnose AD, doctors:

● Ask questions about the person’s overall health, past medical problems, ability to carry out daily activities, and changes in behaviour and personality.
● Conduct tests of memory, problem solving, attention, counting and language.
● Carry out medical tests, such as tests of blood, urine, or spinal fluid.
● Perform brain scans, such as a computerized tomography (CT) scan or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test.

These tests may be repeated to give doctors information about how the person’s memory is changing over time.

Early diagnosis is beneficial for several reasons. Having an early diagnosis and starting treatment in the early stages of the disease can help preserve function for months to years, even though the underlying AD process cannot be changed. Having an early diagnosis also helps families plan for the future, make living arrangements, take care of financial and legal matters, and develop support networks.

How AD is treated
AD is a complex disease, and no single ‘magic potion’ is likely to prevent or cure it. That’s why current treatments focus on several different aspects, including helping people maintain mental function; managing behavioural symptoms; and slowing, delaying, or preventing AD.

Lifestyle and home remedies
A healthy lifestyle may help prevent or postpone the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Because Alzheimer’s is most common in people over the age of 80, delaying the onset of the disease would increase the probability that people will die of other causes before Alzheimer’s has a chance to develop.

Eat your veggies
Maintaining a healthy weight and eating a healthy diet appears to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Your doctor may suggest:

● Lots of fruit and vegetables
● Fish or poultry, instead of red meat
● Whole-grain breads and cereals
● Alternate sources of proteins, such as beans, nuts and seeds
● More olive oil and less saturated fat

Exercise
Higher levels of physical activity have been associated with a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.

Exercise your brain
Maintaining mental fitness may delay the onset of dementia. Some researchers believe that lifelong mental exercise and learning may promote the growth of additional synapses, the connections between neurons, and delay the onset of dementia.

Carry a reminder
Record not just upcoming events, but things that happen and activities you need to complete on a daily basis. Tick off those activities when done. If you can make this process a habit before your memory problems worsen, you’ll be more likely to retain this skill as the disease progresses.

Prevention
Right now, there’s no proven way to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
However, you may be able to reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s disease by reducing your risk factors. The main players appear to be blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose levels.

Keeping active — physically, mentally and socially — also seems to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Copyright © 2008 Stabroek News.

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NEW YORK, NY / The New York Times / New Jersey / Generations / April 19, 2009

By Maria Laurino

WHEN I was in college and wanted to sound like an English Major (in capital letters), I’d enjoy musing over the complexities of narrative structure. In my youthful enthusiasm, I even wrote a paper that included a Möbius strip, which is formed by taking a rectangular piece of paper, giving it a half-twist, and then connecting the two ends. The strip produces a continuous surface, as the inside becomes the outside and the outside the inside.

More than 25 years later, I better understand why that mathematical metaphor had so intrigued me. As the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, I am curious about time’s continuous loop — how the Old World customs of my grandparents, who settled in Maplewood, N.J., at the beginning of the 20th century, are circling their way back into 21st-century life.

Illustration by Rob Dunlavey

At first glance, Maplewood’s tree-lined streets seem a radically different place from my grandparents’ home, a three-story apartment building they owned along the town’s busy Springfield Avenue. It’s hard to imagine that an ancient Mediterranean culture — where women gave neighbors who had wronged them mal’ occhio, the “evil eye,” and chased pigs that had escaped from backyards up Springfield Avenue — once laid down its roots in a suburb now filled with S.U.V.’s, Hondas and minivans laden with children’s car seats and athletic gear.

But in the essence of how we live — from how we raise our children to the food we eat — Old World ways are refurbishing our homes, like a retro sofa that’s suddenly become de rigueur.

The door has been reopened, for example, for grandma to enter as primary child care provider. Our new first lady, Michelle Obama, brought national attention to this idea when she asked her mother, Marian Robinson, to move into the White House to continue to help raise the grandchildren. As more women work long hours and travel for their jobs, the “old-fashioned scenario” of a grandmother serving as the primary caregiver is “cycling back into favor,” this newspaper recently reported.

The arrangement — one that also has deep roots in African-American tradition — brought me back to the Maplewood of the early 1940s, when my mother’s siblings began to have children. With my grandmother as matriarch, all the women pitched in (child care never fell to the domain of Italian men), running between apartments, and up and down the stairs, to help rear the children.

By the postwar 1950s, life had changed as my mother and her three siblings, by now all married and with children, sought the American dream, and moved out of their parents’ building to buy their own homes. With no one living within walking distance, and my mother and her sister unable to drive, the cousins rarely played with, or even saw, one another or their grandmother. By the time I was born in 1959, the insular nuclear family became the New World model that my family had fully adopted.

Yet, how naïve of us Americans to believe that grandma wouldn’t be needed any longer. That model worked only because my mother stayed home to raise her children. Then ’70s feminism came along and helped to radically restructure the American work force. As a society, however, we never figured out how to adequately help families with two working parents. So here in the 21st century, the New World reacquaints itself with the ways of the Old.

This turning back to a way of life once deemed out of sync with modern times also reminds me of my grandfather’s devotion to his garden. Trying as best he could to replicate the agrarian southern Italy of his youth, my grandfather grew zucchini, squash, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, a fig tree, and colorful patches of pansies, poppies and peonies in a large lot next to his building.

Early each morning, my grandmother entered the garden that her husband tenderly cultivated. She would slowly squat her heavy body to the earth, pick the day’s selection and place it in her large apron pockets. Weighed down with vegetables, my grandmother would waddle to the tomato vines to pluck a handful, and then climb three flights of stairs to begin her morning cooking.

My grandfather’s garden was his small piece of paradise. Years later, new owners paved it and put up a parking lot.

When I was growing up, suburban life had been duly sanitized and modernized. Every Friday night, our family piled in the car and headed to a supermarket to purchase the week’s worth of food. We wandered the wide aisles picking out frozen and canned fruits and vegetables, which had replaced the homegrown kind.

But today, I shop the Old World way, caressing tomatoes, sniffing basil and picking a bunch of wild arugula at a local farmer’s market. I know that I’m not alone in my preference, as Americans have enthusiastically embraced elements of Old World culture in our daily lives. Except we don’t use the words “Old World” but more fashionable terms like “organic,” “local” and “artisanal” (derived from artigiano, the Italian word for “craftsman”).

The inside has become the outside, the outside the inside. We have sensed that not all of modernity is healthy or pleasing to the senses.

I’m not suggesting a nostalgic surrender to a falsely imagined better time — indeed the greatest gift of the New World has been to reject the confines of custom and embrace the freedom to make choices that can best suit our needs. Yet the intriguing continuous loop that captured my imagination so long ago presses me to question a basic American assumption: that life moves forward through progress, and progress is always benign.

The complicated pattern of middle age has taught me that we move forward and we move backward, melding the old and the new, hoping to find a little wisdom and not to lose our balance in the half-twisted surface of our lives.

Maria Laurino’s new memoir, “Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom,” was published this month by W. W. Norton & Company. Click for publisher's note

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company