Mainlanders’ concerns about the environment and the wealth gap have surged following a year of high-profile pollution incidents and scores of corruption arrests, a new survey found.

The Pew Research Centre survey found that 47 per cent considered air pollution a “very big problem”, up from 36 per cent last year. Some 38 per cent thought food safety was a major concern. Although down slightly from last year, that represented a 26 point increase from 2008.

Respondents also cited financial inequality as a major concern, with 52 per cent saying the gap between rich and poor was serious – up from 41 per cent five years ago. A similar percentage described political corruption as a big problem, an issue that has come to the fore with the trials of former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai .

“The leap in concern about pollution came in the same year as there were incidents that got an enormous amount of attention in and out of China,” said Bruce Stokes, director of Pew’s Global Attitudes Project. “These included the dead pigs found floating in Huangpu River in Shanghai and the air pollution stories in Beijing.”

Mainlanders, however, hold some of the most optimistic views in the world when it comes to the economy. Some 80 per cent expected the country’s economic situation to improve in the next 12 months, the highest rate among 39 countries polled by Pew this year.

The survey involved face-to-face interviews with 3,200 respondents between March 4 and April 6.

William Yu, an environmental economist and chief executive officer of the World Green Organisation, said that as people became more affluent, they were more likely to care about social and environmental issues.

“The middle class in China is larger than the entire US population, and is more likely now to be better educated than before,” he said. “But even those who would avoid protesting over ‘sensitive’ political issues are likely to get angry if they don’t have access to clean water or if their children’s health is suffering.”

As for rising concern about economic inequality, Sandy To, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Hong Kong, said that media fixation on the lives of the rich and famous could be a factor in growing frustration about the rich-poor gap.

“There’s a lot of envy and negativity because many people might not be living under the poverty line nowadays, but middle class wages won’t allow them to buy a home or to emulate the lifestyle of brand names and banqueting that is increasingly idealised even in state media,” To said.

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Westhill House Highgate Consulting Rooms Sleep Therapy Can Change Bad Memories

Westhill House Highgate Consulting Rooms is located in West Hill House, a quiet building in Swain's Lane, set back from the road. Swain's Lane is one of Highgate's most charming streets. It is within 50 metres of Hampstead Heath and with easy access to bus, train and underground. Local restaurants and cafés add to the friendly, village atmosphere. We’ve had no complaints Many of our consulting rooms are rented to professional and alternative medical specialists. From holistic therapies from SE Asian countries such as Bangkok Thailand, Jakarta Indonesia and many more.

Sleep Therapy Can Change Bad Memories

Forget the psychiatrist’s couch. Your own bed could one day be a setting for psychotherapy. Targeted brain training during sleep can lessen the effects of fearful memories, according to a study published today in Nature Neuroscience. Researchers say that the technique could ultimately be used to treat psychiatric disorders, such as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorders.Today, those conditions are most commonly treated using ‘exposure therapy’, which requires patients to intentionally relive their fears. With repeated exposures in the safety of a therapist’s consulting room, patients can learn to reduce their responses to traumatic cues — suggesting that memories are being altered. But the treatment itself can be intolerably painful for some patients, especially at first. In the latest study, neuroscientist Katherina Hauner and her colleagues at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, devised a form of exposure therapy that works while people snooze.“It’s fascinating, and very promising,” says Daniela Schiller, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “We used to think you need awareness and conscious understanding of your emotional responses in order to change them.”

Instant replay

To create fearful memories, Hauner’s team delivered mild electric shocks to study participants as they viewed pictures of faces that were paired with a distinct odor, such as lemon or mint. People began to sweat slightly on seeing the pictures and smelling the odors, anticipating that they would get a shock.
Soon after the training, participants napped in the lab while the researchers monitored their brain waves with electrodes placed on their scalps. When the volunteers entered slow-wave sleep — a stage during which recent memories are replayed and reinforced — the team released one of the fear-linked odors. By administering the odor at 30-second intervals, the researchers were trying to trigger the memory of the corresponding face over and over again — this time without delivering electric shocks. Just like when they were awake, the sleeping subjects showed increased sweating when exposed to the odor, but the effect gradually subsided.

The reduced effect persisted after sleep. When awake, people showed diminished fear responses when exposed to the odor–face combination that had been triggered repeatedly during sleep. Activity changes in the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in emotion and fear, suggest that the treatment did not erase the fearful memory, but rather that it created new, innocuous associations with the odor–face combination. People who slept longer and received more treatment benefited most from the procedure.

“It’s really paradoxical,” says Jan Born, a neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, noting that the spontaneous replay of memories during sleep is typically thought to strengthen rather than weaken learning.
Hauner explains that repeated activation of a single fearful memory during sleep probably works more like real exposure therapy and less like a natural replay of memories at night, in which memories are triggered haphazardly. More work is needed, she says, to determine how long the treatment lasts and whether overnight sleep might affect it.

As for using the technique therapeutically, Hauner notes that real traumatic memories, especially very old ones, could be much more complicated to treat than the simple scenarios engineered in the lab. “This is a very novel area,” she says. “I think the process has to be refined.”

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The government’s flagship Help to Buy scheme could cause a sharp rise in mortgage fraud, according to one of the most senior policemen tackling economic crime.

The mortgage subsidy programme, the second phase of which started this month, could reignite a crime that has been declining as a result of tighter lending requirements, Detective Superintendent Oliver Shaw of the City of London Police said.

“Mortgage fraud is definitely on my radar,” he told a conference on Thursday. “We’ve seen fewer mortgage frauds recently because banks have been more careful about who they’re lending to but when Help to Buy goes live fully, that’s a huge vulnerability. We’re trying to change everyone’s mindset before it gets to the problem it was in 2009.”

Fraudulent brokers and solicitors were of particular concern, he later told the Financial Times.

The scheme has already been strongly criticised by economists, lenders and even the International Monetary Fund said it risked inflating house prices. These have begun to rise sharply this year, although growth has mainly been concentrated in London.

Mortgage fraud has crept upwards since 2006, according to statistics compiled by Experian. Last year, 38 of 10,000 mortgages were fraudulent, compared with 15 in 10,000 in 2006. Some commentators have attributed the rise to lenders being better at spotting applications that misstate income or poor credit history.

Help To Buy was announced by George Osborne, the chancellor, in this year’s budget. Its first stage offered equity loans of up to 20 per cent of the value of a new property.

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Massaging is one of the best remedies for many of our illnesses. It is very relaxing, like sleeping as a little baby while mommy strokes you all over the sores of your tired body. Just the thought that someone is there while you close your eyes and mind and lie down eases your mind like no other activity available on earth, except perhaps. . . .

But what power does massage have that it provides so much healing benefits to humans? Even animals practice it instinctively as a means to heal themselves, as dogs and cats apparently do. Of course, we know that muscles need massaging in order to remove obstacles in our veins and to enhance blood circulation and breathing. It also removes unwanted dry skin and toxins within our bodies that other cleansing therapies may not totally remove. All in all, massage offers health benefits which are both physiological and emotional.

View source link here..

The emotional side of massage therapy derives from its social dimension as a form of therapy, as we have mentioned. Having someone take care or treat your body in a way that you or someone else you know intimately cannot do for you crosses a barrier that revolves around trust and harmony. One cannot entrust one’s body to someone who does not have the ability or intention to provide healing. In many cases, massage and prayer (or meditation -- notice the spa music they use?) go together. The event becomes essentially a social or cultural activity which goes beyond attaining healing to that of providing peace and harmony among people.

Massage as a therapy then does not deal only with healing the body but more so the mind. Spas have provided a very valuable service to modern society by providing a convenient escape where tired, harried and lonely people can totally relax and obtain body and mental rejuvenation. No wonder that it has become such a lucrative business for many people.

Health, obviously, is wealth in many practical ways.

Make powerful choices to create your maximum level of health with my facilitation skills and the wisdom and support of a group. Visit Jennifer Shearin Group Wellness Coaching.

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Where will our children's jobs come from? It's something to ponder after the implosion of one of the manufacturing sector's linchpins.
The first, broad answer is the retreats of Ford, Holden and Toyota don't mean that Australia cannot create enough jobs.
There were just over 9 million people employed in Australia in November 2000. Employment in the manufacturing sector fell by 140,000 or 13 per cent between then and November last year, but total employment rose by 29 per cent or 2.62 million, to more than 11.6 million.
New South Wales lost 52,900 jobs or 18.5 per cent of its manufacturing workforce over the 13-year period. Victoria was hit even harder. It shed 95,100 jobs, more than 29 per cent of its manufacturing workforce.
NSW nevertheless created 276,100 jobs overall, boosting its employment base by 12.2 per cent. Victoria did even better, boosting total job numbers by 336,600, or 20.3 per cent.
They did it even though they were not sitting on mineral riches that underpinned a 196,500, 252 per cent rise in job numbers to 274,500 in the mining sector between 2000 and 2013 - and while their jobs growth slowed to a crawl between 2010 and 2013, the way they did it gives the next clue about where our kids will be working: it is the service sector that will be the growth engine.
It's still a complicated picture. Smaller job markets are, for example, more vulnerable to shocks such as a large company's collapse. Recent developments also make some sectors that have been growing look less promising in future.
The two biggest losers since 2000 have been manufacturing and agriculture, which saw job numbers drop by almost 30 per cent or 113,000 to 319,000 between 2000 and 2013. It has shed 38,900 jobs since November 2010, not far behind the manufacturing sector's much more actively discussed 56,600 job decline over the same years.
Media and telecommunications, has also been a job destroyer. Job numbers fell by 34,000 or 5 per cent to 193,700 between 2000 and 2013, and have dropped by almost 23 per cent in the past three years.
The real estate industry has also not been a job creator, despite the boom in house prices. Job numbers fell by 3.4 per cent or 6500 between 2000 and 2013.
There are more winners than losers, as Australia's total jobs growth suggests.
Job numbers in the healthcare industry jumped by 65 per cent or 555,600 between 2000 and 2013, to just over 1.4 million. Jobs in the construction industry rose by 364,000 or 54 per cent, to 1.04 million. Employment in the professional, scientific and technical services sector rose by 280,600 to 896,300, and jobs in public administration rose by 275,000 or 55 per cent to 774,000. The ranks of those employed in education and training rose by 40 per cent or almost 256,000 people to 896,000, and jobs in accommodation and food services rose by 139,000 or 21.7 per cent to 780,000.
The current outlook is different, however. Mining sector job growth between 2010 and 2013 was a less feverish 37.5 per cent as the commodity boom cooled. It will slow more as the development phase of the boom ends and miners crack down on operating expenses, and construction jobs are also affected. They rose by almost 20 per cent between 2005 to 2013, but by only 1.4 per cent between 2010 and 2013.
The public sector also won't reproduce its 10.9 per cent increase in jobs since 2010 as government cuts roll in, and growth in other sectors has slowed, to 3.9 per cent in the retail industry and 5 per cent in the professions, for example.
If your children want jobs in industries that are growing there are standouts. One is healthcare, a deep employment pool underpinned by baby-boomer demographics that has lifted job numbers by 37 per cent since 2005, and by more than 9 per cent since 2010.
Another is the finance sector, which also has depth with 420,000 jobs, and has grown job numbers by 11.8 per cent since 2005 and by 6.7 per cent since 2010 despite financial crisis aftershocks. The 212,000 job recreation and arts sector is smaller and more vulnerable to shocks, but has grown by 52 per cent since 2000, 20 per cent since 2005 and by 9 per cent since 2010.
Just like jobs in the manufacturing sector, jobs in the service sector run the gamut of pay and quality. Australia's education system is, however, delivering results that push employees away from the unskilled bottom of the scale.That needs to continue. In America where education outcomes are more polarised, there are signs that the job market is hollowing out. Middle-wage US workers bore the brunt of layoffs during the global crisis, and median wages have been declining since the turn of the century.
mmaiden@fairfaxmedia.com.au
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Westhill Property Consultants Hampstead Heath London specializing in properties in the sale and letting of homes in North and North West London agrees with the following statement.

According to the Bank of England, each year since 2010, £23 billion of foreign money has poured into the London property market. One would think that this is a good thing for the economy, but most of these foreign buyers have never been to London, or at least have no intention of spending any time here.

It’s all about the preservation of wealth. The residents of unstable oil-rich countries fear the Arab Spring. The residents of Southeast Asia, China and Russia fear their governments. All are looking for stability. It has become the fashion to “park” money in London. It’s what wealthy people do when they don’t trust the banks, they “park” their money through the purchase of an asset, as a store of value. In this regard, the London property market has become a gynormous piggy bank.

In 2011, Regent Street was valued by The Crown Estate at £2bn. Each year a multiple of over 11.5 times this in ordinary homes is being snapped up. That’s the equivalent, each single year, of Oxford Street, The Strand, Fleet Street, High Holborn, Trafalgar Square, High St Kensington, Old Bond Street, Berkeley Square, Park Lane and Knightsbridge, and North West London. That’s just one year.

The reason government is doing nothing about this, is because the economy has been so delicate for the last three years, and the question of whether we are in or out of recession have been so finite, that any short term economic activity has been welcomed.

Far from rebalancing the economy, this government are just desperate to fend off the calls for a Plan B. Far from building a long term prosperity, they are trading the benefit of short term finance, for long term misery. This chancellor, who once accused Gordon Brown of being “dishonest” with the British people, is now covering the tracks of his own failure, fully in the knowledge that a future government will be forced to clear up the mess.

The dividing lines between Labour and the Conservative Party is clear. We believe the state has a role to play in building a better society, they believe that the market is supreme in every regard. We believe that government can guide or regulate the market as and when it becomes destructive. They do not.

In this case, the destruction is due to the sheer scale of housing that is being taken out of productive use. The situation has got so bad that even the bankers are being edged into poorer districts. This then bumps the next social class into the next district and so on. In the area of Tower Hamlets, period housing used to be priced at a premium, but as prices push against the ceiling of affordability, the prices of ex-council flats are coming into line with the Victorian terrace.

As prices rise and foreigners become excited by their returns, more money pours into the market causing more housing inflation. If this speculative bubble were caused by the British population then there would be some constraints imposed by the size and the wealth of the native population, however, we are talking about massively greater forces at work.

We keep reading polling that tells us this is not a major issue to the electorate, but that is the reason why Labour should be hammering the message home. Ever since George Osborne’s economic policies failed, we’ve seen increasingly dangerous long-term problems being created by a government who are only concerned with securing their own jobs.

They will continue to do so until the Labour persuades the nation of their folly and creates a consensus for restrictions on foreign purchasing.

Westhill Property Consultants London have noted a significant increase in inquiries from SE Asia especially Hong Kong, Singapore, and Jakarta Indonesia.

Need an elegant antidote to global warming? Look to B.C.

The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in Stockholm Friday, leaves almost no doubt that human activity can take the blame for the warming trend, even if the warming rate seems to be slowing. The conclusion came as no surprise. The 1996 IPCC report stated that the “balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate,” and the updates since then have reinforced that stance.

Once environment ministers and big industries digest the report, don’t expect a lot to change – even though the 1983-to-2012 period in the Northern Hemisphere was very likely the warmest 30-year period in 800 years, and the frequency and costliness of natural disasters (storms, floods, drought, fire, extreme temperatures) has been rising since the early 1980s. Reinsurance giant Munich Re reports that the damages from the 10 biggest natural catastrophes of 2012 alone, topped by the Hurricane Sandy storm surge, totalled more than $130-billion (U.S.).

The pity is that there is an efficient, fair way to reduce carbon footprints without throwing economies into reverse. It is one that is not impossibly complicated and prone to abuse like carbon-credit trading, or based on command-and-control regulations, such as milking taxpayers to subsidize renewable energy. It is carbon taxes. They are quietly being introduced by governments in North America, Europe and Asia, although not quickly enough. Given their relative simplicity and effectiveness, they ought to be ubiquitous.

More than a few prominent scientists and economists, among them Paul Ekins, director of the Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College of London, and Stewart Elgie of the University of Ottawa, think British Columbia’s carbon tax is a fine model. “The design of that carbon tax was the best in the world,” Mr. Ekins said in an interview.

The B.C. carbon tax applies to all fuels, from gasoline to propane, at the point of sale. It was launched in July, 2008 as the main effort in the province’s campaign to drop emissions by one-third by 2020. The tax was designed to be “revenue neutral” – that is, all the income it raised would be offset by reduced taxes elsewhere – and it was introduced gradually. By 2012, the tax per litre of gasoline was seven cents.

A study led by Mr. Elgie found that in the first four years of the carbon tax, B.C. fuel consumption fell 17.4 per cent per capita, and 18.8 per cent compared with the rest of Canada. In the first three years, the province’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 11 per cent (more recent data are not available). If all this were not good enough, B.C.’s economy did not get clobbered, either. Since the tax was introduced, its gross domestic product has kept pace with the rest of Canada.

The tax does not take an army of bureaucrats to administer and was relatively cheap to introduce. It went from concept to reality in a mere five months.

B.C.’s little tax beauty is not perfect. It does not apply to all carbon emissions, notably the flaring of natural gas by the drillers. It is being frozen at the current level, taking away some of its future punch.

Quebec and Alberta have less useful variants of the B.C. tax. (Alberta’s, born in 2007, was the first of its kind on the continent.) The other provinces lack such a tax and none exists at the federal level, where any new tax is treated with fear and loathing. Ditto in the United States, where the mere utterance of “tax” is considered political suicide, at least at the federal level.

Too bad, because carbon trading and regulations lack simplicity, cost fortunes to administer and are less fair and effective. A carbon tax merely sets the price of carbon use, allowing businesses and consumers to change their fuel-consumption behaviour at the lowest cost. Some will use public transportation more often; others will buy more fuel-efficient cars. Companies will innovate, knowing that fuel efficiency will save operating costs.

France, Italy, China and South Africa have recently introduced, or announced they will introduce, carbon taxes of one form or another. Several other European countries have them. All work to some degree, although they tend to lack ambition and get lost in the clutter of other climate-change mitigation efforts, from clean-technology subsidies to appliance performance standards.

The IPCC report will receive a barrage of criticism from the climate-change skeptics. They will dismiss the report as a fraud or a hoax because of the declining rate of warming; never mind that the planet is warming. They will ignore the data that reveal an alarming increase in natural catastrophes, such as floods. They will condemn carbon taxes as yet another tax grab, even if they are revenue neutral. B.C.’s fine example of a tax that helps the planet, yet neither hurts taxpayers nor growth, will fail to sway them.

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I spend an enormous amount of time using textmates block select features. Specifically toggling a selected range to a block using the alt key, moving a block left and right with [ctrl]-[cmd]-arrow and auto align block with [alt]-[cmd]-].

Close all tabs except current [alt] click the one tab you want.

The find in project is so much less useful than Textmate2s find and replace in project and I use that all the time for refactoring.

Reveal in project [ctrl]-[cmd]-r I rely on all the time when I have large amout of files open.

Finally the Rspec integration plugin. Specifically the Rspec keyboard shortcuts and the ability to run scoped tests with [shift]-[cmd]-R and all tests in file with [cmd]-r.

These are the major barriers to me moving to an otherwise awesome editor. I'd definitely switch if these were in place.

I would love it if I had a different background color for the line numbers. It would actually make the editor look better and more simple.

Also, a border right after the line numbers :) and to choose border width and color