SP: English Study Group

Apple has put an end to weeks of speculation by unveiling its tablet device, which it has called the iPad.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive unveiled the touchscreen device at an event in San Francisco.

Mr Jobs described the tablet, which will cost between $499 and $829 in the US, as a "third category" between smartphones and laptops.

The device, which looks like a large iPhone, can be used to watch films, play games and browse the web.

source: http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15434416

How will we recharge all the electric cars?

Jan 29th 2010 | From The Economist online

IN THE ten years since hybrid electric vehicles first hit thehighways and byways of America, they have come to represent 2.5% of newcar sales. Yet, in places like Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Areaand Washington, DC, every other car seems to be a Toyota Prius. That isbecause hybrids like the Prius have sold overwhelmingly wherewell-heeled early adopters reside.

Expect the new generation of “Post-Prius” electrics—plug-in hybridslike the Chevrolet Volt from General Motors and those relying only on abattery such as the Nissan Leaf—to end up nosing around the sameupscale neighbourhoods. With more than a dozen plug-in andpure-electric models arriving in showrooms over the next year or so,sales are expected to outstrip even those enjoyed by the Prius andother hybrids in their early days. A couple of million of the newelectric vehicles could be bought by early adopters during the firstfew years.

That would be a problem. Unlike the Prius and its ilk—which usetheir petrol engines, along with energy recovered from braking, torecharge their batteries while motoring—plug-in hybrids and pureelectrics have to be recharged direct from the grid. The popularassumption is that they will be plugged into a wall socket in thegarage late at night, taking advantage of cheap off-peak power.Unfortunately, things are not that simple.

source: http://health.yahoo.com/featured/77/sleep-routine-makeovers/

Tired? You're not alone. About 20 percent of Americans get fewer than six hours of shut-eye nightly, and a growing number have to rely on sleep aids to fall asleep or stay that way, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Is getting more (and better) sleep possible without the help of drugs? To find out, we asked three Woman's Day staffers to share their nighttime troubles with the experts. Here's what they learned.

Problem #1: "I wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep." -Marilu Lopez, group creative director

Marilu wakes up almost every night between 3:30 and 4 a.m. and is unable to fall back to sleep. To pass the time and try to make herself sleepy again, she reads The New York Times on her BlackBerry. She eventually falls back to sleep but then wakes up early in the morning and feels exhausted all day.

Advice: Step one is to break the BlackBerry habit, says Joyce Walsleben, RN, PhD, diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and coauthor of A Woman's Guide to Sleep. The problem is twofold: Not only is reading news articles too stimulating, but the light from the BlackBerry itself can get in the way of the production of hormones that are essential for sleep.

source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/mental_health/article6989751.ece

On the day many psychologists claim is the most depressing of the year, a writer argues that it is our toxic society, not our DNA, that triggers mental illness

Britain is depressed. Especially its women. Recently the Irish author Marian Keyes announced on her website that she is suffering from such “crippling depression” that she was unable to sleep, write, eat, read or talk.

Depending on which study you believe, a woman aged 25 in 1980 was between three and ten times more likely to have suffered depression than her grandmother. The increase has continued in the past 30 years, particularly among girls from affluent homes.

The proportion of such girls suffering at the age of 15 almost doubled between 1987 and 2006 (up from 24 per cent to 43 per cent). Scientists are now confident that these increases are real, not because of our greater willingness to engage in psychobabble. Overall, 23 percent of us suffered from a mental illness of some kind in the past 12 months. The proportion rockets among the young: 32 per cent of 16-24 year olds, dropping steadily as we get older, to 11 per cent of over-75s.

With the short, dark days of January especially hard for those with depression — many psychologists claim today that with freezing temperatures, debts from the Christmas break, and gloom about returning to work, add up to the most depressing day of the year — what has gone wrong and, even more importantly, what can you do if you are suffering?

Original post: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/01/how_to_quiet_your_inner_critic.html

How to Manage Your Inner Critic by Susan David

Do you spend hours worrying that you aren't good enough to succeed? That you're just not capable or that you aren't smart enough? You're not alone.

A client — I'll call her Sonya — is typical of many top-level executives who struggle with an over-eager inner critic. Despite numerous accomplishments, including a graduate degree from a prestigious business school and a partnership at a leading accounting firm, Sonya always feels like an underachiever. Every day she sees herself as a new graduate — tongue-tied, fumbling, and trying to prove herself for the very first time. Sonya is convinced that soon someone will find out the awful truth — that her incompetence will become clear and that she'll lose her responsibilities, her partnership, and eventually her job. Even though Sonya has never received a negative performance appraisal, she feels stressed, unhappy, and unfulfilled. Sonya is successful — and completely miserable.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/85841/page/1

Backpacking Questions...and Answers

original post:  http://www.travelbackpacker.com/stories.php?story_id=302

Backpacking Questions...and Answers

February 19, 2003

source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/18/mutual-funds-etfs-retirement-investment-plan-personal-finance-bogleheads-view-dogu.html

Big pension funds have Investment Policy Statements. So should you.

Throwing on a backpack and heading out to points unknown may work for a college student out on a European jaunt, but the same attitude won't work when trying to earn a decent return on your investment portfolio. Investing is like taking a cross-country car trip; if you don't map out your route, you're likely to get lost, and that will delay your arrival at your destination. Consequently, the first step on your investing journey should be to settle on a written investment plan (your roadmap) called an Investment Policy Statement (IPS).

In The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning, chapter authors David Grabiner and Alex Frakt state that "if you start with a good plan, you will find it easier to continue to make good investment decisions. Most investors do this backward by starting with investment selection, usually choosing from lists of top performing mutual funds. The portfolio gets pieced together with the flavor of the month."

Your IPS should look into your future and lay out general financial goals and objectives including things like a new car or home purchase in a few years, education expenses for children, and retirement income requirements. Your IPS should also describe the strategies you will use to meet these objectives and discuss the level of risk you are willing to accept through the selection of investments.

Source: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108690

It is becoming both easier and more difficult to experience the thrill of being an outsider

FOR the first time in history, across much of the world, to be foreign is a perfectly normal condition. It is no more distinctive than being tall, fat or left-handed. Nobody raises an eyebrow at a Frenchman in Berlin, a Zimbabwean in London, a Russian in Paris, a Chinese in New York.

The desire of so many people, given the chance, to live in countries other than their own makes nonsense of a long-established consensus in politics and philosophy that the human animal is best off at home. Philosophers, it is true, have rarely flourished in foreign parts: Kant spent his whole life in the city of Königsberg; Descartes went to Sweden and died of cold. But that is no justification for generalising philosophers’ conservatism to the whole of humanity.

The error of philosophy has been to assume that man, because he is a social animal, should belong to some particular society. Herder, an 18th-century Prussian philosopher, launched modern conceptions of nationalism by arguing that a man could flourish only among his own people who shared his language and culture. “Each nationality contains its centre of happiness within itself,” Herder wrote.

 scripts of TV and comics :

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That is the website where you can download any subtitle from movies or America TV.

http://www.onemanga.com/