giovedì 16 maggio 2013
ELECTRIC CAR
An electric car is an automobile that is propelled by one electric motor or more, using electrical energy stored in batteries or another energy storage device. Electric motors give electric cars instant torque, creating strong and smooth acceleration.
Electric cars were popular in the late 19th century and early 20th century, until advances in internal combustion engine technology and mass production of cheaper gasoline vehicles led to a decline in the use of electric drive vehicles. The energy crises of the 1970s and 1980s brought a short-lived interest in electric cars, though those cars did not reach mass marketing as today's electric cars experience it. Since the mid-2000s, the production of electric cars is experiencing a renaissance due to advances in battery and power management technologies and concerns about increasingly volatile oil prices and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
martedì 14 maggio 2013
HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT?
If
you want to slim down the healthy and painless way, try the following
strategies. After all, it's not what you eat but how you eat.
CHEW MORE, EAT LESS Studies show that
the longer time you spend chewing, the lesser calories you consume. Chewing for
longer prevents over-eating, by giving the brain more time to receive signals
from the stomach that it is full. It is not only great for digesting, but it
also helps in limiting your portion size. Try chewing your food 35 to 50
times per mouthful.
DON'T SKIP BREAKFAST No matter how late you are running to work, avoid missing breakfast. There is a reason why it is called the most important meal of the day. Your body (rather your brain) expects to be refueled a few times each day, so when you skip breakfast, you feel so hungry that when lunch time comes, you overeat or maybe choose foods items that are not the healthiest choices. Missing breakfast slows down your metabolism. More importantly, always eat your breakfast, within an hour of waking up, as your body has gone without food the entire night.
CONCENTRATE ON YOUR FOOD How many times has your mother reprimanded you to not talk, read or watch TV while eating food? Not without a reason. When you are multitasking during meal times, your brain isn't focussing on the amount of food that you are consuming and you are more prone to piling on pounds. This doesn't mean that you cannot enjoy a meal with your friends. You can do so, but just pay attention to what you are putting in your mouth!
DON'T OVERCOOK YOUR MEALS Overcooking food kills or reduces the number of nutrients your meal contains, and when you don't get enough nutrients, you don't feel satisfied and soon start to get junk food cravings. To combat this, try eating more raw foods like sushi and salads. Steam, bake, blanch or grill vegetables and grill or bake meat and fish. Avoid microwaving.
FRUITS BEFORE MEALS It is advisable to eat fruits at least 30 minutes before any heavy meal. This way, the fruits will digest quickly. Eating fruits on an empty stomach detoxifies your system and supplies you with a great deal of energy for losing weight.
HAVE SMALLER MEALS, MORE OFTEN Ideally, you should eat five to six times per day, with a two to three hour break between each meal or snack. Eating more frequently gets your metabolism going and keeps it working at an elevated level continuously throughout the day. But don't use this rule as an excuse to overeat.
AVOID EATING AFTER 8 PM It's good to eat your last meal before eight in the evening. This way you don't land up binging on a snack before dinner time. If you find it hard to resist, have some herbal tea or brush your teeth after dinner immediately to switch your mind off from the idea of eating.
WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR BODY WHEN YOU QUIT SMOKING?
If you quit smoking right now, here is what will begin to happen immediately:
- In 20 minutes: Your heart rate drops.
- In 12 hours: The carbon monoxide (a gas that can be toxic) in your blood drops to normal.
- In 2 weeks to 3 months: Your heart attack risk begins to drop and your lungs are working better.
- In 1 to 9 months: Your coughing and shortness of breath decrease and your lungs start to function better, lowering your risk of lung infection.
- In 1 year: Your risk for heart disease is half that of a smoker's.
- In five years: Your risk of having a stroke is the same as someone who doesn't smoke.
- In 10 years: Your risk of dying from lung cancer is half that of a smoker's. Your risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney, and pancreas also decreases.
- In 15 years: Your risk of heart disease is now the same as someone who doesn't smoke.
lunedì 13 maggio 2013
HOW MAKE MONEY WITH FOREX ?
If you want to learn how to make money forex trading you will have to have an open mind and throw away all your prejudices about trading and what it takes to be a profitable forex trader. It is a commonly known statistic that something like 90% of traders fail to make money in the markets, there are many reasons for this, but most of them boil down to having the wrong mindset when interacting with the market. It is the mindset of a trader that determines whether or not they make money forex trading and how much money they make, most traders inhibit their own success because they do not know how to make money forex trading, or they simply ignore the facts of what successful forex trading is all about.
Capitalism and the crisis facing young people
Perhaps more than any other section of society, young people around the world have been made to bear the brunt of the capitalist crisis. In the five years since the 2008 crash, youth unemployment has reached Depression-era levels, young workers’ wages have plummeted, and education opportunities have collapsed.
As with the attack on the working class as a whole, youth all over the world have been hit, including in the advanced capitalist countries.
The cause is not hard to discover: the brutal austerity measures and economic collapse imposed on the country by the European banks, in alliance with the Greek ruling class. Other countries that have received “bailouts” face a similar situation. In March of this year, youth unemployment hit 55.9 percent in Spain and 38.4 percent in Italy.Throughout Europe, youth unemployment is at epidemic levels. Last Thursday, Greece’s statistics service said that the unemployment rate in February for people aged between 15 and 24 reached a staggering 64.2 percent—affecting nearly two thirds of the entire population of youth and young workers. This is up from 54.1 percent in March 2012.
The situation is getting worse. This was made clear in a report published last week by the United Nation’s International Labour Organization (ILO), which concluded that global youth unemployment will continue to rise for at least five years. The agency says it expects the youth unemployment rate worldwide to hit 12.8 percent by 2018, up from the current rate of 12.4 percent.
The ILO report noted that “youth unemployment increased by as much as 24.9 per cent in the Developed Economies and European Union between 2008 and 2012, and the youth unemployment rate was at a decades-long high of 18.1 per cent in 2012.”
The report added that this year there are 73.4 million young people unemployed throughout the world, “an increase of 3.5 million since 2007 and 0.8 million above the level in 2011.” More than one third of jobless youth have been unemployed for at least half a year.
The portion of young people in developed countries who are neither employed nor in school has likewise grown significantly. Between 2008 and 2010, this group grew by 2.1 percentage points to 15.8 percent.
Among those young people in Europe who do have jobs, one quarter were working part-time and 40.5 percent were working under temporary contracts.
The official youth unemployment rate in the United States is 16.2 percent, considerably more than twice the official rate for the population as a whole. But like the overall unemployment rate, this does not take into account the departure of millions of people from the labor force. The labor force participation rate for those under the age of 25 is at its lowest rate in four decades, producing a real unemployment rate of 22.9 percent.
Moreover, the vast majority of jobs created since 2008 in the US have been low-wage, paying between $7.69 and $13.83 an hour, according to a study released last year by the National Employment Law Project.
The disappearance of decent-paying work has led the wages of young people working full time in the US to fall by 6 percent since 2008—more than any other section of the population.
Despair at the prospect of a lifetime in poverty—coupled with other social ills exacerbated by the economic crisis and government austerity policies—has driven a growing number of youth to suicide. One in six US high school students has seriously considered taking his or her life, and one in twelve has attempted it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since the outbreak of the economic crisis, the portion of US teens who attempted suicide has shot up, from 6.3 percent in 2008 to 7.8 percent in 2011.
Even as wages fall and jobs disappear, the prospect of a decent education is moving further and further out of reach for young people. Throughout the world, public education is being dismantled and privatized. The United States is leading this drive, with mass closures of public schools taking place throughout the country. Earlier this month, a public school district in Michigan shut down completely for lack of funds.
Tuition at colleges has soared, saddling an entire generation of college graduates with a huge debt burden. Between 2003 and 2012, the portion of all 25-year-olds in the US with student debt rose from 25 percent to 43 percent. In the same period, the average amount of student debt owed by 25-year-olds doubled from $10,649 to $20,326. Lenders, meanwhile, have become increasingly aggressive and predatory in collecting debts from students who are less and less able to pay.
Young people in the United States and the other imperialist centers, deprived of the opportunity for decent employment and a future, provide the shock troops for ever-expanding wars of aggression, sacrificing in the process their lives or limbs or their physical and mental health.
In the aftermath of the 2011 revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor under Carter and a leading figure in the US political establishment, warned about the potentially revolutionary consequences of a generation of educated young people with no future.
“Populations of young adults…are especially explosive when combined with the revolution in communication technology,” he warned in his book, Strategic Vision. “Often educated but unemployed, their resulting frustration and alienation” leaves them “susceptible to ideological agitation and revolutionary mobilization.”
INCREASING POVERTY IN USA
With retirement confidence at a 23-year low, recent reports shows that a growing number of America’s senior citizens are taking on increasing amounts of debt and plunging into poverty. Many elderly Americans are being forced out of retirement or are working well into their retirement years to cover their debts, living expenses, and health care needs.
The $275 billion in new cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in the US Senate’s 2014 budget proposal would spell further hardship for the elderly. Millions of retired Americans rely on these social programs, in addition to Social Security, to cover a significant share of their increasingly expensive health care costs.The growth of debt amongst the elderly is largely accounted for by the entrenched economic crisis precipitated by collapse of the housing market in 2008, along with the rapidly increasing cost of health care. Growing debt and increasing health care costs are exhausting many individuals’ retirement funds, plunging an increasing number of retired workers into poverty.
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s (EBRI) “Time Trends in Poverty for Older Americans” report for 2001-2009, the poverty rate for workers ages 65 to 74 rose from 7.5 percent in 2005 to 9.4 percent in 2009. As elderly retirees age, their economic conditions only worsen. The poverty rate for retirees ages 75 to 84 rose from 7.6 percent in 2005 to 10.7 percent in 2009. The oldest Americans, those over 84, were the worst off, with 14.6 percent living in poverty in 2009.
The most significant factor for rising poverty rates amongst senior citizens is increasing costs of health care. A 2012 report by Fidelity estimated that a 65-year-old couple retiring in that year required $240,000 to cover medical expense through retirement. This is a 50 percent increase from its estimate of $160,000 in 2002. Despite the promises of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the cost of health care is expected to continue its upward trend over the coming years.
The need for health care is greatest amongst the most vulnerable segment of elderly Americans, as they suffer the most from health issues. According to the EBRI report, 70 percent of retirees living below the poverty line suffer from acute health conditions, including cancer, lung disease, heart problems, or stroke.
Nearly all retirees living below the poverty line, 96 percent, suffer from some sort of health condition, including high blood pressure, diabetes, psychological problems, or arthritis. Among those living above the poverty line, 61.7 percent suffer from the same health conditions.
Also contributing to the steadily growing number of senior citizens living in poverty is the decline in the number of workers saving for retirement. The percentage of Americans who report saving for retirement in 2013 stands at 68 percent, down from 75 percent in 2011. The decline in retirement savings is most significant among households with an income less than $35,000. Among low-income workers, the percentage of those reporting having saved for retirement has dropped dramatically, from 49 percent in 2009 to 24 percent in 2013. (See “US retirement confidence at 23-year low”)
A 2012 report by The Schwartz Center for Economic Policy found that in 2011, 75 percent of workers between the ages of 50 and 64 had less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts. A report by the Wall Street Journal in 2011 found that the typical American household nearing retirement with a 401(k) savings account had less than one quarter of what was required to maintain their current standard of living.
The increasing amount of debt held by older Americans has made saving for a comfortable retirement increasingly difficult. Recently released data from the US Census Bureau reveals that the median amount of debt held by households headed by someone 65 or older rose nearly 120 percent between 2000 and 2011, from $12,000 to $26,000. A significant portion of this increase is accounted for by rising mortgage debt since the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008.
Since the collapse of the housing bubble, many retirement-age workers have found themselves stuck with underwater mortgages in drastically devalued homes. Those 65 and older saw their typical secured debt in mortgages rise from $25,000 to $50,000. Since 2000, Americans over 65 have grown more likely to hold a mortgage or any other kind of debt, while those under 55 have grown less likely to hold mortgage debt.
Americans who are on the verge of retirement are also taking on increasing amounts of debt, particularly in the form of home mortgages. In 2010, 39 percent of households with heads aged 60 to 64 held a primary mortgage and 20 percent held a secondary mortgage. This was up significantly from 22 percent and 12 percent respectively in 1994.
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