【每日阅读训练第三期——速度越障1系列】【1-3】经管

泾渭不凡

速度
A Diet Rich in Fish May Help the Aging Brain
In a Study, People With Low Levels of Omega-3s Had Smaller Brains and Scored Lower on Memory Tests.

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Eating fish and other foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids could help people maintain healthy brains as they age, as well as protect their hearts, new research suggests.
In a study to be released Tuesday, participants with low levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had slightly smaller brains and scored lower on memory and cognitive tests than people with higher blood levels of omega-3s.
Some, but not all, research suggests intake of fatty fish like salmon can lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
The changes in the brain were equivalent to about two years of normal brain aging, says the study's lead author, Dr. Zaldy Tan, a visiting associate professor in the geriatrics department of the University of California, Los Angeles, and a member of the UCLA Easton Center for Alzheimer's Disease Research. Brains normally shrink as people age.
The study involved 1,575 people with an average age of 67 who didn't have dementia, a condition typically marked by memory loss. The study was part of the larger, federally funded Framingham Heart Study, which is looking at what contributes to cardiovascular disease. The study will appear in the journal Neurology.
Several studies have shown diets that include fish, such as the Mediterranean diet, lower people's risks of developing heart problems or having a stroke. And some studies, including one of the first set of participants in the ongoing Framingham study, which started in 1948, suggested intake of fatty fish like salmon and tuna can lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other causes of dementia.
But not all studies have found such an association for Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers. One reason for the inconsistent results might have been because most diet-related studies rely on food-frequency questionnaires to determine dietary intake, which might not reflect what's really been consumed over a certain time period.
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The study led by Dr. Tan used a measure that looked at the level of omega-3 fatty acids in red blood cells over three months. The study participants underwent a magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scan of the brain and researchers measured total brain volume.
The researchers then looked at and ranked the level of omega-3 fatty acids in the participants' blood. People who scored in the bottom 25% in omega-3 fatty acid levels were compared with the rest of the study participants. Researchers found that those who had the lowest level of omega-3 fatty acid levels in their blood had lower brain volume compared with those with higher levels.
Dr. Tan said people with low omega-3 blood levels also didn't do as well on neuropsychological tests designed to test memory, abstract reasoning and function.
However, it wasn't clear from the study how much fish or other omega-3-rich fare people consumed to reach a certain omega-3 level. Dr. Tan said that there isn't a universally accepted target for the level of omega-3 in the blood and the test used in the study isn't commercially available.
The most recent U.S. dietary guidelines—released last year—recommend at least two servings of seafood a week. Some doctors and diet experts recommend that patients consume fish three times a week or take fish-oil supplements so they get enough omega-3 fatty acids to obtain health benefits.
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Who Are You Calling a Mama's Boy?
A strong mother-son bond is crucial, but heaven help the mom who admits being emotionally close to her son
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My daughter Jeanie and I use Google chat throughout the day to discuss work, what we had for lunch, how we're avoiding the gym, and emotional issues big and small. We may also catch up by phone in the evening. I can open up to Jeanie about certain things that I wouldn't share with another soul, and I believe she would say the same about me. We are very close, which you probably won't find particularly surprising or alarming.
Many mothers are anxious when it comes to raising boys. If her teenage son is crying, should she comfort him, or will this embarrass and shame him?
·What's So Bad About Being a Mama's Boy?
Now switch genders. Suppose I told you that I am very close to my son, Paul. That I love hanging out with him and that we have dozens of inside jokes and shared traditions. Even though we speak frequently, I get a little thrill each time I hear his signature ringtone on my cellphone. Next, I confess that Paul is so sensitive and intuitive that he "gets me" in a very special way.
Are you starting to speculate that something is a little off? Are you getting uncomfortable about the kind of guy my son is growing up to be?
For generations mothers have gotten one message: that keeping their sons close is wrong, possibly even dangerous. A mother who fosters a deep emotional bond with her son, we've been told, is setting him up to be weak and effeminate—an archetypal mama's boy. He'll never be independent or able to form healthy adult relationships. As the therapist and child-rearing guru Michael Gurian wrote in his 1994 book about mothers and sons, "a mother's job…is very much to hold back the coming of manhood." A well-adjusted, loving mother is one who gradually but surely pushes her son away, both emotionally and physically, in order to allow him to become a healthy man.
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This was standard operating procedure for our mothers, our grandmothers and even our great-grandmothers. Amazingly, we're still encouraged to buy this parenting advice today.
Somehow, when so many of our other beliefs about the roles of men and women have been revolutionized, our view of the mother-son relationship has remained frozen in time. We've dramatically changed the way we raise our daughters, encouraging them to be assertive, play competitive sports and aim high in their educational and professional ambitions. We don't fret about "masculinizing" our girls.
As for daughters and their fathers, while a "mama's boy" may be a reviled creature, people tend to look tolerantly on a "daddy's girl." A loving and supportive father is considered essential to a girl's self-esteem. Fathers are encouraged to be involved in their daughters' lives, whether it's coaching their soccer teams or escorting their teenage girls to father-daughter dances. A father who flouts gender stereotypes and teaches his daughter a traditionally masculine task—say, rebuilding a car engine—is considered to be pretty cool. But a mother who does something comparable—like teaching her son to knit or even encouraging him to talk more openly about his feelings—is looked at with contempt. What is she trying to do to that boy?
Many mothers are confused and anxious when it comes to raising boys. Should they defer to their husband when he insists that she stop kissing their first-grade son at school drop-off? If she cuddles her 10-year-old boy when he is hurt, will she turn him into a wimp? If she keeps him too close, will she make him gay? If her teenage boy is crying in his room, should she go in and comfort him, or will this embarrass and shame him? Anthony E. Wolf, a child psychologist and best-selling author, warns us that "strong emotional contact with his mother is especially upsetting to any teenage boy."
None of these fears, however, is based on any actual science. In fact, research shows that boys suffer when they separate prematurely from their mothers and benefit from closeness in myriad ways throughout their lives.
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A study published in Child Development involving almost 6,000 children, age 12 and younger, found that boys who were insecurely attached to their mothers acted more aggressive and hostile later in childhood—kicking and hitting others, yelling, disobeying adults and being generally destructive.
A study of more than 400 middle school boys revealed that sons who were close to their mothers were less likely to define masculinity as being physically tough, stoic and self-reliant. They not only remained more emotionally open, forming stronger friendships, but they also were less depressed and anxious than their more macho classmates. And they were getting better grades.
There is evidence that a strong mother-son bond prevents delinquency in adolescence. And though it has been long established that teenagers who have good communication with their parents are more likely to resist negative peer pressure, new research shows that it is a boy's mother who is the most influential when it comes to risky behavior, not only with alcohol and drugs but also in preventing both early and unprotected sex.
Finally, there are no reputable scientific studies suggesting that a boy's sexual orientation can be altered by his mother, no matter how much she loves him.
With all of the concern—some even call it a "crisis"—about boys falling behind girls academically, getting lower grades, exhibiting more behavior problems and going to college in falling numbers, you would think that this research about the benefits of mother-son closeness would warrant some consideration. If staying close to mothers helps boys to perform better in school, act less aggressively and avoid behaviors that will derail their lives, why is it still so discouraged?
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自由阅读
Boys need and want a close connection with their mothers. But the pressure for mothers and sons to disengage begins at a shockingly tender age (one mother I know who was comforting her weeping 3-year-old was told that he should "man up"), and the pressure escalates at every stage, until a mom actually begins to believe that the best kind of parenting that she can offer is to leave her depressed, silent teenage son alone to work out his own problems. Heaven forbid that she threatens his masculinity by giving him a hug and trying to get him to talk about what's bothering him!
I am not the only mother who has rejected this kind of thinking. A great many mothers keep their sons close; it is our little secret. And for the record, Paul, a young man now, is more than six feet tall, plays ice hockey, has lots of male friends and had a steady girlfriend in college. He's self-assured and independent. The fact that I feel the need to reassure you—and myself—that our deep emotional bond has not compromised my son's masculinity is telling. But, yes, we have a tight connection and my son is still OK, even "a guy's guy."
I'm tired of making excuses for our closeness, and I'm not alone.
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泾渭不凡

越障

Arab spring cleaning

Why trade reform matters in the Middle East

Feb 25th 2012 | from the print edition

A YEAR after the start of the Arab spring, no government in the Middle East has attempted serious economic reform even though it is obvious both that economies are distorted and that discontent over living standards has played a big part in the uprisings. The main reaction by governments has been to buy off further protests by increasing public spending. Saudi Arabia boosted government spending by over 50% between 2008 and 2011.

Although higher oil prices have been enough to finance these rises, much of the extra spending has gone into public-sector wages and consumer subsidies. Food and fuel subsidies are often huge: over 10% of GDP in Egypt. In the region as a whole, fuel subsidies rose from 2.3% of GDP in 2009 to 3.2% in 2011.

These subsidies benefit the rich, keep loss-making firms alive and damage the economy. According to the IMF, the richest fifth of Jordanians capture 40% of fuel-subsidy gains; the poorest fifth get 7%. More important, subsidies exacerbate the region’s most important economic problem, which, argue Adeel Malik of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and Bassem Awadallah*, a former Jordanian finance minister, is “that it has been unable to develop a private sector that is independent, competitive and integrated with global markets”. By distorting domestic prices, subsidising energy-guzzling firms and increasing public-sector wages relative to private-sector ones, the past year’s actions have made it even harder to develop a flourishing private sector.

It was hard enough before. The Middle East has strikingly few private companies, less than one-third of the number per person in eastern Europe. Everywhere the state dominates the economy. In Egypt the public sector accounts for 40% of value-added outside agriculture—an unusually large share for a middle-income country. Such private firms as do exist tend to be large and closely connected to the state. The average Middle Eastern company is ten years older than in East Asia or eastern Europe because new entrants are kept out by pervasive red tape. The authors reckon it costs roughly 20 times the average annual income to start a firm in Syria and Yemen (assuming anyone would want to), just over twice the average globally. In a few Arab countries, like Tunisia, some notorious personifications of crony capitalism have fallen foul of political change but the practice has by no means ended.

The weakness of the private sector is typically seen as a domestic problem with domestic solutions, notably privatisation and deregulation. Earlier attempts to strengthen private businesses by pursuing those policies were in practice half-hearted or skewed towards well-connected insiders, tainting the whole process of reform. The risk of the same outcome is a big reason why, in the aftermath of the Arab spring, risk-averse governments have shied away from further efforts to privatise or cut red tape. But, argue Messrs Malik and Awadallah, there is also a regional aspect to the private sector’s weakness—the failure to develop regional markets. Here, reform may be politically easier.

Arab companies are globally uncompetitive. The Middle East accounts for less than 1% of world non-fuel exports, compared with 4% from Latin America (a region with a comparable population). Turkey exports five times as much as Egypt, which has a population of similar size. Despite its favourable geographical location the Middle East is rarely part of global supply chains. And of its modest global exports, inter-Arab trade accounts for less than a tenth, barely more than in 1960.

The usual explanation for the failure to trade is the region’s resource curse. Because it is so easy to export crude oil, Arab countries have failed to develop significant merchandise exports. And because so many export the same thing—oil—they naturally do not trade with each other. Even if that were the whole story, the region would still need to develop competitive manufacturing or services to cope with demographic change. Oil cannot generate the tens of millions of new jobs that predominantly young Arab countries will need. But it is not the whole story. Arab countries could trade with each other more than they do, and part of the reason that they do not is self-inflicted.

Obstacles to regional trade are legion. Costly “trade logistics”—non-tariff barriers, red tape and poor infrastructure—add 15% to the value of Egyptian clothes and 10% to the total value of all goods shipped in the region. It costs companies an average of 95 man-days a year just to deal with trade bureaucracies. It takes longer and is more expensive to ship goods between two Middle Eastern ports than to send them from the Middle East to America. Such market fragmentation, the authors argue, is the consequence of the region’s centralised, state-led economic policies.

Just start somewhere

More trade would have familiar benefits: larger markets should enable firms to reap greater economies of scale, increase returns to investment and adopt more new technology. Just as important in the Middle Eastern context, more open trade would begin the process of dismantling over-centralised states and create a constituency for further economic change.

Of course, trade liberalisation is no substitute for privatisation, financial reform and other domestic measures. But it has a political advantage over those reforms. Because the steps required are relatively small ones (reductions in red tape, for instance) they should provoke less resistance from insiders; and because regional trade can be presented as a pan-Arab goal, it does not have the same taint of “Westernisation” that discredited earlier reform efforts. Regional trade would be only a start. But the main thing is to start somewhere.

* “The economics of the Arab Spring”, OxCarre Research Paper 79, Department of Economics, Oxford University, December 2011.

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babybearmm

抢个sf~饭饭mm辛苦啦，别熬夜哦

Suri在奋斗

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xinnono

饭饭这是几点发贴啊~ 这么早~ 要注意休息啊~

long112358

新人一枚，请多关照

铁板神猴

我out了 这帖这么早发……害我没占到有利地形~！
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shelvey

今天不是周三吗。。。。怎么今天晚上的帖子做完就发了~~~欠了两天越障了，赶作业啊！！

喜欢今天的速度文章，尤其是母子关系的那篇，之前几乎都没看过关于这方面的内容啊~~
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越障：one year ago, in arab country ther e is no government reforms
There are severral problems in the arab country, and the main problem is that arab has no private sector.
Why? because :
1.it is  hard before.
2.it is a domestic problem that there is no sufficient market regulations to support private sectors.
3.the industy in irab is globally uncompetitive
4.The Arab area are full of crude oil, so before the world crisis Arab country have no need to develop other industy
5. the obstacles among the rigion
The solution: develop world trade and industry

babybearmm

速度：
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越障 4'55''

Economy in the Middle East

Now as the price of crude oil is rising, the economic problem in the Middle East seems alleviated. However, only the wages of the state-owned sectors and subsidies benefit from the hike of crude oil market.  This unequal distribution of wealth (mainly in the form of subsidies) serves to aggravate the problem: more subsidies were sent to the rich, leaving the poor economically unsatisfied. This situation broadens the gap between the rich and poor, fosters bureaucracy and corruption.

state-owned sectors have a lot of problems: not running efficiently, bureaucratic....

On the other hand, the private sectors are under developed and poorly performed in Middle East (compared to other regions - e.g. Europe)

Two Reasons for the poor private sectors:
1. domestic: governments do not have good strategies/policies, low/no incentives for private sectors. It's difficult for private companies to grow under the shades of well-supported state-owned firms.
2. regional. This is the main objective that the author argues for in this article.

What the Middle East should do?

They should foster a regional market:  to lower the tariff, foster trading and business cooperation, develop new exports other than oils....

CHRISTINE2010

（1）速度：
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（2）越障：
时间：962/6’05-----158/min