Associated Press has got the news on a recent report which claims that Beijing’s air worse than at past Olympics:

Beijing’s notoriously dirty air was cleaner during last summer’s Olympic games, but pollution levels were still much worse than at recent Olympics, despite a massive Chinese cleanup campaign, a new report said.

Athletes in Beijing faced pollution levels that were up to 3.5 times higher than those in recent Olympic cities like Athens, Atlanta and Sydney, said the study published Friday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The pollution often exceeded what the World Health Organization considers safe.

The joint American-Chinese study – the first major one published on air pollution during the Olympics – also found that the weather, and not the Chinese government’s strict controls imposed in the run-up to the games, played the largest role in clearing the air.

Just ten days later, Xinhua News just boasted about how Beijing records best air quality in nine years:

Beijing saw 146 “blue sky days” during the first half of the year, which means the city’s residents breathed in the least amount of pollutant in nine years, an environment official said Tuesday.

The blue sky days so far this year was 23 days more than the corresponding period last year and 47 days than the average level in recent years, said Du Shaozhong, deputy chief of Beijing municipal environmental protection bureau.

Go figure!

Read Also:

• China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: Coca-Cola most recognized Olympic Games sponsor
• Bibles to be available free during Beijing Games
• Living in China: Shanghai’s noise pollution worsens as air, water quality improves
• China Restricting Visas to Foreigners, hurts Tourism
• Living in China: Shanghai heads list of expats’ favorite cities

Tags:

The research, released by the Center for Women’s Law and Legal Services of Peking University, polled 3,000 women over a year and came up with the result after data analysis and in-person interviews, the China Youth Daily reported yesterday.

According to the report, one in 25 of those surveyed were forced to sign labor contracts containing clauses forbidding them to get married or pregnant in a set period of time.

More than 20 percent said employers cut the salaries of women who become pregnant or gave birth, and 11.2 percent lost jobs for having a baby.

Some 28 percent said employers set different criteria in recruitment and women had to perform much better than their male peers in interviews to get the same job.

More than one-third believed male employees had more chances of promotion, and 52.1 percent attributed it to women having to spend more time taking care of their families. The research also found one in 20 women experienced workplace sexual harassment.

“The society needs to foster the idea of gender equality in employment,” said Guo Jianmei, director of the center. “But legislation is the most effective way to wipe out discrimination.”

Read Also:

• Internet in China: Students look to the Web for sex education
• Living in China: Shanghai’s Cancer Casualties
• Education in China: Gap between rural and urban education levels huge
• Living in China: Hong Kong employees work 48.8 hours per week
• Living in China: 100 Million People with Mental Illness

Tags:

Jason Beres is Director of Product Management at Infragistics, the world leader in user interface development tools, empowers developers to build and style immersive user experiences and rich data visualization in line of business applications across all .NET platforms — Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), ASP.NET and Silverlight — as well as JavaServer™ Faces (JSF). This video is recorded at the Dutch DevDays in Den Haag The Netherlands in June 2009. DevDays is the largest industry event for developers in the Netherlands. Thousands of professional developers visit DevDays yearly to keep in touch with the latest developments in their field.

Read Also:

• “User Interface Design in an Agile Environment”: Jeff White and Josh Unger’s talk at IxDA | Interaction ‘08 Conference
• John Thackara’s “Designing for Business as Unusual” keynote at IxDA | Interaction ‘09 conference
• Alvin Woon’s “The future of social app interface design” talk at the Future of Web Apps
• Watch Free Flow’s “3D Computer Interface” demo
• Watch JoAnn Kuchera-Morin’s “AlloSphere: a stunning new way to see scientific data” demo at TED

Tags:

According to Li Yizhong, Minister for China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, since the start of this century China’s software industry has witnessed an annual average growth rate as high as 38 percent.

The revenue of China’s top 100 software producers rose 84.4 percent to about 203.95 billion yuan (29.86 billion U.S. dollars): among the 100 companies, 32 each posted revenue above 1 billion yuan. The top three were Huawei, ZTE and Digital China. Huawei was first for the eighth year in a row, with revenue of 55.56 billion yuan (over 8.2 billion US dollars).

Li noted that the software industry is of strategic importance, and China will adopt five measures to promote further development of the software industry.

First, the government should formulate the guidelines on accelerating the development of the software service industry, and support enterprises in major industries such as steel, automobile, textile and petrochemistry to spin off their advantageous divisions of software and information technology service to establish professional software service enterprises. The government should also strengthen intellectual property rights protection and regulate the software service industry market.

Second, it should implement adjustment and revitalization plans for major industries such as the electronic information industry, and vigorously develop and promote industrial software and industry application solutions.

Third, it should foster the growth points of the software industry, expand network-based software service, nurture emerging types of Internet-based software service such as e-commerce, e-finance and e-education, and drive the development of sectors such as cartoon, animation and gaming.

Fourth, it should implement pilot demonstration projects for the innovation of information technology service, and carry out plans to boost application of domestically-made software.

Fifth, it should accelerate personnel training, advance international cooperation on human resources and mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and expand the introduction of internationalized human resources.

Read Also:

• China’s Software Industry Revenue Rises 31.2%
• China software industry reports 20% rise in revenue
• China’s Software Service Industry Achieved US$50 Billion Revenue in the first half of 2008
• China’s software export hit $14.2 bln in 2008
• China’s software industry scale ranks 4th in world

Tags:

Bill Gates is founder and former CEO of Microsoft. A geek icon, tech visionary and business trailblazer, Gates’ leadership — fueled by his long-held dream that millions might realize their potential through great software — made Microsoft a personal computing powerhouse and a trendsetter in the Internet dawn. Whether you’re a suit, chef, quant, artist, media maven, nurse or gamer, you’ve probably used a Microsoft product today.

In summer of 2008, Gates left his day-to-day role with Microsoft to focus on philanthropy. Holding that all lives have equal value (no matter where they’re being lived), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has now donated staggering sums to HIV/AIDS programs, libraries, agriculture research and disaster relief — and offered vital guidance and creative funding to programs in global health and education. Gates believes his tech-centric strategy for giving will prove the killer app of planet Earth’s next big upgrade.

Read Also:

• Living in China: Shanghai’s AIDS cases increase fivefold since 2005
• “The Design Eco-System”: Bill Buxton’s Keynote at IxDA | Interaction ‘08 Conference
• Living in China: Young need psychological help
• Hans Rosling’s “New insights on poverty and life around the world” talk at TED
• Billy Graham’s “Technology, faith and human shortcomings” talk at TED

Tags:

Read Also:

• Twitter Daily Updates for 2009-04-27
• Twitter Updates for 2009-03-14
• Twitter Updates for 2009-04-05
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-31
• Twitter Daily Updates for 2009-04-06

Tags:

Since its inception as a mailing list in 2003, IxDA now supports over 10,000 discussion list subscribers, 80 IxDA Local Groups from around the world, an annual conference (with a regional conference on the way in South America), several budding community initiatives and over 12,000 people affiliated via LinkedIn. Despite our ambitions, our current technology infrastructure is no longer able to support our needs, nor expand to meet our future ones.

You have the opportunity to expand IxDA’s capability to provide the next-generation website that will take us beyond the mailing list of today. We aim to develop a solid, extensible platform for our community of practice to meet and enrich one another and grow the discipline. IxDA has chosen Drupal as the technology framework for our new infrastructure. The Drupal framework will allow the IxDA community to grow and thrive with improved digital communications capabilities, easy sharing and searching of all types of content, local group sites, and member profiles. However, we can’t build the new website ourselves. This is where your financial support is crucial.

Without the generous contributions, participation and support of the interaction design community, IxDA wouldn’t be where it is today. IxDA is a member-supported organization, not a membership-supported organization, so we collect no dues. You are a member if you say you are. It’s that simple. Beyond the generous contribution of volunteer time, financially this means we rely heavily on revenue-generating events like our annual conference and on fundraising efforts such as this, which we haven’t held since 2007.

Our goal is to collect $30,000 over the next four days, until June 26th. Ambitious, I know, but not impossible. Consider this: If 10,000 subscribers contributed $3, a fancy cup of coffee in some parts, we’d be done. Or 1,000 contributed $30, often less than a good book these days. If you gain anything from IxDA, won’t you please give a little back? No amount is too big or small. As a thank you to all that contribute, we will hold a drawing each day and select one name to receive a complimentary registration to interaction’10, being held in Savannah, GA next February! (Note:  Each day starts at 12:01 am GMT. No IxDA Board Members are eligible for the drawing. All registrations are transferable but not eligible for cash exchange.)

Can’t see the flash widget?
Donate directly via Pay-Pal

Read Also:

• Watch Manuel Lima’s “Visual Complexity and Mapping Complex Networks” talk at IxDA | Interaction ‘09 conference
• “Design for Flow”: Dave Cronin’s talk at IxDA | Interaction ‘08 Conference
• Dan Saffer’s “Attention Awareness” Keynote at IxDA | Interaction ‘09 Conference
• John Thackara’s “Designing for Business as Unusual” keynote at IxDA | Interaction ‘09 conference
• “Help Me! A New Approach to Support Interactions”: Doug Bolin’s talk at IxDA | Interaction ‘08 Conference

Tags:

Minister of Education Zhou Ji had predicted that the overall number of applicants would exceed 10 million – last year’s total was 10.5 million – but figures from local governments suggest the number of students taking part may be far fewer.

In Shandong, a provincial economic powerhouse, education officials said they received 100,000 fewer applicants this year than they did in 2008 – a drop of more than 10 percent.

The country’s most populous province, Henan, will see 29,000 fewer people sit the college entrance exam.

And similar falls were reported in Shanghai municipality and Hebei, Beijing’s neighboring province.

In Shanghai, more than 73,800 of the city’s high school graduates sat in the three-day exam. That’s more than 20 percent fewer than last year’s candidates. The drop is mainly the result of a low birth rate in 1990 and 1991, said local education authorities.

Some said the global economic crisis is believed to be the reason for the decline.

The exam, which was reinstalled in 1977 after it had been scrapped during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76) was initially hailed as a success and one of the first acts of the reform and opening up of China.

In 1977, some 5.7 million people competed for 220,000 college places.

But the college entrance exam has come in for criticism in recent years for relying solely on written tests, with no evaluation of students’ overall ability.

The exam has long been considered a life-changing opportunity for high school students seeking a better education and, in turn, a better job. But the economic crisis has had an impact. “Since the financial crisis last year, the grim employment situation has broken the ‘employment myth’ for those with a college degree. Some students changed their minds about getting a good job through higher education. They simply quit (from taking the exam),” said an anonymous recruitment officer with the Beijing Institute of Technology.

Until the mid-1990s, the government assigned jobs to university graduates. Although that sometimes meant assigning archeology majors to banks or computer geniuses to zoos, said Li Dajun, a retired worker from a State-owned firm in Beijing.

“That’s why the college entrance exam was that great opportunity to change our lives. Who could’ve known it’d be this hard for college kids today to find a job now?” said Li, whose son will graduate from college next month.

Read Also:

• Education in China: crack down on cheating during college entrance exam
• Education in China: Experts want college curriculum shake-up
• Living in China: Young need psychological help
• Education in China: Gap between rural and urban education levels huge
• Living in China: students begin tuition free school

Tags:

• Clash grouping and detection – Autodesk Navisworks combines precise faultfinding with hard, soft, clearance, and time-based clash management. Engineers can more quickly review and cross-check geometry created by most 3D authoring software; maintain a complete record of all clashes found throughout a project; check time and space coordination; and resolve site and workflow issues at the planning stage.
• Multi-format support - Compatible with most major 3D design and laser scan formats, Autodesk Navisworks can combine 3D data from multiple formats, regardless of file size, into a comprehensive, dynamic information model, which can be shared with all stakeholders. Autodesk is committed to providing multi-format support and will work to provide compatibility with new file formats as they emerge.
• Collaboration – Autodesk Navisworks enables design teams across engineering disciplines to view, annotate, expand, revise, and analyze one comprehensive information model for informed, timely decision-making. All project review files saved in Navisworks format are compressed, more secure, and streamable, and can be easily viewed with the free Navisworks viewer.

Read Also:

• The “Autodesk Story” is now online
• Autodesk Announces Availability of New FDO Providers: Geospatial Open Source Community to Drive Faster Innovation
• Autodesk Announces New Design Software Solutions for Education Market
• Look Into the Future with Autodesk Labs: Multi touch wall
• Autodesk Adds Significant New Benefits to Assistance Program

Tags:

In her book Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, Nancy Etcoff refutes the social origins of beauty, in favor of far more prosaic and evolutionary explanations. Looking for a partner with clear skin? You’re actually checking for parasites. And let’s just say there’s a reason high heels are always in fashion.

Her recent research into the question of happiness exposes results that not only are surprising but reinforce things we should’ve known all along: like the fact that having flowers in the house really does make us happier. As the instructor of “The Science of Happiness” at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Program in Aesthetics and Well Being at Massachusetts General Hospital, Nancy Etcoff is uniquely qualified to solve the mysteries of contentment.

Read Also:

• Don Norman’s “The three ways that good design makes you happy” talk at TED
• Watch Dan Ariely’s “Are we in control of our own decisions?” talk at TED
• Watch Seth Godin’s “Why Tribes, not money or factories, will Change the World” talk at TED
• Frank Gehry’s “Nice building. Then what?” talk at TED
• Steven Pinker’s “A brief history of violence” talk at TED

Tags: