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The pound is tumbling on fears of a no-deal Brexit

Every time it seems more likely that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, sterling falls against the dollar. Boris Johnson, who became prime minister on July 24th, has talked up his willingness to countenance a no-deal exit at the end of October. Since he moved into Downing Street, sterling has lost about 2% of its value on a trade-weighted basis. It is now at a two-year low against the dollar. Expect further declines as exit day approaches.

In truth, the twists and turns of the Brexit saga are not the only reason for sterling’s downward slide over the past few months. In April and May traders began to panic about the effect of a trade war between America and China on global economic growth. That prompted “derisking”—moving money out of countries that are highly reliant on inflows of foreign capital. Britain, which runs a large current-account deficit, saw its currency depreciate. So did Australia and New Zealand, both of which also have large current-account deficits.

In June worries about the trade war eased—only to be replaced by a fresh concern, the health of Britain’s economy. That month the statistics office alarmed analysts by revealing that GDP had fallen in April by 0.4%. Other survey data suggest that Britain registered no economic growth in the second quarter of the year. Together with a series of data releases showing that measures of domestically generated inflation are soft, that makes it less likely that the Bank of England will raise interest rates.

The apparently growing risk of no-deal, however, is driving the most recent bout of depreciation. The strength of this link can be measured statistically. On March 23rd a market opened on Betfair Exchange, a betting website, on whether Britain will leave without an agreement. Punters have so far bet £1m ($1.22m). Since the start of April (when the original Brexit deadline expired), a ten-percentage-point rise in the probability of no-deal on Betfair has been associated with the pound losing $0.03.

This correlation is robust enough to allow for educated guesses about where the pound might land if Britain does end up crashing out. If the same relationship were to hold, the most likely exchange rate against the dollar in the event of a no-deal is $1.06—which would be the lowest value ever recorded.

Yet even that estimate might be too optimistic. In the past fortnight, the correlation has changed: sterling has tumbled even faster as the probability of no-deal has risen on Betfair. That might be because Mr Johnson, who is refusing to meet European leaders unless they agree to scrap the Irish backstop, is risking a particularly acrimonious version of Brexit. If sterling were to keep following this steeper downward trajectory, then the most likely exchange rate in the event of no-deal would be $1.00.

Follow the link below to read the article in full

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/07/30/the-pound-is-tumbling-on-fears-of-a-no-deal-brexit

Babies show empathy as early as 6 months old – Research

Ben-Gurion University (BGU) on Monday said Israeli research proves that babies start to show empathy as early as six months old.

In a study conducted by BGU and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), the joint team looked at empathic preferences in babies of about six months old to understand which situations it is expressed in, and which not.

The researchers first showed the babies two videos in which a square-shaped figure with eyes goes up a mountain and meets a round figure halfway up.

In one of the videos, the character was friendly and pleasant, and the two characters together returned to the bottom of the mountain and express a positive-neutral feeling.

In the second video, however, the round figure behaves like a bully and hits the square figure until it descends to the bottom of the mountain.

Then the square figure expresses distress through crying and squatting.

Next, the team let the babies choose between the two square figures in different colours.

More than 80 per cent of the babies chose the figure in distress and expressed an empathic preference for it.

Then, the babies were shown videos with the same characters, and only this time the babies did not see what led to the emotional expression of the characters.

In this case, the babies showed no preference for either character.

The findings, according to the researchers, mean that during the first year of life babies are already sensitive to the distress of others, and even make complex judgments about the context in which the distress is expressed.

(NAN)

Only six countries have equal rights for men and women, World Bank finds

The world is moving towards legal gender equality -- but it's moving very, very slowly.

Only six countries currently give women and men equal rights, a major report from the World Bank has found.

That's an increase -- from zero -- compared to a decade ago, when the organization started measuring countries by how effectively they guarantee legal and economic equality between the genders.
But the rate of progress means that, by CNN calculations, women won't achieve full equality in the areas studied by the World Bank until 2073.

Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden scored full marks of 100 in the bank's "Women, Business and the Law 2019" report.

Of those nations, France saw the biggest improvement over the past decade for implementing a domestic violence law, providing criminal penalties for workplace sexual harassment and introducing paid parental leave.

But countries in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa averaged a score of 47.37, meaning the typical nation in those regions gives women under half the legal rights of men in the areas measured by the group.

The study aimed to "develop a better understanding of how women's employment and entrepreneurship are affected by legal discrimination," highlighting "how women must navigate discriminatory laws and regulations at every point in their careers, limiting their equality of opportunity." It did not measure social and cultural factors, or how effectively laws were enforced.

The criteria analyzed were: going places, starting a job, getting paid, getting married, having children, running a business, managing assets and getting a pension. Those were broken down into questions such as: "Can a woman travel outside her home in the same way as a man?" and "Is there legislation specifically address domestic violence?"

Overall, the global average came in at 74.71 -- an increase of more than four and a half points compared to a decade ago. But the score indicates that in the average nation, women receive just three-quarters of the legal rights that men do.

The United States scored 83.75, placing it outside the global top 50. The United Kingdom achieved a score of 97.5, Germany measured at 91.88, and Australia scored 96.88.

"If women have equal opportunities to reach their full potential, the world would not only be fairer, it would be more prosperous as well," World Bank Group Interim President Kristalina Georgieva said.

"Change is happening, but not fast enough, and 2.7 billion women are still legally barred from having the same choice of jobs as men."

The study is the latest to stress the economic benefits of guaranteeing legal gender equality.
According to a separate report from the McKinsey Global Institute, released in 2015, closing the gender gap in the workforce could add $28 trillion to the global GDP -- nearly the size of the US and Chinese economies combined.

Laws still holding women back

The US performed especially poorly in the "having children" category, scoring just 20. The criteria analyzed laws around maternity, paternity and parental leave.
"Policymakers interested in keeping women from dropping out of the labor force after they have children can look at their economy's scores in this indicator as a starting point for reform," the report said.
Saudi Arabia's overall score of 25.63 was the worst in the world, while Sudan, the UAE, Syria, Qatar and Iran all scored below 35.

But the report highlighted more positive trends in South Asia, East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the three most-improved regions compared to 10 years ago.

The country that improved the most was the Democratic Republic of Congo, which had a score of 42.50 10 years ago but measured 70 in 2017, the final date for the analysis

.
"This improvement was based, in part, on reforms allowing married women to register businesses, open bank accounts, sign contracts, get jobs and choose where to live in the same way as men," the report said. A legal requirement that wives obey their husbands was also removed in the country.

The report also found that "most top reformers introduced sexual harassment laws or mandated nondiscrimination in access to credit," and that "one-third of the top reforming economies removed job restrictions on night work or on certain job types."

"Gender equality is a critical component of economic growth," Georgieva wrote in the report.

"Women are half of the world's population and we have our role to play in creating a more prosperous world. But we won't succeed in playing it if the laws are holding us back."

"Many laws and regulations continue to prevent women from entering the workforce or starting a business; discrimination that can have lasting effects on women's economic inclusion and labor force participation," she wrote.

"By making the economic case, we encourage governments to guarantee the full and equal participation of women."

(CNN)

There have been four global recessions since 1980, and the next could come at any moment

Just South of Indiana’s border with Michigan lies the city of Elkhart, with a population of just over 50,000. Apart from a small, shop-lined high street near where one river, the Elkhart, flows into another, the St Joseph, the city is mostly shapeless, tree-lined and suburban. Scattered around the outskirts are the factories of several of America’s largest producers of recreational vehicles (RVs). Rows of the finished products rest outside the giant sheds in which they are made.

Modern RVs are impressive, leather-upholstered land yachts fitted with flat-screen televisions and gas fireplaces, the perfect vessels in which to navigate the American continent. The RV business is one of the economy’s most strongly cyclical. Sales of big-ticket items like homes and cars inevitably rise and fall with the business cycle, but RVs are especially susceptible to such swings. It is only once cars and homes have been upgraded that consumers consider splashing out on rolling living quarters. And when financial fear stalks the land, RV-makers have a particularly hard time.

In Elkhart, more than a quarter of people in employment work on RVs. When the global financial crisis in 2007-08 plunged the world economy into its worst downturn since the 1930s, employment in the city’s factories fell by nearly half. The unemployment rate almost quintupled, to 20%. Incomes and population dropped. Elkhart was among the first places President Barack Obama visited after his inauguration in 2009: it exemplified the extraordinary economic challenge facing his administration.

But then the city edged away from the brink. By the end of Mr Obama’s first term its unemployment rate had fallen by more than half. By the end of his second, as President Donald Trump took office, the rate had more than halved again, and earlier this year it dropped to the extremely low level of 2% as Americans started to splash out on luxuries again. Companies in the area cannot fill the jobs they advertise. The good times are back.

But for how long? One day, the forces that turned the palest, thinnest of green shoots after the financial crisis into the second-longest American economic expansion on record will change direction, igniting a new recession—for which the world is woefully unprepared. When that might happen is hard to say. Studies of American business cycles suggest that the economy is as likely to flip from growth to contraction early in the life of a boom as later on. Indeed, America has no records of an expansion lasting longer than a decade, though many countries do: Australia, Canada and the Netherlands have all enjoyed sustained growth lasting more than 20 years in recent memory. Yet all good things come to an end.

It might not take much to bring on the next recession

Though there is no settled view on what constitutes a global recession, worldwide slumps are usually marked out by a sharp slowdown in global growth and a decline in real GDP per person. Roughly speaking, there have been four global recessions since 1980: in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, in 2001, and in the crisis of 2007-08. Each was marked by a slowdown in GDP growth, a sharp decline in trade growth, and retrenchment in the financial sector. According to the Behavioural Finance and Financial Stability project at Harvard University, an average of four countries a year suffered a banking crisis between 1800 and 2016. From 1945 to 1975, when the global financial system was tightly controlled, most years were entirely free of banking crises. Since 1975, however, an average of 13 countries have found themselves in the throes of one each year. Since the 1970s, the deregulation of national banking systems and the lifting of constraints on the global flow of capital ushered in a new era of financial boom and bust. Re-regulation since 2009 has not fundamentally changed this picture. The current value of outstanding cross-border financial claims, at $30trn (and growing), is below the peak of $35trn reached in 2008, but well above the 1998 level of $9trn.

Booms tend not to die of old age, and there are killers aplenty lurking in the shadows. Globally, policy is slowly but surely becoming less supportive of boom conditions. True, America only recently passed a budget-busting tax reform, which promises to swell its deficit and thus to boost American spending. But in most other rich countries government borrowing is flat to falling. Across much of the emerging world, too, deficits are expected to shrink in coming years. China’s government is trying to rein in the credit-dependency of its economy, with some success.

Central banks are pitiless executioners of long-lived booms, and monetary policy has shifted. America’s Federal Reserve has slowly been raising its benchmark interest rate since late 2015. The Bank of England followed suit in 2017 and is expected to continue to increase interest rates slowly over the next few years. The European Central Bank (ECB) will probably conclude its stimulative bond-buying in December and may begin to raise its benchmark rate in late 2019. Global financial conditions, though still fairly relaxed, have become slightly less so recently. Most central banks have become less concerned about economic weakness and more worried about inflation. If they overdo their reaction, they could slow down the global economy more than intended.

America’s Fed, in particular, is treading a difficult path. Over the past few decades economic and financial cycles in the global economy have become more closely connected. Some economists reckon that the link remains loose. Eugenio Cerutti of the IMF, Stijn Claessens of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Andrew Rose of the University of California, Berkeley reckon that global financial factors explain no more than a quarter of the movement of capital across borders. Others disagree. Hélène Rey, of the London Business School, links the global financial cycle to worldwide swings in appetite for risk, which is in turn governed by the stance of American monetary policy. Òscar Jordà and Alan Taylor, of the University of California, Davis and colleagues have found cross-border wobbling in financial variables such as equity prices is at its most synchronised for more than a century.

Shifts in America’s monetary stance echo around global markets. In response to the financial crisis and the weak recovery that followed, the Fed worked hard to bolster American spending, mainly through quantitative easing (QE), the practice of printing money to buy assets such as government bonds. The effects of this policy were felt in the rest of the world; as Fed purchases depressed the yield on American government bonds, investors sought better returns elsewhere. Money flooded into the emerging world. The dollar-denominated debt of emerging-market firms other than banks roughly quadrupled. Chinese corporations now hold dollar-denominated debt of roughly $450bn, compared with almost none in 2009.

A more hawkish Fed means trouble for such borrowers. Since 2014 the dollar has risen by nearly 25%, on a trade-weighted basis, buoyed by a stronger American economy and rising interest rates. A dearer dollar makes life difficult for those with local-currency assets and dollar debts. As such borrowers tighten their belts, credit contracts. Trouble in emerging markets like Turkey and Argentina increases the appetite for safe-haven currencies. The resulting appreciation adds to the burden on other emerging markets, threatening to set off a cycle of contagion. The emerging world may avoid a cascading financial crisis for now, but its fast-growing economies, accounting for ever more of global growth, face a painful adjustment that will weigh on advanced economies too.

New world disorder

As this special report will explain, the rich world is ill-equipped to manage such stress. Handling a bout of economic weakness used to be simple: the central bank would cut short-term interest rates until conditions improved. But in the aftermath of the global financial crisis rates around the world fell to zero, and the weak recovery that followed kept them pinned there. Even the Fed, which has chalked up the most post-crisis rate increases, will almost certainly enter the next recession with a historically small amount of room to cut rates. In a downturn, central banks are likely to turn almost immediately to other tools used after the 2007-08 crisis, such as qe. But such tools are politically harder to deploy, and their stimulative effects are less certain.

Fiscal stimulus could pick up the slack, but mobilising government budgets to aid the economy will also prove a tall order. Across advanced economies the average government debt load has risen above 100% of GDP, up more than 30 percentage points from 2007. Debt in emerging markets has risen as well, from an average of roughly 35% of GDP to over 50%. Plans for large-scale fiscal stimulus were politically difficult to enact during the financial crisis, and will be harder still the next time around. In Europe, any debate about government borrowing threatens to revive the disastrous political showdowns of the euro-area debt crisis.

In the end politics may prove the greatest stumbling block to managing a new global downturn. A decade ago, when the weak link was a disintegrating financial system, co-operation among governments—from the close co-ordination of central-bank action around the world to the establishment of the G20 as a crisis talking-shop—helped prevent a bigger disaster. The world looks very different now. The American economy, which remains the linchpin of the global economic system, is now presided over by Mr Trump. Britain is close to leaving the European Union, possibly in chaotic fashion. The political climate across some of the rest of the EU has turned ugly. Most advanced economies now have viable populist or nationalist parties, waiting to capitalise on the first sign of renewed economic distress. Many emerging markets have regressed as well. Nationalism and strongman tactics are in the ascendant. Power in China is worryingly concentrated in the hands of one man, Xi Jinping. Thanks to Mr Trump’s trade war, relations between America and China have become openly hostile.

In 2007 financial markets were primed for a massive crisis, but governments were able to draw heavily on their monetary, fiscal and diplomatic resources to prevent that crisis from destroying the global economy. Today the financial dominoes are not set up quite so precariously, but in many ways the broader economic and political environment is far more forbidding. It might not take much to bring on the next recession.

(The Economist)

Trends in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Data

The major trend observed across industry and the public sector is artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) for automation. This, in turn, plays a major part in any digital transformation journey.

The trend grew out of the Bay Area, providing a customer-centric view of data and often involved using data as part of the product or service. This consumer- or customer-centric model assumes data enrichment with data from multiple sources.

However, fundamentally, it divides the data into two main areas. Real-time data and historic data. Pivotal, whose initial research forms the basis of this thinking, names this as “fast” data and “big” data.

Streaming or “fast” data

The first part of the chart describes the high value of data as recognized in the sub-second space of finance and into the few-second duration of the mobile user/web shopper. The chart does not describe — but the whiteboard session does highlight — how fiscal information becomes of extreme high value if the organization is required to commit statements of fiscal performance to stock-markets/analysts, etc.

Dell EMC Research (https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/perspectives/realizing-2030.htm) found consumers to have something in the region of a 6-second attention span. Delayed data or a poor connection results in direct loss of consumer business and — if consistently delayed or poor — loss of consumer confidence in the product.
scale and at speed

Behind the chart is the reality of data-driven business. That in delivering information into the hands of customers and business partners the organization is developing a trust relationship.

The better the quality of information, the higher trust exists between parties. Trusted data (accurate information) is used to drive relationships with users and business associates.

Indeed, data, as a part of the wider relationship, the fair and trusted exchange of information, is becoming the central model for many consumer services (for example, Uber, Facebook, Amazon, Spotify). Online gambling is an example where accuracy, speed (of data) and trust (reliability) is essential and creates differentiated services.

The telco-media and entertainment industry, in general, recognized some time ago that strong trusted consumer relationships based on high-quality personalized data deliver consumer brand loyalty and typically increased spend.

Data value increases over time

The greatest change in the overall value of data is that older data is becoming a high-value asset. This trend became apparent when:
Web-based business needed to understand a customer that it never actually meets.
Data scientists, mathematicians and traditional business analysts were employed to build profiles from every customer interaction and, against these, predict and effectively recommend, at high levels of consistency, more or new products.

To make accurate consumer predictions, the technology needed to be fed a lot of data. Different industries began to recognize that corporate wisdom needed to be captured. ING Bank call this its corporate memory.
Corporate memory

Success stories about the organizations whose examples make up the poster children for data evangelists retained/stored and used data that was always most likely to result in competitive advantage. They do not necessarily keep all data, instead — and by design — they keep what is most likely to prove to be beneficial.

The impact of automation

The advent of advanced predictive analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence at scale and with a commodity price has driven the need for the “corporate memory” to be rapidly adopted in many organizations.
Finance sector saw the early beginnings of heavily automated trading.

The corporate memory model is extended now as a means of preventing fiscal losses due to a flash crash. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-05/dow-s-15-minute-plunge-had-elements-of-a-flash-crash-isi-says .
AL and ML contribute significantly to the automation and M2M world that is rapidly emerging within the digital transformation of many businesses. The data chart illustrates how data is best characterized and then utilized in this digital universe. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/04/30/27-incredible-examples-of-ai-and-machine-learning-in-practice/#6b0cb0677502

Data silo and data lake

The charts, in fact, make no suggestion of where or indeed how to store data. Neither do the charts suggest one type of data storage is preferable.

memory and the super-fast data usage in the age of AI-driven data use.

Summary and action
The age of commodity-based AI is extremely close. The pattern of data flow demonstrated in these three charts maps directly into the digital world in which AI is a major automation factor. The corporate memory becomes the governance condition for the super-fast world of machine to machine (M2M) interaction. At a simple level, to avoid a flash crash, AIs need to be built upon real-world examples. This alone creates the high value of both “newly created” and “long term” data.

Action now: Review where you are in the final chart; pinpoint where you are under-indexed in terms of investment. Remedy that — gain capability. And, in terms of building corporate memory, every day lost is a day of data gone. Make sure you can get back the data you store. Start with storing an overkill amount and then pare back. Data you keep today can be disposed of tomorrow. The opposite is not true. Whatever you start with — start today.

(CIO)

Road makers turn to recycled plastic for tougher surfaces

Of all the plastic produced since the 1950s, less than 10% has been recycled. The vast majority ends up being dumped, most of it in landfill. Some is left to litter the natural environment, where it can get into rivers and wash out into the sea (see article). The plastic-waste problem will worsen before it gets better: some 380m tonnes of the stuff are likely to be made this year. That is more than three times as much as the 120m tonnes of bitumen produced annually, most of which goes into building the world’s roads.

There is a connection. Just as plastic is derived from petrochemicals, bitumen is produced as a by-product of refining oil. Both are polymers, which consist of long strands of molecules bound together firmly. It is this characteristic that makes plastic strong and contributes to its great longevity. Such features are also useful for road builders, who use hot bitumen to bind together aggregates made from broken rocks and stones, into what is commonly known as asphalt. All of which has got some people thinking: why not swap one polymer with another?

Recycled plastic is already used to make some products, such as guttering and sewage pipes. Now attention is turning to roads. On September 11th in Zwolle, a town in the Netherlands, a 30-metre bicycle track made from 70% recycled plastic and the rest from polypropylene was opened. It will be used to test a product called PlasticRoad, which is being developed by two Dutch firms—KWS, a road builder, and Wavin, a firm that makes plastic piping—in partnership with Total, a French oil-and-gas firm.

PlasticRoad is prefabricated in a factory as modular sections. The sections are then transported to the site and laid end to end on a suitable foundation, such as sand. Because these sections are hollow, internal channels can be incorporated into them for drainage, along with conduits for services such as gas and electricity. For the Zwolle project, sections that were 2.4 metres long and 3 metres wide were used. These were fitted with sensors to measure things such as temperature, flexing and the flow of water through the drainage channels. A second pilot cycleway is being built in the nearby town of Giethoorn.

Smart roads, too

If all goes well, the inventors hope to develop the idea and make the sections entirely from recycled plastic. Paths, car parks and railway platforms could follow. Eventually, sections for use as actual roads are planned. These could contain sensors for traffic monitoring. In time, the circuits in the plastic roads might extend to assisting autonomous vehicles and recharging electric cars wirelessly.

Prefabricated plastic roads should last two-to-three times longer than conventional roads and cost less, the companies claim, mainly because construction times would be reduced by almost two-thirds. Anti-slip surfaces could be incorporated, too, including crushed stones which are traditionally used to dress road surfaces. The sections, when replaced, can also be recycled. But engineers will be watching to see how the track stands up to wear and tear and if the hollow structure causes resonance, which would make such a road unduly noisy.

An alternative method of using recycled plastic is to mix the material into hot bitumen when making asphalt. A road is about to be built this way on the campus of the University of California, San Diego, to test a number of specialist roadmaking plastics developed by MacRebur, a British firm. Each mix is produced from plastic that is not easily or cheaply recycled and so typically ends up in landfill, says Toby McCartney, who founded the firm in 2015 with a group of colleagues.

MacRebur cleans and sorts the plastic and then grinds the waste into flakes or pellets. The plan is for this part of the process to be carried out in the localities where roads are being laid or repaired, so that local waste is used to produce local roads. Each mix can contain 20 or so different polymers for specific surfaces. One mix, for instance, might be suitable for a bus lane that carries heavy loads. Another would provide some flexibility in an area of turning traffic, such as a roundabout, where lateral forces from vehicles’ wheels can stretch the surface causing it to tear. Extremes of heat and cold can also be adjusted for. And because the addition of plastic helps to seal up small holes, which allow water to get below the surface of a road and cause it to break up, the modified asphalt can help to prevent potholes.

The company’s plastic mixes have already been used in roads, car parks and airport runways in various parts of the world. One of the oldest projects is a stretch of road in Cumbria, in north-west Britain, which is extensively used by heavy lorries. This used to need resurfacing every six months or so, but with the addition of plastic it is still going strong after two years, says Mr McCartney. When resurfacing is needed, the material can be recycled again.

Cleaning and sorting plastic made out of multiple polymers can be relatively expensive, especially if it is used to make low-value products such as packaging. But using such plastic as a replacement for bitumen is cost-effective, claims Mr McCartney. As an example, he says that a tonne of bitumen might cost around £400 ($521) in Britain. A recycled-plastic additive for a standard road works out at £300-£350 a tonne. The additive would replace a proportion of the bitumen, so there are savings to be made. At present 5-10% of the bitumen is replaced by the additives, but this could be increased to 25%.

Mr McCartney decided to develop specialist recycled-plastic additives after watching a practice sometimes employed in India to repair potholes. Plastic waste collected by pickers is piled into the hole and then set alight with diesel to form a molten mass. It is crude and polluting, but it provides a fix of sorts. A number of roads in India are also made by mixing chopped-up plastic into bitumen.

Australia is another country that is starting to recycle plastic into roads. Earlier this year a 300-metre stretch was completed in Rayfield Avenue, Craigieburn, a suburb of Melbourne, using a substance called Plastiphalt. This consisted of recycled material from more than 200,000 plastic bags and packaging, 63,000 crushed glass bottles and toner from 4,500 printer cartridges. All this was blended into 50 tonnes of reclaimed asphalt to create a total of 250 tonnes of road-building material. The road will be monitored to see how it performs.

Stuart Billing of Downer, a firm involved in constructing the road, said that the cost of using the recycled materials was comparable with building a road in the usual way. But the road is expected to last a lot longer and prove better at coping with heavy traffic.

Officials in Craigieburn reckon that the amount of rubbish used to construct the road, all of which was diverted from landfill, is equivalent to what Rayfield Avenue’s residents would have put into their recycling bins over the past ten years. One of the biggest complaints to local councils is about the state of the roads, especially potholes. Households in Australia and elsewhere might well do more sorting and recycling of plastic if they knew it could result in a smoother drive.

(The Economist)

Lying down after sex does not increase a woman's chances of getting pregnant

Lying down after sex does NOT help you get pregnant , a major study has found.

For decades it has been widely accepted that women who lie back and think of England after intercourse can boost their chances of conceiving.

But the world’s largest ever study conducted on the subject has finally put the age-old theory to bed.

The findings were presented today at Europe’s biggest fertility conference in Helsinki, Finland.

Dutch researchers studied 500 couples.

Half of the women were assigned 15 minutes bed rest with their knees raised after artificial insemination.

The other half got up immediately.

But experts discovered that lying down afterwards had no positive effect whatsoever on the chances of pregnancy.

It suggests for the first time that lying down after sex to boost your chances of having a baby is pointless.

Fertility experts at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology said the study showed there was no reason to stay in bed for longer than it takes ‘to get your breath back’.

Reacting to the findings, Prof Allan Pacey, of the University of Sheffield , said he was not surprised by the results because it takes just five minutes for sperm cells to reach the fallopian tube, after which they can survive for several days in the womb.

Prof Pacey added: “By the time you have recovered your breath, and you’ve got out of bed to have a wee, the ones [sperm] that are going to do it [fertilise the egg], are in there already.”

Doing this one thing could TREBLE your chances of getting pregnant

British Fertility Society chairman Dr Adam Balen, Professor of Reproductive Medicine & Surgery at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, added: “What’s very unhelpful in all biology textbooks is the pictorial representation of the female anatomy.

“It shows that the womb and the vagina are in a straight, vertical line. In reality that is not the case.

“The vagina is tilted and the womb is then tilted relative to the vagina and fallopian tubes and the ovaries, so it is not just one passage.

“So when you get up, many women think that everything is just going to fall out but anatomically that is not going to happen.”

Experts also stressed there was just one post-coital act which would damage conception chances - smoking a cigarette afterwards.

Dr Balen said: “After you have had sex, do whatever you want but don’t smoke.”

The study by the VU University Medical Center Amsterdam involved 479 women undergoing artificial insemination.

Women who had 15 minutes bed rest afterwards achieved pregnancy rates of 32.2 per cent, while those who did not had higher rates of 40.3 per cent.

After the results were adjusted to account for differences between the groups, there was absolutely ‘no statistical difference’.

Lead researcher Joukje van Rijswijk said that the study had proved that lying down had ‘no positive effect on pregnancy rates’.

She added: “We believe our results in such a large randomised trial are solid, and sufficiently strong to render the recommendation for bed rest obsolete.”

(Daily Mirror)

How to overcome financial dilemmas

Limited savings, but numerous responsibilities is life by another name. And some of these responsibilities will run parallel to one another. For one, you can't delay saving for your retirement and you can't ignore your child's future either. Since increasing your pay or reducing expenses beyond a limit can't be an option always, we struggle with financial choices. We try to figure out the financial dilemmas that you will face during the different decades of life, tell you how to make efficient choices and optimise your allocation.

20S: Balancing debt against college choice

You are eyeing a coveted course to climb the corporate ladder. However, if you do not have a scholarship and your parents have not saved enough, is it worth taking a big loan? So, just how much sacrifice should a student (and often their parents) make to attain high-quality education? It is one of the first money decisions you will make which can have a long-term financial impact.

"It is important that you do not start your working life with the sword of massive debt over your head. Defaults could ruin your future and chances of borrowing later for a house or a car," says Anil Rego, CEO, Right Horizons.

Be conservative when analysing your potential for employment. "Take a base-case scenario for salary packages that can be landed after the degree. The EMI for the loan should be 50% or lower than the net monthly pay," says Arvind A Rao, founder, Arvind Rao & Associates.

Remember, this is a long-term loan and even a percentage difference in rates can save you a lot.Rather than going for an unsecured education loan where you pay a higher rate of interest, see if your parents can get you a secured loan and keep an asset as a collateral. Even if it isn't a big asset, it can fund a part of the costs. If your parents have a fixed deposit, get an overdraft loan where you will have to shell out 1-2% higher than FD rates.

It makes sense to work for a few years, save some money and then apply for a course. Even if you are unable to save the full expenses, it will reduce your loan burden. "Use debt options to accumulate," says Rao. Since most top universities prefer students with some work experience, it also improves your chances of earning a scholarship.

30S: Managing a home-loan EMI or investing in equity to fund child's goals

You would choose your child's future any day over your dream house. It even makes more financial sense to delay buying a property . You can always live in a rented house as the rent increases at a much lower rate than the cost of education.However, if you delay planning for higher education, the investment in subsequent years becomes exponentially higher.

Advisors warn against a situation where you delay the purchase so much that your debt continues into your retirement. "After retirement, living in a rented accommodation can be stressful especially if you have to move every three-four years. Also, it is not a good idea to retire with debt," says Priya Sunder, director, PeakAlpha Investment, an investment advisory . Besides, the house can also be an asset, a collateral that can help you borrow in case the education savings fall short.

You could consider a smaller apartment that costs less. "If the education costs are expected to be higher, then it makes sense to bring down the cost of the property purchased and thereby reduce the EMI," says Sunder. Or, you can also choose to save opting for SIPs over EMIs. There is an opportunity cost to the loan taken to buy the property .So, suppose you take a home loan for Rs 1 crore for the next 20 years at 10% interest. You would pay about Rs 1 lakh in EMI each month. Over 20 years, the interest cost would be over Rs 69 lakh. Instead, if you rent a house for Rs 30,000 and invested Rs 70,000 through an SIP each month growing at 15% over the next 20 years, the corpus would be close to Rs 10.5 crore, and tax free, if invested in an equity fund.This money could fund both your goals.

40S: Continuing with job or turning an entrepreneur

They say, it's best to take the plunge when you have no baggage. But at 40, you probably would have a dependent family and you still would not have finished saving for all your life goals. On the other hand, you might have accumulated liabilities such as a home and a car loan. A stable job with predictable income allows one to plan and save.

Turning an entrepreneur entails putting all these on the backburner till the new business becomes stable. It might not be easy to make a comeback if you fail. Getting a second opportunity would also depend on the industry and job profile.

Plus, you will be closer to retirement. "It can also happen that the entrepreneur utilises all her savings as capital. With risk of loss, she would have to start all over again with lesser time on her side to benefit from compounding," says Srikanth Bhagwat, advisor, Hexagon Wealth Advisors.

Even if you turn into an entrepreneur, you can't ignore taking some standard financial shields such as term and health insurance for all dependents, be debt-free and have savings of at least 12 to 24 months that can cover all living expenses. Also, it is a bad idea to dilute your investments or assets that you may have earmarked for other goals (say retirement) for initial funding.

50S: Choosing between the child's higher education and retirement

These two big goals may have colliding deadlines.While none of them can be ignored, financial planners believe you should prioritise your retirement corpus. Your child can get a scholarship or fund the education by taking a loan. However, the bank won't extend you a credit because you do not have sufficient savings post-retirement. Even if they do, a personal loan will always be costlier than an education loan.

"An education loan creates a sense of financial responsibility in the child, allows you to keep your assets and gives you additional tax benefits," says Bhuvana Shreeram, a certified financial planner.

Some may argue that it is better to work longer and save more than depending on an educational loan. "It is not difficult to find a job post-60 these days. Plus, being a guarantor to big loan when you do not have an income may not be a good idea," says Vivek Rege, CEO, VR Wealth Advisors.

60S: Investing a portion in equity or staying safe in all debt options

The thumb-rule is to keep moving your investments marked for retirement towards debt as you near 60. But that does not mean you can't re-invest the kitty in equity options. Considering they are your best chances to beat inflation, most advisors would recommend keeping a part in equities.

Although, the case for equities become stronger if you are still earning after 60, there is no need to abruptly stop investing, merely because you have retired.

(Economic Times)

More young women are considering freezing their eggs as a lifestyle choice, survey says

Young women are increasingly considering freezing their eggs as a lifestyle choice - rather than a medical decision.

A total of 84% of women aged 18-24 told a survey that improving career options was a good reason to freeze eggs.

And 59% said women should be encouraged to freeze their eggs to give themselves more "reproductive autonomy".

The survey, by Liminal Space, partly funded by the London School of Economics, found 20% would consider spending £10,000 on the procedure.

Despite the high price tag the number of frozen eggs which result in births are low.

A new egg-storage procedure, known as vitrification, is believed to have improved success rates but very few results are currently available.

Georgina Williams, 36, decided to freeze her eggs three years ago and was quoted £3,000 for the procedure.

But a week into the treatment she was told she wasn't responding to the drugs and needed to pay more to get an increased dose.

In order to get the optimum number of eggs she had to undergo an extra two rounds of treatment, pushing costs to £10,000.

She wants clinics - which may be motivated by profit - to introduce a code of ethics.

She told Sky News: "I cannot imagine what this would be like for somebody who can't afford to go through it again.

"Contrary to how I was feeling at the time, someone could be desperate to have children, they could have absolutely everything invested in this.

"It really worried me that people could be going into that with so little idea of how things were actually going to unfold."

The average age of women who are freezing their eggs is around 37.

According to Emily Jackson, professor of Law at LSE, women face a dilemma over when is best to freeze eggs.

She said: "It's better in terms of the technology to do it earlier - but of course if you do it earlier you're overwhelmingly likely to never use them because most women will conceive naturally.

"So there are complex odds for women to balance; if you do it too late it might not work, if you do it too early it might be a waste of money."

(Daily Mirror)

The threat of terrorism may force French teachers to allow smoking at school

When France imposed a state of emergency in November, following the terror attacks in Paris, it implied some constraints on liberty. But the freedom to smoke was probably not one many observers had in mind. Fully 32% of French 17-year-olds admit that they smoke daily, and by law pupils can do so only outside school premises. Yet head teachers now fret that, by letting them out of the school gates during the day to light up, they face a greater threat: terrorism.

Improbable as it seems, the country’s biggest head-teachers’ union, SNPDEN-Unsa, wrote last month to the prime minister, Manuel Valls, demanding clarification. Did the ban still apply under the state of emergency, as the health ministry insisted? Or, given the security risk of gathering on the pavement, could head teachers make an exception, as the education ministry seemed to suggest, and allow smoking on school grounds? This, argued some, was the lesser danger. “Between a cigarette and a Kalashnikov, the risk is not the same,” said Michel Richard, a head teacher at the union.

Nobody seems to have thought of banning young people from smoking altogether. Smoking, like café culture, seems embedded in French life. Every year 350 tonnes of cigarette butts, the equivalent in weight to two blue whales, are cleared off the streets of Paris alone. Most European countries have curbed smoking over the past decade, thanks to sales taxes, public-health campaigns and stricter rules. The proportion of people who smoke has dropped by six percentage points to 20% in Britain; by 13 points to 13% in Norway, and an average of eight points across the OECD rich countries. In France, however, the figure has remained stable, at around 25%, and since 2008 rates for teenagers have gone up. Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in France, far ahead of alcohol or road accidents.

Successive French governments have tried to discourage the habit. Although cigarette taxes were not raised last year, as the state auditor noted disapprovingly this week, smoking has been banned in cafés and offices. In May, after years of resistance by the tobacco lobby and tabac-sellers, Marisol Touraine, the health minister, will impose “neutral packaging”. A manufacturer’s brand name will still be visible. But all packets will be henceforth sold in “unattractive” shades of mud-brown and khaki, with lurid health warnings.

The French do not exercise much. But they don’t snack, eat much junk food, or binge-drink like British teenagers. And they live longer, stay slimmer, and suffer lower rates of cardiovascular disease than most other rich countries. Yet they seem ready to ignore health warnings when it comes to smoking. Teenage girls say it keeps them from getting fat. “If you want to be with the cool kids, you hang out with the smokers outside the gate,” says one.

(The Economist)

The right way to do drugs

IT IS like a hash-induced hallucination: row upon row of lush, budding plants, tended by white-coated technicians who are bothered by the authorities only when it is time to pay their taxes. Cannabis once grew in secret, traded by murderous cartels and smoked by consumers who risked jail. Now, countries all over the world have licensed the drug for medical purposes, and a few are going still further (see article). Four American states have so far legalised its recreational use; little Uruguay will soon be joined by big, G7-member Canada in the legal-weed club. Parliaments from Mexico to South Africa are debating reforms of their own.

Those (including this newspaper) who have argued that legalisation is better than prohibition will welcome the beginning of the end of the futile war on weed. Cannabis accounts for nearly half the $300 billion illegal narcotics market, and is the drug of choice for most of the world’s 250m illicit-drug users. Legalising it deprives organised crime of its single biggest source of income, while protecting and making honest citizens of consumers.

Yet the repeal of prohibition marks the start of complex arguments about how to regulate cannabis. What sound like details for bureaucrats—how to tax it, which varieties to allow, who should sell it and to whom—are questions that force policymakers to decide which of legalisation’s competing aims they value most. Trailblazers like Canada are writing rules that the rest of the world will copy; once laid down, they will be hard to uproot. Getting these decisions right will ultimately determine whether legalisation succeeds or fails.

Have your hash cake and eat it

Legalisation’s proponents are an odd mix of libertarians, who want to maximise personal and commercial freedom, and conservatives, who grasp that prohibition is less effective than pragmatic legalisation and regulation. The hippies and hardliners created a powerful alliance for legalisation. But when asked to say exactly how the cannabis trade should work—at what rate to set taxes or whether to place limits on consumption, for instance—they can find themselves at odds.
Libertarians may ask why cannabis, which has no known lethal dose, should be regulated at all for adults who can make free, informed decisions. There are two reasons for care. First, cannabis appears to induce dependency in a minority of users, meaning the decision whether to light up is not a free one. Second, cannabis’s illegality means that the research on its long-term effects is hazy, so even the most informed decision is based on incomplete information. When decisions are neither always free nor fully informed, the state is justified in steering consumers away, as it does from alcohol and tobacco.

Hence the libertarians must cede ground. States can tax users to deter consumption—though not so much as to make consumers turn first to the untaxed black market. The “right” level of tax will depend on a country’s circumstances. In Latin America, where abuse is rare and the black market is bloody and powerful, governments should keep prices low. In the rich world, where problem use is more common and drug-dealers are a nuisance rather than a threat to national security, prices could be higher. One model is the United States after Prohibition: alcohol taxes were set low at first, to drive out the bootleggers; later, with the Mafia gone, they were ramped up.

A similar trade-off applies when determining what products to allow. Cannabis no longer means just joints. Legal entrepreneurs have cooked up pot-laced food and drink, reaching customers who might have avoided smoking the stuff. Ultra-strong “concentrates” are on offer to be inhaled or swallowed. Edibles and stronger strains help put the illegal dealers out of business, but they also risk encouraging more people to take the drug, and in stronger forms. The starting-point should be to legalise only what is already available on the black market. That would mean capping or taxing potency, much as spirits are taxed more steeply and are less available than beer. Again, the mix will vary. Europe may be able to ban concentrates. America already has a taste for them. If the product were outlawed there the mob would gladly step in.

In one respect, governments should be decidedly illiberal. Advertising is largely absent in the underworld, but in the legal world it could stimulate vast new demand. It should be banned. Likewise, alluring packaging and products, such as cannabis sweets that would appeal to children, should be outlawed, just as many countries outlaw flavoured cigarettes and alcohol-spiked sweets. The state should use the tax system and public education to promote the least harmful ways of getting high. The legal market has already created pot’s answer to the e-cigarette, which reduces the damage done by smoke to lungs.

In America the federal ban on cannabis means the task of writing its first regulations has fallen to overstretched civil servants in a few small states. Testing potency, setting safe-driving limits and solving a hundred other puzzles is no easier when the federal agencies that would normally advise them (such as the Food and Drug Administration, the world’s most advanced pharmaceutical regulator) are sitting on their hands. And the absence of federal curbs on pot advertising means that the drug is more widely promoted than tobacco, by companies pleading the First Amendment. The federal government’s wait-and-see policy sounds prudent; in fact it is irresponsible.

Be cautious, but be bold

Campaigners for and against legalisation need to adjust to the new reality, too. Those who would rather ban the drug should stop flogging the dead horse of prohibition and start campaigning for versions of legalisation that do the least harm (just as the temperance movement these days lobbies for higher taxes on booze, rather than a ban). Legalisers, meanwhile, should open their eyes to the fact that the legal marijuana industry, which until now has only had to prove itself more worthy than organised criminals, now needs as much scrutiny as the other “sin” industries that defend their turf jealously. Rather than one day having to take on Big Cannabis, it would be better to get policy on pot right from the start.

(The Economist)

Why the English Premier League has been turned upside down

IF ON the opening day of the 2015-16 English Premier League (EPL) season, you had marched into your local bookmaker and bet on lowly Leicester City to sit at the top of the division on Christmas Day, you would have elicited a chuckle from other wizened punters in the shop. The 1,500-to-one odds on your ticket might not have seemed long enough.

The Foxes spent more time in last place than any other side last season, escaping the relegation zone (the bottom three places, from which teams get demoted to a lower division) with barely a month left to play. Of the 20 teams in the league, only the three promoted from the Championship, English football’s second tier, were given a slimmer chance than Leicester’s 5,000-to-one hope of winning the competition.

If you had placed another wager on Chelsea, the reigning champions, to be in 15th place come Yuletide, the giggles would have swelled to guffaws. Last season’s Blues were the first team in EPL history to lead the league wire to wire: they held at least a share of first place every day from start to finish. They were often compared to the unbeaten Arsenal “Invincibles” side of 2003-04 and Manchester United’s treble-winning squad of 1998-99, albeit without emulating either feat. In fact, most gambling companies wouldn’t have offered the bet: you could have taken 250 to one for Chelsea to finish in the bottom half, or 7,500 to one for the club to be relegated. Perhaps a generous bookie might have staked a mere 1,000 to one against Chelsea dropping into the bottom six in the depths of December.

The derision would have been worth it. Chelsea’s champions, who have won 50 major domestic and European titles between them, have looked like novices this season, and sit just three places above the relegation zone as the league approaches its halfway point. Their manager, José Mourinho—renowned not only for his success but for his unshakeable self-confidence—was sacked on December 17th after breaking the unenviable record of the worst season-to-season decline in the history of top-flight football in England. Leicester’s squad, many of whom are graduates of the lower English leagues, possess only three major medals in their collective cabinets. Yet contrary to everyone’s expectations, they have played like seasoned winners, exposing the vulnerabilities of more favoured opponents with swift and clinical attacks, and have risen to the top of the table—the position that they will hold on Christmas Day.

There could be no neater demonstration of the two sides’ opposite trajectories than their meeting on December 14th at Leicester’s King Power Stadium. The hosts’ opening goal came after half an hour, just as the commentators had begun to wonder when they might see “a signature counter-attack from Leicester City”. In the ensuing ten seconds, the home side muscled Chelsea off the ball in midfield, carried it deep into the final third, and worked it past the visitors’ defence into the back of the net. It was a timely reminder of Leicester’s offensive efficiency, and was engineered by two of the club’s key players, both of whom have their own rags-to-riches tales. The lofted assist into the box was provided by Riyad Mahrez, an Algerian winger whom Leicester plucked from the obscurity of the French second division—and who is currently second in both the Premier League’s assist and goal charts. His cross was volleyed in by Jamie Vardy, a striker who looked destined for a career in the semi-professional divisions until Leicester signed him four years ago; he recently broke the league record for the longest streak of scoring in consecutive games. Chelsea’s captain, John Terry, had allowed the pass to reach Mr Vardy, in an error that would have been unthinkable for such a reliable defender just months ago. But this season such mistakes have become typical for the Blues’ back four. No eyebrows were raised when Mr Terry, a member of the 2014-15 Professional Footballers’ Association’s Team of the Year, was hauled off by Mr Mourinho early in the second half, shortly after Mr Mahrez had fired in a fine second goal.

The match remained interesting, as Chelsea rallied and scored themselves. But they were unable to overturn the 2-1 deficit, leaving the Foxes just one victory away from guaranteeing the top spot at Christmas, an opportunity which they duly took by beating Everton 3-2 on December 19th. For Mr Mourinho, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, made even harder to bear by the fact that Leicester’s coach is Claudio Ranieri—the man whom Chelsea dismissed in 2004 to make way for Mr Mourinho’s first spell at the club.

Leicester’s improbable rise and Chelsea’s unprecedented fall have certainly been the biggest shocks of the 2015-16 season. But they are far from the only ones. Plucky West Ham have beaten Arsenal (at odds of 11 to one), Manchester City (11 to one) and Liverpool (eight to one) away from home. In the last fortnight, tiny Bournemouth have vanquished Manchester United and Chelsea, whilst struggling Newcastle have beaten both Tottenham and Liverpool—combinations that according to bookmakers were respectively 3% and 2% likely. Perhaps the only predictable feature of the Premier League in 2015-16 has been the regularity with which pundits have described it as the most unpredictable season ever. According to the betting lines, 42 of 160 games (26%) thus far have been won by the underdogs; since the turn of the century, no Premier League season has ended with the unfavoured teams winning more than 23% of matches.

The rate of upsets may yet fall away as the season unfolds. But it certainly seems that the gap in ability between the best and the rest has shrunk in 2015-16. One way of measuring this is with an Elo system, a simple points-exchange mechanism developed by the physicist Arpad Elo for chess and now used in many sports. It awards credit to the winner of a match and subtracts it from the loser, taking into account the strength of competition, final score, home-field advantage and importance of the contest. A paper published in 2013 by mathematicians from the Universities of Warsaw and Amsterdam found that Elo is better at predicting international football outcomes than the world rankings produced by FIFA, the sport’s global administrating body. And when applied to the Premier League, Elo confirms the popular narrative. The standard deviation of the division’s Elo scores measures how tightly distributed teams’ strengths are: the smaller that number is, the closer the twenty teams’ rankings are to each other. This year’s mark is the lowest the indicator has been at this point in the season since 2003-04.

This year’s topsy-turvy league table should be a welcome sight for the EPL, which has long been dominated by a handful of rich clubs: in the past decade, only six different sides have finished in the top four positions, from which teams qualify for the Champions League, Europe’s most prestigious competition. But half a season of unusual parity is well within the range of random fluctuation, and the ascent of Leicester and collapse of Chelsea do not necessarily mean that the lords of the Premiership should rest easy. Whether the league’s competitive-balance woes have really come to an end or are merely on a brief, welcome hiatus depends mainly on whether there is any lasting structural change that could account for a shrinking gap between haves and have-nots.

The first place to hunt for explanations is money. In February the EPL signed a new television deal worth £5 billion ($7.5 billion) per year. These revenues will be distributed fairly evenly among clubs: the champions will receive around £150m, and the worst performer £99m. In contrast, in Spain’s La Liga, the two leading teams gobble up about half of the entire league’s broadcast income. This arrangement could certainly explain why English teams as a group might improve relative to other leagues. But it cannot account for greater parity within the EPL, because the payout formula has not changed. The Premiership’s relatively egalitarian split of television revenues was fixed in 1991 and has never budged; clubs are simply receiving the same share of a larger pie.

Another potential factor is Financial Fair Play (FFP), a European scheme to prevent rich owners from buying championships by pouring unlimited wealth into loss-making clubs. In theory, FFP should improve competitive balance by shrinking the budgets of teams owned by billionaires. In practice, it has simply frozen the pre-existing hierarchy in place. Clubs that have already built up large non-television revenue streams—primarily Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and the two Manchester teams—remain free to invest the cash they receive from merchandise and ticket sales in player acquisitions, while their weaker rivals no longer can hope to enter the top tier by finding a profligate patron. Just four of the EPL’s 20 clubs—Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City—accounted for roughly half of this year’s summer transfer spending.

So the explanations for the surprising results are more likely to be found on the football pitch itself than in clubs’ account books. One measure of performance suggests that the yawning gap in the league table between Chelsea and Leicester City may overstate the difference in how well the two sides have played. Although shooting and disrupting opponents’ shots are vital skills in football, in many cases the outcome of a shot is all but predetermined: even Cristiano Ronaldo is unlikely to have much success launching shots from the halfway line, and even an amateur player might score on a decent share of chances fired directly in front of the goal.

A popular statistic that evaluates the quality of a team’s shots and those of its opponents is “expected goals” (xG), which estimates how many goals an average EPL team would have scored and conceded given the location of each shot in its matches, as well as the type of attack in which it occurred and the kind of pass that led to it. Teams with outstanding strikers will tend to score more often than their average shot quality would suggest, and those with top-notch defenders and goalkeepers will tend to allow fewer. Nonetheless, very large differentials between actual and expected goals can be hard to sustain. And according to the xG model published by Michael Caley, a football blogger, both of this season’s most surprising clubs have sharply diverged from expectations: Leicester City have scored 46% more goals than their shot quality would indicate, and Chelsea have allowed 68% more goals than their opponents’ shots would usually generate. Some of the blame for the latter showing must rest with Chelsea’s goalkeepers. But in their defence, they have had the misfortune to face some exceedingly well-executed shots, such as Steven Naismith’s final two goals in the team’s 3-2 defeat to Everton, Marko Arnautovic’s acrobatic winner in a 1-0 loss to Stoke, and both of West Ham’s goals in a 2-1 defeat. Mr Mahrez’s outrageous curled strike against them for Leicester was the latest in a series of unlikely winners. It is highly unlikely that Chelsea’s rivals will continue to deliver the ball to precisely the right spot in the net under such challenging conditions with this frequency.

On the other hand, such flukey differences cannot come close to accounting for all of the turmoil in the EPL this season. Even if one were to re-calculate the standings using expected rather than actual goals, the current table would still look like none other in recent memory. The other engine of unpredictability this season appears to be an acceleration of the never-ending cycle of innovation, in which clubs devise new strategies to exploit opponents’ weaknesses, and their rivals respond with counter-tactics designed to neutralise these methods that make them vulnerable to different ones, leaving the process to begin anew.

There is no single “right” or “best” way to play football: different championship teams have deployed virtually all of the common strategies in the sport over the years. But this equivalence does not mean that tactical choices don’t matter. Much of the skill in managing lies with devising the scheme that maximises the impact of the strengths of a specific group of players while minimising the costs of their weaknesses. As squads turn over and players develop and age, clubs must either adjust their strategies to a new mix of talent, or recruit new blood that is well-suited to their existing approach. And in the Darwinian maelstrom that is the EPL, Leicester City seems to have mastered the “adapt or die” mantra, while Chelsea is falling victim to it.

Chelsea’s 2014-15 squad took a methodical path to a title. They moved the ball forward step by step with crisp, precise passing, keeping it out of their opponents’ hands for as long as possible and trying to route it to the sides of the pitch where Eden Hazard, an exceedingly creative winger, could dribble through traffic towards the penalty area. Using figures provided by the sports-data agency Opta, Dan Altman, the founder of the football-statistics firm North Yard Analytics (and a former journalist for The Economist), calculates that Chelsea’s non-header shots from open play followed attacks in which they advanced the ball at just 3.9 metres (13 feet) per second (m/s) last year, the second-slowest pace in the EPL. However, their players were so skilled that they frequently managed to slip the ball between opposing defenders and fire off shots from close range: on average, their chances came closer than 20 metres from goal, which was better than all but three teams in the division. Mr Altman estimates that a typical team would score on a healthy 10.5% of the club’s shots (excluding headers) last season.

But half a year can prove an eternity in the demanding world of top-flight football. Mr Mourinho asks more of his core players than any other coach in the game: last year his top ten regulars were on the pitch in over 80% of the minutes in EPL and Champions League competition, by far the highest mark over the past five seasons. In recognition of their heavy workload, he started training two weeks later this year. But Chelsea failed to bring in any new everyday players during the summer transfer window who might have been better-rested, and the shortened preseason may not have given his stars enough time to get back into form. Mr Mourinho stuck to his slow-paced guns this year, crawling up the field at a snail’s pace of 3.5 m/s. His players, however, have been far less successful at carving up opposing defences: their average shot this year has been launched 1.8 metres further from the goal. Other attributes of their shots, such as the angle and likely defensive pressure, have also been inferior.

According to Mr Altman, a normal EPL club would sneak just 6.5% of those attempts past the keeper, tied for the worst shot quality in the league.
In contrast, while Chelsea nearly stood still during the transfer period, Leicester City went shopping for the missing piece of the puzzle for a strategy built around lightning-quick counter-attacks. Mr Vardy’s ability to out-run defenders was already clear, and the club had tried to cash in on this strength by aiming to push the ball up the pitch as fast as possible: their average advancing speed of 4.9 m/s ranked fourth in the EPL last season. However, their lack of a quality distributor of the ball in the middle of the park meant that they often failed to pick out their forward runners on counter-attacks, preventing them from obtaining precious break-away chances.

What Leicester City needed was a disruptive midfielder willing to gamble on intercepting passes and aggressive tackles, so that opponents would be caught in transition and unable to set up their defences before Mr Vardy blew past them. And they found the perfect fit in N’Golo Kanté, an uncapped Frenchman previously employed by SM Caen, the fastest-paced team in continental Europe. Transferring Mr Kanté cost them just €9m ($9.8m), and he has already justified that investment many times over. He currently leads the league in interceptions, and Mr Altman calculates that when he touches the ball in the middle or back of the pitch, shots on the subsequent attack are 70% likelier to yield a goal than when he isn’t involved.
Chelsea and Leicester City may lie at two opposite extremes of pace and style, but they are indicative of a broader league-wide trend. As recently as last year, there appeared to be a clear trade-off in EPL football between speed on one side and penetration on the other. Teams that moved the ball quickly upfield—led by the three relegated sides, Burnley, Queens Park Rangers and Hull City—tended to settle for chances far from the goal that were unlikely to yield a score, whereas more plodding clubs like Chelsea could take the time to identify weak spots and probe closer to their target. In statistical terms, the correlation between pace and average shot distance was 0.35 (where one is a perfect relationship and zero is none whatsoever). But during this season, that link seems to have been broken: some quick teams, like Leicester City or Newcastle United, are also among the league leaders in shortest shot distance, whereas some slower ones, such as Chelsea or Swansea City, have struggled to get close to goal at all. The overall correlation has now fallen to a virtually nonexistent 0.06. This suggests that a handful of clubs have managed to come up with new strategies that their opponents have not yet figured out how to counter—a new source of variance among clubs (in addition to raw player quality) that may be one cause of the EPL’s increasing unpredictability.

With less than half the season played, there is more than enough time for this pattern to reverse. Against Leicester City, midfielders should eventually learn to swarm quickly around Mr Kanté and his central partner Daniel Drinkwater, thereby cutting off the supply of direct passes up-field and giving the defence more time to deal with the twin threats of Mr Vardy and Mr Mahrez. Slowing down the Foxes is the key to beating them, as it neutralises the value of their strikers’ speed and forces them to make far more passes than they would prefer: for example, following an interception 60 metres from the opposing goal, Mr Altman calculates that Leicester City will score around 2% of the time if they pass the ball 60 metres on their counter-attack, but just 0.5% of the time if they pass it 90 metres, and a mere 0.1% following 120 metres’ worth of passing. Now that Leicester City have a firm hold on the league lead, opposing coaches will surely pay more attention to reining in their dangerous midfielders in the season’s second half. As for Chelsea, Mr Mourinho's successor—which will be the Dutch coach Guus Hiddink on an interim basis, a role which he has performed for the Blues before—will probably try to reduce the team’s reliance on Mr Hazard by varying the speed and direction of its attacks. He could also hope to dip into the pocket of the club’s billionaire owner, Roman Abramovich, and acquire reinforcements during the January transfer window.

Given the magnitude of Leicester City’s advantage over hapless Chelsea so far, such a sharp reversal might seem unlikely. But Mr Caley still believes that Chelsea are the better team: his projections published after the sixteenth round of games, which are based on a team’s current ability to produce and prevent chances and are regressed towards prior performances, give the Blues an additional 38.5 points over the season’s final 22 games, compared with just 29.8 for Leicester City. That would still leave Leicester City comfortably ahead for the whole season, with 64.8 total points to 53.5 for Chelsea, but just barely in the top four. Mr Caley’s model is sufficiently unimpressed with the Foxes’ breakout that it assigned them just a 2% chance of holding onto their lead by season’s end, and sufficiently undisturbed by Chelsea’s collapse that it gives them a mere 1% chance of relegation. Mr Hiddink’s fight for Premier League survival has certainly started well, with a 3-1 victory over fellow strugglers Sunderand on December 19th, even as the Chelsea fans chanted the name of their beloved former coach, and jeered the players—some of whom have been accused of deliberately underperforming to get Mr Mourinho sacked. Current betting lines back them to rediscover their form: at the time of writing, bookmakers give Chelsea a 40-to-one (2.5%) chance of relegation. After beating Everton in their 17th match, Leicester’s odds of a fairy-tale title win have been cut to 13 to one (7%). So if you were to march into your local betting shop today with two more wagers on these clubs in the same direction, the odds would still be heavily stacked against you. But the mirth from the seasoned gamblers would surely have disappeared.

(The Economist)

Coffee-drinkers less likely to die from certain diseases

People who report drinking three to five cups of coffee per day are less likely to die prematurely from heart disease, suicide, diabetes or Parkinson's disease, US researchers said Monday.

Both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee were shown to have benefits, said the study by researchers at the Harvard University Chan School of Public Health published in the November 16 edition of the journal Circulation.

The study compared people who don't drink coffee, or drank less than two cups daily, to those who reported drinking "moderate" amounts of coffee, or up to five cups daily.

The study did not prove a cause-and-effect for coffee and the reduced likelihood of certain diseases, but uncovered an apparent link that aligns with previous research, and that scientists would like to probe further.

"Bioactive compounds in coffee reduce insulin resistance and systematic inflammation," said first author Ming Ding, a doctoral student in the Department of Nutrition.

"That could explain some of our findings. However, more studies are needed to investigate the biological mechanisms producing these effects."

No protective effect was found against cancer in this study. Some previous research has pointed to a link between coffee consumption and a lower risk of certain cancers.

The study was based on data gathered from three large, ongoing surveys including some 300,000 nurses and other health professionals who agree to answer questionnaires about their own medical conditions and habits at regular intervals over the course of 30 years.

"In the whole study population, moderate coffee consumption was associated with reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease, and suicide," said the findings.

Researchers also accounted for potential confounding factors such as smoking, body mass index, exercise, alcohol consumption, and diet. But the fact that the research relied on surveys, which use self-reported behavior, could raise questions about its reliability.

And experts warned that coffee -- a substance adored by many devotees -- may not be right for everyone.

"Regular consumption of coffee can be included as part of a healthy, balanced diet," said senior author Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard.

"However, certain populations such as pregnant women and children should be cautious about high caffeine intake from coffee or other beverages."

(AFP)

Keeping up with the Karumes

A new study shows that money can buy you happiness—but only fleetingly, at others’ expense

“When you open the window, both fresh air and flies come in,” said Deng Xiaoping, describing the good and bad consequences of the opening of China’s economy. Most people see economic growth and rising incomes as desirable, but they have their disadvantages. Families break apart, as young people move to the cities. Jobs become more insecure if the labour market is liberalised. Rising inequality may upset even those who are becoming richer. Small wonder, perhaps, that the satisfaction ordinary Chinese expressed with their lot fell at the start of the economic boom sparked by Deng’s reforms, before rising again as growth accelerated. So, at any rate, concluded a study published in 2012 by Richard Easterlin of the University of Southern California and colleagues.

Mr Easterlin is best known for a hotly contested paper published in 1974, which argued that rising incomes do not make people happier. Ever since, in spite of the obvious benefits, economists have debated whether getting richer is all it’s cracked up to be. The most comprehensive study, published in 2012, looked at a range of countries over time, and concluded that there is a positive relationship between income growth and satisfaction.

That study did not make clear, however, whether money leads to happiness or happiness to money. Andrew Oswald, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi of the University of Warwick have posited that happiness comes first. Depressed workers are less productive, after all, and so earn less. In addition, high incomes and happiness may have a common cause. Those with a big network of friends are both more satisfied in life and better at finding well-paid jobs.

One way to answer questions about causality is to look at evidence from randomised trials. Lotteries randomly allocate extra wealth, and so could serve as a focus of study, but in most countries only a small proportion of people buy tickets. The behaviour of those having a flutter may not be typical of people in general, skewing the results. The solution would be for economists to run their own experiments, doling out big jackpots at random among the population. In rich countries it is too expensive to mimic a lottery. But in poorer places some charities already do.

The Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics in Nairobi, Kenya, runs experiments with participants from slums and rural areas. Its researchers looked at the results of a lottery-like scheme in rural Kenya, in which a random sample of 503 households spread over 120 villages was chosen to receive cash transfers of up to $1,525. The average transfer, $357, was almost enough to double the wealth of a typical villager. The researchers measured the well-being of villagers before and after the transfer, using a range of different methods: questionnaires about people’s life satisfaction, screening for clinical depression and saliva tests for cortisol, a hormone associated with stress.

Since not all the villagers received a transfer, the experiment sheds no light on what would happen if everyone’s wealth increased equally. But the study does mimic the distributional results of economic growth, which tends to allot gains unevenly. As expected, those who received transfers reported greater satisfaction with their lot after the money arrived. Cortisol levels and the incidence of depression fell too.

However, the satisfaction of those who did not receive anything fell sharply as their neighbours’ fortunes improved. The decline in satisfaction prompted by seeing one’s peers get $100 richer was bigger than the increase of satisfaction from getting a handout of the same size. The bigger the handouts to others in their village, the greater the dissatisfaction of non-recipients. (The handouts did not seem to have any impact cortisol levels or the prevalence of depression among non-recipients.)

Both the bitterness and the joy that the windfalls produced were passing. The effects of changes in people’s circumstances wear off as they get used to them—a phenomenon economists call “hedonic adaptation”. The large swings in satisfaction were found in the middle of the transfer scheme. Within about six months, all the transfers had been made (if they had been spread over a longer period, as usually happens when a country develops, the outcome may have been different). A year later the happiness of both the recipients and those who did without had returned close to its initial level.

Moreover, it was not inequality in general that bothered the unlucky, so much as a decline in their own wealth relative to the mean. Participants in the experiment shrugged off changes in the Gini coefficient of their village, which measures overall inequality. Take the example of a village in which one person gets richer, and another gets poorer. The village is less equal, but the mean income is unchanged. In the Kenyan experiment this did not matter to the rest of the village. Instead, participants compared how well everyone else was doing (the village mean) to themselves.

Blinded by aspiration

A study by Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell looking at data on life satisfaction from Germany might help explain the Kenyans’ reactions. She concludes that there is an asymmetry in the way people compare themselves with others. We tend to look exclusively at those better off than us, rather than contemplate our position within the full range of outcomes. When the lot of others improves, we react negatively, but when our own lot improves, we shift our reference group to those who are still better off. In other words, we are never satisfied, since we quickly become accustomed to our own achievements. Perhaps that is what spurs people to earn more, and economies to grow.

(The Economist)

7 Signs your husband i s unhappily married

Have a sneaking suspicion that your husband is unsatisfied with your marriage? Below, psychologists and marriage therapists offer 7 common signs that a spouse may be growing restless in a relationship.

1. He feels like he can't win.

Don't think your heavy sighs and the comments made under your breath are going unnoticed. Unhappily married men often say they feel as though their wives are never satisfied with anything they do, said Kurt Smith, a Northern California-based marriage and family therapist who specializes in counseling for men.

"For some guys, they never feel like they can make their wife happy. Regardless of the issue, they don't do it enough, they do it too much or they never do it right," he explained.

To counter the negativity, Smith said spouses need to put more effort into recognizing helpful, positive things their husbands do around the house or for the family.

"The problem is, many men feel like their partners only notice when they do something wrong," he said. "When we feel like we just can't win, we often just give up trying."

2. He rolls his eyes every time you ask him to attend a party.

It's great to attend parties and get-togethers as a couple -- and making time in your busy schedule for date night is always a good thing. But for some guys, the pressure to be your plus-one at every wedding, work event and ugly sweater party can be a bit overwhelming, said Betsy Ross, a Massachusetts-based psychotherapist and divorce coach.

"Many unhappily married men complain that their spouses pressure them to do this or do that when all they really want to do is absolutely nothing. Sometimes, you just want to chill out for the night," she said.

If you're hearing variations of "leave me alone" more and more, Ross suggests you do just that.

"Men may want more time to themselves but it leads to them lending a hand and actually wanting to spend time with their spouses, without being asked."

3. He complains about nagging.

It's a cliche at this point, but psychologist and divorce mediator Kristin Davin confirms that complaints about nagging spouses is a constant in her New York City office. That said, there's usually more to the story than meets the eye.

"Often -- but not always -- women nag because men don’t follow through. How many times have you had a conversation about doing something and he commits to doing it and never follows through? Often, I'm guessing," she said. "Women feel caught in the middle: You continue to try and talk to him and address the issue but it goes nowhere. He interprets your request as nagging. You want to believe him but his promises go unfulfilled."

How do you save yourself from having these circular -- and tedious-- conversations?

"Try to change the dialogue," Davin suggested, "Say: This really is very important to me so when can I expect it to done? Is there a hurdle we can address? If it's not done by a certain time, can we call someone in to do it instead?"

4. He's putting in extra hours at work.

Sure, staying late at work can be a means to get ahead, but if he's working late into the evenings, on weekends, and even during vacations, he could be using his job as a convenient excuse for avoiding family time, Ross said.

"Spouses usually have a threshold for how much time they can tolerate away from their partner so when a husband starts spending more and more time and energy on work, they're devoting less time and energy to their marriage," she said. "Several of the unhappy husbands I've worked with spent increasing amounts of time on their career, networking or generally pursuing interests outside of their marriage and away from their family life."

5. He feels like he's being punished for things he did in the past.

At some point, you need to leave marital problems you dealt with years ago in the past, said Smith. For example, if he admitted, apologized and truly made amends for having an affair -- and you've granted him forgiveness -- you can't continue to punish him for it.

"We all have made mistakes, but some guys feel like they can never can get out from under the shadow of their past screw ups," Smith said. "These guys know when they make another mistake they're going to also hear all about what they did wrong five, 10 or 15 years ago."

6. He doesn't understand why you give him a hard time every time he wants to hang out with friends.

If the two of you are constantly at odds over his weekly fantasy football league get-togethers, try to address what's at the heart of the issue: If it's his need for space and time to himself that's bothering you, you might want to rethink your position, Davin said.

"Space is vital in a relationship," she explained. "Think of it this way: your marriage should be an interdependent relationship and not one that is dependent and enmeshed. Time spent apart creates space between the couple, which they need to grow, evolve and miss one another."

7. He dodges important conversations.

You may think mid-argument is the best time to bring up the issues that have been bothering you as of late, but the same might not hold true for your hubby, Davin said: Men often need more time or space to process your problems.

"This is very common complaint – often referred to as the 'pursuer-distancer dance' in relationships. Generally speaking, when there is a disagreement, most women want to talk right then and there -- they pursue. Men? Not so much. They want to distance – basically, they need to move away to a place where they have space to think."

The solution to this dilemma, Davin said, is to agree that you'll return to the problem when cooler heads prevail -- but for your own sanity, "do it sooner rather than later."

Study: Ebola in male survivors can survive up to 9 months

Doctors have found that Ebola can linger in some male survivors for up to nine months but aren't sure if that means they might still be infectious, according to new research.

In a study of 93 men in Sierra Leone, scientists found the Ebola virus in semen samples from about half of them. The risk seemed to decline over time. Ebola was detected in all nine men tested at two to three months after their illness began but in only 11 of the 43 survivors tested at seven to nine months.

Researchers aren't sure why Ebola remains in semen as opposed to other bodily fluids and don't know if the lingering virus might sicken others.

"We think there is a potential risk of exposure but we cannot determine that with 100 percent certainty right now," said Dr. Nathalie Broutet, an expert in sexually transmitted diseases at the World Health Organization and one of the study's authors. The paper was published online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

WHO said previous studies showed the virus could survive in semen for about three months, though it noted one case where it remained for about six months. The U.N. health agency has said the sexual transmission of Ebola from men to women is "a strong possibility" even though the disease is mainly spread by direct contact with other bodily fluids like blood.

To date, Ebola has killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa in the outbreak that was first identified last year and now appears to be winding down. There's also about 17,000 Ebola survivors, about half of them male.

The journal also published details of an Ebola case in March in Liberia, where a male survivor spread Ebola to a woman via unprotected sex five months after he became infected.

In an accompanying commentary, Dr. Armand Sprecher of Doctors Without Borders said if sexual transmission of Ebola was a significant means of spreading the virus, "we would have seen a number of cases by now," given the thousands of male Ebola survivors in West Africa. People with Ebola are believed to be most infectious when they are the sickest.

Sprecher said the results suggest that surveillance needs to last longer than now recommended once an outbreak is thought to be over in an area.

WHO and others recommend that male survivors of the lethal disease abstain from sex or use condoms for at least three months after their recovery. After that, they should be tested every month until they have two consecutive negative tests.

WHO says it's unknown how long Ebola survives in vaginal fluid, and says it's less probable that a woman who has survived Ebola could spread it to a man through sex.

Broutet said it was unclear whether the men whose samples tested positive for Ebola had any long-term side effects and if so, whether the virus might be responsible. Many survivors suffer from chronic problems including vision loss and joint pain.

Dr. Francis Moses, a district medical officer in northern Sierra Leone, said it was difficult convincing male Ebola survivors to use condoms or abstain from sex.

"The abstinence thing isn't working," he said, noting there are a number of pregnant women in his district whose partners are Ebola survivors.

Moses said the fact that thousands of Ebola survivors are living in West Africa means scientists need to figure out whether sex is a significant risk to the re-emergence of the disease.

"If we don't find a way of addressing this, we will never stop Ebola," he said.

(AP)

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Keeping up with the Karumes

7 Signs your husband i s unhappily married

Study: Ebola in male survivors can survive up to 9 months

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