Is Indonesia, one of big tobacco's last frontiers, closing?

Not fast enough for anti-smoking campaigners. But Indonesia is slowly taking steps to end its status as one of the great growth markets for tobacco companies.

By Sarah Schonhardt,?Correspondent / March 3, 2013

On Sunday thousands of young Indonesians streamed into an expo center in Jakarta to sway to cool jazz and R&B beats. But looking around it might have been easy to forget that Java Jazz was about music, not smoking.

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Officially, this year?s event is called the Jakarta International Djarum Super Mild Java Jazz festival after its lead sponsor Djarum, Indonesia?s third-largest tobacco company.

Other sponsors include Indonesia?s national bank and telecommunications company, the ministries of trade and tourism, and global healthcare firm Cigna, whose support has drawn the attention of anti-tobacco groups and consumer protection watchdogs.

Tulus Abadi, who works on tobacco control issues at the Indonesian Consumers Foundation, called the co-sponsorship ?contradictive,? while a US-based anti-tobacco group, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, described it as ?not acceptable.?

When asked about its support, Cigna officials said they received sponsorship rights in return for providing free accident coverage to Java Jazz crew, artists and visitors.

?In keeping with our mission ? we used the opportunity to promote health and wellness at the event, including free health checks, exercise activities and healthy eating,? said Christine Setyabudhi, the president director of Cigna?s Indonesia subsidiary in an e-mail.

The tobacco industry remains very powerful in a country with one of the world?s highest smoking rates and one where consumer companies are scrambling to boost profits from a growing middle class eager to spend growing disposable incomes. Cigarette taxes contribute about $8 billion to the government budget a year and the industry is a major employer, with a quarter of a million Indonesians involved in growing tobacco and manufacturing cigarettes.

In the past decade, with Indonesia one of the few growth markets for tobacco, international heavyweights have poured into the market, buying out the founders of some of Indonesia's top cigarette brands. Indonesian smoking culture is dominated by the distinctive local kretek cigarette, which are heavily flavored with cloves.

In 2005 Philip Morris, maker of Marlboro, acquired one of Indonesia?s? top two cigarette companies, PT HM Sampoerna, for $5 billion. British American Tobacco, the maker of Lucky Strike, entered the market in 2009, when it bought a controlling stake in Bentoel for $500 million. Djarum has resisted overtures from foreign buyers and remains in Indonesian hands.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/D1-Q8iZmbSk/Is-Indonesia-one-of-big-tobacco-s-last-frontiers-closing

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China to stress social wellbeing over growth

BEIJING (AP) ? China's government promised its people Tuesday deficit-fueled spending to fight corruption, improve the despoiled environment and address other quality-of-life issues that a growing number of Chinese are demanding.

In a speech outlining government plans at the opening of the annual National People's Congress, outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao signaled that leaders would no longer emphasize growth at all costs and would down-shift development to put priority on social programs.

"We must make ensuring and improving people's wellbeing the starting point and goal of all the government's work, give entire priority to it, and strive to strengthen social development," said Wen, who will step down at the end of the legislative session.

The session will complete China's once-a-decade leadership transition that began with a Communist Party congress in November that appointed Xi Jinping as party leader and as the country's new chief along with a new cohort of leaders in the Politburo. Xi will formally be named president, replacing outgoing Hu Jintao, during the 13-day session.

Wen's address, though given by the outgoing premier, and the accompanying budget presented by the government Tuesday are consensus documents approved by the new leadership and reflect Xi's priorities.

Overall government spending will increase 10 percent to 13.8 trillion yuan ($2.2 trillion) helped by a 50 percent increase in the coming year's fiscal deficit. Defense spending will increase 10.7 percent to 720 billion yuan ? a slight slowdown from last year's increase of 11.2 percent.

There was special emphasis on reducing energy consumption, improving conservation and solving the country's serious air, soil and water pollution.

"In response to people's expectations of having a good living environment, we should greatly strengthen ecological improvement and environmental protection," Wen said. "The state of the ecological environment affects the level of the people's wellbeing and also posterity and the future of our nation."

Hundreds of soldiers, police and plainclothes security officers, equipped with fire extinguishers and anti-explosive blankets, ringed the Great Hall of the People and the adjacent Tiananmen Square for the opening session.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-stress-social-wellbeing-over-growth-011633248.html

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AP PHOTOS: Anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday' march

AAA??Mar. 3, 2013?8:07 PM ET
AP PHOTOS: Anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday' march
By The Associated PressBy The Associated Press, Associated Press??

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., points to where he and others were beaten 48 years ago when they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a civil rights march in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 3, 2013. At rear is Vice President Joe Biden. At left is U/S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., Jesse Jackson is second from left. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., points to where he and others were beaten 48 years ago when they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a civil rights march in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 3, 2013. At rear is Vice President Joe Biden. At left is U/S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., Jesse Jackson is second from left. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., lead a group across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 3, 2013. They were commemorating the 48th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when police officers beat marchers when they crossed the bridge on a march from Selma to Montgomery.(AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Vice President Joe Biden, center, leads a group across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 3, 2013. They were commemorating the 48th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when police officers beat marchers when they crossed the bridge on a march from Selma to Montgomery. From left: Selma Mayor George Evans, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., Rev. Jesse Jackson, Biden, Rev. Al Sharpton and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Martin Luther King III addresses those who gathered for the Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 3, 2013. It is the 48th anniversary since Bloody Sunday. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Vice President Joe Biden and other lawmakers leads a group across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 3, 2013. They were commemorating the 48th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when police officers beat marchers when they crossed the bridge on a march from Selma to Montgomery. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

More than 5,000 people followed Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma, Ala., on Sunday.

The event commemorates the "Bloody Sunday" beating of voting rights marchers ? including a young Lewis ? by state troopers as they began a march to Montgomery in March 1965.

The 50-mile march prompted Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act that struck down impediments to voting by African-Americans and ended all-white rule in the South.

Here's a look at photos from the march.

__

Follow AP photographers on Twitter: http://apne.ws/Vptt6t

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-03-03-AP-Voting-Rights-March-Photo-Gallery/id-f9ce3e1c698f4fdc9fb565fbfe5882a4

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Misplaced molecules: New insights into the causes of dementia

Monday, March 4, 2013

A shortage of a protein called TDP-43 caused muscle wasting and stunted nerve cells. This finding supports the idea that malfunction of this protein plays a decisive role in ALS and FTD. The study is published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA" (PNAS).

ALS is an incurable neurological disease which manifests as rapidly progressing muscle wasting. Both limbs and respiratory muscles are affected. This leads to impaired mobility and breathing problems. Patients commonly die within a few years after the symptoms emerged. In rare cases, of which the British physicist Stephen Hawking is the most notable, patients can live with the disease for a long time. In Germany estimates show over 150,000 patients suffering from ALS ? an average of 1 in 500 people.

Proteins gone astray

Over the last few years, there has been increasing evidence that ALS and FTD ? a form of dementia associated with changes in personality and social behaviour ? may have similar or even the same origins. The symptoms overlap and common factors have also been found at the microscopic level. In many cases, particles accumulate and form clumps in the patient's nerve cells: this applies particularly to the TDP-43 protein.

"Normally, this protein is located in the cell nucleus and is involved in processing genetic information," explains molecular biologist Dr. Bettina Schmid, who works at the DZNE Munich site and at LMU. "However, in cases of disease, TDP-43 accumulates outside the nucleus forming aggregates." Schmid explains that it is not yet clear whether these clumps are harmful. "However, the protein's normal function is clearly disrupted. It no longer reaches the nucleus to perform its actual task. There seems to be a relationship between this malfunction and the disease."

Studies on zebrafish

However, until now little was known about the function of TDP-43. What are the consequences when this protein becomes non-functional? In order to answer this question, the team led by Bettina Schmid cooperated with the research group of Prof. Christian Haass to investigate the larvae of specially bred zebrafish. Their genetic code had been modified in such a way that no TDP-43 was produced in the organism of the fish. The result: the young fish showed massive muscle wasting and died a few days after hatching. Moreover, the extensions of the nerve cells which control the muscles were abnormal.

"To some extent, these are symptoms typical of ALS and FTD. Therefore, a loss of function of TDP-43 does seem to play a critical role in the disease," says Haass, Site Speaker of the DZNE Munich Site and chair of Metabolic Biochemistry at LMU.

The study revealed one more finding which surprised the researchers: the blood flow of the fish was massively disturbed. "It is well known that circulatory disorders play a part in other forms of dementia, notably in the case of Alzheimer's," says Haass. "We now want to investigate whether such problems with blood flow may be a general problem of neurodegenerative diseases and whether such problems occur particularly in patients with ALS and FTD."

###

Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres: http://www.helmholtz.de/en/index.html

Thanks to Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127105/Misplaced_molecules__New_insights_into_the_causes_of_dementia

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What I Learned in Searching for a Job | I'd Rather Be Writing

The most common questions I get on my blog are questions about finding jobs in technical writing. While looking for jobs the other month, I realized a few things that I haven?t actually recommended before. Here are a few notes from my recent job search:

• Large companies often select candidates to interview based on employee recommendations. I have a lot of connections with tech writers (784 on Linkedin), so I had quite a few people who helped connect me with interviewers. I could have reached out to many more connections than I actually did. (Linkedin, by the way, is hands-down one of the most important tools in a job search.)
• Once you get an interview, it doesn?t mean you?ll get the job. You need to have the required skills ? usually advanced technical skills involving the ability to read programming languages. Many companies are SaaS companies (meaning, they offer services in the cloud) and need documentation for developers to tie in to their services via an API. If you can read programming code and have API experience, you?ll be extremely marketable.
• Not everyone reads my blog. In fact, far fewer than I sometimes think. Because of this, it was great to have MindTouch?s ratings about influence to refer to. It gave me a way to pitch the value of my blog. Some people were impressed by this, while others didn?t seem to care too much.
• More than having a blog, being able to speak to challenges employers are facing about documentation gave me an edge. I felt I could address nearly any issue with some insight. I have more than 1,700 posts on my site, and I?ve written about such a variety of topics that I can?t imagine being surprised by anything. Still, communicating this knowledge is a challenge.
• In order to speak to documentation-related issues and challenges, it?s important to study the company?s documentation beforehand. You can gather a lot of insight and questions by looking over the way a company does documentation. If the documentation isn?t accessible, you can still gather a lot of information by reading about the company. I like to look at the way a company organizes their content, as well as any visual communication, user engagement, short guides, online help, and other documentation efforts the company is engaged in.
• It seems that most companies aren?t entirely happy with their documentation process, from the tools they?re using to the formats they publish to the way they deliver it to customers. And there isn?t a single standard process everyone is following. Employers are definitely looking to improve on the way they do documentation. This is something I noticed in various interviews. From systems and tools to methods and strategies, companies want to do documentation better.
• If you?re looking for work out of state, one strategy is to target a specific area, line up as many interviews as you can, and then plan a visit to the area for a week ? at your own expense. It may take about two or three weeks of preparation to line up the interviews, since most companies do phone interviews first. But companies may be more willing to interview if you?ll be in the area.
• Recruiters can be extremely helpful in job searches, since recruiters know which companies have active needs. If a recruiter believes in your ability to do the job well, the recruiter?s trust and rapport with the company can go a long way in getting you the job.
• Before you interview with five people in a row in an on-site visit to a company, be sure you get a good night?s sleep. Seriously. I like talking with people about documentation, but after about 2 hours, I?m ready for a break. When you?re on site for half of a day, it?s grueling. A good night?s sleep helps your endurance.
• Large companies often have slow hiring processes. There may be multiple stages, such as an initial HR interview, a writing questionnaire, another interview with the team, and then an on-site interview with everyone. This process can stretch out to 2-3 weeks. However, once you get an offer, it accelerates everything.
• Showing enthusiasm and interest in a job makes a heck of an?impact on hiring decisions. I wrote my JavaScript post partly to communicate enthusiasm. An audio book I listened to (called Acing the Interview) recommends ending each interview with the question, ?I?m an excellent fit for the position. How do I get the job?? I didn?t necessarily follow all the advice, but really, I noticed that when I was evaluating realtors?the other week to rent out my house, I went with the person who was most enthusiastic.

In looking for a job, one of my main questions?was whether writing this blog was worth it professionally. To some hiring managers, the blog seemed irrelevant. The employer would have preferred me to know Java than to be the ?#1 most influential tech comm blogger.? I wondered whether I should have spent my time learning more technical skills instead of writing blog posts.

Ultimately, I think both activities are important. Writing this blog is key to maintaining my interest and passion in the industry. When I combine the branding that comes from this blog with strong technical skills, it?s a powerful combination.

In the end, though, a blog has no meaning in itself. In job searches, a blog is only relevant when it gives you interesting ideas and strategies that you can communicate to others, especially as these strategies relate to challenges companies are facing.

So yes, blogging is worth it. The blog is a powerful tool for building industry-specific knowledge, innovating in interesting ways, and connecting with other professionals. But you can?t assume everyone has read your blog. You have to communicate the knowledge articulated in relevant blog posts to hiring managers.

As a side note, I haven?t published a new post for about two weeks, because I?ve been so busy relocating and settling in. Having gone so long without writing and publishing feels odd. It makes me feel like a part of me is missing or dormant. I guess that means whether the blog is professionally helpful or not, it?s an activity integral to who I am.

Source: http://idratherbewriting.com/2013/03/03/what-i-learned-in-searching-for-a-technical-writing-job/

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No More Olympic Wrestling?: A Gendered Perspective ...

With the exception of 1900, wrestling has been in every modern Olympic Games since 1896. This past February, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to cut wrestling from the Olympics due to reported low attendance, poor television ratings, and general lack of popularity. Wrestling has two different styles at the Olympic level, Greco-Roman and freestyle. Both will be offered in in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. However come 2020, wrestling ? a sport with historic Olympic roots ? will likely be slashed from the Olympic platform. In this post David Mayeda explains why the IOC?s decision is a slap in the face to women?s and girls? sport.

3-time Olympic Gold medallist Saori Yoshida

Wrestling is a sport that is dear to my heart. I didn?t go that far with it, stopping after high school to pursue a collegiate track and field journey. Still, I?ll brag a bit about my high school wrestling team. Typically one of the less popular American high school sports, our team had over 100 athletes when I was a freshman. Four years later as a senior, we still had around 80 wrestlers on the team, and we were damn good, winning league championships at every level all four years I was there.

But ?wrestling? at my high school actually meant ?boys wrestling.? The sport was normalized as a masculine, males-only sport. You didn?t have to qualify naming it as ?boys wrestling,? because everyone automatically assumed girls didn?t participate as wrestlers, or that women didn?t lead as coaches. As sociologists, we are trained to question that which is presented as normal ? to expose the social forces that construct our everyday lives.

Historically, sport was divided along very gendered lines, even more so than in present time. In early twentieth century United States, sports like boxing, basketball, and track and field were developed as male-only athletic terrain. In contrast, tennis, swimming, and golf, were sports where women could participate with a bit more flexibility. Society?s leaders of that time argued that the physical contact between athletes in sports like boxing and basketball, or the heavy pounding involved in track and field events (e.g., powerful running and jumping) jeopardized women?s reproductive organs. Thus, if women were allowed participation in sport at all, it would have to be in sports that supposedly preserved women?s ability to bear children. Notably, when women did partake in sports like basketball, they were stigmatized for acting in ways that violated ?proper? womanhood.

Ultimately what these sporting trends illustrate is (1) how women were valued in society, and (2) how sport was used as a social institution to preserve values that privileged men. Clearly, women were (and often still are) valued primarily for their ability to reproduce. Women?s general exclusion from sport coincided with the gendered dimensions of work. Just as men were freer to partake in the public spaces of work and assert their financial autonomy, they could also celebrate their public participation in sport, using certain sports as a medium through which to showcase their alleged physical superiority over women. Women on the other hand, were confined to the private realm of the family, encouraged to partake in sport only if participation reaffirmed their status as mothers and home makers. For males, less constrained involvement in work and sport meant a distancing from the family, a distancing from being caring fathers and partners.

Okay, this has been an entirely depressing post thus far. The fact is, women and girls fought for their right to be athletes in a variety of sports, and long before the women?s movements of the 1970s. With regard to the Olympic Games, it has been a lengthy series of struggles that led to the first women?s marathon race back in 1980, to women finally participating in the pole vault and triple jump in 2000, to women?s freestyle wrestling introduced in 2004, and women?s boxing finally entering the Olympics in 2012. Uh, and no, not that it really matters, but for the record, participation in such events and sports has not harmed women?s ability to have kids.

And did you know, Massachusetts just crowned its first state female wrestling champion, Danielle Coughlin, who won her high school state title by competing with (er, defeating) the boys? In some states like Hawai?i, girls wrestling is so popular that it boasts its own infrastructure with their own high school teams and state wrestling tournament. Olympic bronze medallist Clarissa Chun is part of Hawai?i's wrestling legacy. Japan is probably the country with the most successful female wrestlers. Saori Yoshida has won Olympic gold at all three Olympic Games that included women, with two of her teammates ? Hitomi Obara and Kaori Icho ? also winning Olympic gold in 2012. Canada is also producing a strong legacy in wrestling with Tonya Verbeek medalling in 2004, 2008, and 2012, and Carol Huynh winning gold in 2008 and bronze in 2012.

Indeed, the IOC?s decision to cut Olympic wrestling in 2020 is a tragedy for the many male wrestlers who struggle to succeed in a non-revenue producing sport. But even more so it is a slap in the face to the female wrestlers who struggled for so long just to be included in a sport with such rich Olympic tradition. Now that female wrestlers have finally broken through a sporting glass ceiling and can compete alongside their male comrades, it?s taken away. Message to the IOC: Keep Wrestling in the Olympics!

Dig deeper:

1. Explain how sport has been used as a social institution to maintain traditional gender roles.
2. Identify sports in contemporary society that are considered socially acceptable for women and men; describe how society?s perception of certain sports reinforces social gender norms.
3. What do you think about women/girls competing in combat sports like wrestling, boxing, and mixed martial arts? Where do you think your opinions on this issue come from?
4. From a corporate money-making standpoint, why do you feel the IOC has cut wrestling despite its rich Olympic tradition?

Suggested further reading: Cahn, S. K. (1994). Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women?s Sport. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Photo via Wikicommons.

Source: http://www.sociologyinfocus.com/2013/03/04/no-more-olympic-wrestling-a-gendered-perspective/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=no-more-olympic-wrestling-a-gendered-perspective

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Satellite TV ? The True Home Entertainment Experience | TechSling ...

Big-screen TVs were the centre of attention at the International CES in Las Vegas earlier this year. Manufacturers were eager to show off 3D TVs, 4K-resolution TVs and a host of other innovations and developments. But one question remains ? what is there to watch on these high-end TVs?

It does not take long after purchasing a HD-capable TV and a Blu-Ray player to become accustomed to watching movies and TV broadcasts in 1080p. Once you have got used to that, the quality of SDTV and DVD-quality viewing material is hardly satisfactory. Unfortunately, most people have huge DVD collections and it will take a lot of time (and money) to re-build an equivalent Blu-Ray collection.

Endless Entertainment

If you want to watch HD-quality TV series, movies and documentaries, then the best thing to do, right now, is use a broadcast service. Streaming services do broadcast in HD in many cases, but it is often limited to 720p and even where 1080p is available, there is no guarantee that your internet connection will be able to provide a high-quality, consistent stream whenever you want it. Satellite TV may be an older technology, but it offers a consistent, reliable viewing experience. The selection of channels is massive and you can pick and choose your own package from lists such as the one available here.

Documentaries, Dramas, Movies and Sports

With programming including dramas such as The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, documentaries such as Planet Earth and Storm Chasers and a huge selection of sports, including pro-wrestling, all of your favourite basketball and football leagues and mixed martial arts, you should never be short of viewing material. The lag-time between a movie being released at the cinema and it hitting DVD/Blu-Ray and satellite TV is getting shorter, so the selection of movies broadcast on both free and premium movie channels is increasing.

DirecTV offers more than 185 HD channels and the DISH network has a huge selection of full HD channels as well as some that broadcast a mixture of programming. Proponents of streaming and on-demand services love to point to the flexibility that they offer, but they?re forgetting about the issue of quality and reliability.

When you?re planning a movie night at home, you want a service that just works and one that is as close to the cinema as possible. You don?t want to content with buffering, low-quality audio or artefacts on the screen ? not when you have a huge LCD TV and a surround-sound system. Instead, you want to dim the lights, lie back on the sofa and enjoy a cinema-like experience in the company of your friends and with fresh popcorn.

Satellite TV is still the premier home-entertainment experience and the best choice for people who want high-quality, rich and varied entertainment.

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Source: http://www.techsling.com/2013/03/satellite-tv-the-true-home-entertainment-experience/

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