Can money buy happiness

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By Tim Weber
Business Editor, BBC News website, in Davos

If getting rich makes us happy, then why don’t countries as a whole get happier as they grow wealthier? A workshop at the World Economic Forum in Davos tried to find out.

Are you happy? Really, truly happy?

Yes? Oh good! But why? Is it because you are rich, healthy, successful, have a family, or are you just having a good time?

So far, so easy. Even better, neuroscientists could tell me whether you are lying.

They can check whether the right parts in your brain get active when you claim to be as happy as a bunny.

And one thing they have discovered is that money tends to make us happier, says Lord Layard, professor at the London School of Economics and author of the book Happiness.

The conundrum

Now comes the hitch: when a whole society gets richer, there is no overall increase in happiness.

Instead, rich Western societies are plagued with high levels of depression and envy.

Unfortunately, it takes more than an entrepreneur, a media executive, a musician, and two economics professors to find an answer for the conundrum.

At least they gave it a try: “serial entrepreneur” Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Imax co-chief executive Richard Gelfond, Senegalese music legend Youssou N’Dour, Yale professor Robert Shiller and Lord Layard.

Pay taxes, be happy

Are you satisfied earning one million dollars if your neighbour rakes in two million?

Money may make you happier, says Lord Layard, but when you judge your wealth (and thus your happiness) you measure it against the people around you.

Even worse: Western societies make this “terrible error” of telling people they should work ever harder to compete.

What a waste, says Lord Layard (possibly tongue in check) and suggests that only higher taxes can force people to stop competing and restore a healthy, happy work-life balance.

The lesson: pay high taxes, don’t work yourself to death, and live happily ever after.

Play football, be happy

Not so, argues Stelios Haji-Ioannou, boss of Easygroup and amongst many other things founder of budget airline Easyjet.

People quickly get used to their wealth, just as they get used to their own beauty.

As a result, having tons of money won’t make you happy, and as proof there are plenty of unhappy rich kids, says Mr Haji-Ioannou (and he should know – he once was one himself).

Instead we should take a Greek lesson: never was his home country happier than after Greece won the European Football Championship and hosted the Olympics last year.

The lesson: play football, and “don’t try to fix happiness with taxes or wealth”.

Be competitive, be happy

But being an achiever and rising out of poverty surely must bring happiness, argues Richard Gelfond.

And once you are rich you can afford the “creature comforts” that make life pleasant and happy.

The lesson: “wealth plays a bigger factor in being happy than we all would like to admit.”

In surveys, people consistently give three reasons for their personal happiness: wealth, family and health.

Being richer affords you better health, and in all likelihood better relationships as well, believes Professor Robert Shiller.

The lesson: “we can use increased wealth to create happiness,” but if we aren’t happy yet, we just don’t go about it the right way.

Get grooving, play football, be happy

Forget money entirely, says Youssou N’Dour.

There is plenty of happiness in Senegal, even though its people are not wealthy at all, says Mr N’Dour.

“Just see the joy that music and entertainment can bring to the boys in the poorest parts of Dakar.”

But he concedes that one thing was even better: the moment when Senegal beat France in the 2002 Football World Cup.

The lesson: if you’re happy and you know it…

The happy factor

The audience was not convinced.

“What about values?”… “Why are deeply religious people usually so much happier?”… Are “television programmes about the rich and famous”, is the “pop culture celebrity cult” the source of all unhappiness?

Maybe happiness is like a forest that from time to time needs a fire – or suffering – to grow happily?

There was agreement on just one thing: governments will find it difficult to legislate for happiness, although they can clear some of the obstacles out of the way.

As the discussion wrapped up, Youssou N’Dour grabbed the microphone and sang us a song about happiness.

And so we went back into the bitter cold of the Davos night.

Feeling strangely serene, even happy.

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reference:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4211413.stm

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HIV dates back to around 1900, study shows

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Genetic analysis of tissue specimen recently discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo leads researchers to believe the virus that causes AIDS has been present for more than a century.

By Mary Engel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 2, 2008

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A genetic analysis of a biopsy sample recently discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has led researchers to conclude that the virus that causes AIDS has existed in human populations for more than a century, according to a study released Wednesday.

The study, led by evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona in Tucson, puts the date of origin at around 1900, which is 30 years earlier than previous analyses.

HIV-1, the most common form of the virus, is known to have originated in chimpanzees because of close genetic similarities to a simian virus. It now infects an estimated 33 million people worldwide.

But figuring out when the virus jumped species and became established in humans has been difficult. The first cases in the U.S. were recognized in 1981, and the oldest evidence of the virus is a 1959 blood sample taken from a man who lived in what was then the Belgian Congo.

To find the point of origin, the scientists relied on a well-recognized genetic technique to determine the mutation rates of different sub-types of the virus. With a known rate of mutation, researchers could then, in essence, run the clock backward to find the point where the different sub-types were the same. That common ancestor would represent the first appearance of the virus in humans before it mutated.

“The HIV virus evolves incredibly quickly,” said geneticist Bette Korber of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who did an analysis in 2000. “Those mutations get passed on to the next individual. So we have that evolutionary pace to enable a look backward.”

Korber’s analysis compared the 1959 blood sample and modern samples. She traced their common ancestor to roughly 1931.

The new analysis, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, added lymph node tissue from a woman who died in 1960 in the Belgian Congo. The tissue specimen was one of more than 800 preserved in ice-cube-size blocks of paraffin at the University of Kinshasa.

The researchers compared that sample with modern strains to determine its mutation rate. Then they matched that rate with the 1959 sample, tracing their common ancestor to between 1884 and 1924.

“I’ve been trying to track down old samples like this for quite a few years now,” Worobey said. “As soon as you have that one other sequence from that same time period, it really snaps the whole evolutionary picture into sharp focus.”

The researchers surmised that the creation of colonial cities around the turn of the century was the catalyst that allowed the virus to take hold.

Dr. Steven M. Wolinsky, a co-author of the study, said that colonial cities meant not just more potential hosts for viruses living in closer quarters, but also prostitution and other high-risk behaviors for transmitting the virus.

“Urbanization was probably the main trigger,” said Wolinsky, an infectious diseases specialist at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Jim Moore, an anthropologist at UC San Diego who was not associated with the study, said the fact that the virus could have spread unnoticed for decades is no surprise, given the mortality rates in Africa during the colonial period.

“The conditions then were horrendous in terms of how Africans were treated,” he said. “People dying of AIDS would have been part of the background.”

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reference:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation

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9 Great Breakfast Ideas for Kids of All Ages

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“Consumer Reports” finds that many cereals are more sugary than doughnuts. What to do?

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By Nancy Shute

Posted October 1, 2008

A bowl of cereal can be less healthful than a doughnut, according to a new ranking of kids’ breakfast cereals published by Consumer Reports. Eleven cereals ranked by the venerable group had more sugar than a glazed Dunkin’ Donut. The culprits include Kellogg’s Honey Smacks (nee Sugar Smacks) and Post Golden Crisp, both of which get almost 60 percent of their calories from sugar. Talk about a sugar high!

What’s a parent to do? Registered dietitians know how to eat smart at breakfast—without denying your sweet tooth. This is good news not just for kids but for the many grownups who still love sugared cereal. Sarah Krieger, a registered dietitian who teaches kids how to make a wholesome breakfast at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., is among them. Right now she craves Cocoa Krispies, which she attributes to being pregnant. Otherwise, her sugary fave is Frosted Mini-Wheats. Here are nine ways to build a breakfast that’s both healthful and satisfying:

• Go for protein. Study after study has shown that eating breakfast makes for better cognitive performance through the day and less weight gain over time. To make that happen, a key ingredient is protein, which provides lasting energy. One good choice: peanut butter on a whole-grain English muffin.

• Fiber up. Consumer Reports considered fiber one of its key ranking criteria, right up there with the amount of sugar. Its winners among cereals marketed to children: Cheerios and Kix, both with 3 grams of fiber per serving, and Life and Honey Nut Cheerios, both with 2 grams. Step outside the realm of cereals marketed to kids, and there are lots of good choices, including Raisin Bran, with 5 grams of fiber per serving, Grape-Nuts, with 7 grams, or Kashi Go Lean Crunch, with 9 grams. Children need at least their age plus 5 in fiber; a 5-year-old should eat at least 10 grams of fiber a day. Adults need 25 to 35 grams, and cereal is a great way to get it.

• Sugar can help the fiber go down. Some cereals that have added sugar also have real health benefits: A serving of Frosted Mini-Wheats, for instance, has a whopping 6 grams of fiber, which dietitians say helps make up for the 12 grams of sugar per serving.

• Look for whole grains. Not only do whole grain cereals have more fiber, but they also have more natural vitamins and minerals. Finding good whole-grain cereal can take some detective work. For instance, oatmeal in the round box has more fiber than single-serving packaged oatmeal because the instant oatmeal is more highly processed. It almost always has added sugar, too. Better to microwave old-fashioned or quick oatmeal, and drizzle on honey or add dried cherries if you like it sweet.

• Be unconventional. Leftover pizza or pasta makes a great breakfast choice, according to Krieger. Add a piece of fruit and a glass of milk, and you’re good for the morning.

• Keep an eye on sodium. Consumer Reports dinged Rice Krispies, but not because it has a lot of sugar—it’s got only 4 grams per serving, which is next to nothing compared with Froot Loops, with 12 grams. Instead, Rice Krispies was faulted for being higher in sodium than is necessary, at 135 milligrams, and having almost no fiber (it’s puffed white rice). Other cereals heavily promoted to children have up to 270 mg of sodium in a serving, which is a real concern at a time when increasing numbers of children are being diagnosed with high blood pressure.

• Use sweetened cereals like a condiment. Layer a little Cap’n Crunch, with 12 grams of sugar and 1 gram of fiber, on top of shredded wheat, with no sugar and 5 grams of fiber, and you’ve got a not-so-bad bowlful. Krieger likes her Cocoa Krispies atop plain shredded wheat or Cheerios.

• Beware of sneaky sugar substitutes. Some cereal companies are replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners so they can say their product has less sugar, according to Tara Gudis, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. You wouldn’t know that unless you read the fine print in the ingredients. Eating supersweet food, even if artificially sweetened, is a bad idea, Gudis says, because once people are used to really sweet tastes, they’re less likely to eat a varied, healthful diet.

• Eat breakfast every day. Consistently eating breakfast turns up in study after study as a key part of healthful living, particularly for kids. “I like cereal,” says Gudis. “It’s a good way to get people to eat breakfast, and if you pick a high-fiber one, you can get half your fiber knocked out for the day.” Eat it with milk, and you’re getting protein, calcium, and Vitamin D, too.

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reference:http://health.usnews.com/

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