A New and Improved Moore's Law

Power hungry: The first general purpose computer, ENIAC 1, could perform a few hundred calculations per second.
Credit: U.S. Government / Public Domain

COMPUTING

A New and Improved Moore's Law

Under "Koomey's law," it's efficiency, not power, that doubles every year and a half.

• BY KATE GREENE

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Researchers have, for the first time, shown that the energy efficiency of computers doubles roughly every 18 months.

The conclusion, backed up by six decades of data, mirrors Moore's law, the observation from Intel founder Gordon Moore that computer processing power doubles about every 18 months. But the power-consumption trend might have even greater relevance than Moore's law as battery-powered devices—phones, tablets, and sensors—proliferate.

"The idea is that at a fixed computing load, the amount of battery you need will fall by a factor of two every year and a half," says Jonathan Koomey, consulting professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and lead author of the study. More mobile computing and sensing applications become possible, Koomey says, as energy efficiency continues its steady improvement.

The research, conducted in collaboration with Intel and Microsoft, examined peak power consumption of electronic computing devices since the construction of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) in 1956. The first general purpose computer, the ENIAC was used to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army, and it could perform a few hundred calculations per second. It used vacuum tubes rather than transistors, took up 1,800 square feet, and consumed 150 kilowatts of power.

Even before the advent of discrete transistors, Koomey says, energy efficiency doubled every 18 months. "This is a fundamental characteristic of information technology that uses electrons for switching," he says. "It's not just a function of the components on a chip."

The sort of engineering considerations that go into improving computer performance—reducing component size, capacitance, and the communication time between them, among other things—also improves energy efficiency, Koomey says. The new research, coauthored by Stephen Berard of Microsoft, Marla Sanchez, at Carnegie Mellon University, and Henry Wong of Intel, was published in the July-September issue of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

In July, Koomey released a report that showed, among other findings, that the electricity used in data centers worldwide increased by about 56 percent from 2005 to 2010—a much lower rate than the doubling that was observed from 2000 to 2005.

While better energy efficiency played a part in this change, the total electricity used in data centers was less than the forecast for 2010 in part because fewer new servers were installed than expected due to technologies such as virtualization, which allowed existing systems to run more programs simultaneously. Koomey notes that data center computers rarely run at peak power. Most computers are, in fact, "terribly underutilized," he says.

The information technology world has gradually been shifting its focus from computing capabilities to better energy efficiency, especially as people become more accustomed to using smart phones, laptops, tablets, and other battery-powered devices.

Since the Intel Core microarchitecture was introduced in 2006, the company has experienced "a sea change in terms of focus on power consumption," says Lorie Wigle, general manager of the eco-technology program at Intel. "Historically, we have focused on performance and battery life, and increasingly, we're seeing those two things come together," she says.

"Everyone's familiar with Moore's law and the remarkable improvements in the power of computers, and that's obviously important," says Erik Brynjolfsson, professor of the Sloan School of Management at MIT. But people are paying more attention to the battery life of their electronics as well as how fast they can run. "I think that's more and more the dimension that matters to consumers," Brynjolfsson says. "And in a sense, 'Koomey's law,' this trend of power consumption, is beginning to eclipse Moore's law for what matters to consumers in a lot of applications."

To Koomey, the most interesting aspect of the trend is thinking about the possibilities for computing. The theoretical limits are still so far away, he says. In 1985, the physicist Richard Feynman analyzed the electricity needs for computers and estimated that efficiency could theoretically improve by a factor of 100 billion before it hit a limit, excluding new technologies such as quantum computing. Since then, efficiency improvements have been about 40,000. "There's so far to go," says Koomey. "It's only limited by our cleverness, not the physics."

Europe warned of financial chaos over Greek debt crisis

Greek prime minister fails to form unity government as police battle rioters in Athens and shares tumble over default fears

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• Ian Traynor in Brussels, Helena Smith in Athens
• The Guardian,
• Article history

Greece's 18-month sovereign debt crisis brought the government to the brink of collapse as public fury over savage austerity measures erupted in pitched battles with riot police on the streets of Athens.

The escalation of the Greek crisis had instant European and global impact, sending world stocks tumbling and exposing European Unionparalysis over whether and how to launch a second attempt in a year to save Greece from insolvency.

George Papandreou, the socialist prime minister, announced he would seek a vote of confidence on a new government after offering to resign and broker a new national unity coalition with opposition conservatives.

He admitted failure after intense but fruitless negotiations with the conservative New Democracy party aimed at engineering a consensus behind the massive public spending cuts and wholesale privatisation programme – moves deemed necessary to secure a second bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

The opposition called for Papandreou's resignation and a renegotiation of the bailout terms with the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF as the price for its assent to a national coalition.

Earlier, riot police clashed with tens of thousands of demonstrators protesting in the capital against the radical austerity measures being imposed to try to secure a new bailout expected to amount to around €100bn.

Following the fall of the Irish and Portuguese governments in recent months after driving their countries into bankruptcy, it appeared that the eurozone's worst crisis was claiming another scalp. Despite the heightening sense of urgency, EU governments, the ECB, and the European Commission remained gridlocked over how to respond to the debt emergency, which pushed Greece closer to sovereign default and Europe towards a fresh banking crisis.

The ECB warned that a Greek default could spark "contagion" across Europe, causing Greek banks to implode and inflicting major damage on the big banks in France and Germany.

"It looks like a week of chaos," said a European official in Brussels. An emergency meeting of the 17 eurozone finance ministers on Tuesday failed to bridge the differences over how to construct a second bailout for Greece, senior EU diplomats said. In May last year the EU and the IMF put together a €110bn bailout for Greece, the first in a single currency country. That experiment has failed. Ireland and Portugal have since also needed to be rescued from national insolvency.

"The euro area faces a very challenging situation that comes mostly from the interconnection of the sovereign debt crisis and the situation of the banking sector," the ECB said. "Greece could have a contagion effect," added Vitor Constancio, an ECB vice-president.

Papandreou's offer of a national unity government signalled he was throwing in the towel because of an inability to push through the tens of billions in spending cuts, tax rises, and privatisation progress needed to secure the international bailout.

Europe's peripheral debt crisis has also taken a heavy political toll in the richer creditor countries of the eurozone, with anti-bailout populists making big gains in Finland and the Netherlands. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also suffered political setbacks at home while coming in for searing criticism abroad for her handling of the emergency.

The Americans too are exasperated with the failure of the big EU states to resolve the crisis and fear for the impact of a Greek default on the international economy. Greek borrowing costs soared to record levels as investors took fright.

Stock markets suffered; the Dow Jones industrial average in Wall Street was down 180 points, and FTSE 100 was down 60 points.

Berlin, backed by the Dutch, Austrians, and Finns, have been arguing for weeks that there can be no new bailout of Greece without the country's private creditors being forced to suffer losses on their loans. Otherwise, they argue, European taxpayers will be shouldering the costs while the international banks pocket the proceeds.

The ECB, the European Commission and other EU countries led by France argue that this could pave the way to disaster, with the financial markets decreeing the compulsory "haircuts" on private bondholders a Greek default, a "credit event" that could lay waste to the single currency.

"We are against any sort of default with haircuts and any form of private-sector event that could lead to a credit event or a rating event," Constancio said.

There was little sign that the differences had been bridged at Tuesday's emergency meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

They meet again in Luxembourg on Sunday under pressure to strike a deal on a new Greek rescue by 20 June, ahead of an EU summit next Thursday.

But yesterday in Brussels diplomats said it could take weeks, perhaps until mid-July, to reach agreement. Amid a sense that the Greek drama was moving towards a European denouement, all eyes were on a summit between Merkel and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

End of the line for Greece?

Europe doesn't want to play the bailout game anymore. That decision may be regretted, later

BY ANDREW LEONARD

Sashkin and Antony McAulay via Shutterstock

Is Greece approaching the end of the line? Judging by a lengthy and detailed article in Spiegel, "Germany Plans for Possible Greece Default,"getting passed around Monday by econobloggers like a eurozone-destroying hot potato, the answer is yes. Germany's patience -- never much to begin with -- has run out. There is no way that Greece will be able to keep to the terms of its ongoing bailout, and the support spigot appears finally about to run dry. So one way or another, the country will default. The only question is whether it does so as a member of the eurozone, or as a refugee.

Many observers have been predicting this end game since the beginning of Europe's sovereign debt crisis, if only because the austerity forced upon Greece by the terms of its bailout has so damaged the Greek economy as to make it impossible for the country to grow at all. But whatever might or might not happen to Greece has never been the primary cause for concern. European banks own lots and lots of Greek debt. What happens to those banks when Greece defaults?

Systemic crisis, anyone? As Spiegel observes, "As the financial crisis showed, banks are deeply interconnected across national borders. If one major bank fails, others can easily be dragged down with it."

And that of course, was the rationale for bailing out institutions like Bank of America and Citigroup, rather than forcing them into some kind of managed bankruptcy. Now it looks more and more like the world will get a chance to find out what happens when governments decide that they won't (or can't) bail out the bad apples.

The consensus view of Europe's policymakers, as summarized by Spiegel, seems to be that Greece is a basket case that can't be saved, but that the Greek contagion won't spread to other sickly eurozone countries. That sounds an awful lot to me like Hank Paulson or Ben Bernanke's assertions that the subprime mortgage housing woes were "contained." The big risk of course, is that Greece turns out to be like Lehman Brothers, and a default there leads to meltdown more broadly.

Felix Salmon captures the moment:

"We're at an inflection point, in Europe, and all the signs are pointing to more chaos and uncertainty. The last crisis brought Europe and the world together, at least briefly. This one is tearing Europe apart."

HOW TO EXPAND YOUR BUSINESS WORLDWIDE

Would you like to expand your business beyond America’s and Europe’s borders? This article offers an excellent explanation of how you can do exactly this. Find out here!

Strategy+Business shares…

During the high-growth years between 1992 and 2007, the globalization of commerce galloped at a faster pace than in any other period in history. Now, amid the chronic unemployment and anti-trade rhetoric of the post-financial-crisis world, some observers wonder whether globalization needs a time-out. However, the experience of multinational companies in the field suggests the opposite. For them, globalization isn’t happening rapidly enough. Whereas GDP growth has stalled in the industrialized world, consumption demand is still expanding in China, India, Russia, Brazil, and other emerging markets. The 1 billion customers of yesterday’s global businesses have been joined by 4 billion more. These customers reside in a much larger geographic area; three-quarters of them are new to the consumer economy, and they need the infrastructure, products, and services that only global companies provide.

Most companies are still organized as they were when the market was largely concentrated in the triad of the old industrialized world: the U.S., Europe, and Japan. These structures lead companies to continue building their global strategies around the trade-offs and limits of the past — trade-offs and limits that are no longer accurate or relevant.

One of the most prevalent and pernicious of these perceived trade-offs is the one between centrally driven operating models and local responsiveness. In most companies, an implicit assumption is at play: If you want to gain the full benefits of economies of scale — and to integrate common values, quality standards, and brand identity in your company around the world — then you must centralize your intellectual power and innovation capability at home. You must bring all your products and services into line everywhere, and accept that you can’t fully adapt to the diverse needs and demands of customers in every emerging market.

Alternatively (according to this assumption), if you want locally relevant distribution systems, with rapidly responding supply chains and the lower costs of emerging-market management, then you must decentralize your company and run it as a loose federation. You must move responsibilities for branding and product lineups to the periphery, and accept different trade-offs: more variable cost structures, fewer economies of scale, more diverse and incoherent product lines, and more inconsistent standards of quality.

Some companies try to use strict cost controls to manage these trade-offs. They put in place a decentralized operating model with some central oversight, usually augmented by outsourcing. But this is a tactical move based on expediency, rather than a global strategy. This approach leads to suboptimal results in today’s complex world.

கணவன் மனைவி இடையே பாச பிணைப்பு இருந்தால் 100 ஆண்டுகளை தாண்டினாலும் இளமை யோடு வாழலாம்

by Ponnaiahpillai Ramesh 

மனைவியுடன் பிறந்த நாள் கொண்டாடிய 104 வயது தாத்தா

கணவன் மனைவி இடையே பாச பிணைப்பு இருந்தால் 100 ஆண்டுகளை தாண்டினாலும் இளமை யோடு வாழலாம் என்பதை நிரூபித்து இருக்கிறார்கள் வடசேரியைச் சேர்ந்த ராமன்ஆசாரி வள்ளியம்மாள் தம்பதி.

நாகர்கோவில் வடசேரியைச் சேர்ந்த ராமன்ஆசாரி மர வேலைகள் செய்து வருகிறார். இவரது மனைவி வள்ளியம்மாள். கணவருக்கு உதவியாக இருக்கிறார்.

ராமன்ஆசாரிக்கு 5 மகன்களும், 3 மகள்களும் உள்ளனர். அனைவருக்கும் திருமணமாகி விட்டது. ஆனால் ராமன்ஆசாரியும், வள்ளியம்மாளும் இன்றும் அந்த பகுதியில் இணை பிரி யாத தம்பதிகளாக வலம் வருகிறார்கள். ராமன்ஆசாரிக்கு இன்று 104 வயது பிறந்தது. இதை சிறப்பாக கொண்டாட அவரது கொள்ளுபேரன்கள் முடிவு செய்தனர்.

இதையடுத்து வடசேரியில் உள்ள ஒரு திருமண மண்டபத்தில் இன்று பிறந்த நாள் கொண்டாட்டம் நடந்தது. இதில் பிரமாண்ட கேக் செய்து வைக்கப்பட்டிருந்தது. ராமன் ஆசாரி கேக் வெட்டி அதனை அன்பு மனைவிக்கு ஆசையுடன் ஊட்டினார். உறவுகளும், சொந்தங்களும், இதைப்பார்த்து மகிழ்ந்தனர். இது போன்ற வாழ்க்கையை தாங்களும் வாழ்ந்திட அவரிடம் வாழ்த்து பெற்றனர்.

இதுபற்றி ராமன்ஆசாரியின் மகன் கூறும்போது, எங்களின் தந்தை இதுவரை பல விபத்துக்களில் சிக்கி உயிர் பிழைத்து உள்ளார். மோட்டார் சைக்கிள், பஸ், ரெயில் விபத்தில் கூட சிக்கி இருக்கிறார். இதற்காக மட்டும் ஒரிருநாள் ஆஸ்பத்திரியில் சிகிச்சை பெற்றுள்ளார். ஆனால் உடல் நலக்குறைவுக் காக ஒரு நாள் கூட அவர் ஆஸ்பத்திரிக்கு சென்றதில்லை. மூலிகை மருந்து தான் அவரது உடல் நலனுக்கு காரணம்.

தனது உடல் சோர்வுக்கு மூலிகை மருந்துகளையே பயன்படுத்துவார். அதையும் அவரே தேடி கண்டு பிடித்து மருந்தாக்கி அருந்துவார். அவரது வாழ்க்கை எங்களுக்கு உதாரணம். அது எதிர்கால சந்ததிக்கும் தெரிய வேண்டும் என்று விரும்பியதால் இந்த விழாவை எடுத்தோம். இதில் தந்தையின் கொள்ளு பேரன்கள் பேத்தி கள் குடும்பத்துடன் கலந்து கொண்டு அவரிடம் வாழ்த்து பெற்றோம்

2 STORY OF SAI BABA .avi

Neuroscientists Find Famous Optical Illusion Surprisingly Potent

The yellow jacket (Rocky, the mascot of the University of Rochester) appears to be expanding if you have just viewed concentric circles moving inwards. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Rochester)

Science Daily  — The yellow jacket (Rocky, the mascot of the University of Rochester) appears to be expanding. But he is not. He is staying still. We simply think he is growing because our brains have adapted to the inward motion of the background and that has become our new status quo.

This age-old illusion, first documented by Aristotle, is called the Motion Aftereffect by today's scientists. Why does it happen, though? Is it because we are consciously aware that the background is moving in one direction, causing our brains to shift their frame of reference so that we can ignore this motion? Or is it an automatic, subconscious response?Similar situations arise constantly in our day-to-day lives -- jump off a moving treadmill and everything around you seems to be in motion for a moment.

Davis Glasser, a doctoral student in the University of Rochester's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences thinks he has found the answer. The results of a study done by Glasser, along with his advisor, Professor Duje Tadin, and colleagues James Tsui and Christopher Pack of the Montreal Neurological Institute, is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

In their paper, the scientists show that humans experience the Motion Aftereffect even if the motion that they see in the background is so brief that they can't even tell whether it is heading to the right or the left.

Even when shown a video of a pattern that is moving for only 1/40 of a second (25 milliseconds) -- so short that the direction it is moving cannot be consciously distinguished -- a subject's brain automatically adjusts. If the subject is then shown a stationary object, it will appear to him as though it is moving in the opposite direction of the background motion. In recordings from a motion center in the brain called cortical area MT, the researchers found neurons that, following a brief exposure to motion, respond to stationary objects as if they are actually moving. It is these neurons that the researchers think are responsible for the illusory motion of stationary objects that people see during the Motion Aftereffect.

This discovery reveals that the Motion Aftereffect illusion is not just a compelling visual oddity: It is caused by neural processes that happen essentially every time we see moving objects. The next phase of the group's study will attempt to find out whether this rapid motion adaptation serves a beneficial purpose -- in other words, does this rapid adaptation actually improve your ability to estimate the speed and direction of relevant moving objects, such as a baseball flying toward you.

For a demonstration of the effect, see:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXnUckHbPqM

Mitosis: New Techniques Expose Surprises in Cell Division

A "regular" spindle configuration (top) with all chromosomes attached to microtubules, and the O. tauri spindle (bottom) with chromosomes bundled together and attached to just two short, incomplete microtubules. (Credit: Caltech)

Science Daily  — Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have obtained the first high-resolution, three-dimensional images of a cell with a nucleus undergoing cell division. The observations, made using a powerful imaging technique in combination with a new method for slicing cell samples, indicate that one of the characteristic steps of mitosis is significantly different in some cells.

But when the Caltech researchers observed this step using their new technique, what they saw was not business as usual for a dividing cell. "We've found the first clear example of a cell where there are fewer microtubules used than chromosomes," says Grant Jensen, professor of biology at Caltech and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. The group's findings appear online in Current Biology and will be published in the September 27 issue of the journal.During mitosis, two sets of chromosomes get paired up at the center of the cell's nucleus. Then hollow rods of proteins called microtubules, which make up a cellular structure called the spindle apparatus, grab on to the chromosomes and essentially pull each set away from the center in opposite directions, so that both daughter cells end up with a full copy of the genetic material. Typically, in the cells of plants, fungi, and many animals, one or more microtubules attach to each chromosome before the spindle will separate the sets of chromosomes from each another.

Jensen's group is one of just a few in the world that uses electron cryotomography (ECT) to image biological samples. Unlike traditional electron microscopy -- for which samples must be dehydrated, embedded in plastic, sectioned, and stained -- ECT involves plunge-freezing samples so quickly that they become trapped in a near-native state within a layer of transparent, glasslike ice. A microscope can then capture high-resolution images of the sample as it is rotated, usually one degree at a time.

One limitation of ECT is that samples cannot be thicker than 500 nanometers -- otherwise the electron beam cannot penetrate the sample sufficiently. Therefore, ECT studies have focused on small bacteria and viruses. But Jensen's group wanted to extend the technique to observe eukaryotic cells, which are typically much bigger. So they located the smallest known eukaryote, Ostreococcus tauri, and imaged it with ECT.

The next step was to observe the important process of cell division in a eukaryote. But even tiny O. tauri exceeds the 500-nanometer limit when it is undergoing mitosis, since cells are essentially twice as big as usual when they're dividing. So the researchers needed a way to cut the frozen sample into slices, a process called cryosectioning.

"In the past when people have tried this, the sections have come off sort of like snowflakes -- the material has gotten crushed," Jensen says. But Caltech electron microscopy scientist Mark Ladinsky has developed a highly successful new technique for cryosectioning samples. He slices them at about -150°C, using a special machine and a diamond knife. Then he carefully removes the slices from the knife using a micromanipulator. The technique has enabled the researchers to look at slices through dividing cells in a near-native, hydrated state.

With the new imaging and sectioning techniques working together, a former postdoctoral scholar in Jensen's lab, Lu Gan, was able to make detailed observations of mitosis in O. tauri, a cell with 20 chromosomes. Contrary to expectations, Gan observed nowhere near 40 microtubules attached to the two sets of chromosomes during mitosis; instead, he found only about 10 small, incomplete microtubules. This suggests that the chromosomes may link together to form some kind of a bundle that can then be segregated all at once by a smaller number of microtubules.

Previous studies, dating back to the 1970s, claimed to have found unicellular eukaryotic cells with fewer microtubules than chromosomes. However, those cells were chemically fixed and stained -- a process that can easily damage the cells -- casting doubt on the claims. But with their new imaging and sectioning techniques, the Caltech researchers feel confident that they have indeed imaged such a cell.

Their success bodes well for future studies. "Our work with O. tauri shows that we might be able to get high-resolution, three-dimensional images of other eukaryotic cells, which are much larger than bacteria," Jensen says. "We've even moved on to try to image some human cells using the same process."

The group's report, "Organization of the Smallest Eukaryotic Spindle," was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health and a fellowship from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. The ECT imaging was made possible by a gift from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Have We Met Before? Direct Connections Found Between Areas of Brain Responsible for Voice and Face Recognition

Direct structural connections exist between the two voice recognition areas (blue and red spheres) and the face recognition area (yellow sphere). In comparison, the connection to the area responsible for more general acoustic information (green sphere) is less strong. The connections appear to be part of larger fibre bundles (shown in grey). (Credit: MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences)

Science Daily  — Face and voice are the two main features by which we recognise other people. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences have now discovered that there is a direct structural connection consisting of fibre pathways between voice- and face-recognition areas in the human brain. The exchange of information, which is assumed to take place between these areas via this connection, could help us to quickly identify familiar people in everyday situations and also under adverse conditions.

"We now assume that areas in the brain which are involved in voice and face recognition interact directly and influence each other," says Helen Blank, a member of von Kriegstein's research group. In a new study, Blank could show that a structural connection between voice and face recognition areas exists. She used diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, a method with which the course of white matter tracts in the brain can be reconstructed when combined with tractography, a mathematical modelling technique. Blank had located the areas responsible for voice and face recognition in her study participants by measuring the reactions of the brain to different voices and faces using magnetic resonance imaging.

Theories differ as to what happens in the brain when we recognise familiar persons. Conventionally, it is assumed that voice and face recognition are separate processes which are only combined on a higher processing level. However, recent findings indicate that voice and face recognition are much more closely related. Katharina von Kriegstein, Leader of the Max Planck Research Group "Neural Mechanisms of Human Communication," found in previous research that areas of the brain which are responsible for the identification of faces also become active when we hear a familiar voice. These activations were accompanied by better voice recognition.

Blank discovered a direct connection consisting of fibre pathways between the voice- and the face-recognition area. "It is particularly interesting that the face recognition area appears to be more strongly connected with the areas involved in voice identification, despite the fact that these areas are further away than areas which process information from voices on a more general level," says the researcher.

This direct connection in our brains could be used in everyday contexts to simulate the faces of our conversation partners, e.g. when we speak on the telephone to a familiar person. However, the precise nature of the information that is exchanged between the voice- and face-recognition areas remains unclear. A forthcoming study which Blank is currently preparing aims to clarify this issue.

Obtaining a more detailed understanding of how the brain works in relation to the processing of such basic tasks as person recognition could be of benefit in many different areas. "The finding is of interest for research on unusual neurological conditions, such as prosopagnosia and phonagnosia, which prevent people from being able to recognise others from their faces or voices," says Blank. The new insights could also stimulate innovations in computer technology and improve person recognition by machines

Neglected and poor widows in Mali

SUBMITTED BY DOMINIQUE VAN DE WALLE 

In common with many readers, I was aware of the discrimination and severe disadvantage faced by widows in many countries. 

Nonetheless, I was completely unprepared for what I found when I looked closely at the data for Mali.  As documented in my recent paper (Lasting Welfare Effects of Widowhood in a Poor Country, 5734 ), Malian women who have experienced the shock of widowhood, sometimes very young, have lower living standards than other women of the same age.  These detrimental effects persist through remarriage and are passed on to their children ─ possibly more so to daughters ─ suggesting an intergenerational transmission of poverty stemming from widowhood.

My analysis of household consumption data from the 2006 Enquête Légère Intégrée Auprès des Ménages (ELIM) indicates that households headed by widowed women (comprising the vast majority of female headed households) are significantly poorer than all other households even when controlling for an extensive set of household and individual characteristics, including age.
Widows absorbed into male-headed households also fair poorly.  Mali’s 2006 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) can tell us about the situation of these women. Focusing on women aged 15 to 49, the DHS has the considerable advantages of containing individual level welfare indicators but also marital history so that we know whether currently married women were previously widowed.  This allows an examination of whether remarriage provides the insurance one would expect.  By and large, it does not.

In Mali, women at very young ages marry men 12 to 14 years older on average in urban and rural areas, respectively.  Many are widowed young: 5 percent of the DHS sample of women aged 15 to 49 are previously or currently widowed.  Women’s rights, such as to a plot of land, are acquired through, but also contingent on, marriage and hence lost at widowhood.  In this setting, widows usually remarry but often into worse circumstances such as into polygamous unions as lower ranked ─ and hence often lower status ─ wives. 

Malian women have 7 children on average.  A father’s death can also be traumatic for them. Although the children remain a mother’s responsibility, only some will remain with her.  Others will stay with their father’s family as their mother moves on, while some will be rejected by a new husband and go live with relatives. 

The plight of widows in many African countries has been neglected in the work of economists and in public policy action. The situation of ever-widowed women of often young ages who have remarried or have been in some other way absorbed into male headed households along with their dependent children has received scant attention. There may well be a cultural blind spot related to the perception that the issue is related to old age.

Another reason for its neglect is that our standard data bases don’t look within the household. However, data are rarely ideal. In the meantime, as shown for Mali, there is compelling evidence that can be assembled from a careful look at the existing data on headship and available individual welfare indicators.     

To properly inform policy we need to figure out whether there is a case for targeting widows or their children independently of poor or malnourished people in general.  And we must keep in mind that it may be tricky to target widows: the same conditions that create inequality within households also constrain the ability to target women per se with interventions. But these caveats do not excuse ignoring the problem. More thinking, resources and effort need to go into how best to help these extremely vulnerable groups.

லண்டன் கடிகாரம்

ரைட் சகோதர்கள்

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ஆஸ்கார் அவார்டு வழங்கப்பட்ட நாள்

ஆசுக்கர் விருது (ஆஸ்கார் விருது, ஓஸ்கார் விருது) எனப் பரவலாக அறியப்படும் அகாதமி விருதுகள் அமெரிக்காவில் திரைத்துறைக்கு வழங்கப்படும் மிகவும் முக்கிய விருதாகும். மேலும் உலகிலேயே அதிகளவில் தொலைக்காட்சி மூலம் பார்வையிடப்படும் விருது வழங்கும் விழாக்களில் முதன்மையான விழாவாகும்.

முதன்முதலாக அகாதமி விருதுகள் மே 16, 1929 ஆம் ஆண்டு ஹாலிவுட் ரூஸ்வெல்ட் ஹோட்டலில் 270 மக்கள் முன்னிலையில் நடந்தது. பின்னர் மேபைர் ஹோட்டலில் பெரிதாக நடந்தது. மொத்தம் பதினைந்து விருதுகள் வழங்கப்பட்டன.

வெற்றியாளர்கள் நிகழ்ச்சிக்கு மூன்று மாதங்கள் முன்னதாக அறிவிக்கப்பட்டனர். 1930ஆம் வருடம் வெற்றியாளர்கள் நிகழ்ச்சியின் இரவு 11 மணிக்கு பத்திரிகையில் வெளியிடப்பட்டன.