NEW YORK — Consumer and media research firm Scarborough Research is reporting that broadband penetration has increased more than 300 percent since 2002. Broadband is defined as U.S. adults who have a DSL or cable modem Internet connection in their household. In 2002, 12 percent of U.S. adults had a broadband connection in their household. Now, almost half (49 percent) have broadband  an increase of more than 300 percent, bringing broadband penetration to a mainstream level. San Francisco is the top local U.S. market for broadband penetration, according to Scarborough. Other top broadband markets include Boston and San Diego. In these cities, 61 percent of adults have a broadband connection in their household. Broadband subscribers are more likely than other Internet users to be engaged with Internet content. They are 30 percent more likely than total Internet users to have downloaded podcasts during the past month, 29 percent more likely to have downloaded/watched TV programs and 27 percent more likely to have downloaded/listened to other audio clips during this timeframe.
WASHINGTON — Roughly one in five U.S. troops is suffering from major depression or post-traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an equal number have suffered brain injuries, a new study estimates. Only about half of them have sought treatment, says the study released Thursday by the Rand Corp. A recently completed survey showed 18.5 percent – or 300,000 people – said they have symptoms of depression or PTSD, the researchers said. Nineteen percent – or 320,000 – suffered head injuries ranging from mild concussions to penetrating head wounds. ‘There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan,’ said Terri Tanielian, the project’s co-leader and a researcher at the nonprofit Rand. ‘Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation,’ she said in a statement. The 500-page study is the first large-scale, private assessment of its kind – including a survey of 1,965 service members across the country, from all branches of the armed forces and including those still in the military as well veterans […]
For the first time in history, unless you believe the ancient Greek myth of the Amazons, a European country has a government in which more women than men hold positions of power. The new Spanish cabinet, sworn in by the socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has nine women alongside eight men, including Spain’s first woman Defence minister, Carme Chacon, and its youngest-ever cabinet minister, the 31-year-old minister for equality, Bibiana Aido. This is the country whose exaggerated respect for masculine values added the word ‘machismo’ to the English language. Elderly Spaniards can recall life under General Francisco Franco, when no woman could open a bank account, apply for a passport or sign a contract without her husband’s permission. The idea that a woman might serve in the army was, of course, out of the question. They were first allowed in 20 years ago, and now make up nearly a fifth of the total strength of Spain’s armed forces. Even so, the spectacle of the 37-year-old Chacon inspecting the troops on Monday morning dressed in black pants and a white tunic, and visibly pregnant, was altogether too much for the Conservative daily El Mundo, which raged against […]
WASHINGTON — For an hour or so Greenland had its own mighty waterfall, flowing secretly at three times the volume of Niagara. A meltwater lake on the surface of a glacier suddenly emptied in July 2006, sending millions of gallons of water through cracks in the ice sheet to the ground where it could affect the movement of the ice. The lake covered 2.2 square miles near the western edge of the ice sheet and took about 24 hours to drain. During the most rapid 90 minutes, water was flowing out of the lake at a rate of 2.3 million gallons per second, according to researchers led by Sarah Das of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass. Under international convention, the minimum flow of Niagara Falls in summer is about 750,000 gallons per second. The findings are reported in a pair of papers about the Greenland ice sheet appearing in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Science. Das and Ian Joughin of the University of Washington in Seattle led the teams that produced both papers. ‘We found clear evidence that supraglacial lakes - the pools of meltwater that form on the surface […]
Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases. With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month. The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too. No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without. Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
