By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Contributor
Color Wheel for mood:http://i.livescience.com/images/mood-color-wheel-100208-02.jpg
People tend to pick different colors to describe different moods, according to research published Feb. 8, 2010 in the journal BMC Medical Research Methodology.
Are you in a gray mood today? How about a blue funk? Maybe you're seeing red, because you're green with jealousy. The colors we use to describe emotions may be more useful than you think, according to new research.
The study found that people with depression or anxiety were more likely to associate their mood with the color gray, while happier people preferred yellow. The results, which are detailed today in the journal BMC Medical Research Methodology, could help doctors gauge the moods of children and other patients who have trouble communicating verbally.
"This is a way of measuring anxiety and depression which gets away from the use of language," study co-author and gastroenterologist Peter Whorwell of University Hospital South Manchester told LiveScience. "What is very interesting is that this might actually be a better way of capturing the patient's mood than questions."
Colors are often used as metaphors for moods, but no one had systematically researched color associations, Whorwell said. To investigate, he and his colleagues picked eight colors — red, orange, green, purple, blue, yellow, pink and brown — and split each into four shades. They then added white, black and four shades of gray for a total of 38 options. After meeting with focus groups, the researchers decided to display the colors in the form of a wheel.
Next, they recruited 105 healthy adults, 110 anxious adults and 108 depressed adults and mailed them printouts of the color wheel. Each person was asked to pick their favorite color, as well as the color they were most "drawn to." Finally, they were asked to pick a color that described their day-to-day mood over the last several months. Another group of 204 healthy volunteers classified each color as positive, negative or neutral.
Whether depressed, anxious or healthy, people liked blue and yellow. Blue 28 on the color wheel was the most popular favorite color among healthy people, while Blue 27 (which is a little darker than 28) got first place among people with anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, Yellow 14 was picked as the color most likely to catch the eye.
But when it came to mood, the groups diverged. Only 39 percent of healthy people associated their mood with a color at all. Of those who did, Yellow 14 was the most popular choice, with about 20 percent of the votes. Meanwhile, about 30 percent of people with anxiety picked a shade of gray, as did more than half of depressed volunteers. In comparison, healthy volunteers described their mood with a shade of gray only about 10 percent of the time.
The researchers also found that when assigning a mood to colors, saturation matters.
"A light blue is not associated with a poor mood, but a dark blue is," Whorwell said. "The shade of color is more important than the color itself."
Whorwell is now testing the wheel on patients with irritable bowel syndrome. He's hoping that color choices can reveal patients' attitudes and predict how well they will respond to treatments like hypnosis. Because people are embarrassed by gastroenterogical symptoms, Whorewell said, non-verbal methods of getting information are sometimes preferable to conversation. And, he said, with additional research, the wheel could be used in medical fields from pediatrics to surgery.
"You've got an instrument now," Whorwell said. "Now people have to play with it and find out the applications."
* What Color Fits Your Mood? http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=health&c=news&l=on&pic=mood-color-wheel-100208-02.jpg&cap=People+tend+to+pick+different+colors+to%0D+describe+different+moods%2C+according+to+research+published+Feb.+8%2C+2010+in%0D+the+journal+BMC+Medical+Research+Methodology.&title=
* 7 Thoughts That Are Bad for You: http://www.livescience.com/health/090911-7-bad-thoughts.html
* Top 5 Keys to Happiness: http://www.livescience.com/health/080822-top5-keys-happiness.html
Monday, 8 February 2010
The High Cost Of The U.S. Budget
David Malpass and Eric Singer, 02.08.10, 03:10 PM EST
Remember the ending of ''Thelma and Louise''? This is worse.
Early last week the administration unveiled its new $3.8 trillion budget. This budget, and the spending it assumes, is so reckless it is difficult to fathom. It projects a deficit of $1.6 trillion for fiscal 2010, with an explosion of publicly traded government debt to $18.5 trillion by 2020. Debt service is projected to reach $912 billion a year by 2020, or over $5,000 for every working person in America.
Even assuming that wages grow over time, the budget suggests the government believes that as U.S. citizens we should devote 10% or more of our grossincome just to pay the interest on the federal debt. That 10% comes out of income even before people start paying for actual government programs like national defense, health care, bank rescues and welfare. Nor does it count the spending people need to make for state and local government obligations and their own mortgage and credit card payments.
The administration clearly believes that we can spend our way out of a slow economy and has put us on a path to have total government spending over 40% of GDP. This is Disneyland thinking. While it is true that we can spend our way into a depression, there is little evidence we can spend our way out. It didn't work last year, when we allocated $ 787 billion in stimulus spending on the threat that unemployment would go over 8% otherwise. (It is now at 9.7%--16.5% if you count the underemployed and those who are too discouraged to look for work.) Excess spending didn't work for President George W. Bush. It didn't work for Presidents Roosevelt or Obama.
When the government spends $3.8 trillion, there is no net multiplier effect. There is a divider effect. We become divided from our income and wealth. The government taxes inefficiently and spends inefficiently, wasting a big chunk of the transfer. Yes, it is possible for purposes of a speech anecdote to find isolated beneficiaries. The government will soon be able to claim massive "job gains" for temporary workers for the 2010 census. But much government spending misallocates resources--it's distributed without a profit motive and with frequent conflicts of interest, including an eye toward political returns rather than longer-term growth and private sector jobs.
Markets are waking up to the fiscal crisis. The price of a credit default swap for a five-year U.S. Treasury has gone up 700% since 2007, from about 8 basis points to 56 basis points. Germany, at 40 basis points, is now deemed by the market to be 28% less likely to default than the U.S., and the difference is growing. More ominously, the U.S. swap has more than doubled in price in the last few months. As recently as 16 months ago Greece was at levels we are today. When a country goes past owing 100% of its nominal GDP in publicly held debt, as this budget schedules us to do by 2020, there is danger.
Given our politicians' willful innumeracy, perhaps the best way to understand what the budget does for us is to compare it with the movie Thelma and Louise. For those who never saw it, Thelma and Louise was a film about two women on a supposedly liberating road trip. Toward the end, running out of money, they rob a convenience store and blow up a gasoline truck for fun. FBI agents close in on them, and they decide to drive their car off a cliff. In a Hollywood ending they are shown with a look of joyous freedom while they are in free fall.
Like Thelma and Louise, we are spending beyond our means, and at some point the bond vigilantes will close in. With this budget we almost guarantee that the United States AAA debt rating will at some point be called into question. If and when it is, the result will resemble the downward arc of that terrific 1966 Pontiac Thunderbird. In real life, at the end, when you go off a cliff at 100 miles an hour, gravity takes hold, and there is a fiery crash.
David Malpass is an economist and president of Encima Global LLC. He writes a column for Forbes. Eric Singer is the president and portfolio manager of the Congressional Effect Fund (CEFFX).
Remember the ending of ''Thelma and Louise''? This is worse.
Early last week the administration unveiled its new $3.8 trillion budget. This budget, and the spending it assumes, is so reckless it is difficult to fathom. It projects a deficit of $1.6 trillion for fiscal 2010, with an explosion of publicly traded government debt to $18.5 trillion by 2020. Debt service is projected to reach $912 billion a year by 2020, or over $5,000 for every working person in America.
Even assuming that wages grow over time, the budget suggests the government believes that as U.S. citizens we should devote 10% or more of our grossincome just to pay the interest on the federal debt. That 10% comes out of income even before people start paying for actual government programs like national defense, health care, bank rescues and welfare. Nor does it count the spending people need to make for state and local government obligations and their own mortgage and credit card payments.
The administration clearly believes that we can spend our way out of a slow economy and has put us on a path to have total government spending over 40% of GDP. This is Disneyland thinking. While it is true that we can spend our way into a depression, there is little evidence we can spend our way out. It didn't work last year, when we allocated $ 787 billion in stimulus spending on the threat that unemployment would go over 8% otherwise. (It is now at 9.7%--16.5% if you count the underemployed and those who are too discouraged to look for work.) Excess spending didn't work for President George W. Bush. It didn't work for Presidents Roosevelt or Obama.
When the government spends $3.8 trillion, there is no net multiplier effect. There is a divider effect. We become divided from our income and wealth. The government taxes inefficiently and spends inefficiently, wasting a big chunk of the transfer. Yes, it is possible for purposes of a speech anecdote to find isolated beneficiaries. The government will soon be able to claim massive "job gains" for temporary workers for the 2010 census. But much government spending misallocates resources--it's distributed without a profit motive and with frequent conflicts of interest, including an eye toward political returns rather than longer-term growth and private sector jobs.
Markets are waking up to the fiscal crisis. The price of a credit default swap for a five-year U.S. Treasury has gone up 700% since 2007, from about 8 basis points to 56 basis points. Germany, at 40 basis points, is now deemed by the market to be 28% less likely to default than the U.S., and the difference is growing. More ominously, the U.S. swap has more than doubled in price in the last few months. As recently as 16 months ago Greece was at levels we are today. When a country goes past owing 100% of its nominal GDP in publicly held debt, as this budget schedules us to do by 2020, there is danger.
Given our politicians' willful innumeracy, perhaps the best way to understand what the budget does for us is to compare it with the movie Thelma and Louise. For those who never saw it, Thelma and Louise was a film about two women on a supposedly liberating road trip. Toward the end, running out of money, they rob a convenience store and blow up a gasoline truck for fun. FBI agents close in on them, and they decide to drive their car off a cliff. In a Hollywood ending they are shown with a look of joyous freedom while they are in free fall.
Like Thelma and Louise, we are spending beyond our means, and at some point the bond vigilantes will close in. With this budget we almost guarantee that the United States AAA debt rating will at some point be called into question. If and when it is, the result will resemble the downward arc of that terrific 1966 Pontiac Thunderbird. In real life, at the end, when you go off a cliff at 100 miles an hour, gravity takes hold, and there is a fiery crash.
David Malpass is an economist and president of Encima Global LLC. He writes a column for Forbes. Eric Singer is the president and portfolio manager of the Congressional Effect Fund (CEFFX).
IBM Unveils Power7 Systems, Ramps Up Competition Against HP, Sun
IBM is rolling out the first of its Power7 systems as it looks to grab more market share in the $14 billion Unix server space from HP and Sun. The move comes as HP and Intel prepare to release the next-generation Itanium processor and Oracle looks to bring Sun into the fold.
IBM is rolling out the first systems based on its new Power7 processors, setting the stage for a new round of competition in the rapidly changing high-end server space.
IBM will officially unveil the four new Power7 systems at an event Feb. 8 in New York. At about the same time, at a press conference in San Francisco that also will be Webcast, officials with Intel and Hewlett-Packard are expected to officially release “Tukwila,” the much-delayed next-generation version of the Itanium processor.
All that comes as Oracle works to incorporate Sun Microsystems’ SPARC/Solaris hardware line into its business, and Intel and Advanced Micro Devices look to grab more high-end workloads with their x86 processors.
“We’re seeing three very big vendors … sharpening their elbows a bit,” Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Research, said in an interview.
IBM officials are looking to press their advantage, having gained 12 points of market share in the $14 billion Unix space since 2005 and more than 2,200 HP and Sun server and storage customers over the same time span.
“We view the Unix market as very, very robust and mission-critical, and with [the Power7] platform, we have a perfect spot in the market,” Scott Handy, vice president of worldwide marketing and strategy for IBM’s Power systems platform, said in an interview.
With the new Power7 systems, IBM is offering greater performance while consuming less energy than their predecessors, according to Handy. The servers also dovetail with IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, with capabilities to not only process large amounts of data, but also to analyze that data at the same time.
According to IBM, the Power7 servers deliver twice the performance and four times the virtualization capabilities for the same price as the Power6 servers, all the while consuming half the energy.
They also offer better price for performance than comparable systems from Sun and HP.
The new Power7 chips bring greater performance than the Power6 processors. Power7 offers up to eight cores, with each core able to run up to four instruction threads, enabling each chip to run 32 simultaneous tasks. That includes four times the number of cores and eight times the number of threads per chip than in Power6.
However, the new servers come with more than just new chips, Handy said. There are a host of new integrated hardware and software features designed to increase performance and energy efficiency, Handy said.
TurboCore mode is a workload optimization feature that can have four cores running, and putting the resources—include cache memory and memory bandwidth—of the other four dormant cores before those active ones. It also can increase the clock speed of those four active cores.
Not all systems will support TurboCore mode. Among the four new servers, only the Power 780, designed for such high-end transaction workloads as databases, will support TurboCore.
When not in TurboCore, all the Power7 systems are in MaxCore mode, which takes advantage of its increase in thread count.
The chips also feature Intelligent Threads, a technology that can dynamically change the number of threads being run depending on the type of workloads.
Another Power7 feature, dubbed Active Memory Expansion, uses memory compression technology to make the physical memory appear to be twice as large as it actually is, and can dynamically change the amount of compressed memory based on workload demands.
In addition, IBM engineers have optimized the company’s middleware—including WebSphere, DB2 pureScale, Lotus Domino and Rational—to take advantage of the new capabilities in the Power7 systems.
Regarding virtualization, Power7 systems can support 1,000 virtual machines on a single physical server, four times as many as Power6 servers can support.
“They can put lots of virtual images on these machines and really consolidate the number of servers,” Handy said.
In addition, IBM’s Intelligent Energy technology lets customers power on and off parts of the system, or ramp up or down processor speed based on thermal conditions and system utilization, he said. Intelligent Energy can be run on a single server or across multiple systems. The goal is to help users balance the competing needs of energy consumption, performance and utilization.
The gains in performance and energy efficiency enable IT administrators to do the same amount of work on fewer systems, or to do much more work on the same number of servers, Handy said.
Along with the Power 780, IBM is rolling out the Power 770, a midrange server with up to 64 cores; the Power 755, a high-performance cluster with 32 cores; and the Power 750 Express, a midmarket offering.
IBM also is enhancing its Systems Director Express, Standard and Enterprise editions to make management easier and to bolster virtualization capabilities through enhancements to VMControl.
IBM is rolling out the first systems based on its new Power7 processors, setting the stage for a new round of competition in the rapidly changing high-end server space.
IBM will officially unveil the four new Power7 systems at an event Feb. 8 in New York. At about the same time, at a press conference in San Francisco that also will be Webcast, officials with Intel and Hewlett-Packard are expected to officially release “Tukwila,” the much-delayed next-generation version of the Itanium processor.
All that comes as Oracle works to incorporate Sun Microsystems’ SPARC/Solaris hardware line into its business, and Intel and Advanced Micro Devices look to grab more high-end workloads with their x86 processors.
“We’re seeing three very big vendors … sharpening their elbows a bit,” Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Research, said in an interview.
IBM officials are looking to press their advantage, having gained 12 points of market share in the $14 billion Unix space since 2005 and more than 2,200 HP and Sun server and storage customers over the same time span.
“We view the Unix market as very, very robust and mission-critical, and with [the Power7] platform, we have a perfect spot in the market,” Scott Handy, vice president of worldwide marketing and strategy for IBM’s Power systems platform, said in an interview.
With the new Power7 systems, IBM is offering greater performance while consuming less energy than their predecessors, according to Handy. The servers also dovetail with IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, with capabilities to not only process large amounts of data, but also to analyze that data at the same time.
According to IBM, the Power7 servers deliver twice the performance and four times the virtualization capabilities for the same price as the Power6 servers, all the while consuming half the energy.
They also offer better price for performance than comparable systems from Sun and HP.
The new Power7 chips bring greater performance than the Power6 processors. Power7 offers up to eight cores, with each core able to run up to four instruction threads, enabling each chip to run 32 simultaneous tasks. That includes four times the number of cores and eight times the number of threads per chip than in Power6.
However, the new servers come with more than just new chips, Handy said. There are a host of new integrated hardware and software features designed to increase performance and energy efficiency, Handy said.
TurboCore mode is a workload optimization feature that can have four cores running, and putting the resources—include cache memory and memory bandwidth—of the other four dormant cores before those active ones. It also can increase the clock speed of those four active cores.
Not all systems will support TurboCore mode. Among the four new servers, only the Power 780, designed for such high-end transaction workloads as databases, will support TurboCore.
When not in TurboCore, all the Power7 systems are in MaxCore mode, which takes advantage of its increase in thread count.
The chips also feature Intelligent Threads, a technology that can dynamically change the number of threads being run depending on the type of workloads.
Another Power7 feature, dubbed Active Memory Expansion, uses memory compression technology to make the physical memory appear to be twice as large as it actually is, and can dynamically change the amount of compressed memory based on workload demands.
In addition, IBM engineers have optimized the company’s middleware—including WebSphere, DB2 pureScale, Lotus Domino and Rational—to take advantage of the new capabilities in the Power7 systems.
Regarding virtualization, Power7 systems can support 1,000 virtual machines on a single physical server, four times as many as Power6 servers can support.
“They can put lots of virtual images on these machines and really consolidate the number of servers,” Handy said.
In addition, IBM’s Intelligent Energy technology lets customers power on and off parts of the system, or ramp up or down processor speed based on thermal conditions and system utilization, he said. Intelligent Energy can be run on a single server or across multiple systems. The goal is to help users balance the competing needs of energy consumption, performance and utilization.
The gains in performance and energy efficiency enable IT administrators to do the same amount of work on fewer systems, or to do much more work on the same number of servers, Handy said.
Along with the Power 780, IBM is rolling out the Power 770, a midrange server with up to 64 cores; the Power 755, a high-performance cluster with 32 cores; and the Power 750 Express, a midmarket offering.
IBM also is enhancing its Systems Director Express, Standard and Enterprise editions to make management easier and to bolster virtualization capabilities through enhancements to VMControl.
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