Doing yoga may be a good way to protect against heart disease, particularly if you cannot do more vigorous exercise, research suggests.
A review in the Netherlands of 37 studies involving nearly 3,000 people found yoga was independently linked to a lowering of heart risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Yoga does not count towards the recommended physical activity that we should all do each week.
The benefits could be due to working the muscles and breathing, which can bring more oxygen into the body, leading to lower blood pressure”
Maureen TalbotBritish Heart Foundation
Yoga is an ancient form of exercise that focuses on strength, flexibility and breathing to boost physical and mental wellbeing.
There are lots of different types of yoga - tantric, Hatha and Ashtanga to name a few - but most are not strenuous enough to count towards the 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity the government says we should get each week to give our heart and lungs a workout.
Yoga does count as a muscle strengthening exercise - something the same guidelines say we should do on two or more days a week, every week.
Calming
Prof Myriam Hunink, from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, set out to investigate what effect, if any, yoga might have on heart health.
Compared with no exercise, yoga had significant benefits - it was linked to a lower risk of obesity, high blood pressure and raised cholesterol, the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology reports.
When pitched against other types of exercise, such as brisk walking or jogging, yoga was no better or worse based on the same measures of heart risk.
Prof Hunink said: "These results indicate that yoga is potentially very useful and in my view worth pursuing as a risk improvement practice."
It is not clear why yoga might be beneficial, but experts say it could be down to its calming effect. Stress has been linked to heart disease and high blood pressure.
Maureen Talbot, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "The benefits could be due to working the muscles and breathing, which can bring more oxygen into the body, leading to lower blood pressure.
"A larger study is recommended though to assess the effects of yoga more fully."
She said the benefits of yoga on emotional health were well-established.
At least 100 people, 80 of them children, have been killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistani officials say.
Five or six militants wearing security uniforms entered the school, officials said. Gunfire and explosions were heard as security forces surrounded the area.
The army says most of the school's 500 students have been evacuated. It is not clear how many are being held hostage.
A Taliban spokesman says the assault is in response to army operations.
Hundreds of Taliban fighters are thought to have died in a recent military offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area.
A school worker and a student interviewed by the local Geo TV station said the attackers had entered the Army Public School's auditorium, where a military team was conducting first-aid training for students.
Troops have sealed off the area around the school
Mudassir Awan, a worker at the school, said he saw six or seven attackers.
"As soon as the firing started, we ran to our classrooms," he said. "They were entering every class and they were killing the children."
Locals said they also said they heard screams of students and teachers. It's unclear excatly how Taliban militants got into the military-run facility.
Ambulances have been carrying the injured to a nearby hospital. A helicopter is also in the area.
The dead are said to include teachers, as well as a paramilitary soldier.
The attack started at 10 am local time (0500 GMT).
A robot delivers an order of fresh towels to a room at the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, Calif.
A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a Seattle hospital. At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items to people’s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.
Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years — allowing machines to mimic the human mind — are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work.
And over the same 15-year period that digital technology has inserted itself into nearly every aspect of life, the job market has fallen into a long malaise. Even with the economy’s recent improvement, the share of working-age adults who are working is substantially lower than a decade ago — and lower than any point in the 1990s.
Economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology would create as many jobs as it destroyed. Now many are not so sure.
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A robot delivers an order of fresh towels to a room at the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, Calif.CreditJason Henry for The New York Times
Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary, recently said that he no longer believed that automation would always create new jobs. “This isn’t some hypothetical future possibility,” he said. “This is something that’s emerging before us right now.”
Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at M.I.T., said, “This is the biggest challenge of our society for the next decade.”
Mr. Brynjolfsson and other experts say they believe that society has a chance to meet the challenge in ways that will allow technology to be mostly a positive force. In addition to making some jobs obsolete, new technologies have also long complemented people’s skills and enabled them to be more productive — as the Internet and word processing have for office workers or robotic surgery has for surgeons.
More productive workers, in turn, earn more money and produce goods and services that improve lives.
“It is literally the story of the economic development of the world over the last 200 years,” said Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and an inventor of the web browser. “Just as most of us today have jobs that weren’t even invented 100 years ago, the same will be true 100 years from now.”
Articles in this series will examine the decline of work in the United States and its consequences, for individuals and society.
Yet there is deep uncertainty about how the pattern will play out now, as two trends are interacting. Artificial intelligence has become vastly more sophisticated in a short time, with machines now able to learn, not just follow programmed instructions, and to respond to human language and movement.
At the same time, the American work force has gained skills at a slower rate than in the past — and at a slower rate than in many other countries. Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 are among the most skilled in the world, according to a recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Younger Americans are closer to average among the residents of rich countries, and below average by some measures.
Clearly, many workers feel threatened by technology. In a recent New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll of Americans between the ages of 25 and 54 who were not working, 37 percent of those who said they wanted a job said technology was a reason they did not have one. Even more — 46 percent — cited “lack of education or skills necessary for the jobs available.”
Self-driving vehicles are an example of the crosscurrents. They could put truck and taxi drivers out of work — or they could enable drivers to be more productive during the time they used to spend driving, which could earn them more money. But for the happier outcome to happen, the drivers would need the skills to do new types of jobs.
The challenge is evident for white-collar jobs, too. Ad sales agents and pilots are two jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects will decline in number over the next decade. Flying a plane is largely automated today and will become more so. And at Google, the biggest seller of online ads, software does much of the selling and placing of search ads, meaning there is much less need for salespeople.
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A medical team performed a colonoscopy with a robotic system (the object topped by a monitor at left) that delivered sedatives to a patient at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle.CreditMatthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times
There are certain human skills machines will probably never replicate, like common sense, adaptability and creativity, said David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. Even jobs that become automated often require human involvement, like doctors on standby to assist the automated anesthesiologist, called Sedasys.
Elsewhere, though, machines are replacing certain jobs. Telemarketers are among those most at risk, according to a recent study by Oxford University professors. They identified recreational therapists as the least endangered — and yet that judgment may prove premature. Already, Microsoft’s Kinectcan recognize a person’s movements and correct them while doing exercise or physical therapy.
Other fields could follow. The inventors of facial recognition software from a University of California, San Diego lab say it can estimate pain levels from children’s expressions and screen people for depression. Machines are even learning to taste: The Thai government in September introduced a robotthat determines whether Thai food tastes sufficiently authentic or whether it needs another squirt of fish sauce.
Watson, the computer system built by IBM that beat humans at Jeopardy in 2011, has since learned to do other human tasks. This year, it began advising military veterans on complex life decisions like where to live and which insurance to buy. Watson culls through documents for scientists and lawyers and creates new recipes for chefs. Now IBM is trying to teach Watson emotional intelligence.
IBM, like many tech companies, says Watson is assisting people, not replacing them, and enabling them to be more productive in new types of jobs. It will be years before we know what happens to the counselors, salespeople, chefs, paralegals and researchers whose jobs Watson is learning to do.
The percentage of people ages 25 to 54 who do not work:
%
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1970
1980
1990
2000
Nov.
Women
Men
Whether experts lean toward the more pessimistic view of new technology or the most optimistic one, many agree that the uncertainty is vast. Not even the people who spend their days making and studying new technology say they understand the economic and societal effects of the new digital revolution.
When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure.
Perhaps the most worrisome development is how poorly the job market is already functioning for many workers. More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960s; 30 percent of women in this age group are not working, up from 25 percent in the late 1990s. For those who are working, wage growth has been weak, while corporate profits have surged.
“We’re going to enter a world in which there’s more wealth and less need to work,” Mr. Brynjolfsson said. “That should be good news. But if we just put it on autopilot, there’s no guarantee this will work out.”
Some say the nature of work will need to change. Google’s co-founder, Larry Page, recently suggested a four-day workweek, so as technology displaces jobs, more people can find employment. Others believe the role of the public sector should expand, to help those struggling to find work. Many point to education, in new technologies and in the skills that remain uniquely human, like creativity and judgment.
“The answer is surely not to try to stop technical change,” Mr. Summers said, “but the answer is not to just suppose that everything’s going to be O.K. because the magic of the market will assure that’s true.”
Glebe cyclist Eve Burchfield leaves flowers in Martin Place. Photo: Emma Partridge
Glebe cyclist Eve Burchfield has left a bunch of hand-picked flowers in Martin Place with a note that says: "I'll ride with you".
The #illridewithyou hashtag amassed more than 120,000 tweets as Australians took a stand against anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of the siege, reports Emma Partridge.
Ms Burchfield, who was in New York on September 11, said it was beautiful that such a strong message of love had come out of such a tragic event.
"It's horrifying but it is just really beautiful to see the city come together like a big family," Ms Burchfield said.
'I was in New York for September 11 and these horrible situations just bring out the best in people and it just beautiful," she said.
Participants hold German national flags during an anti-immigration demonstration in Dresden. Photo: Reuters
Dresden, Germany: A new grass-roots movement that assails the German government for ignoring its fears of being overrun by Muslims and other immigrants attracted a record 15,000 marchers on Monday in the eastern city of Dresden.
The fast-growing movement that calls itself PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, has drawn support from the far-right as well as some ordinary Germans alarmed by a sharp rise in refugees, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East.
The rallies have spread rapidly across Germany since starting with a local social media appeal in Dresden two months ago. They are now beginning to unsettle the German political establishment, which has spent decades restoring Germany's image as an open, tolerant country after the devastation of the Nazis.
"The politicians in Germany have lost touch with the people and that's why they can't comprehend what's happening here," Lutz Bachmann, the 41-year-old gravel-voiced leader of the movement, told marchers from a makeshift stage.
In recent weeks, media reports have exposed Bachmann's own criminal record for among other things burglary, drunk driving and drug dealing.
At the rally on Monday he lashed out at the media for what he said were lies about the movement, eliciting chants of "Luegenpresse! Luegenpresse!" (media lies!) from a fired-up group of demonstrators, mostly white men over 40 wearing shabby clothing.
Bachmann started PEGIDA in October to protest plans to add 14 centres for roughly 2000 refugees in Dresden.
The number of asylum-seekers in Germany has surged to some 200,000 this year, more than any other western country, due in part to an influx of Syrians.
Even though foreigners are scarce in Dresden and the Saxony region compared to other parts of Germany, Bachmann's protest reverberated and his Monday rallies have grown from a few hundred to 10,000 a week ago and now to 15,000.
Marchers on Monday carried banners reading "Courage for the truth", "Stop immigrants abusing our social welfare system" and "We miss our country".
They chanted: "If you don't love Germany, leave it" and "We're the people" - the slogan used by pro-democracy demonstrators whose marches in eastern cities like Dresden led to the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago.
Roughly 6000 protesters marched in a separate anti-PEGIDA rally in Dresden on Monday evening.
"Dangerous"
Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas, a leading figure in the centre-left Social Democrats, has called the movement a disgrace for the country.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned all forms of xenophobia and stressed that Germany needs immigrants to help it cope with a looming demographic crisis resulting from one of the lowest birth rates in Europe.
But she is also keen to avoid alienating voters that might ordinarily support her conservatives. Some are already leaving for a new party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which was founded last year in opposition to the euro currency but now talks tough on immigration and law-and-order issues.
The AfD scored surprisingly well in three eastern state votes, including Saxony, earlier this year, entering regional parliaments for the first time.
"Anyone who goes to such a rally needs to watch out that they are not instrumentalised by the organisers," Ms Merkel said in Berlin on Monday, adding that her government was working with states and cities to ensure any problems arising from the influx of asylum seekers were resolved.
Political scientists say that the ferocity of the PEGIDA movement has caught the country's political leaders off guard.
"It's extremely dangerous for Germany and its reputation as a country that is open to the world," said Thomas Jaeger, a political scientist at Cologne University.
"It's also extremely dangerous for Merkel because a political movement is now opening up to the right of her conservative party and that had never happened before," he said.
Lutz Hagen, a professor at Dresden's Technical University, said it was wrong to write off all PEGIDA supporters as far-right nuts. "It's already a broad movement and could become even broader," he said.
Dresden is a conservative bastion and the venue for Germany's biggest annual neo-Nazi march, which takes place on the anniversary of the controversial bombing of the city by Allied forces near the end of World War Two.
Thomas Tretz, a 46-year-old chauffeur, who was proudly waving a large German flag in front of the stage before Bachmann's speech, bristled at the suggestion PEGIDA was anti-foreign.
"We're not Nazis," Mr Tretz snapped. "We're just peaceful citizens against the Islamisation of Germany. We're not against foreigners who come here to work. We've got nothing against the Turks or anyone else."
However the rallies are also drawing far-right supporters and sympathisers. A 35-year-old woman who identified herself only as Heidrun was passing out free copies of the far-right weekly "Junge Freiheit".
Michael Stuetzenberger, 55, drove five hours from Munich to join the rally.
"We're being inundated by asylum-seekers and 70 percent of them have no right to be here," he said. "We want to talk about that. And we've got a problem with Islam overrunning us in Germany and Europe. It's just stupid to say that's not happening because it is."
