Word: slowness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Japan's minister for economy, trade and industry, Kaoru Yosano, summed it up on Monday when he said, "Japan is in a very serious situation." Last month, as the nation's export-driven economy watched global demand slow down, Japan's Nikkei index fell to a 26-year low. Couple this with the appreciation of the yen - which some economists say could strengthen to an exchange rate of 80 to the dollar by the end of next year - and it's little wonder that corporate powerhouses like Toyota, Honda and Sony have seen profits dive. Royal Bank of Scotland Japan...
...savers. The generations that have followed represent a smaller share of the overall population. Thus as boomers age, the overall workforce will shrink. "Without an unexpected burst of productivity growth or a significant upsurge in investment per worker, the aging boomers' reduced levels of working and spending will slow the real growth of the U.S. GDP from an average of 3.2% a year since 1965 to about 2.4% over the next three decades," says the MGI report. That growth rate is 25% lower than the one we've been accustomed...
...destitute Indians will pay for a clean toilet. In China, George meets Wang Ming Ying, a tiny woman from the rural province of Shaanxi who promotes the use of biogas - energy created from the fermentation of human waste - which can be used for electricity and cooking fires, and helps slow the deforestation ravaging her country. In Japan, George recounts the history of Toto, maker of the world's most advanced toilets, which can do everything including check your blood pressure - and wonders why they never caught on in the West...
...understandable that so many people would try almost anything, including popping gingko supplements - on which Americans spend more than $100 million annually - in the hopes of holding off the slow and agonizing mental decline that characterizes dementia. The claimed benefits of gingko have mostly been based on the supplement's antioxidant effects, which have been shown in lab studies - but not in patients - to gnaw away at the fatty plaques that infiltrate the Alzheimer's brain and destroy nerve cells. Studies in patients have involved only small groups, making those results interesting but hardly definitive...
...follow up, 523 of the more than 3,000 healthy subjects had developed dementia - 277 of those patients had taken gingko, and 246 had received the placebo. Of these cases, 92% were likely in the first phase of Alzheimer's, researchers say. "These results show that gingko doesn't slow down entry into the disease," says DeKosky...