Word: systemize
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...requiring that 40% of all board members of publicly listed companies had to be women. The measure paid off: company boards went from just 7% female in 2003 to 40% in January 2008. Spain, the Netherlands and France are now planning similar laws. Sweden doesn't have a quota system, but it has introduced other measures to help women combine work and family life, such as tax cuts for household and child-care services and incentives for more fathers to take parental leave to care for children. The policies have helped Swedish women get ahead: 19% of executive board positions...
...elegant experiments, Smith and her collaborators showed that this temporary learning deficit could be traced to a remarkable change that occurs at puberty in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is involved in remembering places and integrating other kinds of learning. The change affects the GABA neurotransmitter system. GABA, which is present in all mammals, inhibits or down-regulates nerve signals, as opposed to exciting them; this calming, relaxing system is activated by tranquilizers like Valium and the popular sleep drug Ambien, which attach to GABA receptors and act similarly to GABA. But at puberty, female mice experience...
GABA is not the only neurotransmitter system that goes out of whack at puberty, Giedd notes. Recent studies at Harvard suggest that dopamine receptors also temporarily proliferate, a change that might be related to the impulsiveness and risk-taking behaviors seen in teens. These bursts of brain changes seem to be connected to developmentally sensitive periods, says Giedd. Understanding them better just might unlock some of the enduring puzzles of adolescent behavior...
...some predictions are well-worn, others are downright dubious. "Freedom and Fairness" is the most problematic. This is a country where dissidents disappear and where the legal system can be twisted. Yet China's brutally efficient machinery of repression and state capitalism is, in the Naisbitts' gushing parlance, "a new form of governance and development, never before seen in modern history." Really? Is an autocracy grimly determined to keep itself in power all that unique...
...trial system will not be affected uniformly. Statutory and constitutional guarantees in the criminal justice system protect the right to a speedy trial, says Allan Parachini, spokesman for the Los Angeles Superior Court, so "we really can't go to the criminal courts for the cuts... what is happening is that resources are being bled out of other areas, especially civil, to make sure we can meet all our obligations in criminal." Ten years ago the average time to trial in a general civil case in Los Angeles County was an eye popping five years. Reforms and increased efficiency reduced...