Neurologist Offers Guide to Healthier, Smarter Brain

Putting on extra pounds can negatively affect brain health

By Faiza Elmasry 
Washington, D.C.
22 May 2009

 

Did you know that your brain gets better the more you use it? Throughout your life, it undergoes changes in structure and function, in ways that are influenced by your life experiences.
 
In Think Smart, Dr. http://richardrestak.com/');">Richard Restak - a clinical professor of neurology at the George Washington University Medical School who has written more than 18 books about the human brain - takes a fresh look at this wondrous and mysterious organ. He says we've learned more about the human brain in the last decade than we have in the previous two centuries. 

Obesity: Bad for body, brain

For example, it's long been common knowledge that what's good for your heart is also good for your brain. Now, Restak says, recent studies have shown why obesity - already a known danger to the heart - is also bad for the brain.

"Obesity is now recognized as the No. 1, if least high up on that list of the causes of dementia that will lead to loss of brain functions," he says. "So it's important to get one's weight under control, to keep blood pressure under control, as well as cholesterol, and all these things because they create problems with the blood vessels feeding the brain."

So Restak recommends a variation on the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, cereals, fish and olive oil. Restak says physical activity is also important.

"You have to think of something that you really like doing, because exercise creates new path lines, new vessels around the neurons and increases interconnections," he says. "It also elevates what's called the nerve growth factor, which is a tonic, you can think of, which helps brain cells growing and be nurtured. It doesn't have to be any great amount of exercise. Walking a mile two or three times a week will decrease your chances of Alzheimer's about 30 percent."

Another recommendation on Restak's brain-enhancing plan of action: taking short naps.

"It's been found that napping in the afternoon during the workday for about half an hour is tremendously a rejuvenating ability force that enables us to restructure the brain, make consolidation and enhancement of new knowledge," he says. "So things like that are new and were not really recognized previously."

Rewire your mind

And just as you can improve your brain's health, Restak says you can improve its function. He says we're not born with a fixed level of intelligence. People can raise their IQ by reading great works of literature, expanding their areas of interest or simply increasing their vocabulary.

In his new book Think Smart, Dr. Richard Restak explains how we can increase brain health and function

"You get new words every day," he says. "For instance, my word of the day is 'evadible,' meaning it's something that can be avoided. So, you can use that and work it into a sentence: It was an evadible situation."

The human brain, Restak says, is able to continually adapt and rewire itself. He points to multitasking as a good example. Our brain's neural wiring is not designed to perform two different tasks at the same time and with the same level of efficiency. But it can, with training.

"It's already being seen as a change factor in the military where people who have had a lot of experience with video games are moving rapidly in the military in terms of doing things that require a lot of eye-hand coordination, which the younger person has achieved through their video game experience," he says. "And they are so good at this that they have been able to outperform someone who is of a higher rank and a longer military experience."

Mapping a path to better health

Keeping your mind active and flexible has long-term benefits, too. Restak says working to improve your memory may be crucial in preventing Alzheimer's disease. 

Keeping your body active and your mind sharp can help you as you age

He says people can sharpen their memory by doing mental exercises and games, such as visualizing a map of their surroundings.

"I just go through my house, local library, I see it in my mind," he says. "So as I walk [mentally] from one place to another, I see the objects that I'm trying to remember. So it's as simple as it can be. You need just to set your own 10 places. See them clearly. Then try to remember. Take one object and exaggerate it, whether it's your house or a library or whatever it may be."

Restak presents several other brain exercises. 

"Let's say I ask you about the presidents of the country, a number of prime ministers or presidents as far as you can recall," he says. "Then, I would ask you to recite them in terms of their political affiliation. Then recite them in order according to alphabet staring with A and going as far as you need."

In Think Smart, Restak emphasizes that while severe mental decline is usually caused by disease, age-related memory loss can be the result of inactivity and a lack of mental exercise and stimulation. He urges readers to pay attention to everything they see, hear and do, and continually try to learn new skills. Restak's main message is a simple one: The best way to keep your brain healthy is to use it. 

 

Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2009-05-22-voa18.cfm

 

Posted via web from Human Capital

China Answers Global Crisis with New Labor Market Policies

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

 

Many countries have adopted plans designed to help their economies recover from the global financial crisis. Unfortunately, those have mostly concentrated on saving banks and companies on the one hand, and on stimulating consumption on the other. Amazingly, there has been relatively little emphasis on the labor market policies needed to save jobs and protect wages. One wonders who is meant to do all the consuming if unemployment keeps rising and wages keep falling (at least in real terms)?

The FLA has been drawn to the impact the crisis is having at the bottom-end of the global supply chain, far from the banks and brokerage houses where the crisis first erupted. The countries that make the consumer goods that our consumption-driven economic bubble fed on have experienced a tsunami of factory closures and layoffs. In an attempt to help buyers, suppliers and worker representatives deal with that tsunami, the FLA has been on the ground in a few locations convening meetings to see how governments, employers and trade unions can work together to handle retrenchments in a socially responsible way.

Recently, the FLA was in Guanzhou, China, where we conducted a meeting that brought together a major brand-name buyer, its local suppliers and representatives from the Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) for this purpose. This type of discussion has really been eroded in many countries around the globe, but in China the crisis is strengthening this collaborative process.

Protecting jobs to preserve social harmony

In China, 20 million migrant workers had no jobs to return to after the Chinese new year, creating social pressures that could not be ignored. The government and social partners have adopted a two-prong strategy to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs and loss of wages in order to maintain social stability. One prong involves measures to reduce employers' statutory labor costs. The other involves increased vigilance by local authorities and trade unions toward companies who are not paying wages or are closing their doors without meeting their legal obligations. New regulations and policy statements from the government feature a carrot and sticks approach.

Tripartite cooperation has been very much in evidence in the Chinese response. On January 23, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and the China Enterprise Association issued a joint statement urging employers to avoid or reduce mass layoffs by reducing wage costs, placing workers on leave or adopting flexible working arrangements. This was followed on February 3 by a notice from the State Council that advised local governments to cut employment costs through temporary measures such as reducing social security rates or even suspending the payment of social security premiums altogether. Tax breaks are to be offered to companies in economic trouble.

Labor law enforcement and labor relations also feature prominently. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has advised local governments to establish a wage arrears reporting system: if a company finds itself constrained to pay wages, then it is obliged to negotiate an agreement with its union or workers’ representatives and to file a report with the local labor and social security office.

Local authorities also have been instructed to crack-down on companies that are not paying wages, as reflected in new rules issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in January. The measures go as far as stating that shareholders or holding companies will be held liable if the company is shuttered without meeting the company's liabilities to workers. Foreign-owned companies may even be pursued in countries that have reciprocal agreements with China.

Handling retrenchments in a socially responsible way

At our meeting in Guanzhou, we learned more of the nuts and bolts of how China was managing the crisis. Contrary to speculation, representatives from government agencies explained that China was not permitting the highly protective provisions of the Labor Contract Law and Minimum Wage regulations to be breached. The ACFTU representatives pointed out, however, that the Minimum Wage is based on an 8-hour day and if companies put workers on short time, they only need to pay a proportional share of the minimum wage. The law allows companies to go down to 75% of the minimum wage. They also noted that workers who are on short time, forced holidays or alternative work arrangements, such as job sharing, can receive training paid for by the Government.

The company participants were surprised to learn that employers facing economic difficulties could apply to the Government for a moratorium or reduction in Social Security payments. No one could tell us, however, whether the employer would have to pay the backlog when the moratorium is lifted.

The ACFTU representatives were very engaged and stated that they were open to negotiating (or re-negotiating) collective bargaining agreements to reflect such new arrangements. The ACFTU had already negotiated a number of short-time agreements with foreign-invested companies, we were told, and was open to approaches from employers. Their only concern was that any changes to work arrangements (and hence wages) be negotiated.

As one would expect in China, the negotiation approach had been piloted in a designated area before being applied more widely. A city in Guangdong Province had been chosen to test out collective agreements with special provisions regarding wages, working hours, labor protection, women workers and work-related welfare. Agreements were negotiated at a select group of enterprises and then submitted for a number of rounds of broader consultation before being finalized. Draft agreements were then distributed to enterprises for their use. One of the provisions relates to transparency about the financial and business situation of the enterprise. Once an agreement has been concluded it is registered with the local labor office.

The FLA has agreed to continue to bring together the parties concerned at both the provincial and the national level to discuss socially responsible retrenchment. The next such meeting will be held in Jiangsu province in June. You can read more China’s National and Local Labor Market Policies on the FLA website.

Source: http://flaglobalaction.blogspot.com/2009/05/china-answers-global-crisis-with-new.html

Posted via web from Human Capital

Asians Not Rising To Heights Of Silicon Valley

By Mike Swift

Mercury News

Posted: 05/19/2009

 

In Silicon Valley, "Asian" and "success" often seem synonymous.

Asians lead all racial groups in levels of education and income, and they are a quarter or more of undergraduates at elite universities like Stanford and the University of California-Berkeley. Last week, the Census Bureau said Santa Clara County had the largest annual Asian population growth in the United States — for the third successive year.

 

But an eye-opening first-of-its-kind "census" of local executives shows that while Asians make up more than a third of the work force at some of Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies, they are far less prominent in the boardroom or the highest executive offices: Asians represent about 6 percent of board members and about 10 percent of corporate officers of the Bay Area's 25 largest companies.

 

Among the 25 largest Bay Area companies by revenue, 12 had no Asian board members, and five had no Asian corporate officers, according to the new study. Despite the growing prominence of Asians at Silicon Valley tech companies — Asians are least 23 percent of the work force at Cisco Systems, Intel, Sun Microsystems, eBay and Advanced Micro Devices, according to a Mercury News review of documents filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — they have made no gains in the share of seats on the boards of large tech companies since 1999.

 

"There is an underlying belief in the Asian community that there is a corporate glass ceiling," said Buck Gee, a retired Cisco vice president and former Silicon Valley CEO who co-authored the study. He and Wes Hom, a retired IBM vice president who was also the senior chair of the company's Asian Diversity Task Force program, built their survey from company data on Web sites and SEC filings from the third quarter of 2008. "This has been talked about in the Asian community for a long time."

 

Gee began asking where all the Asian CEOs were back in 2006, when the resignation of two Chinese vice presidents caused him take a look around at Cisco. To his shock, he realized he was the only Chinese vice president in the San Jose networking giant's product development organization.

 

"I thought, 'That can't be right,' " Gee said. But it was.

 

Asians are better represented among the leadership of Bay Area companies compared with all Fortune 500 companies, Gee and Hom say, but the Bay Area also has the highest percentage Asian population among the nation's big metro areas. They place much of the blame for Asian non-advancement not on big companies, but on limiting factors within Asian culture and the failure of Asian executives to mentor talented younger colleagues.

 

"It's mostly our fault,"

 

Gee said of the small numbers of Asians at the helm of the Bay Area's biggest companies. "It's mostly up to us to figure out the skills we need to develop, and to get those skills."

 

The issue is front and center at a forum today at The Indus Entrepreneurs in Santa Clara, featuring a panel including Gee and executives from Cisco, Intel and Nektar. The forum, along with Gee and Hom's research, is a joint program with the Asia Society of Northern California and Ascend, an Asian business group.

 

Gee and Hom and a small group of executives are organizing a Corporate Executive Initiative, hoping to work with Bay Area companies to foster the career development of promising younger Asian workers.

 

The executive census and a related paper — "The Failure of Asian Success in the Bay Area" — say several social factors hold Asian managers back, including cultural deference to superiors, which U.S. managers may view as a worker lacking confidence or knowledge; a lack of strong English skills; and a failure of some Asian workers to invest enough effort in networking.

 

While East Asian cultures and educational systems tend to encourage technical excellence and respect for authority, they may not do as good a job developing leadership and communication skills, Gee and Hom say.

 

"The culture says you don't have to raise your hand — just do a good job," Hom said.

Among the 100 largest Bay Area companies, Gee and Hom found 13 Asian CEOs. But six were the founders of their company.

 

The list of companies without Asian corporate officers includes Apple, AMD and Symantec, according to the study. The list of companies without an Asian board member includes Intel, Oracle, Chevron, eBay and Symantec.

 

Given the high-profile successes of a few Asian entrepreneurs like Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, and with so many Asians who are mid-level managers, the lack of top executives is "a problem hidden in plain view," the study says.

 

"Everybody agrees this is the case, but very few Asians are willing to come out and make a stink about it," said Jane Hyun, an executive coach and multicultural leadership strategist, and the author of "The Bamboo Ceiling," a 2005 book about the limits on Asian career advancement. "You don't see an Asian Al Sharpton-type figure out there. You don't see people making waves that we haven't really reached these positions."

 

Cisco, which has one Asian board member, is trying to unearth the management talents of its Asian workers.

 

The company has created a "Cisco Asian Affinity Network," which helps employees develop their business, communication and influence skills. "Diversity and inclusion is a top priority for Cisco," said spokesman Ken Lotich, echoing the statements of many companies.

 

Hyun and others say the situation is not limited to business. At Stanford University, Asians made up 24 percent of the undergraduate Class of 2008. But university officials acknowledge they have no record of having an Asian academic administrator above the level of department head in the school's history.

 

Gee and Hom say their goal is to launch a dialogue about how Asians can fully contribute their business talents.

 

Nevertheless, Hyun said U.S. business culture can limit Asian advancement if existing leaders are unfamiliar with leadership styles from other parts of the world.

"Organizations want you to demonstrate leadership in a certain way," Hyun said.

 

"There is definitely a pressure to be like the senior leaders that are already in place."

 

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12404879?nclick_check=1

Posted via web from Human Capital

Google Searches for Staffing Answers

Associated Press-  

Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can't make the same impact as the company matures.

By SCOTT MORRISON

 

Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm.

 

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

 

Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.

 

Applying a complex equation to a basic human-resource problem is pure Google, a company that made using heavy data to drive decisions one of its "Ten Golden Rules" outlined in 2005.

 

Edward Lawler, director of the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California, said Google is one of a few companies that are early in taking a more quantitative approach to personnel decisions.

 

"They are clearly ahead of the curve, but a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that there is a lot of modeling that can provide you with critical data on human capital," Mr. Lawler said.

 

The move is one of a series Google has made to prevent its most promising engineers, designers and sales executives from leaving at a time when its once-powerful draws -- a start-up atmosphere and soaring stock price -- have been diluted by its growing size. The data crunching supplements more traditional measures like employee training and leadership meetings to evaluate talent.

 

Google's algorithm helps the company "get inside people's heads even before they know they might leave," said Laszlo Bock, who runs human resources for the company.

 

Concerns about a talent exodus have revived in recent weeks amid the departures of top executives, including advertising sales boss Tim Armstrong and display-advertising chief David Rosenblatt. Meanwhile, midlevel employees like lead designer Doug Bowman, engineering director Steve Horowitz and search-quality chief Santosh Jayaram continue to decamp to hot start-ups like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.

 

Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can't make the same impact as the company matures. Several said Google provides little formal career planning, and some found the company's human-resources programs too impersonal.

 

"They need to come up with ways to keep people engaged," said Valerie Frederickson, a Silicon Valley personnel consultant who has worked with former Google employees. "If Google was doing this enough, they wouldn't be losing all these people."

 

Google spokesman Matt Furman said the chance to contribute to "constant and often amazing innovation" keeps employees engaged. The company is determined to retain top product managers and engineers.

 

Google wouldn't say how many people have left, but says it has managed to hang on to its most important staffers. "We haven't seen the most critical people leave," Mr. Bock said.

 

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269038041932531.html

Posted via web from Human Capital

Stanford's Free iPhone Course Hits 1 Million Downloads

May 18, 2009 12:43 PM PDT

by Jim Dalrymple

 

Stanford University on Monday said its free iPhone Application Programming course has been downloaded more than 1 million times since being uploaded to Apple's iTunes U--a learning-focused area of iTunes--seven weeks ago.

 

The course is a series of classroom videos taken from the live lectures at Stanford. Apple engineers teach the course to students in an auditorium at Stanford's Quad--the videos are uploaded to iTunes U two days after every class, giving the public free access to the material. The university even makes copies of the slides shown during the class available to the public.

 

Jason Ediger, Apple's director of iTunes U and Mobile Learning, said this is the fastest any course hit the million download mark on iTunes U. Certainly a testament to the amount of interest from would-be iPhone developers

 

Apple currently has over 40,000 apps available for download from the App Store, according to numbers from 148 Apps, an enthusiast Web site that monitors the number of apps on the store.

 

iPhone Application Programming is a 10-week course and can be downloaded free from iTunes U. Only students enrolled in the classroom course will receive credit, according to the university.

 

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10243639-37.html

Posted via web from Human Capital

Should Google Just Keep Hiring?

May 18, 2009

Earlier this year, much hullabaloo was made about Google’s capital allocation decisions. While the traditional acquisitions, cash used in investing activities, and minimum guaranteed payments for ad inventory (i.e. MySpace) were scrutinized, particular media attention was placed on Google’s rate of hiring.

 

Well, according to recent analysis done by Pingdom, maybe the headcount worries were a little premature. In fact, while overhead costs may be increasing, Google remains the most profitable business on a per employee basis amongst all of its peers thus proving out the scalability of a web services business model.

 

While the fact that Google is remarkably profitable on a per-employee basis is somewhat reassuring, attention must still be paid to how well the Company is able to maintain this level of profitability. The law of diminishing marginal returns dictates that eventually new hires will become less and less profitable. Moreover, the value of investing in the overhead necessary to support new employees may no longer be worth the return. From the looks of it, Google is nowhere near confronting this dilemma as of yet, but clearly market participants were on edge over the idea of hiring during a recession.

 

Why would investors worry about investing in human capital for earnings growth? Remember, stock ownership represents a claim on the residual cash flows of a business. That means that as an investor, you have an indirect claim to the money a business makes. Now, because public companies are owned by many decentralized shareholders, decisions are made by a representative board of directors and a management team entrusted to make decisions on your behalf.

 

For many businesses, a significant portion of earnings is reinvested in the business to promote future growth. In the case of Google, a non-dividend paying stock, this means that all the present value you could derive from holding the stock is being reinvested rather than delivered directly to you in the form of a dividend. Since you could just as well have taken that money and invested it elsewhere for a given return, management at Google must prove that it is using your money wisely by reinvesting in various areas.

 

Profitability per employee is just one metric that you can use to gauge the successfulness of a management team. More interesting might be profit margin percentage per employee which would be an interesting approximation of return on human assets. 

More traditionally, investors are interested in more holistic measures like Return on Invested Capital or Return on Equity. To read more about how to properly assess management capital allocation decisions check out my post on, “Finding Stocks with Great Management Teams.”

 

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/138184-should-google-just-keep-hiring

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70% of Employees Work Overtime, Skip Lunch

 

Friday, May 15, 2009

 

Boston Business Journal - by Crystal Jarvis Bizjournals Staff

 

More American workers are skipping lunch breaks and working longer hours to boost their careers, according to a survey published by the Society for Human Resource Management.

 

About 72 percent of employees across the nation said they work through lunch, while 70 percent report working beyond a 40-hour workweek and working at home on the weekends, according to the survey dubbed “Pressure to Work: The Employees’ Perspective.”

 

The poll, which questioned U.S. workers about sick leave, flex time and work arrangements, found that more than half, about 52 percent, of participants admitted that “self-imposed pressure” was the main reason for working overtime, while 44 percent cite “meeting project or performance goals.”

 

Only 21 percent of people polled said pressure from their immediate supervisor was the reason for working extra hours. Even fewer, about 12 percent, said pressure from top management executives as a source of pressure. Another 12 percent said advancing their individual career goals was the motivation for working extra hours.

 

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2009/05/11/daily52.html

Posted via web from Human Capital

Towers Perrin Launches Global Human Capital Metrics Database

GETTY IMAGES

Towers Perrin announces the launch of a global Human Capital Metrics Database to support human capital decisions

TORONTO, May 14 /CNW/ -

 

In today's challenging economy, as companies seek ways to reduce labour costs while improving productivity and performance, many are struggling to find meaningful data and insights to support their human capital decisions. Although the business risks of making the wrong decisions are significant, there hasn't been a source of global, industry-specific data, benchmarks and analytics to support such decisions.

 

To help close this gap, Towers Perrin, a global professional services firm, is launching a global Human Capital Metrics Database. This database will provide benchmarks and metrics in such areas as talent, rewards and the HR function, as well as industry-specific productivity measures, such as sales per square foot for retailers and premiums per employee for insurers.

 

"Organizations are moving beyond the 'thousand points of data' approach that has traditionally been used to assess the efficiency of the HR function, and are now seeking sophisticated business tools to provide precise and reliable data to support strategic human capital decisions," said Keri Alletson, Towers Perrin. "People practices and investments are fundamental to business' long-term health and bottom-line. In this economic environment, more than ever, the provision of actionable data is critical."

 

The Human Capital Metrics Database will focus on four key areas to support enhanced decision making for participating companies:

 

    -  Human Capital Productivity - financial and industry-specific workforce

       productivity measures

 

    -  Talent Management - talent measures for key industry-specific

       workforce segments and the overall employee population, covering such

       areas as attraction, retention, engagement, leadership development,

       wellness and safety

 

    -  Total Labour Costs - efficiency of reward programs

 

    -  HR Function Performance - efficiency and effectiveness of HR service

       delivery.

 

“Being able to more precisely quantify workforce cost and value relative to business outcomes can provide companies with a real competitive advantage," said Alletson.

 

"New technology and sources of data provide focused information to support short- and long-term business decision making. Companies are able to make more informed and strategic decisions to improve performance by understanding the real business value of human capital investments. In today's economy - this could provide a head start when the economy turns around."

 

Organizations interested in participating in the 2009 Human Capital Metrics database can learn more by visiting www.towersperrin.com downloading our brochure or emailing the firm at HCM@towersperrin.com.

 

    About Towers Perrin

 

Towers Perrin is a global professional services firm that helps organizations improve performance through effective people, risk and financial management. The firm provides innovative solutions in the areas of human capital strategy, program design and management, and in the areas of risk and capital management, insurance and reinsurance intermediary services, and actuarial consulting. Towers Perrin has offices and alliance partners in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. More information about Towers Perrin is available at www.towersperrin.com.

Source: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/May2009/14/c3973.html

Posted via web from Human Capital

Help Wanted: Top Managers in China

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120940666051950223.html?mod=djemasialinks

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/18/business/wbjoe19.php

How Google Fuels Its Idea Factory

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_19/b4083054277984.htm?chan=rss_topEmailedStories_ssi_5