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W EDN ESDAY, MAY 13, 2015
EXTRA The modern-day ‘Yuppie’ Of all the family-newspaper-appropriate socioeconomic slurs, one that was ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s, is slowly on its way out in this millennium — yuppie
BRIEFS
Nano memory stores data like a human brain AUSTRALIAN SCIENTISTS have developed nano memory capable of storing information in a way similar to a human brain - a significant step towards the creation of a bionic brain, Australian media reported. The device, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, imitates the complex engineering of the brain with its twisted mass of nerve pathways, according to the team from RMIT University in Melbourne that created it. “The development of these nano memory cells is a prerequisite for building these artificial neuron networks that are capable of matching the performance and functionality of their biological counterparts,” research leader Hussein Nili said. Unlike digital storage devices that record data in binary streams, a nano memory cell can store information in multiple states because it is analogue.
Father’s age linked to blood cancer risk in children A NEW study links a father’s age at the birth of his child to the risk that the child will develop blood and immune system cancers as an adult, particularly for single children. However, the study found no association between having an older mother and these cancers. “The lifetime risk of these cancers is fairly low — about one in 20 men. Still, the study does highlight the need for more research to confirm these findings and to clarify the biologic underpinning for this association,” said lead author Lauren Teras from American Cancer Society. The researchers analysed data from women and men enrolled in the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study-II Nutrition Cohort.
Near wins may actually boost our motivation
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he moderately derogatory term for young urban professionals, or young upwardly mobile professionals , is believed to have first appeared in print in a 1980 Chicago magazine article by Dan Rottenberg, though he does not take credit for coining it. A Google Ngram search reveals that the word’s usage in books began ascending steeply in 1983 and reached its apex a decade later. It’s no surprise that the yuppie flourished after the gloomy ‘70s had yielded to easy money in the stock market (until 1987, at least) for post collegiate brokers and boomers eager to invest after their youthful fling with the counterculture. Television and movies amply reflected the proliferating demographic. The yuppie apotheosis on the small screen was “Thirtysomething” and Seinfeld; in the multiplex, there were too many to mention, but The Big Chill and When Harry Met Sally would be a good start, and, on the darker side, Michael Douglas’ 1987 filmography (Wall Street and Fatal Attraction). We have plenty of equivalents today, such as This Is 40 (and nearly every other romantic comedy) and TV’s Togetherness and the recently departed Parenthood and
The yuppie has shifted from standing on the prow of his yacht in an attitude of rapaciously aspirational entitlement to a defensive crouch of financial and existential insecurity
How I Met Your Mother (and most other dramedies and sitcoms). Their organic-buying, gym-going, home owning characters, however, aren’t tagged as yuppies as readily as those from the previous era were. It’s not because they aren’t from the narcissistic upper middle class; they certainly are. But they look different now. The yuppie has shifted from standing on the prow of his yacht in an attitude of rapaciously aspirational entitlement to a defensive crouch of financial and existential insecurity. This instability has fragmented the yuppie’s previously coherent identity into a number of personae, each of which can trace its lineage to its ‘80s paterfamilias.
Collectively, these microyuppies are just as strong in their ranks as their progenitors, if not more so. Three decades ago, the yuppie was viewed as a self-interested alien invader in an America that had experienced a solid 20 years of radical activism and meaningful progress in civil rights and women’s liberation. A generation and a half later, we have so deeply internalised the values of the yuppie that we have ceased to notice when one is in our midst — or when we have become one ourselves. (This generalisation about those with ample economic and social capital doesn’t factor in, of course, the massive swath of Americans who lack the opportunity to become yuppies in the first place.)
The film critic Dominic Corry of The New Zealand Herald has described a genre of ‘80s and ‘90s films as “yuppies in peril” movies, and, since their affluent protagonists lack any real-world problems, their improbable crises revolve around murder and a preponderance of stalking. While Hollywood still likes a good crazed villain making life miserable for an upstanding protagonist, a fictional yuppie hero nowadays is more likely to be plagued by a layoff or the crash of his mutual fund. And that may be the starkest difference. Unbridled acquisitiveness was the central trait of the ‘80s yuppie; the dread of losing one’s property and dropping down a tax bracket may define the contemporary one. Fiercely protecting one’s existing money seems less gauche than plotting ways to grab more, even if it’s just a circumstantial response. But we have fooled ourselves into thinking we aren’t as moneyoriented as the ‘80s yuppie by scapegoating a perennially convenient villain — bankers. Placing all the blame for the 2008 financial crisis on this easily scorned group allows us to overlook our own overreaching transactions.-Teddy Wayne/The New York Times News Service
LOSING OUT by a whisker, or the “near wins”, may actually boost our motivation to achieve other wins, says a new study led by an Indianorigin researcher. “Our research suggests that at least in some cases, losing has positive power,” said lead researcher Monica Wadhwa from INSEAD, a business school based in Fontainebleau, France. While it may seem like losing might put a damper on motivation, Wadhwa and colleagues hypothesised that losing out by only a narrow margin might have the opposite effect. A near win, they speculated, intensifies but doesn’t satisfy our motivational state, and so the drive to win is extended to the next task or goal we encounter. The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.
‘Smart’ helmet can turn any room into virtual battlefield DO YOU want to experience the real battlefield without being harmed? Well, a new Google Glassstyle pair of glasses can create a virtual battlefield for you anywhere. Developed by London-based defence equipment giant BAE Systems in collaboration with Birmingham University, the glasses can turn almost any surface into a virtual command centre. Similar to Microsoft’s HoloLens headset, BAE’s creates what it calls a ‘mixed reality’ combining the real world with a virtual interface that can project a battlefield onto any surface combined with realtime video chat and live feeds, Huffington Post reported. -IANS