The economics of living together

In the United States cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent lifestyle. The number of 30- to 44-year-olds living as unmarried couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Adults with lower levels of education — without college degrees — are twice as likely to cohabit as those with college degrees.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of census data suggests that less-educated adults are less likely to realize the economic benefits associated with cohabitation. The typical college-educated cohabiter is at least as well off as a comparably educated married adult and better off than an adult without an opposite-sex partner. By contrast, a cohabiter without a college degree typically is worse off than a comparably educated married adult and no better off economically than an adult without an opposite-sex partner. (Most adults without opposite-sex partners live with other adults or children.)

Among the 30- to 44-year-old U.S. adults who are the focus of this report, 7% lived with an opposite-sex partner in 2009, according to census data. The share is higher among adults without a college education (8%) than among those with college degrees (4%).

The proportion of adults who ever have cohabited is much larger than the share currently cohabiting, and it has grown to become a majority in recent decades, according to data from the National Survey of Family Growth. Among women ages 19-44, for example, 58% had ever lived with an opposite-sex unmarried partner in 2006-2008, up from 33% among a comparable group in 1987 (National Center for Marriage and Family Research, 2010).

This report finds that greater economic well-being is associated with cohabitation for adults with college degrees, but not for those without college degrees. The measurement used for economic well-being is median household income, which in this analysis has been adjusted for the size of the household and standardized to a household size of three.

Among college-educated adults, the median adjusted household income of cohabiters ($106,400 in 2009) slightly exceeded that of married adults ($101,160) and was significantly higher than that of adults without opposite-sex partners ($90,067). However, among adults without college degrees, the median adjusted household income of cohabiters ($46,540) was well below that of married couples ($56,800) and was barely higher than that of adults without opposite-sex partners ($45,033).

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cbi probe protest, 29 Andhra legislators loyal to Jagan to resign

Twenty-nine Andhra Pradesh legislators loyal to YSR Congress party chief Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy have decided to resign to protest the inclusion of late chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy's name in the complaint registered by the CBI in a case against his son.
Rallying behind Jaganmohan, who is facing a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the alleged illegal assets, 24 legislators, almost all of them belonging to the ruling Congress, decided to quit.
Five other legislators have conveyed to the party that they would also resign, said YSR Congress leaders.
Congress leader Amarnath Reddy told reporters after a meeting at YSR Congress party office here that they have decided to submit their resignations out of love for their beloved late leader.
"The Congress had called YSR a god when he was the chief minister and now the same party is tarnishing his image after his death by including his name in the FIR (first information report)," said Amarnath.
He said they would submit their resignations to assembly speaker N. Manohar on Sunday evening.
The party hopes many others would come forward to quit.
"You should not be surprised if 29 more legislators submit their resignations tomorrow (Monday)," said YSR Congress party leader Jupudi Prabhakar.
Two MPs and four members of state legislative council loyal to Jagan are also likely to resign.
The FIR says YSR doled out several favours to certain companies which invested in the firms floated by his son Jaganmohan in a quid-pro-quo arrangement.
YSR, who became chief minister in 2004, died in a helicopter crash in 2009.
Jagan, as Jaganmohan Reddy is popularly known, quit the Congress last year after he was sidelined by the party leadership. He floated the YSR Congress party in March this year and was re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Kadapa.
The CBI last week launched the probe against Jagan on the direction of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on the petitions of a state minister and some leaders of opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP).
The central agency during the last four days searched residences, companies of Jagan, his family members and also the firms which invested in his businesses.
The legislators loyal to Jagan met and took the decision even as Jagan continues to tour Krishna district to console the family members of those who committed suicide or died of shock following his father's death.
Those who attended the meeting include P. Subhash Chandra Bose, B. Srinivas Reddy, Konda Surekha and K. Ramakrishna who served as ministers under YSR.

 actress-turned-legislator Jayasudha, Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) legislator Shoba Nagi Reddy were also among those who attended the meet.

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PETA to launch ‘porn’ website

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is all set to draw the attention of millions of internet surfers when they launch their own ‘porn website’.

According to the Herald Sun, the animal rights group will use some obvious changes to internet domain names in order to register themselves to operate the www.peta.xxx website.

“We are preparing to launch our own peta.xxx site, but instead of just showing people our iconic ads we then show them how animals suffer for entertainment,” News.com.au quoted spokeswoman Ashley Byrne as saying.

“Our racier actions are sometimes a way to get people to sit up and pay attention to the plight of animals,” she said.

Initially, the watchers will be shown the animal rights groups too hot for TV ads and campaigns.

However, the sexy side PETA displayed in galleries and videos will quickly give way to the menacing world of animal mistreatment revealed by the group’s hidden camera investigations in a very different kind of graphic content.

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England apply maths to keep Sachin silent. how?

A mathametician's plan and modern technology have helped England keep Sachin Tendulkar's bat quiet in the ongoing Test series against the Indian cricket team, according to reports. England has relied on drawing Tendulkar outside his offstump in the early part of his innings rather than let him get h is runs on the onside and this ploy is the result of a computer simulator plan, created by team analyst Nathan Leamon.

"We feed into the simulator information about pitches and the 22 players who might play, and it plays the game a number of times and tells us likely outcomes." Leamon was quoted as saying in a British newspaper.

England believe Tendulkar largely gets his runs on the onside until he has made 50 and they have denied him the advantage completely.

Of the 261 balls bowled to Tendulkar by England's fast bowlers till the Edgbaston Test, 254 have pitched outside his off-stump, six have been in the line of the stump and just one beyond leg-stump.

Tendulkar, world's greatest run-maker ever and on the cusp of his 100th international hundred, has so far got 34,12, 16, 56, 1, 40 and 23 from seven innings for a combined total of 182 from the series at an average of 26.00.

Leamon, nicknamed "Numbers" by England players, breaks down the target area of the pitch into 20 blocks, each 100cm x15cm, in his software and bowlers begin to get a better idea of where to aim against a particular opponent.

The software records how many times a ball is pitched in each block and the resulting shot. This data is then used by England bowlers to work out the best areas to bowl to exploit each batsman's weakness.

On the basis of this data, Leamon helps England's coach and captain, Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss, to see clearly which players might do best to a certain ball in a certain situation.

"It helps us in strategy and selection. I've checked the program against more than 300 Tests and it is accurate to within 4-5 per cent."

Leamon apparently has chronicled every ball bowled in Test cricket for the past five years, dissecting to the last detail how each pitch and player perform in different circumstances and situations.

Leamon, a former Cambridge mathematician, does use video data but he makes greater use of Hawk-Eye ball-tracking system.

"It's all about asking the right questions, which can be short cut to six months of work. A lot of the old ways of looking at the technique of opponents leads to guesswork—feet position, how they hold the bat. Hawk-eye enables you to come up with answers.

"We classify balls in certain ways nad how opposing batsmen deal with each type. It is unusual for anyone not to have an area in which they don't have some sort of weakness. If the bowlers can hit the right block twice an over, it markedly increases the chance of success," Leamon said.

"Of all the Indian players, we have executed our plans best to Tendulkar. We have bowled brilliantly at him," he added.

According to an insider in the Indian team, Tendulkar did work out what England were doing to him by the time the third Test match was played at Edgbaston.

Tendulkar realised that he was being made to reach out to deliveries, that the strokes he was attempting were going on the left of the cover fielder—an indication that he was playing beyond his body.

He was getting out to catches in the slip cordon as well as leg before because his head was falling outside the line of off-stump.

In order to counter this tactics, England took a middle and leg stump guard in the second innings of the Edgbaston Test and stood outside his crease.

He thus became surer of his off-stump and his off-side strokes were now going to the right of the cover fielder.

England then tried to desist Tendulkar from following his change in batting tactics and Matt Prior immediately came up to the stumps to James Anderson to force the little master back into his crease.

Leamon, 39, was recruited by Flower shortly after he became England's coach in 2009. He is also a qualified cricket coach.

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Who can challenge Apple? india is ready

The sudden demise of Hewlett-Packard Co's WebOS TouchPad after just seven weeks on shelves was a reminder of how tech giants have failed so far to take a bite out of Apple Inc's iPad.

The TouchPad joins Dell Streak 5 in the tablet graveyard and weak sales for many offerings suggest others are bound to follow.

"The non-iPad tablets just won't sell at retail. That's the clear message from events over the past few days," said Mark Gerber, an analyst at Boston research and investment firm Detwiler Fenton.

Other tablets that have failed to click with consumers include Asustek Computer Eee Pad Transformer and the Xoom from Motorola Mobility, which Google Inc plans to buy.

Research in Motion's PlayBook received scathing reviews and sales have been slack, but it will probably survive since it is key to RIM's strategy.

"I do not expect RIM to be shutting down PlayBook sales any time soon or abandoning that platform, because RIM views it as its future," said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial in New York.

Apple's rivals have not fared any better in designing software for tablets.

Apple's iOS tablet software accounted for 61.3% of the tablet market in the second quarter, more than double the 30.1% share held by Google's Android, its nearest competitor. Microsoft held a paltry 4.6% share and RIM 3.3%, according to Strategy Analytics.

Competition coming
But the landscape could soon change.

Google's move this week to buy Motorola Mobility, a hardware manufacturer, has also potentially raised the stakes against Apple as it will give the internet leader devices to showcase its software -- just as Apple does.

All eyes are now on Google's "Ice Cream Sandwich" system, which will unite the Android software used in tablets and smartphones. That is expected to encourage developers to flock to the platform and create better apps.

Microsoft could also pose a threat when it releases its tablet software, code-named Windows 8, but this probably won't be until the fall of 2012.

"The ecosystem built around Microsoft is the largest computing ecosystem out there, so this makes it the company most likely to get significant traction in the tablet marketplace," said BGC's Gillis.

Microsoft has said the software will run on a range of devices from traditional PCs to laptops and tablets, and incorporate mouse and keyboard commands.

Amazon.com, the maker of the popular Kindle e-reader, is also expected to announce plans to release a tablet this fall, providing a challenge to Apple.

The Amazon offering could be a "game-changer," Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert Baird & Co, said in a recent note.

The tablet will likely feature Android's Honeycomb OS system, a 7-inch screen and be priced under $300, he said.

Sebastian forecast sales of up to 3 million units in the first year and said they would eventually outsell other Android-enabled tablets from Motorola and Acer, and could potentially surpass Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

Amazon's as-yet unnamed tablet poses a significant threat to Apple because of the Kindle's popularity and the movie and music services the company sells. Analysts also expect Amazon to subsidize the tablet's price, which could also boost sales.

"Amazon is widely viewed as a wild card. It has the potential to be disruptive," said NPD analyst Ross Rubin.

The crowded market has not discouraged Sony Corp either. The consumer electronics giant is going full steam ahead with plans to release its first two tablets in the fall.

"We're going to see many competitors come and go," a Sony spokeswoman said.

"We're going to bring the best of all of the assets at our disposal to bear: hardware, content and network services."

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