PARIS (AP) – Italian couturier Giorgio Armani looked east with a rich, cinematographic display Monday inspired by China.
Armani called the country “a dream” and denied that China’s status as an economic powerhouse had influenced the collection, the spring-summer offering for his haute couture label, Giorgio Armani Prive.
Lean skirt suits in luminous silks, embellished with tassels and appliques dominated the collection. Glossy, second-skin evening gowns, heavy with sequins and beadwork, made up most of the show’s remaining 62 looks.
Pointed shoulders and cuffs on jackets evoked pagoda roofs, while a purple and yellow pantsuit recalled a Chinese martial arts ensemble.
The dresses, in lacquer red and inky black, had a costume-like quality about them. A shift dress in red sequins with black piping was almost crying out to be worn by sculptural Chinese movie star Gong Li.
The models wore severe black bobbed wigs or had their hair swept up into a long thin tower wrapped in black leather. They tottered down the catwalk in the pencil skirts and towering, richly worked heels.
Longtime Armani fan Glen Close hailed the collection as “extraordinary.”
“I’m stunned (by) the pure creativity of it, the whimsy, the fantasy, the shapes,” said the actress, who smiled and nodded approvingly during much of Monday’s presentation.
Asked whether the collection was an overture to the emerging economic superpower, Armani said “there’s no point in bringing China to China.”
“This was a dream, a real spectacle, a film,” he told The Associated Press.
Men who are more sexually active in their 20s and 30s may run a higher risk of prostate cancer, research suggests.
The Nottingham University study quizzed 800 men on how often they had sex or masturbated.
Those who were most active while younger had more chance of developing cancer later in life.
The researchers said higher levels of sex hormones could lead to a bigger sex drive and the cancer, the journal BJU International reported.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with well over 30,000 new cases diagnosed each year.
It affects the prostate gland, which is found close to the bladder and makes a component of semen.
The Nottingham team, led by Dr Polyxeni Dimitropoulou, recruited more than 400 men diagnosed with prostate cancer, then compared their answers to 409 men thought to be free of the disease.
As well as questions about how often they had been sexually active from puberty onwards, they were asked how many sexual partners they had had and whether they had been diagnosed with any sexual infections.
Roughly the same proportion of both groups, 59%, said they had engaged in sexual activity 12 times a month or more in their 20s, falling to 48% in their 30s, 28% in their 40s and 13% in their 50s.
Almost two-fifths of the prostate cancer group had had six female partners or more, compared with less than a third of the non-cancer group.
Frequency risk
There was also a difference among the men who masturbated or had sex the most often, with 40% of men in the cancer group being sexually active 20 times a month or more in their 20s, compared with 32% in the non-cancer group.
The gap between the two groups narrowed as the men aged, suggesting that the difference was strongest at a younger age.
Dr Dimitropoulou said: "What makes our study stand out from previous research is that we focused on a younger age group than normal and included both intercourse and masturbation at various stages in the participants' lives."
He said that it was possible that higher levels of sex hormones in some men were both responsible for a high sex drive in their 20s and 30s, and for the development of prostate cancer later on.
"Hormones appear to play a key role in prostate cancer and it is very common to treat men with therapy to reduce the hormones thought to stimulate the cancer cells."
She said that the reasons why the connection between sexual activity and prostate risk appeared to diminish with advancing age was not clear, although other studies have suggested that sexual activity releases toxins from the gland.
John Neate, chief executive of The Prostate Cancer Charity, said that while the study was useful, its findings would need to be backed by more evidence before they could be accepted
He said: "The role of sexual activity is becoming an increasing focus for prostate cancer research but unfortunately this study does little to offer any practical advice to men wishing to reduce their risk of the disease.
"The study is retrospective, and asks men to complete a questionnaire about their sexual history.
"However, in relying on men to recall information from 20 or 30 years previously, it is likely that there will be some inaccuracy in the data collected as men either consciously or unconsciously forget some detail which could compromise their findings.
"The sample used in the study is also relatively small, making it difficult to draw any universal conclusions."
A Chinese car maker promising affordable, gas-free driving stakes its claim at the Detroit Auto Show. But it still has something to learn about presentation.
A Car for the Everyday Man
By Brian Mockenhaupt January 22, 2009
DETROIT—During a break from selling his employer’s vision of the future, Patrick Zhou wandered the floor at the North American International Auto Show, past the Maseratis and the Bentleys, past the $500,000 Maybachs and the Lamborghinis accessorized with models clad in black cocktail dresses. (“Half these guys aren’t really interested in the cars,” a woman observed to her boyfriend.) Returning to his own unprepossessing patch of auto show real estate—five cars parked on a stretch of carpet—Zhou assessed the surrounding opulence: “Those beautiful vehicles are for the very handsome men, those high in society. They’re not for the everyday man.”
Zhou, just a year out of university, where he studied mechanical engineering and engine design, works for the Chinese automaker BYD (short for “Build Your Dreams”), selling cars that are intended for the everyday man—cars like the F3DM, a $20,000 plug-in hybrid that can go 60 miles before the gas engine kicks in, or the e6, an all-electric crossover that cruises 250 miles on a single charge. Eyebrows rise when Zhou goes over the numbers for visitors stopping by his display. “Impossible! They all say that,” Zhou told me.
Maybe. But BYD intends to be the first Chinese brand in America when it introduces its plug-in hybrid and electric crossover here in 2011. And the company, which makes a third of the world’s cell phone batteries (and only started building cars in 2003), seems to be doing well. Warren Buffet liked the battery technology so much that he bought a $230-million stake in the company in September.
When BYD first debuted its wares at Detroit last year, its display was in the basement. But this year, benefiting from the fact that other companies have downsized their displays and Nissan and Suzuki withdrew from the show entirely, BYD was given a spot on the main floor, nestled between GM, Ford, Mazda, Subaru, and Brilliance, the other Chinese automaker at this year’s show. Zhou and his colleagues arrived here on January 1, and for the next several days toured twenty car dealerships in the Detroit area, learning about American sales techniques and service plans for the U.S. market.
Compared with the delicate balancing act that America’s beleaguered automakers must perform at the show—acknowledging past missteps while projecting confidence about their viability and capacity to innovate—BYD’s task is relatively simple: get a foot in the door and offer a glimpse of products to come. But BYD still has much to learn from its competitors and their polished displays. When I stopped by, the all-electric e6, the jewel of BYD’s fleet, had no signs or information screens describing the car’s features, and the doors were locked, so visitors couldn’t climb inside. Most people were drawn instead to the F0, a tiny red four-door that gets 56 mpg on a three-cycle engine, and costs just $6,000. Never mind that the F0 won’t even be available in America. Visitors clustered around it, intrigued by the site of an authentic Chinese car, snapping pictures of each other at the wheel.
What’s more, because Chinese manufacturers are better known for making cheap products than for green, technologically advanced ones, many visitors were clearly skeptical about BYD’s quality. A few visitors seemed determined to expose shortcomings. Zhou showed me where one person had manhandled and broken one of the cars’ rear windshield wipers. Another had opened and slammed a door of the F0 sedan over and over, perhaps testing its strength. “I can understand the reason, but so many times?!” Zhou asked. “Maybe ten is okay, but 20?”
Two men originally from Hong Kong who had driven down from Toronto, snickered just out of Zhou’s earshot as they ran their hands across the interior and rapped their knuckles against the dashboard and console.
“Every car company starts off crappy,” one of them, Patrick Lui, commented. (Indeed. Hyundai, once dismissed for the same reasons, won top honors this year, with its Genesis luxury sedan named the show’s car of the year.) But Lui conceded that BYD has already made demonstrable progress: “In a year’s time, they’ve made amazing strides. Last year, it was like a plastic model glued together.”
“They just have to come up with their own style instead of copying from everybody else,” said Lui’s friend, Andy Lee.
“They are the first company to introduce a fully electric car,” Liu pointed out. “We’ll see how that goes, see if it doesn’t burn up, burst into flames.”
Cars are still quite a luxury for many in China, where the car ownership rate, while booming, is just 40 per 1,000, about one-tenth America’s rate. “In China, if you can switch from a two-wheel motorcycle to a four-wheel car, you’re doing pretty good,” Lui observed. “That’ll get you the chicks.” But to succeed in the U.S. market, Chinese companies will need to cater to the concerns of Americans, who view the style and quality of their cars as a reflection of their tastes and values.
Zhou, for one, seems confident. “Now, our batteries are the best,” he said. “As the next step, we will make everything else perfect.”
Warren Buffett-Backed Electric Car Makes Detroit Debut
Alex Crippen 12 Jan 2009
China's BYD Auto's e6 all-electric automobile made its Detroit debut today, with an assist from the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary MidAmerican Energy Holdings.
MidAmerican and Warren Buffett made headlines last September, paying $230 million for a 10 percent stake in BYD.
CNBC's team at the Detroit Auto Show shot some video of the car, described by the manufacturer as a "mid-size five passenger crossover vehicle" with a range of about 250 miles on a single charge.
A shorter-range electric vehicle was introduced in China last month.
In a news release, BYD Chairman and President Wang Chuanfu is quoted as saying the company plans to sell both all-electric and hybrid vehicles in the U.S. starting in 2011. He also says BYD will set up manufacturing facilities in the U.S. "when it is appropriate."
MidAmerican Chairman David Sokol was also present at the Detroit show. His quote: "For the electric-vehicle market to mature, the underlying charging infrastructure and technologies must mature at least simultaneously, if not first. Perhaps like no other corporate entity in the world, we are in a position to help make that happen."
5 comments:
Giorgio Armani does China chic
27 January 2009
PARIS (AP) – Italian couturier Giorgio Armani looked east with a rich, cinematographic display Monday inspired by China.
Armani called the country “a dream” and denied that China’s status as an economic powerhouse had influenced the collection, the spring-summer offering for his haute couture label, Giorgio Armani Prive.
Lean skirt suits in luminous silks, embellished with tassels and appliques dominated the collection. Glossy, second-skin evening gowns, heavy with sequins and beadwork, made up most of the show’s remaining 62 looks.
Pointed shoulders and cuffs on jackets evoked pagoda roofs, while a purple and yellow pantsuit recalled a Chinese martial arts ensemble.
The dresses, in lacquer red and inky black, had a costume-like quality about them. A shift dress in red sequins with black piping was almost crying out to be worn by sculptural Chinese movie star Gong Li.
The models wore severe black bobbed wigs or had their hair swept up into a long thin tower wrapped in black leather. They tottered down the catwalk in the pencil skirts and towering, richly worked heels.
Longtime Armani fan Glen Close hailed the collection as “extraordinary.”
“I’m stunned (by) the pure creativity of it, the whimsy, the fantasy, the shapes,” said the actress, who smiled and nodded approvingly during much of Monday’s presentation.
Asked whether the collection was an overture to the emerging economic superpower, Armani said “there’s no point in bringing China to China.”
“This was a dream, a real spectacle, a film,” he told The Associated Press.
Sex drive link to prostate cancer
26 January 2009
Men who are more sexually active in their 20s and 30s may run a higher risk of prostate cancer, research suggests.
The Nottingham University study quizzed 800 men on how often they had sex or masturbated.
Those who were most active while younger had more chance of developing cancer later in life.
The researchers said higher levels of sex hormones could lead to a bigger sex drive and the cancer, the journal BJU International reported.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with well over 30,000 new cases diagnosed each year.
It affects the prostate gland, which is found close to the bladder and makes a component of semen.
The Nottingham team, led by Dr Polyxeni Dimitropoulou, recruited more than 400 men diagnosed with prostate cancer, then compared their answers to 409 men thought to be free of the disease.
As well as questions about how often they had been sexually active from puberty onwards, they were asked how many sexual partners they had had and whether they had been diagnosed with any sexual infections.
Roughly the same proportion of both groups, 59%, said they had engaged in sexual activity 12 times a month or more in their 20s, falling to 48% in their 30s, 28% in their 40s and 13% in their 50s.
Almost two-fifths of the prostate cancer group had had six female partners or more, compared with less than a third of the non-cancer group.
Frequency risk
There was also a difference among the men who masturbated or had sex the most often, with 40% of men in the cancer group being sexually active 20 times a month or more in their 20s, compared with 32% in the non-cancer group.
The gap between the two groups narrowed as the men aged, suggesting that the difference was strongest at a younger age.
Dr Dimitropoulou said: "What makes our study stand out from previous research is that we focused on a younger age group than normal and included both intercourse and masturbation at various stages in the participants' lives."
He said that it was possible that higher levels of sex hormones in some men were both responsible for a high sex drive in their 20s and 30s, and for the development of prostate cancer later on.
"Hormones appear to play a key role in prostate cancer and it is very common to treat men with therapy to reduce the hormones thought to stimulate the cancer cells."
She said that the reasons why the connection between sexual activity and prostate risk appeared to diminish with advancing age was not clear, although other studies have suggested that sexual activity releases toxins from the gland.
John Neate, chief executive of The Prostate Cancer Charity, said that while the study was useful, its findings would need to be backed by more evidence before they could be accepted
He said: "The role of sexual activity is becoming an increasing focus for prostate cancer research but unfortunately this study does little to offer any practical advice to men wishing to reduce their risk of the disease.
"The study is retrospective, and asks men to complete a questionnaire about their sexual history.
"However, in relying on men to recall information from 20 or 30 years previously, it is likely that there will be some inaccuracy in the data collected as men either consciously or unconsciously forget some detail which could compromise their findings.
"The sample used in the study is also relatively small, making it difficult to draw any universal conclusions."
A Chinese car maker promising affordable, gas-free driving stakes its claim at the Detroit Auto Show. But it still has something to learn about presentation.
A Car for the Everyday Man
By Brian Mockenhaupt
January 22, 2009
DETROIT—During a break from selling his employer’s vision of the future, Patrick Zhou wandered the floor at the North American International Auto Show, past the Maseratis and the Bentleys, past the $500,000 Maybachs and the Lamborghinis accessorized with models clad in black cocktail dresses. (“Half these guys aren’t really interested in the cars,” a woman observed to her boyfriend.) Returning to his own unprepossessing patch of auto show real estate—five cars parked on a stretch of carpet—Zhou assessed the surrounding opulence: “Those beautiful vehicles are for the very handsome men, those high in society. They’re not for the everyday man.”
Zhou, just a year out of university, where he studied mechanical engineering and engine design, works for the Chinese automaker BYD (short for “Build Your Dreams”), selling cars that are intended for the everyday man—cars like the F3DM, a $20,000 plug-in hybrid that can go 60 miles before the gas engine kicks in, or the e6, an all-electric crossover that cruises 250 miles on a single charge. Eyebrows rise when Zhou goes over the numbers for visitors stopping by his display. “Impossible! They all say that,” Zhou told me.
Maybe. But BYD intends to be the first Chinese brand in America when it introduces its plug-in hybrid and electric crossover here in 2011. And the company, which makes a third of the world’s cell phone batteries (and only started building cars in 2003), seems to be doing well. Warren Buffet liked the battery technology so much that he bought a $230-million stake in the company in September.
When BYD first debuted its wares at Detroit last year, its display was in the basement. But this year, benefiting from the fact that other companies have downsized their displays and Nissan and Suzuki withdrew from the show entirely, BYD was given a spot on the main floor, nestled between GM, Ford, Mazda, Subaru, and Brilliance, the other Chinese automaker at this year’s show. Zhou and his colleagues arrived here on January 1, and for the next several days toured twenty car dealerships in the Detroit area, learning about American sales techniques and service plans for the U.S. market.
Compared with the delicate balancing act that America’s beleaguered automakers must perform at the show—acknowledging past missteps while projecting confidence about their viability and capacity to innovate—BYD’s task is relatively simple: get a foot in the door and offer a glimpse of products to come. But BYD still has much to learn from its competitors and their polished displays. When I stopped by, the all-electric e6, the jewel of BYD’s fleet, had no signs or information screens describing the car’s features, and the doors were locked, so visitors couldn’t climb inside. Most people were drawn instead to the F0, a tiny red four-door that gets 56 mpg on a three-cycle engine, and costs just $6,000. Never mind that the F0 won’t even be available in America. Visitors clustered around it, intrigued by the site of an authentic Chinese car, snapping pictures of each other at the wheel.
What’s more, because Chinese manufacturers are better known for making cheap products than for green, technologically advanced ones, many visitors were clearly skeptical about BYD’s quality. A few visitors seemed determined to expose shortcomings. Zhou showed me where one person had manhandled and broken one of the cars’ rear windshield wipers. Another had opened and slammed a door of the F0 sedan over and over, perhaps testing its strength. “I can understand the reason, but so many times?!” Zhou asked. “Maybe ten is okay, but 20?”
Two men originally from Hong Kong who had driven down from Toronto, snickered just out of Zhou’s earshot as they ran their hands across the interior and rapped their knuckles against the dashboard and console.
“Every car company starts off crappy,” one of them, Patrick Lui, commented. (Indeed. Hyundai, once dismissed for the same reasons, won top honors this year, with its Genesis luxury sedan named the show’s car of the year.) But Lui conceded that BYD has already made demonstrable progress: “In a year’s time, they’ve made amazing strides. Last year, it was like a plastic model glued together.”
“They just have to come up with their own style instead of copying from everybody else,” said Lui’s friend, Andy Lee.
“They are the first company to introduce a fully electric car,” Liu pointed out. “We’ll see how that goes, see if it doesn’t burn up, burst into flames.”
Cars are still quite a luxury for many in China, where the car ownership rate, while booming, is just 40 per 1,000, about one-tenth America’s rate. “In China, if you can switch from a two-wheel motorcycle to a four-wheel car, you’re doing pretty good,” Lui observed. “That’ll get you the chicks.” But to succeed in the U.S. market, Chinese companies will need to cater to the concerns of Americans, who view the style and quality of their cars as a reflection of their tastes and values.
Zhou, for one, seems confident. “Now, our batteries are the best,” he said. “As the next step, we will make everything else perfect.”
** Brian Mockenhaupt is a freelance writer.
Warren Buffett-Backed Electric Car Makes Detroit Debut
Alex Crippen
12 Jan 2009
China's BYD Auto's e6 all-electric automobile made its Detroit debut today, with an assist from the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary MidAmerican Energy Holdings.
MidAmerican and Warren Buffett made headlines last September, paying $230 million for a 10 percent stake in BYD.
CNBC's team at the Detroit Auto Show shot some video of the car, described by the manufacturer as a "mid-size five passenger crossover vehicle" with a range of about 250 miles on a single charge.
A shorter-range electric vehicle was introduced in China last month.
In a news release, BYD Chairman and President Wang Chuanfu is quoted as saying the company plans to sell both all-electric and hybrid vehicles in the U.S. starting in 2011. He also says BYD will set up manufacturing facilities in the U.S. "when it is appropriate."
MidAmerican Chairman David Sokol was also present at the Detroit show. His quote: "For the electric-vehicle market to mature, the underlying charging infrastructure and technologies must mature at least simultaneously, if not first. Perhaps like no other corporate entity in the world, we are in a position to help make that happen."
爱在记忆中找你 — (岁月风云 插曲)
歌手：林峰
我对你
这一生
哪个可比
我与你
差一些
永远一起
邂逅时间场地
似连场好戏
要自何页说起
爱太重
深呼吸
欠缺空气
爱太美
轻轻的
却载不起
爱情来到时候
似明媚天气
它走了
突然骤变雪落雨飞
如果可以恨你
全力痛恨你
连遇上亦要躲避
无非想放下你
还是挂念你
谁又会及我伤悲
前事最怕有人提起
就算怎么伸尽手臂
我们亦有一些距离
你太远
该怎么
说对不起
你太近
一转身
却已高飞
快乐也许太短
似场流星雨
一眨眼
就如幻爱怕又记起
如果可以恨你
全力痛恨你
连遇上亦要躲避
无非想放下你
还是挂念你
谁又会及我伤悲
前事最怕有人提起
就算怎么伸尽手臂
我们亦有一些距离
如果可以恨你
全力痛恨你
连遇上亦要躲避
无非要放下你
还是挂念你
谁又会及我伤悲
前事最怕有人提起
就算怎么伸尽手臂
我们亦有一些距离
我情愿我狠心憎你
我还在记忆中找你
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