World Usability Day

World Usability Day is a project of UPA – Usability Professionals’ Association: promoting usability concepts and techniques worldwide. Human Factors International is the title sponsor for World Usability Day.

“Why doesn’t this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?”

World Usability Day, November 3, 2005, is for everyone who’s ever asked these questions.

This Earth-Day-style event, focused on easy-to-use technology, currently involves plans in more than 70 cities in 30 countries.

World Usability Day promotes the value of usability engineering, user-centered design,and every user’s responsibility to ask for things that work better. The Usabililty Professionals’ Association is doing that by encouraging, organizing, and sponsoring 36 hours of activities at the local level around the globe, all occurring on November 3, 2005.

http://worldusabilityday.org/

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Site Search Tags: design, event, technology, usuability

Usability awards are just a start

read here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4392278.stm
see also
Silver Surfer’s Day
Help the Aged
Office of National Statistics
Graham’s site
Reading Chaucer
World Usability Day

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Technorati Tags: aging, usability

How much money does a centenarian need for retirement?

October 31, 2005 edition, By Steve Dinnen

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1031/p15s01-wmgn.html?s=hns

Q: How much should one have saved when it becomes mandatory to start taking money out of an IRA? What would be a reasonable amount for a comfortable retirement which would include a cruise once a year and account for taxes, home insurance, a car, gasoline, food, and inflation? Would $1 million cover all that? All my relatives are over 100 years old and I need to think in the long term. And staying independent is important.
V.C., Missouri

A: A million dollars might sound like a nice, round – and precise – figure. But before determining how much you need to have saved, Tony Proctor, a certified financial planner from Wellesley, Mass., says that you must calculate how much you plan to spend each year. And you must calculate all of your sources of retirement income, such as Social Security and pensions.

Someone who plans to spend $150,000 per year in retirement, and who only has Social Security to offset their spending, will need much more than $1 million in the bank, Mr. Proctor says. But that amount would be a fortune to someone who only spends $40,000 per year and has Social Security income of $20,000 per year.

The key to determining a reasonable amount to have saved is knowing your "annual cash flow need," he says. Proctor defines that as the difference between your spending and your sources of income.

Measuring Vital Signs in Elderly People

This article (continuing education course) is on Medscape.com which requires a free registration. You don’t have to be a health practitioner to read and learn.

Measuring Vital Signs in Elderly People CME/CE
Author: Mark E. Williams, MD Release Date: October 17, 2005

• Measuring Vital Signs in Elderly People
• Introduction
• Body Temperature and Fever
• Pulse
• Blood Pressure
• Respiration
• Recommended Reading and Links

Goal The goal of this activity is to educate the health professional on identifying vital signs in elderly patients during a physical examination.

Learning Objectives Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. Identify fever patterns and the possible causes and implications.
2. Recognize key pulse features and possible causes of abnormalities.
3. Accurately measure blood pressure and identify abnormalities and their potential causes.
4. Describe patterns of respiration and their potential implications.

Age at retirement and long term survival of an industrial population BMJ

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/bmj.38586.448704.E0v1?ecoll

BMJ, doi:10.1136/bmj.38586.448704.E0 (published 21 October 3005)

[But, why did early retirees retire early? feeling unwell?]

Age at retirement and long term survival of an industrial population: prospective cohort study
Shan P Tsai 1*, Judy K Wendt 1, Robin P Donnelly 1, Geert de Jong 2, Farah S Ahmed 1

1 Shell Health Services, Shell Oil Company, 910 Louisiana, Houston, TX 77002, USA
2 Shell International, Hague, Netherlands
* Correspondence to: shan.tsaiAT shell DOT com

Objective To assess whether early retirement is associated with better survival.
Design Long term prospective cohort study.
Setting Petroleum and petrochemical industry, United States.
Subjects Past employees of Shell Oil who retired at ages 55, 60, and 65 between 1 January 1973 and 31 December 2003.
Main outcome measure Hazard ratio of death adjusted for sex, year of entry to study, and socioeconomic status.

Results Subjects who retired early at 55 and who were still alive at 65 had a significantly higher mortality than those who retired at 65 (hazard ratio 1.37, 95% confidence interval 1.09 to 1.73). Mortality was also significantly higher for subjects in the first 10 years after retirement at 55 compared with those who continued working (1.89, 1.58 to 2.27). After adjustment, mortality was similar between those who retired at 60 and those who retired at 65 (1.06, 0.92 to 1.22). Mortality did not differ for the first five years after retirement at 60 compared with continuing work at 60 (1.04, 0.82 to 1.31).

Conclusions Retiring early at 55 or 60 was not associated with better survival than retiring at 65 in a cohort of past employees of the petrochemical industry. Mortality was higher in employees who retired at 55 than in those who continued working.

(Accepted 16 August 2005)