1 US jobless at 10-year low (BBC) The US
unemployment rate fell to its lowest in almost a decade in March, despite the
economy adding a smaller than expected number of jobs. Employers added 98,000
jobs last month - far fewer than the 180,000 expected by economists and less
than half the figure for January and February.
However, the unemployment rate fell from 4.7% in
February to just 4.5% - the lowest since May 2007. Anything under 5% is
considered to indicate "full employment". The economy needs to create
75,000 to 100,000 jobs a month to keep pace with growth in the working-age
population.
The US had added more than 200,000 jobs in both
January and February, but March brought lower temperatures and a major storm to
the North East, which was likely to have hit hiring. Aberdeen Asset Management
investment strategist Luke Bartholomew said the decline in job creation was
another sign of a "pretty tight" labour market.
2 Dubai landlords lowering rents (Cleofe Maceda in
Gulf News) According to property analysts, owners of residential flats and
villas in Dubai are generally being more flexible than they have been for a
long time. They’re not just increasing lease instalments, they’re also
extending contracts and lowering rents, in a bid to keep their units occupied
amid a sluggish market.
The residential rental market continued to post
modest declines in 2017, with rates falling by an average of 1 per cent during
the first three months of the year compared to the previous quarter, according
to CBRE, a commercial property and real estate services
adviser.
During the property boom, landlords were wielding
control over rental negotiations and tenants always had to set aside a huge
lump sum to rent a house in Dubai. It was always mandatory to pay the full rent
one year in advance, and many tenants who were in a financial bind had to
borrow money from the bank. And every year, residents would see their
accommodation expenditures rise.
The current slowdown has been due to limited demand
and high inventory in the rental market. The situation looks set to continue
for the rest of the year, as more supply is expected to come on stream in the
run-up to Dubai’s hosting of the World Expo in 2020.
3 A contact lens that can give a health report
(Emily Price in San Francisco Chronicle). A research team at Oregon State is
developing a bio-sensing contact lens that would be able to detect everything
from when your blood sugar is running a little low to when one of your organs
isn’t running at 100%. The group, led by professor Gregory Herman, presented
its findings at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
In its current form, the technology, which was
developed as a solution for diabetics, is only able to detect blood glucose
levels. Herman is optimistic that in the future it will be able to detect a
number of different health conditions, potentially even cancer.
The way it handles testing is through your tears.
The water in your tears have the potential to detect things like cancer, as
well as diseases such as glaucoma. While the contact lens in its current form
only has a sensor to detect glucose built in, there’s room to add additional
sensors – more than 2,500 in fact – to a lens to give it the ability to test
for much more.
While certainly a high-tech solution to monitoring
your health, it also might be an affordable one. The technology inside of the
sensor is similar to transistors currently being used for cell phone displays.
One hundred transistors currently cost around $.10,
making this a solution that could even find its way into disposable contacts,
although some of the components used in the device are still a bit on the
pricey side.
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