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Category: Artificial intelligence Posted Jul 17 fish on a bicycle
The concept: When we look at a chair, regardless of its shape and color, we know that we can sit on it. When a fish is in water, regardless of its location, it knows that it can swim. This is known as the theory of affordance, a term coined by psychologist James J. Gibson. It states that when intelligent beings look at the world they perceive not simply objects and their relationships but also their possibilities. In other words, the chair “affords” the possibility of sitting. The water “affords” the possibility of swimming. The theory could explain in part why animal intelligence is so generalizable—we often immediately know how to engage with new objects because we recognize their affordances.
The idea: Researchers at DeepMind are now using this concept to develop a new approach to reinforcement learning. In typical reinforcement learning, an agent learns through trial and error, beginning with the assumption that any action is possible. A robot learning to move from point A to point B, for example, will assume that it can move through walls or furniture until repeated failures tell it otherwise. The idea is if the robot were instead first taught its environment’s affordances, it would immediately eliminate a significant fraction of the failed trials it would have to perform. This would make its learning process more efficient and help it generalize across different environments.
The experiments: The researchers set up a simple virtual scenario. They placed a virtual agent in a 2D environment with a wall down the middle and had the agent explore its range of motion until it had learned what the environment would allow it to do—its affordances. The researchers then gave the agent a set of simple objectives to achieve through reinforcement learning, such as moving a certain amount to the right or to the left. They found that, compared with an agent that hadn’t learned the affordances, it avoided any moves that would cause it to get blocked by the wall partway through its motion, setting it up to achieve its goal more efficiently.
Why it matters: The work is still in its early stages, so the researchers used only a simple environment and primitive objectives. But their hope is that their initial experiments will help lay a theoretical foundation for scaling the idea up to much more complex actions. In the future, they see this approach allowing a robot to quickly assess whether it can, say, pour liquid into a cup. Having developed a general understanding of which objects afford the possibility of holding liquid and which do not, it won’t have to repeatedly miss the cup and pour liquid all over the table to learn how to achieve its objective.
108 MindGods 5 hrs 49
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佔國人近98-99%的第2型糖尿病,「矇騙」期間平均比第1型糖尿病更久,通常不會只是數個月而是長達幾年。
第2型糖尿病體內的胰島素分泌異常,在開始階段是過量分泌,即所謂的「胰島素阻抗」,意思是指體內的胰島素無法正常運作於細胞接受體上,舉例來說,接受體就像是房間的鎖,胰島素是鑰匙,房門順利被打開,葡萄糖才能進入細胞利用或合成。
剛開始時身體會拚命增加胰島素,透過更多鑰匙去把鎖打開,血糖還能維持正常,慢慢地就進入「糖尿病前期」(空腹血糖≧100mg/dL, 75公克葡萄糖耐量測試兩小時≧140mg/dL)。這個階段若採取積極的飲食、運動及體重控制治療,是有機會回復正常的;但往往因為沒有每年進行例行檢查,或是輕忽「糖尿病前期」認為不用服藥治療沒關係,也未定期追蹤,不但錯失改善的機會,更是何時進展至「糖尿病」階段(空腹血糖≧126mg/dL,兩小時≧200mg/dL),自己也完全沒感覺,而從這個時期開始,身體分泌的胰島素就變得不足了。
由於「三多一少」的症狀只發生在持續累積高血糖時,通常空腹血糖已高過200mg/dL,或餐後血糖高過300mg/dL,若這時候才被診斷出有糖尿病,身體處於血糖過高的時期可說已經是經年累月了。在門診就醫的新診斷病人中,經常會碰到剛確診糖尿病就已經發生視網膜病變或腎病變的患者,表示糖尿病危害身體健康的時間至少五年以上,其中嚴重的更是造成失明或已瀕臨洗腎,而在這之前都是沒有明顯的不適,真是所謂的「騙很大」。
這期間有許多錯誤的直覺或反應,常會使狀況惡化。例如許多人口渴時習慣喝飲料,或以為是火氣大造成口乾,喝椰子汁解渴,這些含糖份的飲料或果汁會使血糖飆更高,症狀越明顯;高血糖造成營養無法充分吸收,飢餓感比平常更明顯,攝取的含醣食物例如米飯、麵食、水果等,份量越多血糖越高,越吃反而越餓;有些錯誤甚至來自醫療人員,例如未說明糖尿病前期的嚴重性與追蹤處理方式,只給了「輕微偏高,不用擔心」的建議,等到累積至明顯高血糖時,往往已是併發症纏身。腎臟與視網膜病變也同樣是「矇騙」期間很長,等到水腫、視力受損出現時,往往為時已晚,這多少也是人們習慣以直覺來感受自身健康狀況,不痛不癢就認為自己沒病!
為了不被糖尿病「矇騙」,最好的方式就是建立定期檢查的好習慣,特別是肥胖、有糖尿病家族史、血壓高、血脂異常、有妊娠糖尿病史、曾產下巨嬰的高危險群,應該每1?3年定期檢查血糖,把歷年空腹血糖數據記錄下來,注意有無逐年增加至接近或超過100mg/dL的程度。血糖代謝異常者,及早透過飲食、運動調理,需要時加上藥物處理,以最少量藥物維持長期血糖控制,可說是有效預防併發症的最有效方法。要當個聰明的健康管理者,還是因輕忽而被矇騙,關鍵就在自己對健康的謹慎與重視。
資料來源: 康健網站名家專欄:《糖尿病騙很大!「矇騙期」可達數年》作者:游能俊醫師,游能俊診所院長。
Arguments over whether game addiction is real have led to feuds between government departments and a national debate over policy.
Max S. Kim They say StarCraft was the game that changed everything. There had been other hits before, from Tetris and Super Mario Bros to Diablo, but when the American entertainment company Blizzard released its real-time science fiction strategy game in 1998, it wasn’t just a hit—it was an awakening.
Back then, South Korea was seen as more of a technological backwater than a major market. Blizzard hadn’t even bothered to localize the game into Korean. Despite this, StarCraft—where players fight each other with armies of warring galactic species—was a runaway success. Out of 11 million copies sold worldwide, 4.5 million were in South Korea. National media crowned it the “game of the people.”
The youth issue
This story was part of our January 2020 issue The game was so popular that it triggered another boom: “PC bangs,” pay-as-you-go gaming cafés stocked with food and drinks where users could entertain themselves for less than a dollar an hour. As old-world youth haunts like billiard halls and comic-book stores disappeared, PC bangs took their place, feeding the growing appetite for StarCraft. In 1998 there were just 100 PC bangs around the country; by 2001 that had multiplied to 23,000. Economists dubbed the phenomenon “Starcnomics.”
“PC bangs were really the only place where people could relieve their stress,” says Edgar Choi, a former teenage StarCraft wunderkind who went on to become one of the first professional gamers.
Now 35, and still involved in pro gaming, Choi says that StarCraft and PC bang culture spoke to a generation of young South Koreans boxed in by economic anxiety and rising academic pressures. “Young people especially had few other places they could go, especially since parents would just tell them to study if they were at home,” he says.
The social aspect of StarCraft set the stage for another phenomenon: e-sports. PC bangs began hosting the first StarCraft competitions—informal neighborhood affairs where prizes were free playing time and bragging rights. After one cartoon channel broadcast a tournament on TV to popular acclaim in 1999, organized competitions took over. By 2004, one finals match held on Busan’s Gwangalli Beach attracted more than 100,000 spectators.
Crowds like that drew money and fame. Corporate sponsorships flowed from companies like Samsung, which created branded professional teams paying big salaries. Lim Yo-hwan, the Michael Jordan of StarCraft, was a household name whose public profile surpassed that of pop artists and movie stars. Choi, a self-described “midlevel player,” says even today he is occasionally recognized by taxi drivers who used to watch him on TV.
Beyond gaming circles, however, an unease had begun to sink in.
"Their normal functions were falling apart"
PC Gaming addiction MS Tech (Source: Unsplash) Just outside Seoul, at a hospital in the nearby city of Uijeongbu, psychiatrist Lee Hae-kook witnessed StarCraft mania unfold. But his eyes weren’t on its popularity. He was looking at a pattern of medical incidents involving computer games.
Some of the reports came from other countries, like Japan, China, and Germany, but the most disturbing incidents were local. In October 2002, an unemployed 24-year-old man died in a PC bang in the southwestern city of Gwangju after playing for 86 hours straight. It was the world’s first reported case of death by gaming. In 2005, a 28-year-old man in the southwestern city of Daegu had a heart attack in his seat after a 50-hour StarCraft binge. Another death occurred just months later in Incheon, at the opposite end of the country.
“Young people were gaming to the point where their normal functions were falling apart, and people started coming to the hospital seeking treatment,” says Lee, who works at the Catholic University of Korea’s St. Mary’s Hospital. He wondered if he was looking at something more than just a fad. Was this a new category of addiction?
Others, including the government, were asking the same question. In 2002, another psychiatrist estimated that 20% to 40% of South Korean adolescents exhibited signs of addiction to gaming, such as aggression toward their parents or an inability to manage time; he started hospitalizing his patients. In 2005, the government in Seoul began opening internet and gaming addiction detox camps where children and teenagers were given counseling in peaceful wilderness retreats.
Games, Lee perceived, were also becoming far more immersive, with elements designed to “make the user stay as long as possible.” In 1998 the South Korean gaming company Nexon had invented the “free-to-play” business model, in which games are technically free but require constant cash infusions for the player to meaningfully progress. Since then, companies had been churning out games that enticed users to spend money in ways that seemed to resemble gambling. That explained something else Lee had noticed: the debt his patients were racking up.
By 2011, Lee was convinced that gaming addiction was real and diagnosable, and that it was hindering children’s academic performance and sleep. That same year, as national panic mounted, the government proposed the Shutdown Law, a curfew that would block access to online games for those under 16 between midnight and 6 a.m. In a government-commissioned study outlining the policy’s benefits, Lee argued that gaming addiction had inflicted “mass trauma” on the nation and was to blame for suicides and homicides. The law passed by a large majority and is still in effect today.
In 2002, an unemployed 24-year-old man died after playing for 86 hours straight. It was the world’s first reported case of death by gaming. The following year, Lee joined forces with a newly minted lawmaker named Shin Eui-jin, who had put gaming addiction at the top of her agenda. A former child psychiatrist, Shin was preparing a so-called “addiction bill” that aimed to regulate what fellow lawmakers called the four evils of South Korean society: gambling, alcohol, drugs … and video games. Gaming addiction, Shin claimed, was responsible for schoolyard bullying and violent crime. At a 2014 parliamentary hearing, Lee told lawmakers that gaming might be “an even stronger addiction than drugs,” and when asked whether he would be open to removing it from the list of addictions, he said, “I’d sooner take out drugs.” (Lee now insists the comment was taken out of context: “What I meant was that we need a legal support system to prevent and treat a problem that’s far more prevalent than drug use.”)
But whereas the Shutdown Law had passed easily enough, Shin’s bill quickly became bogged down in controversy. While medical experts like Lee said gaming addiction was real, others claimed there was no conclusive evidence that video games were inherently addictive. Critics skewered the bill and said Lee’s comments were a witch hunt. When the legislation failed to pass, it seemed the debate had reached an impasse—until it was recently reignited by an unlikely source.
Is this really a public health crisis?
On May 25, 2019, in Geneva, Switzerland, members of the 72nd assembly of the World Health Organization unanimously voted to pass the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, the WHO’s official catalogue of illnesses. Among the revisions is the addition of “gaming disorder,” defined as “a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior” accompanied by a loss of control and functional impairment. It is only the second globally recognized behavioral addiction; the first was gambling, which was approved in the last revision of the ICD in 1990.
ICD-11, which goes into effect in 2022, adds thousands of new codes to more accurately capture specific injuries and diseases, as well as correcting historical mistakes. Strokes, for example, will now be classified as a neurological problem rather than a circulatory one; “gender identity disorder” is now “gender incongruence” and is no longer classified as a mental disorder.
Adding gaming disorder to the official medical lexicon marks a significant shift. Despite the years of concern and study about the effects of video games, conclusive evidence of any links to addiction or violence has been hard to come by. For many, the idea that somebody can be clinically addicted to behaviors—rather than to substances like alcohol or opioids—remains controversial. Others think the definition of gaming addiction in particular is too woolly to be useful.
“We’ve had 30-plus years of research on gaming addiction and we’re not really anywhere closer to understanding what it is that we’re actually talking about,” behavioral researcher Pete Etchells recently told MIT Technology Review.
For people like Lee, the psychiatrist, the decision is a vindication. The grounding for the WHO’s decision came out of talks among an advisory group of mental health researchers that he had been invited to join in 2014. Reports from the group’s annual meetings, which were held from 2014 to 2017, noted “the wide-ranging perceived benefits of increased government prevention” in South Korea, as well as “significant developments” in prevention, treatment, and research.
Yet some have disputed the caliber of the South Korean work. According to a recent meta-study, 91 of the 614 papers on gaming addiction published internationally from 2013 to 2017 were from that country, making it the single largest contributor by volume. The study’s author, Yonsei University media studies professor Yoon Tae-jin, argues that many of those studies are overly broad, treating gaming as a single category and failing to distinguish specific games or genres. Most of the research, according to Yoon, suffers from a confirmatory approach: assuming that gaming addiction is real from the outset, rather than trying to prove it scientifically.
Why was StarCraft so popular? When StarCraft arrived on the scene, the Asian financial crisis of 1997 had just leveled South Korea’s finances, causing mass unemployment and unrest. The International Monetary Fund bailed out the government in Seoul to the tune of $58 billion, an unprecedented sum at the time, but only in exchange for an agreement to completely overhaul the nation’s economy. The following year, acting on advice from Bill Gates and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, the South Korean government launched aggressive programs to revive the economy by building up internet infrastructure and making computers accessible to the public. By 2002, 10.4 million households had high-speed internet—a 700-fold increase from 14,000 in 1998. Catalyzed by broadband, StarCraft moved into people’s homes and into PC bangs, where it provided a welcome refuge for teens feeling the crush of the post-crisis years. Local competitions made the game important to many communities, as well as giving teenagers a safe release valve for the competitive feelings generated by the country’s high-pressure academic environment. In 1999, a young StarCraft-smitten TV producer came up with the idea of televising a match on a local channel, Tooniverse—the first televised e-sports tournament in the world. Filmed on dusted-off ping-pong tables in an unused studio for $300, it became a hit, and tournaments grew in scale and number. StarCraft cemented itself as a spectator sport to be reckoned with. When game sales in South Korea reached the 2 million mark in 2002, Blizzard founder and then-CEO Mike Morhaime made a pilgrimage to Seoul, where he saw his first live e-sports match and lead programmer Bob Fitch got a standing ovation. The varied and lasting cultural legacy of StarCraft can be felt even today. Game lingo from the era lives on in contemporary youth slang, and it is a touchstone for Generation X nostalgia. When Blizzard released a remastered edition of the game in 2017, it inspired “salarymen StarCraft tournaments” and throwback live events. And even after 20 years, the game still maintains a respectable seventh place on the PC bang most-played list. There have also been suggestions that Asian countries like South Korea—which are generally more sensitive about gaming addiction than their Western counterparts—leaned on the WHO to include gaming disorder in ICD-11. In August 2016, an American clinical psychologist, Christopher Ferguson, emailed the WHO to advise against the inclusion. “It’s probably not an issue that’s quite ready for prime time,” he wrote. One of the email’s recipients, ICD-11 project officer Geoffrey Reed, replied: “Not everything is up to me. We have been under enormous pressure, especially from Asian countries, to include this.” (In an email to me, Vladimir Poznyak, coordinator of the WHO substance abuse department, denied that political pressure had influenced ICD-11.)
Surprisingly, the WHO decision has reopened, rather than settled, the bitter debate. Even government agencies have openly feuded; the South Korean culture ministry refused to join a consultative body led by the health ministry last May, effectively stonewalling early moves to implement the classification. The rift has prompted Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon to create a separate arbitration committee to decide whether South Korea will adopt ICD-11’s recommendations in the coming years.
And in the numerous parliamentary forums, televised debates, and academic symposia convened in the wake of the WHO decision, the same question looms large: Has a culture of intensive gaming really brought about a public health crisis?
A disorder, or a coping mechanism?
When I met him at his office in September, Lee Hae-kook was on edge. Now 50 years old, the psychiatrist is slender and wan, with a haughty and impolitic manner that seems unsuited to public campaigning. His views, at the center of renewed attention following the WHO decision, have made him public enemy no. 1 in the gaming community, where he is widely seen as the architect of a moralistic vendetta.
He began our meeting by railing against “fake news” propagated by gaming journalists to distort his views and obscure an obvious public health crisis. “Debating whether it should be a disease code or not is a meaningless waste of time,” he said. The medical authorities had spoken, so what else was there to say?
Video Game addiction MS Tech (Source: Unsplash) To illustrate the dangers of gaming addiction, Lee told me the story of one of his recent patients: a 25-year-old unemployed man who was dragged in by his older sister after racking up around $18,000 in debt from in-game purchases. The patient had spent his adolescent years gaming for two to three hours a day, with little interest in schoolwork. As an adult, Lee said, “he spent 10 hours a day online, five playing games and five watching YouTube videos.”
The patient seemed to be a textbook case of gaming disorder under the WHO’s criteria: loss of control, gaming displacing other aspects of life, and functional impairment. So when I asked Lee about the treatment, I expected to hear about some novel form of therapy.
“This person eventually fit the criteria for adult ADHD, so we began administering ADHD medication,” he said instead. “He also exhibited temporary symptoms of depression, so his condition was partially improved by the use of antidepressants.”
When I asked what made this a “gaming disorder” diagnosis, as opposed to just ADHD and depression, Lee replied that “gaming a lot can cause ADHD-like impulsivity.”
The conversation epitomizes one of the central disagreements hanging over the WHO’s decision: Is excessive gaming truly a unique disorder, or is it simply a manifestation of other conditions? Current research confirms that patients with gaming disorder are more likely to have ADHD and depression, but neurologists and psychiatrists who dispute Lee’s claim emphasize that correlation does not equal causation. Others, like the authors of a 2017 open debate paper against the WHO’s proposal to include gaming disorder, believe excessive game-playing is better understood as a coping mechanism for other underlying mental conditions. But of course, this is the sort of debate that Lee says is pointless because of the WHO ruling.
The tyranny of the old against the young
To South Korean gamers, Lee’s strident campaigning suggests that the push to codify gaming addiction is being driven primarily by alarmism. The attempt to link violent crimes to gaming—a claim pointedly debunked by criminologists—has made him notorious. So has the comparison to drugs.
“It sounds like what these doctors consider gaming addiction treatment is just neutering basic human urges.” “No matter how bad games can be, they can never be as bad as drugs or gambling,” says former game designer Kim Seong-hoe. “To create an equivalency with those is completely officious and oppressive.”
In 2018, after quitting his job with one of South Korea’s biggest game companies, 41-year-old Kim began working full time on his gaming-themed YouTube channel, where he has been chronicling the controversy over gaming disorder in angry tirades for 336,000 subscribers.
1994
The US introduces a voluntary rating system for games after Senate hearings on violent titles. 2002
An 86-hour gaming binge leads to the world’s first “death by gaming” in South Korea. 2011
The US Supreme Court rules that video games are protected speech under the First Amendment. 2011
South Korea’s Shutdown Law prohibits under 16s from gaming online after midnight. 2019
The WHO votes to add “gaming disorder” to the upcoming revision of the International Classification of Diseases. While he is critical of companies that make what he calls “slot machines in disguise”—the types of games where users can rack up $18,000 worth of debt—Kim also wonders whether doctors can make sound diagnoses if the research fails to distinguish gambling-like titles from those that require creative problem-solving.
“The psychological effects of certain games and genres are far more complex than something like alcohol,” he says. “But to try to judge gaming addiction without even differentiating type or genre? It’s ridiculous.”
Kim sees the push to pathologize games as a tyranny of the old against the young, rooted in authoritarian attitudes. He recounts a recent scandal at an orphanage, where caretakers dosed unruly children with ADHD medication obtained from doctors under pretexts like “smartphone immersion.” Could the same happen with gaming disorder? Kim believes so. “It sounds like what these doctors consider gaming addiction treatment is just neutering basic human urges,” he says. One core criterion for the WHO diagnosis, functional impairment, strikes him as particularly vulnerable to abuse: “To me, what that’s saying is that it’s also acceptable to medicate kids underperforming academically.”
Most of all, he wants the debate to lead to a wider conversation about the experiences of young people in the country. He cites recent research linking problematic gaming in South Korean adolescents to overbearing parenting and academic stress. The implication is that in focusing on games and the people who play them, the concept of gaming disorder papers over the dysfunctions of a society shaped by adults.
Indeed, while South Korea has grown into one of Asia’s strongest economies, that has not translated into broader cultural or social enrichment for the country’s youth. Rather, young people in South Korea’s punishing education system are killing themselves at historically high rates. “Pushed up against relentless competition,” one lawmaker has said, “our children are gradually losing anywhere to go.” Even Lee Hae-kook acknowledges that gaming is one of the few sources of pleasure and recreation available to South Korean youngsters. It’s a grim realization, and just about the only thing on which Lee and his opponents agree.
gaming keyboard MS Tech (Source: Unsplash) A coveted career path
Whatever image problems the gaming industry has developed, its sheer position in popular culture has made it impossible to ignore. The global gaming market is projected to reach $152 billion in 2019, and there are now 2.5 billion gamers across the world. E-sports alone are valued at more than $1 billion, a figure expected to double by 2022, and are now gunning for a spot at the Olympics. As a UK proponent has argued, they are “the first world sport outside of football that is truly global.”
This was never more apparent than when I met Edgar Choi, the former StarCraft pro, on a sunny day in September. These days he is employed as a head coach at Gen G, a South Korean e-sports organization worth an estimated $110 million. Inside its headquarters, a brutalist-chic multistory concrete building in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district, Choi trains players in a game called League of Legends—this generation’s StarCraft.
The facilities’ careless luxury and startup-campus cool are a testament to the industry’s remarkable expansion since the early days of pro gaming. Gen G recently received $46 million in funding from Silicon Valley venture capital firms and celebrities like Will Smith. Two-time NBA champion Chris Bosh is the “player management advisor.” There are a massage room, a napping room, basement studios for streamers, a buffet-style cafeteria tended to by aproned lunch ladies, two more headquarters in Los Angeles and Shanghai, and aisle upon aisle of sleek black gaming computers in classrooms throughout the building.
Professional gaming has become one of the most coveted career paths among South Korean youth, and these classrooms are where Gen G develops future prospects. “Only about 10% of trainees will become pro,” said Choi. Things are far more competitive and regimented than they were in his time; gamers can no longer afford to just play for fun. “Back then, I couldn’t even imagine that it would become like this,” he said.
On a row of computers in the employee lounge, three of the team’s marketers played games on their break. Expensive whiskeys and gleaming silver trophies were displayed in cases on the walls.
To Choi, who lives in a world where gaming has evolved into a form of work rather than play, the idea of gaming addiction feels anachronistic. He wants to steer his two young children away from the hyper-competitive world of e-sports and has been careful to instill healthy personal gaming habits in them. For the most part, though, he is less worried about games than smartphones. Kids, he says, are mostly on their phones, watching YouTube, going on social media, and reading webtoons as well as playing “free to play” games. With the WHO already behind gaming disorder, there is now talk of government regulation specifically aimed at smartphone use. Perhaps the StarCraft generation, now parents themselves, have found their own bogeyman.
Max S. Kim is a freelance writer based in Seoul. He reported on corruption in South Korea’s nuclear energy industry for the May/June 2019 issue.
本報訊】中共繞過香港立法會,直接由全國人大常委會透過《基本法》附件三在香港頒佈及實施國安法,大律師公會主席戴啟思批評,由特首委任特定法官處理國安法案件,對香港司法體系造成重擊,又指港版國安法最令人憂慮之處是,即使案件全程以香港法律程序處理,但國安法指明有凌駕性,《基本法》對港人的保障恐蕩然無存。他直言外界指港版國安法標誌一國兩制告終亦無可厚非。
有人權大狀之稱的戴啟思接受本報訪問時批評,人大採用不尋常的方式立法,一切法例細節都是疑問,他最憂心的是,北京似要將國安法凌駕本地法律,「《基本法》列明香港擁有獨立法制,並不是指內地法制可擊倒我們的普通法法制」,慨嘆情況令香港人認為一國兩制壽終正寢亦是合理看法。
戴啟思認為,原則上每個國家需要就國家安全問題立法,因此北京要直接立法亦只能接受,北京要在香港成立國安公署及國安委員會也無問題,關鍵在於有關部門的權限及如何運作,如果內地人員要高調在香港執法,必須對香港政府及香港法庭負責。
他更提及中港法制有別,香港重視的法律專業保密權等人權保障全靠《基本法》確立,若然國安法具凌駕性,即使國安法案件以香港法律程序處理,若香港法律與國安法有衝突,就要以國安法為先,港人原本享有的人權保障恐難應用於國安法案件,因此他認為有關人權保障必須在國安法條文中明文規定。
對於港版國安法列明特首指定法官審理涉國安案件,戴啟思認為事關重大,指特首只能委任經司法人員推薦委員會舉薦者,強調司法獨立在於行政機關在處理委任程序後抽身,否則「特首挑選特定法官,以造成有利的判決,這會很糟糕」。
港版國安法其中一項犯罪行為是「勾結外國或者境外勢力」,戴啟思指普通法下沒有「勾結」概念,只有「串謀」,但犯罪元素必須串謀做出某種刑事行為。他直言內地也沒有「勾結」罪名,「我們甚至不能參考內地案件」,強調港版國安法不應以開放式處理「勾結」的定義。
戴啟思又難以理解北京對少數案件保留管轄權,指30年前訂立的《基本法》,當中23條包括最嚴重的危害國安叛國情況,但也是交由本地法庭處理,「我不明白為何想有部份案件在內地審理」。至於有說法指有案件或超出本地自治範圍,戴啟思稱嘗試由內地想法出發,國安法若列明內地保留部份管轄權,應同時列明相關要求,但強調送中審理違反《基本法》。
5.6和6.1和7.0,空腹血糖到底超过哪个值才算不正常? 很多怀疑自己得糖尿病或者在得糖尿病边缘徘徊的人,有事没事就喜欢去测个血糖,有人说超过5.6mmol/L就不正常了,有人说正常值的标准是6.1mmol/L,也有人说超过7.0mmol/L才是有问题,到底该以哪个为准呢?
关于空腹血糖的标准到底是什么?相信不少都遇到过,之了所会出现这三个数值,是因为这三个数值代表着不同的意义,都可作为判断血糖水平高低的一项指标,且听小编为你一一解析:
1、空腹血糖5.6mmol/L
在美国的血糖分级管理中,超过5.6mmol/L即表示血糖升高。这是因为在对血糖对人体影响的研究中发现,当血糖超过了这个水平即会对血管内皮产生微损害,而血管内皮的微损害是动脉粥样硬化发生的危险因素,特别是存在高血压、高血脂的人群,血糖的超过此数值会更进一步加速血管损伤。但我国现行的血糖分级管理并没有采用这一数值标准。
2、空腹血糖6.1mmol/L
这一数值是指空腹8-12小时后测量的血糖值,是我国目前实行的空腹正常血糖的上限,超过这一数值即表示血糖处于异常状态,提示需要查找原因并进行干预控制,力争将血糖降到正常范围,但是否可诊断为糖尿病还要看超过了多少。
3、空腹血糖7.0mmol/L
这是我国目前实行的糖尿病诊断标准之一,超过这一数值时即可诊断为糖尿病。由于糖尿病一旦诊断即不可逆,只可控制而不可治愈,因此对诊断应慎重对待。
需要说明的是:上述几个数值是以静脉血测得的数值,非家用血糖仪测量的结果,因此当自行用血糖仪测量的血糖异常时,应到医院进一步检查以明确是否发生了血糖异常或是糖尿病。
综合以上内容,对空腹血糖高低的判断标准总结如下:
空腹血糖正常范围:3.9-6.1mmol/L
空腹血糖受损(糖尿病前期):6.1-7.0mmol/L
糖尿病:空腹血糖大于7.0mmol/L
此外需要特别提醒的是:在血糖水平的分级管理中,空腹血糖只是一个方面,餐后2小时血糖更为重要。因为在糖尿病前期餐后2小时血糖异常出现的时间往往早于空腹血糖异常的时间,且在糖尿病的治疗中控制餐后2小时血糖对防治并发症的发生也更为重要,因此检测血糖时不能只测空腹血糖,更应多测餐后2小时血糖。
餐后2小时血糖水平高低的判断标准是:
餐后2小时血糖正常范围:4.4-7.8mmol/L
餐后2小时血糖受损(糖尿病前期):7.8-11.1-7.0mmol/L
糖尿病:餐后2小时血糖大于11.1mmol/L
空腹血糖和餐后2小时血糖怎么样才算正常?想必大家看完上文后心里也有了一个底,日常有需要做血糖测量的亲们不妨收藏一下这篇文章,当下次再碰到关于血糖标准值的相关疑问的时候,在文中就能找到答案啦,希望能帮助到大家。
美國聯儲局自3月推出一連串救市措施,包括但不限於:將聯邦基金利率降至零至0.25厘水平;恢復購債計劃(每月至少購入800億元美國國債及400億元按揭證券,有需要時可增加買入金額);承諾將利率保持在低水平(最近鮑威爾表示在2022年前不會加息);推出一級交易所信貸工具(Primary Dealer Credit Facility, PDCF)讓一級交易商能向聯儲局取得資金;推出貨幣市場基金流動性工具(Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, MMLF),確保貨幣市場基金有足夠資金應付客戶贖回;成立針對學生貸款、汽車貸款及信用卡貸款而設的定期資產抵押貸款工具(Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, TALF)。
最為矚目的是,聯儲局首次成立一級市場企業信貸工具(Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility, PMCCF)直接購買由高信用評級企業所發行的債券;又成立二級市場企業信貸工具(Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, SMCCF),讓局方直接在二手市場購入企業債或投資評級企業債ETF;另外亦為救助小企業而設的薪酬保障計劃(Paycheck Protection Program, PPP)。本周一聯儲局更新了SMCCF的內容,消息刺激投資者情緒,令市場由跌轉升。
的而且確,局方今次救市速度比金融海嘯時期來得更多,覆蓋範圍亦更廣,由主力救WallStreet 變成WallStreet及MainStreet雙管齊下,而且購入企業債及相關ETF的決定令金融市場壓力大減,芝加哥聯儲銀行的國家金融市場狀況指數,以及聖路易斯聯儲銀行金融壓力指數均自3月底聯儲局宣布PMCCF及SMCCF後迅速回落,現已跌至年初水平。前聯儲局主席貝南奇曾表示,只要迅速控制信貸市場,防止恐懼擴散,就能大大降低對經濟的負面影響,使經濟得以加快復甦。
美國國家經濟研究局已經確定美國經濟在今年2月步入衰退,一般衰退會維持一年或以上,筆者會繼續留意領先經濟指標,判斷美國經濟何時擺脫衰退,有三點可以肯定的是:
1、 美國至今仍處於衰退;
2、 美股史無前例的反彈超前經濟復甦頗多;
3、 短期美股表現更視乎聯儲局的行動,因為當市場開始下跌,聯儲局可以隨時出口術,例如進一步擴大購入企業債的金額或降低購債的門檻,按SMCCF的Term Sheet規定,局方只能購買那些截至3月22日發債人評級處於BBB-或Baa3的債券,或購入債券時相關發行人評級處於BB-或Ba3,不排除之後再放寬限條件;
4、 美股中長期走勢還是以經濟發展為依歸,要擺脫衰退才能延續牛市。
到底聯儲局可否繼續無限量買企業債?理論上財政部可以不配合,如果有留意Term Sheet的話,你便會發現聯儲局其實並非以自己的資金救市,而是借出資金給予那些為救市而設的SPV,而SPV的股本則來自財政部。換句話說,美國政府是以納稅人的錢救市,雖然現階段無人反對,但不能肯定之後會怎樣。
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股息和增長兩者兼得,可能是延長退休投資組合壽命的好方法。美國人的壽命越來越長,僅買股息率高的股票可能並不足夠, 派發穩定股息和有穩定增長的股票是不錯的選擇。以下介紹七間符合上述條件的公司。
Home Depot(HD)、Tractor Supply Company(TSCO)和 Target(TGT)三間實體零售商捱過了疫情,這些首屈一指的營運商為客戶打造強大的網上購物體驗,利用實體基礎設施創造「全通路」(omnichannel)體驗。
Visa(V)和萬事達(MA)的客戶持有超過55億張印有兩間公司標誌的信用卡和借記卡。 去年,兩間公司的客戶每天刷卡超過8億次,購買的商品和服務高達13萬億美元。
應該沒有人未曾聽過科技巨頭微軟(MSFT) 或者蘋果(AAPL),但是您可能不知道這兩家公司已經派息超過九年了。這些科技公司在40年前成立,現已發展為利潤豐厚的公司。微軟的軟件業務去年的收益為1,300億美元,營運現金流為520億美元。 蘋果的iPhone、Mac電腦以及龐大的軟件和服務業務去年的收益為2,600億美元,營運現金流超過690億美元。