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Feeling sad? Researchers at Britain's University of Leicester reckon you might just be in the wrong country. According to Adrian White, an analytic social psychologist at Leicester who developed the first "World Map of Happiness," Denmark is the happiest nation in the world.



White's research used a battery of statistical data, plus the subjective responses of 80,000 people worldwide, to map out well-being across 178 countries. Denmark and five other European countries, including Switzerland, Austria, and Iceland, came out in the top 10, while Zimbabwe and Burundi pulled up the bottom.

Not surprisingly, the countries that are happiest are those that are healthy, wealthy, and wise. "The most significant factors were health, the level of poverty, and access to basic education," White says. Population size also plays a role. Smaller countries with greater social cohesion and a stronger sense of national identity tended to score better, while those with the largest populations fared worse. China came in No. 82, India ranked 125, and Russia was 167. The U.S. came in at 23.

IT'S SUBJECTIVE.

White's study, to be published later this year, was developed in part as a response to the British media's fascination with life satisfaction. A recent BBC survey concluded that 81% of Britain's population would rather the government make them happier than richer.

Despite its often bleak weather, England ranked relatively happy at 41. "There is increasing political interest in using measures of happiness as a national indicator along with measures of wealth," White says. "We wanted to illustrate the effects of global poverty on subjective well-being to remind people that if they want to address unhappiness as an issue the need is greatest in other parts of the world."

To produce the "Happy Map," White dug deep. He analyzed data from a variety of sources including UNESCO, the CIA, The New Economics Foundation, and the World Health Organization. He then examined the responses of 80,000 people surveyed worldwide.

MONEY STILL COUNTS.

Good health may be the key to happiness, but money helps open the door. Wealthier countries, such as Switzerland (2) and Luxembourg (10) scored high on the index. Not surprisingly, most African countries, which have little of either; scored poorly. Zimbabwe, which has an AIDS rate of 25%, an average life expectancy of 39, and an 80% poverty rate, ranked near the bottom at 177. Meanwhile, the conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis gave fellow Africans in Burundi, ranked 178, even less to smile about, despite their having a slightly lower poverty rate of 68%.

Capitalism, meanwhile, fared quite well. Free-market systems are sometimes blamed for producing unhappiness due to insecurity and competition, but the U.S. was No. 23 and all the top-ranking European countries are firmly capitalist—albeit of a social-democratic flavor.

White says the only real surprise in his findings was how low many Asian countries scored. China is 82, Japan 90, and India an unhappy 125. "These are countries that are thought as having a strong sense of collective identity, which other researchers have associated with well-being," he says.

ARE WE HAPPY YET?

White admits that happiness is subjective. But he defends his research on the grounds that his study focused on life satisfaction rather than brief emotional states. "The frustrations of modern life, and the anxieties of the age, seem to be much less significant compared to the health, financial, and educational needs in other parts of the world."

One of the study's intentions was to see how Britain, given media preoccupation with well-being, fared compared to other parts of the globe. His conclusion: "The current concern with happiness levels in the U.K. may well be a case of the 'worried well.'"

To take a tour of the world's happiest countries, click here.

Tourism Technology is a term coined by the Korea Tourism Organization, which refers to the recent trend of incorporating technology within the tourism industry.

Definition of Tourism Technology

The convergence of industries has forced people to create terminology such as information technology, biotechnology, ubiquitous technology and even cultural technology to explain frequently talked about topics. Tourism Technology is a term that encompasses all social, cultural, managerial, and value-adding activities of the tourism industry. Tourism Technology also incorporates and encourages technological advancements and economic development in the tourism industry.

The Origin of Tourism Technology

"Tourism Technology", initially based on the concept of cultural technology, is a more comprehensive term covering knowledge used to add to the value of tourism products on a micro level and the management of the travel and tourism industry on a macro level. New tourism products are also the end result of tourism technology combining with other industries. These include medical tourism, educational tourism, agricultural tourism, marine tourism and the application of information technology to the travel and tourism industry.

Application of Tourism Technology

The term "technology" can easily call to mind scientific achievements, computer graphic skills, special effects and other engineering-related images. However, "Tourism Technology" encompasses the integrated fields mentioned in the previous paragraph, statistics, managerial and socio-cultural know-how, and skills that the tourism industry can adopt to design, produce, and market various tourism products. In addition to coordinating various aspects of human resources in the travel and tourism industry, “Tourism Technology” describes a comprehensive field containing but not limited to such widely referred to subjects as entertainment technology, contents technology and creative technology. és feio .

Software for Tourists


One of the latest applications is software that permits tourists to customize their visits according to their preferences. Luis Castillo Vidal, computer engineer of the University of Granada and one of the authors of the study, points out that, in order to design the customized visit plans, they have used Artificial Intelligence techniques, “a science that provides computers with abilities to solve problems which, in principle, can only be solved by humans”.

Users must have access to the internet, either through a computer, a mobile phone or a PDA, in order to be able to access a web where they can define their preferences and needs, such as their artistic, cultural and gastronomic preferences, their lifestyle and favourite hours, whether they are disabled or not and the spending capacity.

The new “adaptive user-focused system to plan tourist visits”, as their authors describe it, means “step forward” in the current trend of tourist activities automation, such as the online payment of transport tickets and accommodation, or the use of audio-guides in the monuments tours .

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Place Branding?



Place branding brings together a range of existing specialisms, in particular those of brand management and development policy, to create a new discipline with equal emphasis on visionary strategy and hands-on implementation. Successful place branding combines the responsible and intelligent application of disciplines and techniques from commercial branding, as well as new leadership and partnership development practices, with a creative approach to established methods of international relations, diplomacy, and policy making.

This enables a place to build on all its strengths, and make sense out of the often chaotic and contradictory mosaic of its current and future identity. One of the things which distinguishes our place branding approach is that we use brand strategy to drive and inspire consistent and on-brand behaviour, not merely communications. If you simply tell the world about how great your country or city is, it is ordinary publicity at best, and spin at worst. In place branding, the role of communications is not primarily a method for telling the world about a place, but a method for making the world aware of the actions a place performs which best exemplify what kind of place it is. Place branding ensures that the place gets due credit for its real strengths and positive behaviour, and that the place brand gains appropriate equity from the recognition which that behaviour deserves.

The Benefits of a Place Brand

In a globalised world, every place must compete with every other place for its share of the world's wealth, talent, and attention. Just like a famous company, a famous city, region or country finds it much easier to sell its products and services at a profit, recruit the best people, attract visitors, investment and events, move in the right circles, and play a prominent and useful part in world affairs. It is all too easy to become famous for the wrong reasons. A place's reputation needs to be built on qualities which are positive, attractive, unique, sustainable and relevant to many different people around the world. A place brand strategy determines the most realistic, most competitive and most compelling strategic vision for the city, region, or country, and ensures that this vision is supported, reinforced and enriched by every act of investment and communication between that place and the rest of the world. But unless every government department or agency consistently communicates and demonstrates the same carefully developed brand, people in other places will quickly become confused about what the place brand stands for. For the same reason, the process must be led at the highest level of government, and have the personal endorsement of the 'Chief Executive', whether this is the Prime Minister, President, Monarch or Mayor. The acts of communication which a place performs, now and in the future, include the products which it exports; the way it promotes itself for trade, tourism, inward investment and inward recruitment; the way it behaves in acts of domestic and foreign policy and the ways in which these acts are communicated; the way it promotes and represents and shares its culture; the way it manages and develops its built and natural environment; the way its citizens behave when abroad and how they treat strangers at home; the way it features in the world's media; the bodies and organisations it belongs to; the other places it associates with; the way it competes with others in sport and entertainment; what it gives to the world and what it takes back. If done well, such a strategy can make a huge difference to both the internal confidence and the external performance of the place.

The Management and Implementation of a Place Brand

A place brand strategy is, of course, only as good as its implementation, and it is when people actually experience the brand that they begin to form positive attitudes and behaviours about the place. Implementation involves devising actions for each of the stakeholder groups that are in line with the brand strategy, creating the right 'internal' communications to reach, inform and engage them, devising the correct delivery mechanisms to ensure uptake, developing funding and taxation that will assure success, and training staff on whose enthusiasm and dedication the final outcomes depend. We provide support in appropriate tactical areas, such as public diplomacy, perception management, product and service development, brand training, and the construction of rewards and monitoring systems. We believe that, as outsiders, we cannot and should not attempt to create the strategic vision for a place ourselves and 'sell' this to its administration. Only the place itself - with representation from government, NGO's, industry, the arts and the population in general - is entitled and qualified to do so. Our role is to provide the objective viewpoint, the research, the framework, the structures, methods and tools for a place to arrive at its own clear, useful and distinctive brand strategy, and maximise the opportunities for creativity and innovation throughout the implementation. As noted, communications are not sufficient to change the opinions of large numbers of people about a place, especially if the reality one desires is very different from current perceptions. In most cases, it is essential to prove the point, rather than endlessly repeat it. A place brand will only come alive if people are offered the opportunity to experience it through active participation.

Picture a classroom where every student has their own tablet PC, with wireless internet access and videoconferencing equipment to give them access to academics, industry experts and other schools around the world. The teacher begins the lesson by drawing students’ attention to a new discussion thread that’s appeared overnight on an online forum about a text they’re studying.

There’s no need for an attendance check: the smart cards that give access to the school have already recorded who’s in class. Even though the school has been open for only a few months, students and teachers already know each other well – they’ve been talking online since before the school started.

This isn’t the future; it’s already a reality at the Queensland Academy for Health Sciences (QAHS) in Southport, Australia. Since it opened in February 2008 as part of a Queensland state government initiative, it’s been a model cyber-school, where technology is embedded into the fabric of every part of school life. The cursor really has replaced the chalk here.

But it’s not what you’ve got that counts – it’s what you do with it. As Mark McCallum, head of high school at the International School of Singapore, argues:

“Access to IT resources isn’t about technology – it’s about increasing access to resources, information, and other people.”

“People need to know there are better methods out there to engage students – you’ve got to have interaction, collaboration, opportunities for creativity. Textbooks just don’t cut it any more.”

“Technology isn’t magic. It doesn’t provide instant solutions. It challenges teachers to improve their practice by being more flexible and creative, and it challenges students to reflect on the limitations of technology as well as its capabilities. The best way to learn is by practising together.”

The term "technology" refers to the application of knowledge for practical purposes.

The field of "green technology" encompasses a continuously evolving group of methods and materials, from techniques for generating energy to non-toxic cleaning products.

The present expectation is that this field will bring innovation and changes in daily life of similar magnitude to the "information technology" explosion over the last two decades. In these early stages, it is impossible to predict what "green technology" may eventually encompass.

The goals that inform developments in this rapidly growing field include:

Sustainability - meeting the needs of society in ways that can continue indefinitely into the future without damaging or depleting natural resources. In short, meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

"Cradle to Cradle" Design - ending the "cradle to grave" cycle of manufactured products, by creating products that can be fully reclaimed or re-used.

Source Reduction - reducing waste and pollution by changing patterns of production and consumption.

Innovation - developing alternatives to technologies - whether fossil fuel or chemical intensive agriculture - that have been demonstrated to damage health and the environment.

Viability - creating a center of economic activity around technologies and products that benefit the environment, speeding their implementation and creating new careers that truly protect the planet.

Examples of green technology subject areas :

Energy
Perhaps the most urgent issue for green technology, this includes the development of alternative fuels, new means of generating energy and energy efficiency.

Green Building
Green building encompasses everything from the choice of building materials to where a building is located.

Environmentally Preferred Purchasing
This government innovation involves the search for products whose contents and methods of production have the smallest possible impact on the environment, and mandates that these be the preferred products for government purchasing.

Green Chemistry
The invention, design and application of chemical products and processes to reduce or to eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances.

Green Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology involves the manipulation of materials at the scale of the nanometer, one billionth of a meter. Some scientists believe that mastery of this subject is forthcoming that will transform the way that everything in the world is manufactured. "Green nanotechnology" is the application of green chemistry and green engineering principles to this field.

IBM is pushing ahead into providing technology services to manage water, a market US$10 billion (RM35 billion) market that the company sees growing quickly.

“This to me is an area that’s really going to explode in the next three to five years,” said Sharon Nunes, who heads IBM’s Big Green Innovations initiative.

“People see it as a gap. The water market is transforming.”

Big Green Innovations, a play on IBM’s nickname Big Blue, is part of IBM’s so-called‘smarter planet’ initiative that aims to apply information technology to efficiently manageelectrical grids, transportation systems and other infrastructure.

“We are actually looking at three different markets – industrial sector, for example food and beverage companies . . ., local and municipal governments, water utilities,” said Sharon Nunes.

Her group looks at business opportunities in sectors such as water, carbon management, solar technology and desalination.

“We are in discussions with a lot of food and beverage companies and some of the industrial processing companies,” Nunes said, referring to new water management contracts.

IBM is also in talks with “a lot of utilities,” she added but declined to give details.

Government stimulus in the water sector China and the United States, estimated at around US$10 billion to US$15 billion, will help establish the market for water management, Nunes said.

Governments, investors and human rights activists all see managing fresh water as key challenge in the coming decade. Billions of people already lack access to clean water and development and climate change are expected to disrupt the supply of fresh water even more.

IBM estimates leaks account for up to 60 percent of water supplied, costing water utilities worldwide US$14 billion every year. Managing water resources would include monitoring rivers, water reservoirs and pipes. IBM also provides systems for managing water infrastructure, such as levee oversight and flood control, Nunes said.

The technology company, whose products range from servers and software to consulting services, currently has a commercial deal underway with the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries in New York to build a monitoring and forecasting network for the Hudson River.

Also, IBM is working with researchers to monitor wave conditions and pollution levels in Galway Bay, Ireland, and is putting together smart water meters in Malta in cooperation with the utilities there.

The company’s flood management and control system is getting a lot of attention from flood-prone countries in Asia.

“We are seeing some initial inquiries from a lot of smaller Asian countries,” Nunes said. “In areas where there is government stimulus packages, there’s been a lot of outreach from some of the companies to IBM.” – Reuters

Quranic teachings and John Locke: two compatible approaches to good government — Stephen B. Young

SEPT 2 — Is British constitutional democracy consistent with Quranic guidance? A positive answer would have great importance for the future of Malaysian politics, permitting the emergence of a single civic community of Malaysians sharing common preferences for their political institutions.

In his 1689 “Essay Concerning the True, Original, Extent and End of Civil Government”, John Locke set forth a number of famous propositions on limited government. For Locke, public power was to be held in trust for certain beneficiaries; for him government was stewardship.

Locke arrives at his conclusions that government consists of powers held in trust for the benefit of the people by starting with certain assumptions about the natural conditions into which all people are born. Locke starts not with religious teachings or a moral code of right and wrong but with observations about the natural order.

It is sometimes alleged that John Locke’s arguments for limited, responsible constitutional government reflect a parochial cultural framework about human possibilities. It is true that Locke was Western European, Protestant, humanist, as well as rational and scientific in the Enlightenment way of thinking. But that does not mean that his conclusions are necessary irrelevant to other cultures and peoples who do not share that fundamental view of how to think about the world. In fact, it is a matter of collective common sense that conclusions may be supported by different arguments and either inferred from a variety of propositions or deduced from a range of premises.

When we seek to establish governments in a global community of many nations and cultures, it is the conclusions that should matter most. Agreement on the ends of government permits cooperation and mutual respect.

Quranic revelation, for example, starts from a set of understandings about the circumstances in which we live that were not completely shared by John Locke. Nonetheless, Quranic revelation provides us with analogous concepts to those used by Locke that carry us to very similar conclusions about the proper role and nature of government.

In short, for different reasons, Quran teaches us that government is a trust that should not be abused.

Quran reveals a proper destiny for humanity in that it should be wisely responsible in the use of power. It presents five inter-related aspects of that destiny, which are the nature of humanity, the assumption of trust responsibility, the office of khalifah, the necessity of wise discernment, the use of good counsel, and the seeking of justice.

First, Quran teaches that each human is born possessing something of God’s life force. According to Quran, God provided humans with remarkable potential by breathing into the first created human some holy spirit. Humans are therefore not just made in the image of God, but with God’s life force within them. Humans, according to Quran, are specially created by God to serve a divine purpose and so are possessed with something of the Creator’s energy, will, capacity and purpose.

Second, Quran relates that humanity accepted God’s offer of executing a trust for the betterment of creation. The abilities and potentials that the Creator afforded to humanity and to each human being, Quran teaches, are given in trust – amanah – so that God’s purposes can be served on earth.

Of course, trust can be abused and many passages of Quran discuss how humans do and most likely will abuse the various amanah given to them by God. Quran is most explicit at how easily humanity turns from its higher potential to acts of unrighteousness because of temptation, or excessive pride, narrow fixations, lack of patience or too much sensuality.

Third, Quran reveals that the office holding the amanah given to humanity is that of khalifah, or vice-regent for God on earth. The role and responsibilities of serving as khalifah are not to be understood as reserved for only one person seeking to govern the Muslim Ummah, but as expectations for each human to contribute to the achievement of God’s right order.

Fourth, Qur’an requires that as each human executes his or her amanah and serves God as khalifah, he or she must use some of what has been given as part of the amanah – the capacity to observe, think, reason and judge – in order to take proper and correct action. The capacity of ijtihad, or practical application of the human mind to reality, was given, it seems, in order that an individual’s khalifate can be successfully undertaken in the execution of the am?nah held by that person.

Fifth, Quran recommends use of institutions of consultation – shura – as a means for the application of individual ijtihad. The wisdom and thoughts of others function as a check on the possible corruption and selfish biases our own minds are prey to out of temptation and petty jealousies. The Quran realizes only too well the limitations that may infect ijtihad with ignoble purpose or misunderstanding.

The conclusion that government too is a trust – an amanah – seems a necessary one given Quranic teaching that we as humans were created for certain ends and that everything that comes our way – money, education, power - is to be used constructively, thoughtfully, and responsibly. We cannot be in government and escape our responsibilities (1) for acting as if we hold an amanah from God, (2) for thinking wisely in fulfillment of that amanah, and (3) for seeking to be a good khalifah.

Thus, Quranic guidance may provide more compelling reasons to support John Locke’s conclusions about democratic constitutionalism than Locke’ enlightenment rationalism did.

Quran provides an additional ground for support of Locke’s recommendations; the need for justice. Justice – not abuse or oppression - is to be gained by the establishment of government. Government is an agency dedicated to service of the good, which includes acting as khalifah in its own right, using its ijtihad as an amanah, and helping people achieve their highest potentials as God made it possible for them to do.

Justice serves as a check on the actions of government. When government abuses its duty to seek justice, or fails to do so, then, through intention or negligence it forfeits its claim to our support and loyalty. The failure of government to act as a proper agent for justice dissolves its authority just as Locke argued using his different premises.

Faithful believers in Quranic teachings may fully embrace as part of their khalifhaship on earth in this life the principles of democratic constitutionalism as advocated by John Locke. It might even be argued more broadly that democratic constitutionalism is the most appropriate form of good Quranic government.