asia

While online social contact can be traced back to the 1980s, online dating began to gain more prominence — and participants — around 1997, according to a 2011 study by the Oxford Internet Institute. The incorporation of Web 2.0 interactive technologies and database support helped online dating to steadily expand: Before 1997, only 6% of singles searched for potential companions online; after 1997, 30% of singles did.

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) — the idea that companies directly contribute to the common good — is gaining adherents throughout the business world.  However, what constitutes responsible corporate behavior is open to interpretation by the firms themselves and the larger cultures in which they operate.

Over the two decades prior to the onset of the global financial crisis, real disposable household incomes increased an average of 1.7% a year in the 34 countries represented by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. As this rise in earnings occurred, however, so too did a rise in income inequality — a pattern that raises questions about imbalances in growth around the world.

As nations undergo economic development and open their markets, they will see necessary structural change within their labor sectors. One key assumption about globalization is that it will uniformly force economies to become more productive and efficient as competition exerts pressure. However, local conditions may significantly alter globalization’s impact, particularly as it relates to the nature and quality of employment.

Japan sees more local and distant tsunami events than any other country — indeed the very term “tsunami” comes from the Japanese language. The massive quake and tsunami in March 2011 that have devastated northern parts of that country are situated in a long natural and cultural history that has prompted Japan to take ever-more elaborate preventative measures.

If ever there were a natural event worth forecasting, it would be a major earthquake. Currently, there are dozens of long-term predictive models employed around the world that attempt to do just that with varying degrees of success. One such model, named EEPAS (Every Earthquake a Precursor According to Scale), attempts to predict the magnitude, location and probability of a future major quake based on indicative measures of the minor earthquakes that precede it.