Latest news with #Hao
Miami Herald
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
China's Single Men Turn to ‘Dating Camps' To Find Love
The growing popularity of dating coaches in the U.S. has taken root in China, where men from humble beginnings are trying a new way to improve their odds as marriage rates plummet nationwide. Newsweek reached out to the Chinese foreign ministry with an emailed request for comment outside of office hours. China has an enormous gender imbalance, with roughly 30 million more men than women-a legacy of the decades-long one-child policy and long-standing cultural preference for sons. Meanwhile, many young workers face grueling hours, stagnant wages and fierce jobs competition, leaving little time or energy for family life. Marriage registrations last year were down over 20 percent from 2023 and 54 percent from 2013. Marriages are a strong predictor of births in China, where few children are born out of wedlock-prompting concern over the long-term economic impacts as the birth rate trends downward. Chinese men are traditionally expected to provide a dowry, and often to own their own home and vehicle, before securing a marriage. As women achieve higher levels of education and professional success, the bar continues to rise-leaving many men feeling they simply cannot compete. The challenge is even greater for rural men who move to the cities, according to the dating coach known as Hao, who has become one of the country's most popular advisers on the topic. Hao claims to have worked with more than 3,000 clients, and says as many as 500 have successfully married after participating in his programs. Hao leads students through weeklong "dating camps," a practice highlighted in Dating Game, a documentary by Emmy-winning filmmaker Violet Du Feng released earlier this year. The film follows three students-Li, 24, Zhou, 36, and Wu, 27-all born during the one-child policy era, which ended in 2016. The men undergo "glow ups" under Hao's tutelage, receiving not only new haircuts and optimized social media personas but also strategies for connecting with women both off and online. Not every participant is comfortable with this curated approach. "I feel guilty deceiving others," Hao says in the film. Director Du Feng told the BBC that while Dating Game takes place in China, it reflects a universal struggle: "In this digital landscape, we're all struggling and wrestling with the price of being fake in the digital world, and then the cost that we have to pay to be authentic and honest." Filmmaker VioletDu Feng told Variety: "This generation of young men are being punished again and again and again at the cost of the country's development... They grew up without proper parenting. They grew up without access to girls." Zheng Mu, a sociology professor at the National University of Singapore, told the BBC: "In China, marriage or the ability, financially and socially, to get married as the primary breadwinner, is still largely expected from men." She said that failing to meet these expectations "can be a social stigma, indicating they're not capable and deserving of the role, which leads to great pressures and mental strains." Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow at Victoria University's Centre of Policy Studies in Melbourne, previously told Newsweek: "Younger generations work so hard, they have little flexibility to raise a large family. Attitudes about having children or even marrying have changed. Women's education levels are now higher than men's on average, and many women prioritize career development over starting larger families." The United Nations projects that China's population-now about 1.4 billion-could shrink to less than 800 million by 2100 if current trends persist. Central and local governments continue to introduce new measures aimed at encouraging young people to start families. Related Articles China Reveals Encounter With Western Aircraft Carrier in Contested WatersChina and US Ally in Maritime Confrontation Near Disputed TerritoryUS Ally Calls China Greatest ThreatChina Reacts As Russia Floats New Geopolitical Power Bloc With India 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
China's Single Men Turn to 'Dating Camps' To Find Love
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The growing popularity of dating coaches in the U.S. has taken root in China, where men from humble beginnings are trying a new way to improve their odds as marriage rates plummet nationwide. Newsweek reached out to the Chinese foreign ministry with an emailed request for comment outside of office hours. Why It Matters China has an enormous gender imbalance, with roughly 30 million more men than women—a legacy of the decades-long one-child policy and long-standing cultural preference for sons. Meanwhile, many young workers face grueling hours, stagnant wages and fierce jobs competition, leaving little time or energy for family life. Marriage registrations last year were down over 20 percent from 2023 and 54 percent from 2013. Marriages are a strong predictor of births in China, where few children are born out of wedlock—prompting concern over the long-term economic impacts as the birth rate trends downward. Two young men sit on a staircase beneath Chinese national flags during the National Day Golden Week holiday on October 5, 2024, in Chongqing, China. Two young men sit on a staircase beneath Chinese national flags during the National Day Golden Week holiday on October 5, 2024, in Chongqing, To Know Chinese men are traditionally expected to provide a dowry, and often to own their own home and vehicle, before securing a marriage. As women achieve higher levels of education and professional success, the bar continues to rise—leaving many men feeling they simply cannot compete. The challenge is even greater for rural men who move to the cities, according to the dating coach known as Hao, who has become one of the country's most popular advisers on the topic. Hao claims to have worked with more than 3,000 clients, and says as many as 500 have successfully married after participating in his programs. Hao leads students through weeklong "dating camps," a practice highlighted in Dating Game, a documentary by Emmy-winning filmmaker Violet Du Feng released earlier this year. The film follows three students—Li, 24, Zhou, 36, and Wu, 27—all born during the one-child policy era, which ended in 2016. The men undergo "glow ups" under Hao's tutelage, receiving not only new haircuts and optimized social media personas but also strategies for connecting with women both off and online. Not every participant is comfortable with this curated approach. "I feel guilty deceiving others," Hao says in the film. Director Du Feng told the BBC that while Dating Game takes place in China, it reflects a universal struggle: "In this digital landscape, we're all struggling and wrestling with the price of being fake in the digital world, and then the cost that we have to pay to be authentic and honest." What People Are Saying Filmmaker Violet Du Feng told Variety: "This generation of young men are being punished again and again and again at the cost of the country's development... They grew up without proper parenting. They grew up without access to girls." Zheng Mu, a sociology professor at the National University of Singapore, told the BBC: "In China, marriage or the ability, financially and socially, to get married as the primary breadwinner, is still largely expected from men." She said that failing to meet these expectations "can be a social stigma, indicating they're not capable and deserving of the role, which leads to great pressures and mental strains." Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow at Victoria University's Centre of Policy Studies in Melbourne, previously told Newsweek: "Younger generations work so hard, they have little flexibility to raise a large family. Attitudes about having children or even marrying have changed. Women's education levels are now higher than men's on average, and many women prioritize career development over starting larger families." What Happens Next The United Nations projects that China's population—now about 1.4 billion—could shrink to less than 800 million by 2100 if current trends persist. Central and local governments continue to introduce new measures aimed at encouraging young people to start families.
Jordan News
16-07-2025
- Health
- Jordan News
New and Unexpected Benefits of Turmeric - Jordan News
New and Unexpected Benefits of Turmeric Wastewater can become a true breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria—but natural compounds like curcumin from turmeric and emodin from rhubarb may help combat them. اضافة اعلان According to the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, the use of antibiotics can have unexpected consequences—not only for the human body but also for the environment. As is well known, some medications are excreted through urine and feces and end up in sewage systems, where they create ideal conditions for the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. A scientific team led by Dr. Liwen Hao from the University of Utah discovered multiple strains of bacteria resistant to various antibiotics in wastewater treatment plants in the state. While these microbes rarely cause illness in healthy individuals, they can transfer resistance genes to more dangerous pathogens such as E. coli (Escherichia coli). Moreover, researchers found strains resistant even to colistin, an antibiotic considered a last-resort treatment for severe infections. One particular strain, labeled U2, had the highest number of resistance genes and did not respond to any of the antibiotics tested. To fight these superbugs, scientists tested 11 natural compounds known for their antimicrobial properties. Curcumin (from turmeric) and emodin (from rhubarb) showed the most promising results—inhibiting cell growth, preventing biofilm formation, and reducing bacterial activity. Dr. Hao stated: 'These substances could be integrated into environmentally friendly wastewater treatment methods.' However, researchers stressed that further testing is essential before these compounds can be applied in real-world wastewater facilities. Additional studies are needed to evaluate interactions with other substances and to assess their impact on microbial communities. —
Indian Express
12-07-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Karen Hao's Empire of AI brings nuance and much-needed scepticism to the study of AI
Most conversations that we have around Artificial Intelligence (AI) today share one commonality: the technology's society-altering capacity, its ability to leap us towards the next breakthrough, a better world, a future that we rarely imagined would be possible. The founding mission of Open AI, the company that made AI a household name through ChatGPT in 2022, is 'to ensure that artificial general intelligence — AI systems that are generally smarter than humans — benefits all of humanity'. Behind this seemingly optimistic idea, tech reporter Karen Hao argues, is the stench of empires of old — a civilising mission that promises modernity and progress while accumulating power and money through the exploitation of labour and resources. Hao has spent seven years covering AI — at the MIT Tech Review, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. She was the first to profile OpenAI and extensively document the AI supply chain — taking the conversation beyond the promise of Silicon Valley's innovation through reportage around people behind the black boxes that are AI models. And it is these stories that find centre-stage in 'Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI', her debut book. It is a company book and, like all good business books, gives an intimate picture of the rise of an idea, the people, strategy and money behind it. But the book stands out as it provides us one way of framing the dizzying AI boom and conversation around us. In doing so, the book joins the list of non-fiction on AI that brings nuance and much-needed scepticism of the subject while being acutely aware of its potential. In 2024, Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor from the Computer Science department of Princeton University wrote 'AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference'. The book lays out the basics of AI research, helping distinguish hype from reality. The same year, tech journalist Parmy Olson wrote Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World about the unprecedented monopoly that Open AI and Google's AI research wing Deepmind currently have in the world. This approach needs a lot of computing capacity. The physical manifestation of it are the massive data centres that are mushrooming everywhere. These data centres, in turn, consume a lot of energy. Open AI cracked this technique and doubled down on it: more data, more high-functioning and expensive Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) that make the computation happen, and more data centers to house them. This more-is-more approach, Hao writes, has 'choked' alternative forms to AI research, which has been a subject many have been trying to crack and expand since the 1950s. 'There was research before that explored minimising data for training models while achieving similar gains. Then Large Language Models and ChatGPT entered the picture. Research suddenly stopped. Two things happened: money flowed into transformers (a type of highly-effective neural network) and generative AI, diverting funding from other explorations,' Hao says. With the 'enormous externalities' of environmental costs, data privacy issues and labour exploitation of AI today, it is important to 'redirect some funds to explore new scientific frontiers that offer the same benefits of advanced AI without extraordinary costs,' Hao argues. But it might be harder than said. In her book, Hao traces how researchers, who were working outside major AI companies, are now financially affiliated with them. Funding, too, primarily, comes from tech companies or academic labs associated with them. 'There's a misconception among the public and policymakers that AI research remains guided by a pure scientific drive,' Hao says, adding that 'the foundations of AI knowledge have been overtaken by profit motives.'
The Star
09-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
China's gig economy booms as blistering heat leaves workers exposed
On a scorching morning in Beijing, Hao and a dozen other food delivery drivers sweltered outside a hot-pot restaurant. They smoked. They swiped through videos. They waited for the next round of lunch orders from people wise enough to stay indoors. Hao, like most of China's 200 million gig workers, is eligible by law to receive a "heat wave allowance,' or danger money for thoserequired to work for hours in extreme heat conditions. He should be paid at least 180 yuan ($25) per month when the heat crosses 35C (95F). The city had already breached that, with the mercury heading fast toward 40C that week. But he hasn't seen a penny. "I've never heard of a company benefit for working in a heat wave,' said Hao, who's been clocking 10 hour days on his scooter for five years now. He declined to use his full name for fear of reprisals from his employer. Hao's not alone – most drivers have never received a payment. When the sun turns cities like Beijing into gridded ovens, demand for deliveries spike. The hotter it gets, the more orders pour in. For platforms like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s, Meituan and – some of China's largest food delivery sites – the math is simple: sweating riders equal happy customers. For their part, the companies say they dosupportworkers. is offering full-time riders a hot weather allowance, the firm said, without elaborating on the details. Meituan is taking measures including the use of heatstroke prevention insurance from this month. didn't respond to a request for comment, though has previously implemented programs which provided drivers with "summer cooling supplies.' For Hao and millions like him, the rush of orders mean he maybe earns an extra yuan per hour, or roughly 14 US cents. Not even enough for a cold bottle of water. Heat wave allowances are only given by companies that are willing to comply with the law, and with China's slowing economy pushing more than one in five workers to gig work, competition for jobs is fierce and few are willing to negotiate for better benefits. By contrast, employees at government agencies and state-owned enterprises often jump online to boast of their own "heatstroke prevention subsidies' -cash bonuses, early leave, even vacations in state-run seaside resorts. There's no hiding the irony that China's gig workers, a growing group of mostly younger people, are some of the least protected in the biggest communist country in the world. "Those who 'enjoy'the heat waves don't enjoy allowances, and those who enjoy allowances don't taste the heat waves,' one user quipped on Weibo, one of China's most used social media sites. The haves and haves-nots story isn't new, but climate change is making it starker. And deadlier. In 2024, China recorded its hottest year on the three previous years were all among the top five for highest annual temperatures since the to The Lancet, yearlyheat wave-related deaths in Chinahave now nearly doubled compared with1986 to 2005, with more than 37,000 deaths in 2023 alone, the most recent full-year data. The risk, however, isn't equally shared. Delivery drivers, street vendors, and construction workers bear the brunt. And when they collapse, few safety nets catch them. A study published last year analyzing 1,200 food drivers and 580,000 meal orders found that during heat waves, gig workers saw a 9% increase in hourly orders, worked 6% longer hours, and earned only one yuan more per hour – in part because of an increase in penalties from delayed deliveries. Meanwhile, their out-of-pocket health costs to treat heatstroke and other harms, like worsening pre-existing cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, averaged over 500 yuan during the summer peak. "Most couriers don't realize the health costs until they're sick and hospitalized, without medical insurance,' said Susan Feng Lu, co-author of the study and professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. "Consumers benefit from staying protected indoors, yet the burden of health risks falls heavily on gig workers.' The human cost is growing harder to ignore. At least 51workers died of heatstroke in the last three years, according to analysis by a platform that focuses on China's labor data and news. But that's likely only a tiny fraction of the true total, partly due to difficulties attributing heat as a cause of death as well as efforts by authorities to restrict data. By law, outdoor work is supposed to be limited to less than six hours when temperatures cross 37C and suspended when it hits 40C. But enforcement is largely limited to those in formal employment. Gig workers fall through the legal cracks. Just like ride hailing and food delivery apps the world over, Chinese gig work employers pitch their jobs as flexible, entrepreneurial, empowering. But freedom, critics argue, is just a euphemism for exclusion: no benefits and virtually no labor protections. Almost half of China's platform workers don't have any social insurance coverage, and fewer than a third of the total working population have insurance for work-related injuries, research shows. Under criticism from lawmakers, the platforms have been adding some benefits. Meituan previously committed to "gradually contribute to social insurance for full-time and stable part-time delivery drivers' from the second quarter of this year, and said in its statement that it has a "high-temperature care fund'that attaches an extra delivery fee to each eligible order. has begun to offer additional assistance to full-time drivers and is "committed to ensuring our riders' wellbeing during this period of hot weather,'the firm said. But some say that doesn't go far enough. "What workers give and what they receive are not equal,' said Han Dongfang, a renowned labor activist for Chinese workers. "If they were paid fairly, they would be able to take better care of themselves during heat waves.' While climate and public health experts call for a stronger system to raise public awareness of the risks of heatstroke, employers and state media often glorifya Soviet-style hard-working spirit, implying heat waves are a challenge that workers mustconfront. A national television segmentin 2023 aired a glowing feature about construction workers "fighting the temperature' at a sweltering site, where a thermometer reading showed one surface had reached 68C. The workers, the report implied, were heroes. And though China's lawmakers have floated proposals for expanding social protections for gig workers, and local governments trumpet initiatives to safeguard health each summer, little actually changes. China's top communist party cadres, government employees, and military officers, meanwhile, escape the heat to seaside towns like Beidaihe, a summer retreat destination once popular with leaders including Chairman Mao Zedong. Hundreds of hotels and sanatoriums are exclusive to government workers, who spend their summers at the cool town when the heat turns Beijinginto a furnace. Delivery drivers can expect more performative – and vastly smaller – luxuries from employers. A bottle of cold tea. A bowl of mung bean soup. A slice of watermelon. "Who needs a cup of cold tea at a station ten kilometers away on a hot day?' Han, the labor activist said. "What you need is a functional labor union that protects workers' rights.' The temperature in Beijing climbed another degree. Hao climbed back onto his scooter. The next order was ready. Someone wanted a cold bubble tea. – Bloomberg
