"<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">Life Expectancy Is Declining in Some Pockets of the Country</nyt_headline><nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "></nyt_byline>By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: April 22, 2008
<nyt_text> </nyt_text>Life expectancy has long been growing steadily for most Americans. But it has not for a significant minority, according to a new study ... Counties with significant declines were concentrated in Appalachia, the Southeast, Texas, the southern Midwest and along the Mississippi River. Life expectancy increases were mainly in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast. ... "
I think you'll find that the greatest concentrations of wi-fi installations are in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast.
"<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">Life Expectancy Is Declining in Some Pockets of the Country</nyt_headline><nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "></nyt_byline>By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: April 22, 2008
<nyt_text> </nyt_text>Life expectancy has long been growing steadily for most Americans. But it has not for a significant minority, according to a new study ... Counties with significant declines were concentrated in Appalachia, the Southeast, Texas, the southern Midwest and along the Mississippi River. Life expectancy increases were mainly in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast. ... "
I think you'll find that the greatest concentrations of wi-fi installations are in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast.
"<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">Life Expectancy Is Declining in Some Pockets of the Country</nyt_headline><nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "></nyt_byline>By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: April 22, 2008
<nyt_text> </nyt_text>Life expectancy has long been growing steadily for most Americans. But it has not for a significant minority, according to a new study ... Counties with significant declines were concentrated in Appalachia, the Southeast, Texas, the southern Midwest and along the Mississippi River. Life expectancy increases were mainly in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast. ... "
I think you'll find that the greatest concentrations of wi-fi installations are in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast.
Well, how's that for proof? :wink:
-Jeff
I think there is something to this, at least as a proof of/by correlation.
Having access to wi-fi is correlated with being informed, educated, etc. which is probably causally connected with healthy life style, making good choices in ambiguous situations, etc., leading to higher life expectancy.
To make this into something more we need to look for an increase in life expectancy among high speed train conductors in Europe and Startbuck baristas.
Trains in Europe offering Wi-Fi
By Eric Pfanner
Sunday, February 10, 2008
LONDON: European rail travelers take high speeds for granted. Increasingly, they can take advantage of high-speed Internet access, too.
Train operators across Britain and the Continent have been accelerating the rollout of onboard Wi-Fi systems, allowing travelers to prepare for meetings, download video clips or catch up on their e-mail - sometimes while zipping through the countryside at 300 kilometers, or 190 miles, an hour.
While some railway companies see Wi-Fi as a new source of revenue for themselves or for the technology companies that run the systems for them, others see it as a service or marketing perk.
"It's a key tool that we use to compete with the airlines," said John Gelson, spokesman for National Express East Coast, a British train operator that has one of the largest on-the-go Wi-Fi systems, in 43 trains that ply a 950-kilometer route between London and Inverness, Scotland, via Edinburgh.
The one-hour flight from London to Edinburgh is shorter than the four-hour, 20-minute train ride. But airlines are only starting to experiment with e-mail or text-message systems using cellphones and other portable devices. National Express recently made Wi-Fi free for all passengers; previously second-class travelers had to pay.
National Express recently took over the East Coast line from the Great North Eastern Railway, which started testing Wi-Fi on its trains in 2004. Meanwhile Virgin Trains, which operates on the West Coast line between London, Birmingham and Manchester, and other British railway operators have also added Wi-Fi.
"They're aiming to catch the business market, because they pay more for tickets," said Robert Preston, deputy editor of Railway Gazette International. "One thing business travelers want to have is Wi-Fi."
Outside Britain, Wi-Fi on trains is less widespread, but in Germany, the national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, was another early adopter, testing Wi-Fi on a route between Dortmund and Cologne in 2005.
Last year, the service was expanded to trains between those cities and Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich. Soon trains between Frankfurt and Hamburg will also be Wi-Fi-enabled, said René Bresgen, a spokesman for T-Mobile, the wireless subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, which operates the system in partnership with Deutsche Bahn.
Thalys, which runs high-speed trains linking Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne, is testing Wi-Fi in three trains, and plans to roll it out in its entire fleet of 26 trains this spring, said Patricia Baars, a spokeswoman. It will be free in first class, and a paying service in second class, she added.
SNCF, the French railway operator, started tests of Wi-Fi in December in trains on a new Train à Grande Vitesse, or TGV, line linking Paris to Strasbourg at speeds of up to 320 kilometers an hour.
If they are successful, the service eventually might be extended to the entire French high-speed system, or about 400 trains, linking Paris to destinations throughout France, as well as Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg.
"For the TGV, high-speed Wi-Fi is a tool for gaining market share, both in France and in international markets," the SNCF said when announcing the trial.
Trains on several lines in Sweden have also been equipped, and other European railways are running tests.
Eurostar, which operates trains linking London to Paris and Brussels via the tunnel under the English Channel, is one exception. Gareth Headon, a spokesman, said Eurostar had been focused recently on the completion of its new high-speed line in Britain and the move to a new London terminus, St. Pancras International, but now planned to look at the possibility of installing Wi-Fi.
While Wi-Fi has been added most widely on long-distance routes, particularly Continental high-speed trains, other rail systems are also being equipped. T-Mobile, for instance, operates Wi-Fi systems on the Heathrow Express train from London to Heathrow Airport and on some commuter trains between London and Brighton, England.
High-speed lines created some special challenges for the Wi-Fi engineers, and they have adopted several technologies to try to minimize problems like dropped connections. The wireless "local area networks" in trains can be connected to cellphone networks, to satellites, or both.
Deutsche Bahn, for instance, links up to the T-Mobile wireless system because the many tunnels that German trains pass through would make a satellite system impractical, said Andreas Fuhrmann, a spokesman for Deutsche Bahn. The system on the Heathrow Express, also run by T-Mobile, relies on a so-called WiMax connection in a tunnel leading into the airport.
Thalys is relying on satellite links, because it stays mostly above ground, on flat terrain in northern France and the Benelux countries, and because its trains cross borders, which mobile networks do not.
National Express, meanwhile, uses both mobile networks and satellite connections to ensure that coverage is seamless, said Gelson, the spokesman.
He said National Express invested £3.2 million, or $6.2 million, to equip all its trains for Wi-Fi; other operators declined to say how much they had spent.
Icomera, a Swedish company that installed Wi-Fi in National Express and Swedish trains, said last autumn that 23,000 customers a week were using the systems.
So far, Wi-Fi on trains seems to be a mostly European phenomenon. Amtrak, the U.S. railway operator, has Wi-Fi hot spots in some stations, but not on the trains.
Although some Asian countries have technologically advanced rail systems, fewer people there connect to the Internet via laptop computers than in the West, preferring to use mobile phones instead.
Railway operators like Thalys and National Express said delegations from Asia had recently been visiting to look at their systems. Central Japan Railways, which operates the Shinkansen high-speed trains between Tokyo and Osaka has said it will install Wi-Fi next year.
shellebelle
04-21-2008, 09:38 PM
Woooooooo Wooooooo ROFLMAO - You two are too much! Too funny!
Okay so though Europe claims not WiFi their trains are filled with it spreading it like coal smoke across the country side. Hmmmmmmmmmmm
I think there is something to this, at least as a proof of/by correlation.
Having access to wi-fi is correlated with being informed, educated, etc. which is probably causally connected with healthy life style, making good choices in ambiguous situations, etc., leading to higher life expectancy.
To make this into something more we need to look for an increase in life expectancy among high speed train conductors in Europe and Startbuck baristas.
Trains in Europe offering Wi-Fi
By Eric Pfanner
Sunday, February 10, 2008
LONDON: European rail travelers take high speeds for granted. Increasingly, they can take advantage of high-speed Internet access, too.
Train operators across Britain and the Continent have been accelerating the rollout of onboard Wi-Fi systems, allowing travelers to prepare for meetings, download video clips or catch up on their e-mail - sometimes while zipping through the countryside at 300 kilometers, or 190 miles, an hour.
While some railway companies see Wi-Fi as a new source of revenue for themselves or for the technology companies that run the systems for them, others see it as a service or marketing perk.
"It's a key tool that we use to compete with the airlines," said John Gelson, spokesman for National Express East Coast, a British train operator that has one of the largest on-the-go Wi-Fi systems, in 43 trains that ply a 950-kilometer route between London and Inverness, Scotland, via Edinburgh.
The one-hour flight from London to Edinburgh is shorter than the four-hour, 20-minute train ride. But airlines are only starting to experiment with e-mail or text-message systems using cellphones and other portable devices. National Express recently made Wi-Fi free for all passengers; previously second-class travelers had to pay.
National Express recently took over the East Coast line from the Great North Eastern Railway, which started testing Wi-Fi on its trains in 2004. Meanwhile Virgin Trains, which operates on the West Coast line between London, Birmingham and Manchester, and other British railway operators have also added Wi-Fi.
"They're aiming to catch the business market, because they pay more for tickets," said Robert Preston, deputy editor of Railway Gazette International. "One thing business travelers want to have is Wi-Fi."
Outside Britain, Wi-Fi on trains is less widespread, but in Germany, the national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, was another early adopter, testing Wi-Fi on a route between Dortmund and Cologne in 2005.
Last year, the service was expanded to trains between those cities and Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich. Soon trains between Frankfurt and Hamburg will also be Wi-Fi-enabled, said René Bresgen, a spokesman for T-Mobile, the wireless subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, which operates the system in partnership with Deutsche Bahn.
Thalys, which runs high-speed trains linking Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne, is testing Wi-Fi in three trains, and plans to roll it out in its entire fleet of 26 trains this spring, said Patricia Baars, a spokeswoman. It will be free in first class, and a paying service in second class, she added.
SNCF, the French railway operator, started tests of Wi-Fi in December in trains on a new Train à Grande Vitesse, or TGV, line linking Paris to Strasbourg at speeds of up to 320 kilometers an hour.
If they are successful, the service eventually might be extended to the entire French high-speed system, or about 400 trains, linking Paris to destinations throughout France, as well as Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg.
"For the TGV, high-speed Wi-Fi is a tool for gaining market share, both in France and in international markets," the SNCF said when announcing the trial.
Trains on several lines in Sweden have also been equipped, and other European railways are running tests.
Eurostar, which operates trains linking London to Paris and Brussels via the tunnel under the English Channel, is one exception. Gareth Headon, a spokesman, said Eurostar had been focused recently on the completion of its new high-speed line in Britain and the move to a new London terminus, St. Pancras International, but now planned to look at the possibility of installing Wi-Fi.
While Wi-Fi has been added most widely on long-distance routes, particularly Continental high-speed trains, other rail systems are also being equipped. T-Mobile, for instance, operates Wi-Fi systems on the Heathrow Express train from London to Heathrow Airport and on some commuter trains between London and Brighton, England.
High-speed lines created some special challenges for the Wi-Fi engineers, and they have adopted several technologies to try to minimize problems like dropped connections. The wireless "local area networks" in trains can be connected to cellphone networks, to satellites, or both.
Deutsche Bahn, for instance, links up to the T-Mobile wireless system because the many tunnels that German trains pass through would make a satellite system impractical, said Andreas Fuhrmann, a spokesman for Deutsche Bahn. The system on the Heathrow Express, also run by T-Mobile, relies on a so-called WiMax connection in a tunnel leading into the airport.
Thalys is relying on satellite links, because it stays mostly above ground, on flat terrain in northern France and the Benelux countries, and because its trains cross borders, which mobile networks do not.
National Express, meanwhile, uses both mobile networks and satellite connections to ensure that coverage is seamless, said Gelson, the spokesman.
He said National Express invested £3.2 million, or $6.2 million, to equip all its trains for Wi-Fi; other operators declined to say how much they had spent.
Icomera, a Swedish company that installed Wi-Fi in National Express and Swedish trains, said last autumn that 23,000 customers a week were using the systems.
So far, Wi-Fi on trains seems to be a mostly European phenomenon. Amtrak, the U.S. railway operator, has Wi-Fi hot spots in some stations, but not on the trains.
Although some Asian countries have technologically advanced rail systems, fewer people there connect to the Internet via laptop computers than in the West, preferring to use mobile phones instead.
Railway operators like Thalys and National Express said delegations from Asia had recently been visiting to look at their systems. Central Japan Railways, which operates the Shinkansen high-speed trains between Tokyo and Osaka has said it will install Wi-Fi next year.