Some of the most fascinating topics covered this week are: Business (Lessons from the Donut King who went from rags to riches, twice), Education (Alarming rise in education costs in New India), Technology (Top 10 emerging technologies of 2020), Science (Life on the inside as a locked-in patient), and Biotech (DeepMind is answering one of biology's biggest challenges)
Image: Shutterstock
At Ambit, we spend a lot of time reading articles that cover a wide gamut of topics, ranging from zeitgeist to futuristic, and encapsulate them in our weekly ‘Ten Interesting Things’ product. Some of the most fascinating topics covered this week are: Business (Lessons from the Donut King who went from rags to riches, twice), Education (Alarming rise in education costs in New India), Technology (Top 10 emerging technologies of 2020), Science (Life on the inside as a locked-in patient), and Biotech (DeepMind is answering one of biology’s biggest challenges). Here are the ten most interesting pieces that we read this week, ended December 04, 2020- 1) Business and life lessons from the Donut King who went from rags to riches, twice [Source: BBC]2) The alarming rise in education costs in New India [Source: The Hindu Business Line]
You surely must have heard this phrase, “education cost has risen dramatically”. Education cost is becoming a burden for most of the households in India. Enrolment has increased significantly in school and higher education, and the gender gap in enrolment has reduced up to secondary education. However, the Report of the NSSO’s 75th Round survey of “Household Social Consumption of Education in India” conducted from July 2017 to June 2018 provides some very disturbing results. Essentially, this expansion in education has involved increasingly burdening households for the payment, creating a situation in which education beyond the secondary level is essentially unaffordable for most working people.
Why are households having to shell out so much when a significant amount of enrolment is still in public institutions which should be much more accessible to all? The Right to Education Act, 2009, specified that school education up to the age of 14 years would be free and compulsory, and the spirit of that legislation clearly required that the costs of elementary schooling would be borne by the state. Yet, only a minority of students receive free education, and less than a quarter in urban areas. And there are also other costs associated with schooling — such as textbooks, uniforms, transport — which also add to the financial burden on households. And in this respect, very few students received any assistance.
In urban areas, nearly 40% of a casual labourer’s wage would be required for the education of two children. The proportions are lower for rural wage workers, mainly because they are effectively excluded from seeking higher education for their children. Unequal access and high personal costs involved in educating more of the young may well boomerang on society; both employment conditions and educational access need urgent policy action.
3) Top 10 emerging technologies of 2020 [Source: World Economic Forum]
The world is all about tackling Covid-19 now. We might have a vaccine soon, but what about the future? Could technology help us to be well prepared for future? A new report from the World Economic Forum and Scientific American magazine says that we could be well prepared in future. From electric planes to tech sensors that can “see” around corners, this year’s list is packed with inspiring advances. Experts whittled down scores of nominations to a select group of new developments with the potential to disrupt the status quo and spur real progress.
Some of the technologies that we could see in near future are: a) Microneedles for painless injections and tests: These tiny needles, at no more than the depth of a sheet of paper and the width of a human hair, could bring us pain-free injections and blood testing. Now we won’t have to be scared of getting injected! b) Virtual patients: If the goal of swapping humans for simulations to make clinical trials faster and safer sounds simple, the science behind it is anything but. Data taken from high-res images of a human organ is fed into a complex mathematical model of the mechanisms that control that organ’s function. Then, computer algorithms resolve the resulting equations and generate a virtual organ that behaves like the real thing. Such virtual organs or body systems could replace people in the initial assessments of drugs and treatments, making the process quicker, safer and less expensive.
c) Digital medicine: Digital medicine won’t replace doctors any time soon, but apps that monitor conditions or administer therapies could enhance their care and support patients with limited access to health services. Many smart watches can already detect if their wearer has an irregular heartbeat, and similar tools are being worked on that could help with breathing disorders, depression, Alzheimer’s and more. d) Green hydrogen: When hydrogen burns, the only by-product is water – and when it’s produced through electrolysis using renewable energy it becomes “green”. Earlier this year it was predicted green hydrogen will become a $12 trillion market by 2050. Why? Because it could have a key role in the energy transition by helping decarbonize sectors – like shipping and manufacturing – that are harder to electrify because they require high-energy fuel.
4) Employment, income in India during and after lockdown: A V-shape recovery? [Source: Business Standard]
The stock market has recovered sharply, but what about the employment rate and income? After skyrocketing to nearly 25% in April and May, the unemployment rate returned by July to its February level of around 7% where it has remained since. However, the unemployment rate provides an incomplete picture of labour market conditions and of the ongoing experiences of Indian households. It calculates employment as a share of the labour force, which only includes those that are employed and those that are actively looking for work. A back-to-normal unemployment rate may mask workers exiting the labour force if they cannot find work, or because of health concerns.
Business Standard analysed data from the CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS), a panel survey of approximately 175,000 households. The data confirms these concerns and reveals a less complete labour market recovery than what one might conclude solely based on the unemployment figures. The employment to population ratio (“EPOP,” which includes the full working-age population) has not yet returned to its pre-lockdown level. After a collapse in April and May, the EPOP among those 15 years of age or older has hovered around 37-38% between July and October, from a base of closer to 40% pre-lockdown.
In addition to job losses, income may remain depressed if individuals earn less in the same occupation. The analysis reveals widespread drops in wage income across many occupation groups. While substantial recovery had occurred by June (the latest month of data availability), median wage incomes remained depressed in about 80% of occupations in that month. The drop in total income during the lockdown was primarily driven by a sharp drop in labour income, but was supplemented by a decline in business profits. During the lockdown, income losses were more pronounced among households in the bottom 90% of the income distribution; however, these households also experienced a faster recovery post-lockdown such that by June 2020, their incomes were 18% below January 2020 levels (in April, this drop was 41%).
9) Singularity: Marie Howe’s Ode to Stephen Hawking, Our Cosmic Belonging, and the Meaning of Home, in a Stunning Animated Short Film [Source: brainpickings.com]
This animated short film is inspired by Marie Howe’s poem ‘Singularity’. While inspired by Stephen Hawking and titled after his trailblazing work on black holes and singularities — work that shines a sidewise gleam on the origin of everything — the poem is at bottom a stunning meditation on the interconnectedness of belonging across space and time, across selves and species, across the myriad artificial unbelongings we have manufactured as we have drifted further and further from our elemental nature.
Its closing line is an invocation, an incantation, ending with a timeless word of staggering resonance today: home. As we now stand on a profound precipice two years later — facing our deeply interconnected ecology of being on this shared cosmic home as we look back on fifty years of Earth Day built on Rachel Carson’s legacy, facing the most intimate meaning of home in our isolated shelters scattered across this “small and lonely planet” — the poem pulsates with a whole new meaning, as all great poems do in the veins of time.
So, as a special treat for the 2020 Universe in Verse, the author teamed up with SALT Project, a kindred clan of visual storytellers, who have won some hearts and won some Emmys with their soulful shorts ranging from book trailers to bird migration documentaries, to bring Howe’s “Singularity” to life in a transcendent short film, illustrated by paper collage artist Elena Skoreyko Wagner and featuring original music by the heroic cellist Zoë Keating, who was present in atoms at the 2018 show when “Singularity” premiered and who also composed the score for “Antidotes to Fear of Death” — the headlining miracle of a poem for the 2020 show.