China releases 10 Indian soldiers after intense negotiations

The release of the 10 soldiers figured in three rounds of talks between Indian and Chinese delegations, led by major generals, near Patrol Point 14 in Galway Valley between Tuesday and Thursday. Maj Gen Abhijit Bapat, commander of Karu-based headquarters 3 Infantry Division, and his Chinese counterpart, met for the third time on Thursday.Intense negotiations through diplomatic and military channels, including three rounds of talks between senior military officers, led to the release of 10 Indian soldiers detained by the Chinese side during the violent brawl of June 15 in Galwan Valley, people familiar with developments said.The people, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 10 soldiers, including at least two officers, were returned to the Indian side on Thursday evening, three days after the violent face-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that left 20 soldiers, including a colonel, dead.

These negotiations were kept tightly under wraps due to concerns for the safety of the soldiers amid the heightened tensions between the two sides, the people said.

Russia assures support to India amid violent face-off with China at Galwan Valley

India and Russia enjoy close ties and have frequently engaged at the highest level, both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have spoken to each other several times this year including on COVID crisis.Later next week, the \foreign ministers of the three countries are scheduled for the RIC (Russia, India, China) meet. The Russian envoy called the existence of the grouping an “undisputable reality” which is “firmly fixed on the world map”. 

Commenting on the current stage of the trilateral cooperation amid the border skirmish, he said, “There are no indications that it might be frozen”Also, Russia is set to host SCO and BRICS summits later this year. 

Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister SM Qureshi also spoke to his Russian counterpart and the Russian foreign ministry readout of the talks reveals that Russia does not support Pakistab’s priorities as had been claimed by Islamabad.

Awakening

EYE TO THE WORLD- AWAKENING

Awakening is the phase that comes from the three words when they come together. Awakening is the way in which we change our vision towards our own life.
The three words are death, hope and moments

Death:-
when we die, it is not the things we did that we regret the most, it is the things we did not do. That’s what, what every book, story motivational speaker says live your life to the fullest because you never know when your time to leave this universe might come and you’ll regret things.If you are 15, 18, 22, 25 remember a time when you used to think how old are you today seem so far away?you don’t have any more time to waste. No one remembers the night they got plenty of sleep. On the day you got to eat cheesecake. Go out and do something fun. Tonight!the perfect moment will never come. You just continue to get older and look back wishing you had  participated in more things in school, wishing you had talked to that cute guy or girl, wishing you had told your parents that you love them more. At the end of the day, it’s not about which school you went to, which car you drive, how many followers you had, or how many bedrooms does your apartment have or any of that. It is about the memories you made in the love you had with the people you made them with. This isn’t Just another motivational post this is a chance for you right now to make a true lasting impact in your life. To live a better life. To go out and have fun, chase your dreams, make memories, most importantly spend time with your loved ones,because death might take you and me but we will leave the ones we love behind and they will be the people who are gonna cry their eyes out and whimpering all over.

Hope:-
Hope feels like such a silly little 4 letter word and yet it is still in our everyday language. People tell us to hope all the damn time and I find it rather repetitive, but a necessary task. We set alarms every night In the hope we wake up the next morning. We all say “umeed par duniya kayam hai”.without hope there wouldn’t be anything we know in this world. This world has lost its meaning because people throw it around and kick it in the dirt, but I still hope.I hope one day I’m waking up next to you with those sleepy and barely opened eyes and  arms wide open that you pull me closer for those last few cuddles before we have to go on with our mundane missions for the day.I hope I can kiss you wherever we are, if it be in public and private, and I pull away and you draw me and for one more.I hope that someday I wake up in a beautiful bed in Paris and make breakfast for my entire shooting crew. I hope one day you see the man that I see and feel confident because you are truly remarkable.I just hope that one day the simple things don’t get a full stop I hope to yours one day and that you will be mine. But who gives a damn about hope anymore.

Moments:-
I was laughing with my friends once. When I realize something. Life is nothing but moments the fight you had with your best friend is just a moment. The championship you lost is just a moment. The road trip you spent with your friends singing to throwbacks is just a moment. Every up and down every down and everything in between is just a moment that passes with time. You will remember these moments and you may not but what you will remember is the people you spend them with and the way you felt. The way she made you laugh and the way he made you cry, and the way they made you feel like you’re on the top of the world when you were nowhere but with your best friends. The way you to walked the long the Marine drive and Sat and talked for hours. All of those moments and feelings and people combine to make a big moment that we call life. In all of eternity, our life is just a moment. Appreciate the moment you’ve been given to spend it with,because no matter how beautiful or tragic a moment it is , it is a moment, it always ends. So hold on a little tighter smile a little bigger kiss a little harder laugh a little louder try a little harder forgive a little quicker and lover whole lot deeper because they are the moments you will remember when you are old and wishing you could rewind time. Not a thing lasts forever,mind you love does, my love would last I hope, so you better damn well enjoy before it is all gone.
ciao for now.

Being busy

What a basic necessity to every relationship and to every other person it is time.
You know what is very appealing, very convincing, very sexy, it is humility. Being busy, being on the cloud and not having any sort of humility this is not how relationships work.
Now I know many people who organise slam me with comments like if we have work, we gotta work. now I’ll tell you this article is not for people who are being productively busy but this is for people who are being ignorant to the people around them into the relationships they are handling around them.
This article is also for those people who think that the people around them have gotten really ignorant and they think that they got no one to talk to.
Being busy and being ignorant is different just so you know. Being busy is working on making yourself better, being productive, working for your jobs, working for the betterment of your career, working on the betterment of your soul is being the productive busy, and being productive busy like this means extremely good, people who are indulging themselves into activities to make their career and life work should be supported no matter what.
The people who are ignorant and the people who are productively busy have a difference in them the people who are ignorant won’t be texting you for the entire day won’t be calling you instead will be indulging themselves into things like YouTube or Instagram or pubg or call of duty maybe or some other gaming channels on more entertainment sources instead of just working on the relationships.
The people who are ignorant and the ones who are productively busy have a difference in them the people who are productively busy will efficiently try and make efforts to maintain the relationships with everyone. The people who are ignorant will make absolutely no efforts to put into the relationship.
This blog contains this overview because I’m having my fair share of people who are ignorant and also those who are productively busy. Now as this overview is done I am going to tell you what to do to cope up with people like this.
we all know that being alone and being lonely so much different. Being alone is a choice sometimes being lonely is a situation you get stuck in. being lonely is like being in an extremely crowded room you are screaming on the top of a voice but nobody can hear you. being alone is like you are sitting in the quietest peaceful and beautiful hotel room reading a book with a cup of coffee or Coco and you can walk out any time and encounter in an adventure. Loneliness is not that, loneliness is something that keeps you entrapped it does not give you a choice.
that’s what you encounter when you have ignorant people in your life you do not get alone you get lonely. But it differs with the people if the person is productively busy all you have to do is understand, stay back and support.
But if the person is ignorant and you are getting lonely and you are just going up with the person my dear friend it is a Red flag.
when you have a person in your life who is extremely ignorant who pays no heeds and leaves you one question your mind gets questioned and you are jumbled up.
I’ll tell you when I do get lonely what is my solution. It is truly said tit for tat, I am not advising you to get ignorant instead get busy within building yourself. Paint portraits and landscapes, take up the hundred novel challenge, 30-day article challenge, cook the favorite meal challenge. Trust me when I tell you this cooking is therapeutic. Pick up the 30 ROM com movie challenge on Netflix. And of course, there are many more things you can encounter which will always keep you off your negative thoughts and definitely build up your own character and your own soul and you will have things to do with yourself which will form the base of your career.
Do not let others being ignorant to you affect your workspace. If the person is being ignorant it is the person who is Losing the relationship and trust me you are not at fault. Be proud of who you are and not ashamed of how someone else treats you. Owning your own story and loving yourself through the process is the bravest thing that you will never do. After all, you have to love yourself first you love someone else because you cannot pour from an empty cup.
Ciao.
 

“Deserts-A solution for Rising Global Environment Crises”?

Global warming, climate change, melting of ice, earth temperature increasing and many more are some common natural phenomena happening these days with a sure shot affect on our future life. Even today, we acknowledge many examples of these phenomena as well as well researched papers which surely don’t deny the fact that these are surely happening. Countries across the world have been discussing this serious issue of climate change and global warming and have been coming up with brilliant ideas and policies to fight back. These technologies and various steps include a shift from Non sustainable resources to more Sustainable ones so as to reduce carbon emission and from them and getting a better and pure form of energy in endless quantities. Many nations have shifted to wider use of wind energy and solar energy as a mode of generation of power from them in various day to day activities. Many countries have also come up with a policy of carbon tax, which surely is charged from the companies and industries from which the emissions of carbon content is more. Also if any country buys fuel from the other country, carbon tax is included in it, which surely motivates people to cut down usage of these resources and also slow down their extra money cost in the form of fines. 

So we all know that it’s really an important issue and need to work on till it becomes too late. But we do lack some of the technologies which could have a stronger impact on these or the resources which are available like sustainable one, it proves somewhat expensive to most of the countries with low economy so what’s the solution,”Is there any way we could undo and alter these activities and thus make our environment cleaner”. There are various researches and thoughts on these activities which can be done and varius good engineering methods have come into existence to fight these. One of those and widely accepted one is “Afforestation”. The term is self explanatory which means to increase the growth of plants and trees around the world and thus increase their quantity and improve quality of air as these would absorb more of the carbon-dioxide present in air. It’s a well known phenomenon and a lot many countries have been into it for quite a few years. But the main issue with this is, that we humans so lack the availability of land for the same. For trees to be grown, we need the required environment and the important is the space and fresh water resources. But we do lack it’s availability , also for the reason that we require much of our land for building hotels and other commercial activities in response to the growing population. But there are various regions which have large amounts of space and area, and are not used by humans and are widely available. These are the toughest terrain and known as deserts. These deserts have large space and thus can be used to plant trees without much human getting affected. The main issue is how can we irrigate, as we know they are desert because they lack water, then how is it possible. And if it is possible, will it not become desert again?

It’s possible as per many people doing research on this as they believe by the growing technology of desalination of water, we could utilize the water for irrigation. The benefits of utilizing these spaces are that these have lesser people living in it . So selecting the trees which are friendly to these climatic conditions would be the better option. Which could grow easily and used for commercial activities also. The benefit of growing more trees in these areas would be the amount of carbon content absorption would increase. Also we could cut down some of the trees as for the new ones to grow since it wouldn’t affect much this cycle since this would be practising around the world. We would use them for construction activities, for feeding animals and also liquifying most of them to biomass fuel, thus a pure and much better source of power for our other activities also, reducing the carbon content, and increasing economies. Also we know that most of these deserts acquire large amounts of ground water hidden under them, for example- Sahara. Which could initially be used for irrigation initially. Also the power required for the technology for the same could easily be generated from the solar energy trapped in there solar panel 

So it seems according to research being done by various scientists and weather experts. But there are some other problems which could be faced in doing these projects. The water required would be clean, and thus desalination must be done carefully. But it’s output of concentrated salts dissolved in water in oceans could be harmful for the aqua life. Still this is just a thought which might affect the resulting increase in carbon content to reduce down. But still it seems difficult to make these ideas go on since they do require a large sum of money and also success of these are sureshot not acknowledged, since it’s still a question that wouldn’t these lands again transform into deserts again and lead us to big economic loss around the world. 

“Various steps and policies are into actions with faster growing technologies so as to reduce the carbon content from them and shifting towards  pure form of energy which is much cleaner, much cost effective and much safer for our planet”. 

Deliberate Practice:What It Is and How to Use It

What is Deliberate Practice?
Let’s define deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.

Can You Achieve Anything With Enough Practice?
Deliberate practice does not mean that you can fashion yourself into anything with enough work and effort, though. While human beings do possess a remarkable ability to develop their skills, there are limits to how far any individual can go. Your genes set a boundary around what is possible.

However, while genetics influence performance, they do not determine performance. Do not confuse destiny with opportunity. Genes provide opportunity. They do not determine our destiny. It’s similar to a game of cards. You have a better opportunity if you are dealt a better hand, but you also need to play the hand well to win.

Regardless of where we choose to apply ourselves, deliberate practice can help us maximize our potential—no matter what cards we were dealt. It turns potential into reality.

Examples of Deliberate Practice
Joe DiMaggio was one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. I recently heard a little-known story about how DiMaggio developed his exceptional ability. Read more…
In some circles, golfer Ben Hogan is credited with “inventing practice.” Hogan methodically broke the game of golf down into chunks and figured out how he could master each section. Today, experts have a new term for his rigorous style of improvement.

In some circles, Ben Hogan is credited with “inventing practice.”

Hogan was one of the greatest golfers of the 20th century, an accomplishment he achieved through tireless repetition. He simply loved to practice. Hogan said, “I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning so I could hit balls. I’d be at the practice tee at the crack of dawn, hit balls for a few hours, then take a break and get right back to it.”

For Hogan, every practice session had a purpose. He reportedly spent years breaking down each phase of the golf swing and testing new methods for each segment. The result was near perfection. He developed one of the most finely-tuned golf swings in the history of the game.

His precision made him more like a surgeon than a golfer. During the 1953 Masters, for example, Hogan hit the flagstick on back-to-back holes. A few days later, he broke the tournament scoring record

Hogan methodically broke the game of golf down into chunks and figured out how he could master each section. For example, he was one of the first golfers to assign specific yardages to each golf club. Then, he studied each course carefully and used trees and sand bunkers as reference points to inform him about the distance of each shot.

Hogan finished his career with nine major championships—ranking fourth all-time. During his prime, other golfers simply attributed his remarkable success to “Hogan’s secret.” Today, experts have a new term for his rigorous style of improvement: deliberate practice.

While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.

The greatest challenge of deliberate practice is to remain focused. In the beginning, showing up and putting in your reps is the most important thing. But after a while we begin to carelessly overlook small errors and miss daily opportunities for improvement.

This is because the natural tendency of the human brain is to transform repeated behaviors into automatic habits. For example, when you first learned to tie your shoes you had to think carefully about each step of the process. Today, after many repetitions, your brain can perform this sequence automatically. The more we repeat a task the more mindless it becomes.

Mindless activity is the enemy of deliberate practice. The danger of practicing the same thing again and again is that progress becomes assumed. Too often, we assume we are getting better simply because we are gaining experience. In reality, we are merely reinforcing our current habits—not improving them.

Claiming that improvement requires attention and effort sounds logical enough. But what does deliberate practice actually look like in the real world? Let’s talk about that now.

Examples of Deliberate Practice
One of my favorite examples of deliberate practice is discussed in Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. In the book, Colvin describes how Benjamin Franklin used deliberate practice to improve his writing skills.

When he was a teenager, Benjamin Franklin was criticized by his father for his poor writing abilities. Unlike most teenagers, young Ben took his father’s advice seriously and vowed to improve his writing skills.

He began by finding a publication written by some of the best authors of his day. Then, Franklin went through each article line by line and wrote down the meaning of every sentence. Next, he rewrote each article in his own words and then compared his version to the original. Each time, “I discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.” Eventually, Franklin realized his vocabulary held him back from better writing, and so he focused intensely on that area.

Deliberate practice always follows the same pattern: break the overall process down into parts, identify your weaknesses, test new strategies for each section, and then integrate your learning into the overall process.

Here are some more examples.

Cooking: Jiro Ono, the subject of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, is a chef and owner of an award-winning sushi restaurant in Tokyo. Jiro has dedicated his life to perfecting the art of making sushi and he expects the same of his apprentices. Each apprentice must master one tiny part of the sushi-making process at a time—how to wring a towel, how to use a knife, how to cut the fish, and so on. One apprentice trained under Jiro for ten years before being allowed to cook the eggs. Each step of the process is taught with the utmost care.

Martial arts: Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning, is a martial artist who holds several US national medals and a 2004 world championship. In the finals of one competition, he noticed a weakness: When an opponent illegally head-butted him in the nose, Waitzkin flew into a rage. His emotion caused him to lose control and forget his strategy. Afterward, he specifically sought out training partners who would fight dirty so he could practice remaining calm and principled in the face of chaos. “They were giving me a valuable opportunity to expand my threshold for turbulence,” Waitzkin wrote. “Dirty players were my best teachers.”

Chess: Magnus Carlsen is a chess grandmaster and one of the highest-rated players in history. One distinguishing feature of great chess players is their ability to recognize “chunks,” which are specific arrangements of pieces on the board. Some experts estimate that grandmasters can identify around 300,000 different chunks. Interestingly, Carlsen learned the game by playing computer chess, which allowed him to play multiple games at once. Not only did this strategy allow him to learn chunks much faster than someone playing in-person games, but also gave him a chance to make more mistakes and correct his weaknesses at an accelerated pace.

Music: Many great musicians recommend repeating the most challenging sections of a song until you master them. Virtuoso violinist Nathan Milstein says, “Practice as much as you feel you can accomplish with concentration. Once when I became concerned because others around me practiced all day long, I asked [my professor] how many hours I should practice, and he said, ‘It really doesn’t matter how long. If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.’

Basketball: Consider the following example from Aubrey Daniels, “Player A shoots 200 practice shots, Player B shoots 50. The Player B retrieves his own shots, dribbles leisurely and takes several breaks to talk to friends. Player A has a colleague who retrieves the ball after each attempt. The colleague keeps a record of shots made. If the shot is missed the colleague records whether the miss was short, long, left or right and the shooter reviews the results after every 10 minutes of practice. To characterize their hour of practice as equal would hardly be accurate. Assuming this is typical of their practice routine and they are equally skilled at the start, which would you predict would be the better shooter after only 100 hours of practice?”Basketball: Consider the following example from Aubrey Daniels, “Player A shoots 200 practice shots, Player B shoots 50. The Player B retrieves his own shots, dribbles leisurely and takes several breaks to talk to friends. Player A has a colleague who retrieves the ball after each attempt. The colleague keeps a record of shots made. If the shot is missed the colleague records whether the miss was short, long, left or right and the shooter reviews the results after every 10 minutes of practice. To characterize their hour of practice as equal would hardly be accurate. Assuming this is typical of their practice routine and they are equally skilled at the start, which would you predict would be the better shooter after only 100 hours of practice?”

The Unsung Hero of Deliberate Practice
Perhaps the greatest difference between deliberate practice and simple repetition is this: feedback. Anyone who has mastered the art of deliberate practice—whether they are an athlete like Ben Hogan or a writer like Ben Franklin—has developed methods for receiving continual feedback on their performance.

There are many ways to receive feedback. Let’s discuss two.

The first effective feedback system is measurement. The things we measure are the things we improve. This holds true for the number of pages we read, the number of pushups we do, the number of sales calls we make, and any other task that is important to us. It is only through measurement that we have any proof of whether we are getting better or worse.

The second effective feedback system is coaching. One consistent finding across disciplines is that coaches are often essential for sustaining deliberate practice. In many cases, it is nearly impossible to both perform a task and measure your progress at the same time. Good coaches can track your progress, find small ways to improve, and hold you accountable to delivering your best effort each day.

The Promise of Deliberate Practice
Humans have a remarkable capacity to improve their performance in nearly any area of life if they train in the correct way. This is easier said than done.

Deliberate practice is not a comfortable activity. It requires sustained effort and concentration. The people who master the art of deliberate practice are committed to being lifelong learners—always exploring and experimenting and refining.

Deliberate practice is not a magic pill, but if you can manage to maintain your focus and commitment, then the promise of deliberate practice is quite alluring: to get the most out of what you’ve got.

Scientists decode how the brain senses smell

Scientists have further decoded how mammalian brains perceive odors and distinguish one smell from thousands of others.

In experiments in mice, NYU Grossman School of Medicine researchers have for the first time created an electrical signature that is perceived as an odor in the brain’s smell-processing center, the olfactory bulb, even though the odor does not exist.

Because the odor-simulating signal was manmade, researchers could manipulate the timing and order of related nerve signaling and identify which changes were most important to the ability of mice to accurately identify the “synthetic smell.”

“Decoding how the brain tells apart odors is complicated, in part, because unlike with other senses such as vision, we do not yet know the most important aspects of individual smells,” says study lead investigator Edmund Chong, MS, a doctoral student at NYU Langone Health. “In facial recognition, for example, the brain can recognize people based on visual cues, such as the eyes, even without seeing someone’s nose and ears,” says Chong. “But these distinguishing features, as recorded by the brain, have yet to be found for each smell.”

The current study results, published online in the journal Science on June 18, center on the olfactory bulb, which is behind the nose in animals and humans. Past studies have shown that airborne molecules linked to scents trigger receptor cells lining the nose to send electric signals to nerve-ending bundles in the bulb called glomeruli, and then to brain cells (neurons).

The timing and order of glomeruli activation is known to be unique to each smell, researchers say, with signals then transmitted to the brain’s cortex, which controls how an animal perceives, reacts to, and remembers a smell. But because scents can vary over time and mingle with others, scientists have until now struggled to precisely track a single smell signature across several types of neurons.

For the new study, the researchers designed experiments based on the availability of mice genetically engineered by another lab so that their brain cells could be activated by shining light on them—a technique called optogenetics. Next they trained the mice to recognize a signal generated by light activation of six glomeruli—known to resemble a pattern evoked by an odor—by giving them a water reward only when they perceived the correct “odor” and pushed a lever.

If mice pushed the lever after activation of a different set of glomeruli (simulation of a different odor), they received no water. Using this model, the researchers changed the timing and mix of activated glomeruli, noting how each change impacted a mouse’s perception as reflected in a behavior: the accuracy with which it acted on the synthetic odor signal to get the reward.

Specifically, researchers found that changing which of the glomeruli within each odor-defining set were activated first led to as much as a 30 percent drop in the ability of a mouse to correctly sense an odor signal and obtain water. Changes in the last glomeruli in each set came with as little as a 5 percent decrease in accurate odor sensing.

The timing of the glomeruli activations worked together “like the notes in a melody,” say the researchers, with delays or interruptions in the early “notes” degrading accuracy. Tight control in their model over when, how many, and which receptors and glomeruli were activated in the mice, enabled the team to sift through many variables and identify which odor features stood out.

“Now that we have a model for breaking down the timing and order of glomeruli activation, we can examine the minimum number and kind of receptors needed by the olfactory bulb to identify a particular smell,” says study senior investigator and neurobiologist Dmitry Rinberg, Ph.D.

Rinberg, an associate professor at NYU Langone and its Neuroscience Institute, says the human nose is known to have some 350 different kinds of odor receptors, while mice, whose sense of smell is far more specialized, have more than 1,200.

“Our results identify for the first time a code for how the brain converts sensory information into perception of something, in this case an odor,” adds Rinberg. “This puts us closer to answering the longstanding question in our field of how the brain extracts sensory information to evoke behavior.”

New research untangles the complex code the brain uses to distinguish between a vast array of smells, offering a scientific explanation for how it separates baby powder from bleach, lemon from orange, or freshly cut grass from freshly brewed coffee.

A single scent can trigger a complex chain of events in what’s known as the olfactory bulb, the brain’s control center for smell. To unravel the intricacies of that process, researchers in the U.S. and Italy turned to a technique known as optogenetics, which uses light to control neurons in the brain. In research on mice, they used light to trick the brain into thinking it smelled a particular scent, then studied brain activity to understand the role different neurons play in a mouse’s ability to recognize that scent. Their findings were published Thursday in Science.

When we encounter a certain smell, it stimulates a specific pattern of activity among tiny spheres known as glomeruli, which are found in the olfactory bulb. The odor plays across these glomeruli like a melody across piano keys: Just as a tune is made distinct by which keys are pressed and at what point in the melody, a scent is made distinct by which glomeruli are activated and in what order.

A tune remains identifiable even with some tweaks: We can still place a melody marred by a wrong note or a mistimed beat. Likewise, we can still recognize a scent altered by some change in its characteristic activity pattern. The researchers wanted to understand how the specific combination of neurons that respond to a scent — including where they’re located, and when they’re activated — might affect whether the brain registers a smell as recognizable.

To do so, the researchers harnessed optogenetics to activate genetically engineered, light-sensitive neurons. The scientists used light to stimulate a specific pattern across glomeruli in mouse brains, which gave the mice the experience of smelling a particular scent — even though that scent that did not actually exist outside of their own heads.

You can do this experiment with the music. I’ll play different music and see which notes are more important, less important,” said Dmitry “Dima” Rinberg, a neuroscientist at NYU Langone Health and a senior author of the study. “We asked not on the level of the external stimulus, but at the level of stimulating neurons.”

The scientists trained the mice to respond in a particular way to this “synthetic smell.” Then, they introduced different tweaks to that pattern — like wrong notes in the melody — and watched to see which of those changes affected whether a mouse could still “smell” the scent.

Justus Verhagen, Yale researcher who studies taste and smell and was not involved in the research, said that the new paper builds on past research into the locations of olfactory neurons and the timing of their activation by bringing the two factors together into a single, comprehensive model.

The difference in the perception seems to follow fairly linearly with the magnitude of the change in either space or time of the stimulation of the olfactory system,” he said. “That linearity is kind of surprising because, in neuroscience, we’re very used to a lot of nonlinear effects.”

The study also cemented the findings of previous research, which has shown that receptors activated earlier are more essential to scent recognition than those activated later on.

“If I messed up with the first note, you have a much higher chance to misinterpret the melody than if I messed up with the 25th note,” Rinberg explained. That makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, he added — animals out in the wild need to make instantaneous assessments of danger. It’s what’s known as the primacy effect. Rinberg added that the effect carries over even to lower-stakes settings like smelling wine, where the specific notes that might suggest where the grapes were harvested only follow after we get past the immediately overwhelming impression of alcohol.

There are no immediate therapeutic applications of the research, Rinberg said. But a better understanding of how the brain perceives scent could one day shed more light on other scientific questions that also involve smell, such as why people sometimes temporarily lose their sense of smell when sick, which has been observed in some patients with Covid-19. Verhagen said research on the logic of the olfactory system could also be of use in developing new technologies.

“In terms of medicine, there is increased interest in brain-machine interfaces. And so it is very important to understand how the brain encodes stimuli,” he said. “If we understand that coding logic, we can use that to help people who have deficits.”

How artificial intelligence is transforming the future of digital marketing

From smart search options and personalized messaging to being used in campaigns and marketing, AI and machine learning are increasingly being used in digital marketing.

Digital marketing relies on leveraging insights from the copious amounts of data that gets created every time a customer interacts with a digital asset. Algorithms optimize various factors and data points that influence digital marketing success.
In 2020, we anticipate a significant uptick in the mainstreaming of AI and machine learning use cases in digital marketing across several areas. 

Search will get very smart

In the past year, online search has had several AI and machine learning developments. Google is leading the pack with exciting applications in information retrieval. For example, Google’s BERT technology can process a word in the context of all the other terms in a sentence, rather than one-by-one in order. BERT also enables anyone to train their own state-of-the-art question answering system.  

Customization of search results and the results page based on learning from past interactions and preferences of a user is another application of machine learning used in search.

AI-driven personalization of messaging 

Several attach companies have been focusing on using AI and machine learning to find the right audience to write better ads than humans, and to increase conversion rates and engagement with the target audience. There are also several AI-led developments in the area of creating dynamic ads and landing pages to personalize marketing messages on the fly. 

AI has an application in content creation in terms of determining the logic of personalization as also crating content specific to an individual, using techniques such as natural language generation (NLG).

Use of machine learning in campaign operations 

Platforms such as Google and Face book have been at the forefront of AI/ML applications in marketing. Starting from smart bidding and smart campaigns to auto-generated ads, Google is making it easy for advertisers.

Smart bidding options such as TROAS, TCPA, and others use advanced machine learning algorithms to train on data at a vast scale to make accurate predictions about how different bid amounts might impact conversion or conversion value and assist advertisers in optimizing without getting into too many details. 

Google factors in a wide range of contextual signals (through search data) to predict user behavior and to influence auction time bidding as per the goal set by advertisers. Facebook has also incorporated machine learning across campaign planning and execution, as also in ad placements and ad delivery.

Similarly, on the organic search side, machine learning-based product ALPS reverse engineers Google’s ranking algorithm, and is able to accurately quantify ranking drivers, provide precise recommendations for changes, and predicts the impact of SEO actions before they are implemented.

Similar technology to drive improved ad copy testing in digital marketing exists. These help in evaluating ad copies and landing pages on various parameters like relevancy, use of action promoters/inhibitors, urgency inducers, page layout, load times, etc., to gauge the impact on ad relevance, expected CTR, and landing page experience. 

Future trends 

AI will also have additional application in digital marketing with the uptick in the adoption of technologies such as VR and AR, as commercial use cases of these technologies find wider adoption in retail and other sectors.

Many retailers are also testing AI and VR/AR technologies together to make the user experience personalized to an individual.

Other areas of impact include voice search. We will increasingly see ads about things which we just said or talked about, but haven’t searched for yet. Similarly, image search is also being used by many brands for their consumers to match patterns and identify products using image search. 

The coming years will continue to unfold newer potential uses of AI in digital marketing.

Ethnic Killings/ Honour Killings: Right or Wrong???

‘Honour Killings’ are extreme acts of domestic violence culminating in the murder of a woman by her family or community. However only in relation to religious and ethnic communities is the concept of ‘honour’ invoked as motivation for domestic violence. Women who are victims of honour killings are invisible within the cultural relativism of the British multicultural discourse and the private/public divide which characterises the domestic violence discourse.

We are listening these issues of honour killings from much earlier times. These issues also came up at the time of partition. Both women of Hindu and Muslim religion were abducted, raped and looted by males of opposite communities in which the girls were either murdered by their own families in the name of honour or they had to got married by the men who raped them. That was the time of most honour killing issues.

Honour Killings has been defined as ” The killing of women for suspected deviation from sexual norms imposed by the society”. These are extreme acts of violence perpetrated upon a women when an honour code is believed to have been broken and perceived shame is brought upon the family. What marks so called ‘honour killings’ is that it is not just the husband or partner that may carry out the act, but also the community and other family members such as mothers, brothers, uncles, or cousins.

However in the UK honour killings as a specifc phenomena is perceived by the media and government agencies as a crime that is practiced only among certain minority ethnic groups. Thus honour killings as domestic violence has become ‘ethnicised’ within the British multicultural context. While we recognise that ethnic groups and communities do have specific religious and cultural traditions which they may themselves label as honour based, why, in the context of ethnicity, is domestic violence treated as a culturally specific
honour crime by our wider organisations and institutions?

Focusing on culturally specific forms of domestic violence is often seen as very controversial ground. However culture has been used in some UK cases of honour killings where the defendant has tried to push for a more lenient sentence by pleading a
cultural defence. It is generally disputed that culture can explain how and why particular practices happen. In vulnerable and racialised communities there are tensions between protecting men from the racism of state agencies and negative media representation on the one hand, and the need to raise the issue of gendered violence and protect women’s rights in these communities on the other.

However, liberal multiculturalism in its many and shifting manifestations has consistently functioned to privilege ‘race’ and ethnicity over gender. Multiculturalism deals with problems between communities, but not problems within communities as it fails to recognise the gendered power divisions within ethnic groups.Gender differences within the multicultural discourse now and in the past have yet to be recognised.The Government’s
Community Cohesion reports fail to look at the specificity of gendered social action.

With the appropriate enforcement of the Human Rights Act (2000) in the UK, it is possible to move away from the ‘gender trap’ of cultural relativism inherent within liberal democratic discourse on multiculturalism, where gender is rendered at best marginal, or at worst invisible. In the absence of global social and political reform of violent patriarchal cultures where masculinity and honour is linked to female control, we can use human rights law- based challenges to develop a more equitable and culturally neutral perspective where women’s rights are ensured and privileged over patriarchal cultural practices. By adopting a realist human rights approach which is predicated upon challenging the gender-biased corporate identity of the British multicultural State, black and Asian feminist activists who are in the process of redefining the ‘we‘, not only in their own communities but in the multicultural nation, have already begun to challenge the injustice of culturally endorsed domestic violence at its heart.

Refrences:- Gender, violence and multiculturalism by Heidi Safia Mirza

Hollywood Movies You Might Be Missing Out On

Entertainment has always been a huge part of our lives. From kids to a person of any age, everyone enjoys entertainment. Entertainment can come in various forms, be it music, talking to someone,playing a game, going out and finally one of the most important, Movies. Movies are considered the best source of entertainment in the entire world as it seems to be the most relaxing as all you need to do is start a movie either on your device at home or sit in the theatre and watch the time fly by. Two to three hours feel like minutes when you are watching the right movie. So to help you relax and forget about all the problems  going on in the world right now, Here are some worldwide blockbusters you don’t wanna miss out on. Grab a drink, grab some popcorn, sit your family down and experience some of the best movies out there.

  1. Shawshank redemption- This movie was released in 1994 and is still the highest rated movie by imdb all over the world. This movie is rated at 9.2 and holds the number one spot for a reason. This movie is about a great prison escape of a guy named Andy Duferene who took 20 years to escape from the Shawshank prison by only using a small rock hammer. Shawshank prison was one of the most secure prisons of his time. Andy was the only prisoner to ever escape the prison. He was also actually innocent and didn’t deserve to be locked up. This movie is based on a true story and is a must watch.
  2. Fight club- flight club was released in 1999 and holds the 8th spot on the top rated leaderboard on imdb. It is rated at 8.8 and is a seriously intense movie. It is about an insomniac job worker who starts an underground fight club with a soapmaker which slowey transforms into a lot more. The dynamic between the two characters and the plot twist that happen throughout the movie are insane. A couple blinks and you might miss out on a huge detail.This movie is full of suspense and will have u falling out of your chair by the end of it.
  3. Inception – Inception was released in 2010 and this year marks a decade since its release. This blockbuster movie holds the 13th spot on the top rated movies on imdb. It is rated at 8.7 and it stars the one and only Leonardo dicaprio. This movie is based on a very interesting topic called lucid dreaming and is of the fiction genre. This movie has received various awards for its amazing plot, exceptional acting and its remarkable concept. It is really one of a kind and is one of the most watched movies all over the world.

All of these movies have been dominating the leaderboards massively for many many years now and still continue to be very popular. All of these movies are worth the time and will leave you thinking about them for a while after it ends

The Up and Coming Korean Brands

Happiness for a parent is when he is recognized by his child’s name. Just so, when a small country, in terms of size and resources, gains something big, a name in the whole world only because of the various companies it is home to, nothing could measure up to that.

For a long time, Korea was just a country with a population of 76 million, located in Asia, known for its cultural heritage and cuisine. However, in recent times the Korean Products and brands have become very popular in all corners of the globe. Invading our homes are LG, Samsung, Hyundai, 87mm to name a few. Being a gadget freak, I have my home filled with gadgets ranging from a Samsung Galaxy Tab, an LG microwave and washing machine, and even a Hyundai Grand i10.

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The popularity of these brands is such that even global media such as Time and Fortune feature them too. Not only the well-known brands, but the smaller ones too are also set to make a mark in this giant world, few of them being Lock and Lock, Aurora, Pororo, and Woongjin.

Similar to naming a newborn, branding is the most vital marketing step for an organization, creating its identity, and generating long-term business perspectives. And that, I think, has been achieved by many brands of Korea very beautifully. With the fandom of Samsung merchandise overshadowing the popularity of Apple products, Korea has successfully ventured into the arena of technological advancements. Founded in 1967, the world’s largest maker of memory chips, smartphones, and television Samsung Electronics has a user-friendly interface and one could be easily taught how to operate a Samsung mobile phone.

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Now, these advancements are being highlighted worldwide by hosting events like the Big Bang Alive Tour and the Golden Disk Awards, which receive global press coverage and have helped to build up a positive brand for Korea and its products.

Some of the leading automobile producers, no doubt, are from South Korea. World’s largest shipbuilding company is Hyundai Heavy Industries and the world’s fifth-biggest carmaker, Hyundai Motor Company is the top automaker in South Korea, producing pieces like Grand i10, Santa Fe, Veloster, Universe, and Genesis, with a variety of trims and body styles.

Korea has developed in terms of fashion too. When Wonder Girl’s star Sohee, one of the most fashionable young stars in the country is campaigning for 8seconds, there must be something in that brand. “Spain has Zara, Korea has 8seconds,” said “In Style Korea” fashion editor Sujin Yang. A signature 8seconds will have you looking at a pair of neon tribal print leggings paired with Space Age silver bomber jackets and a retro polka dot blouse. With colorful and creative displays, the stores are some of the most fun places to visit in Korea. Next in line is the Lucky Chouette, the variegated, street-inspired, and accessible line by Kim Jae Hyun.

Korean-fashion

The obvious analogy that one could make is that South Korea is set to one day replace Japan in terms of makers of high-quality brands. This in turn can mean that Samsung is on a trajectory to become Sony and Hyundai will one day have as loyal a following as Honda. Nevertheless, since brands are more global than ever before, it is getting harder to identify a global brand with a single country. That could help ascendant brands as they gain a global presence. As it is newcomers from China and India are already stalking them, fueled by fast-growing middle classes eager to display their newfound wealth through luxury goods and premium brands. With this growth rate, the day is not far when South Korea would be leading the world with all its advancements and technologies, supported by the hard work of its people.

Image Courtesy: GOOGLE

A Story of African Diamonds…

It’s a far cry from the clean, mechanized mines of South Africa, but it’s how much of Africa’s gemstones are mined: men dig by hand in pits, gravel and stream beds, looking for telltale signs of that elusive stone that will make them rich – or at least bring in enough money to sustain them and maybe secure the family’s future. Over one million diggers search for diamonds this way in Africa. They make less than a dollar a day,  while the global diamond trade nets an estimated $80 billion a year. But, economic woes are not the only human toll of the gem industry.

In countries like Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone, diamonds were used by armed militias and rebels to fan civil war and inflict misery on the population. These became known as “blood diamonds.” Global Witness was one of the first non-governmental organizations to focus on the issue. Speaking with VOA in London, Annie Dunnebacke says the group set out to document the tragedy of conflict diamonds. “Sierra Leone is one of the most notorious cases where hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of the conflict that saw the eastern part of the country, where the diamond fields are, controlled by the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group backed by then Liberian president Charles Taylor,” says Dunnebacke. “Horrific destruction and havoc were wreaked, especially upon the civilian population really, because the diamonds represented an economic incentive for the war to continue.”

The horrors of that war shocked the public, especially the scenes of innocent men, women, and children with their limbs cut off by rebels, and youngsters being forced into combat. Efforts to publicize the link between the atrocities, the warlords, and the diamonds paid off.

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The movie Blood Diamonds helped. In it, Leonardo DiCaprio plays an ex-mercenary who sells arms to Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for diamonds. In the end, though, he gives up the business and helps publicize the illicit trade. Global Witness was an advisor on the film, and Annie Dunnebacke says it had an impact. “I think bringing the message is sort of Hollywood terms to a much wider audience than possibly our reports get to, it does have value,” she says.

Eventually, international pressure made the diamond industry sit up and listen. In 2003, the Kimberley Process came into being. It requires member governments to certify that exports and imports are free from blood diamonds. Industry associations said they would comply. Tom Tweedy is a spokesman for DeBeers, the world’s largest producer of. He says the Kimberley Process is a good way forward. “We have a system, and however imperfect it may be, it is probably the only comprehensive system of its type in the world,” says Tweedy.

At the World Diamond Center in Antwerp, Director Philip Claes says that before the Kimberley Process, conflict diamonds accounted for 4 to 15 percent of rough diamonds traded worldwide. “Today, conflict diamonds account for only 0.2 percent of all rough diamonds traded worldwide,” says Claes.The emphasis is on certifying the origin of the diamonds to weed out goods traded illegally. Annie Dunnebacke of Global Witness says it’s a good start but there are loopholes.

“There are huge weaknesses ranging obviously from porous borders in African artisanal producing countries and basic lack of infrastructure, corruption, things like this which are stopping the scheme from being implemented effectively, things that encourage a lot of smuggling, cross-border smuggling,” she says. In Johannesburg, diamond trader Janine Chaveau agrees. “I know quite a few people who are multi-millionaires who have never dealt in legal diamonds,” she says, “it’s always been illegal, blood diamonds.”

Chaveau says she has been offered many undocumented diamonds. She says if they don’t have papers, she doesn’t touch them. But, it’s not just diamonds that are causing trouble. More than 90 percent of the world’s rubies come from Burma, a poor country with a military government that controls the sale of gems. The trade helps maintain the government in power. Human rights activists are working to tighten sanctions against Burmese rubies. But, like with diamonds, the potential profits are large and many are willing to look the other way.

Rights activists are hoping consumers will start to ask more questions of the jewelers to make sure that the gemstone they buy is not sullied by anguish and blood.

Ram Vilas Paswan meets Food Ministers of states, UTs to discuss roll out of One Nation One Ration Card scheme

Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan today held video conference with Food Ministers of States and Union Territories.

The meeting was held to discuss the roll out of One Nation One Ration Card scheme in remaining 14 states and Union Territories. Speaking on the occasion, Mr Paswan said that in the time of Covid-19 pandemic, the scheme proved immensely beneficial for migrant labourers, stranded and needy persons to access their quota of food.

He said by August this year, three more States – Uttarakhand, Nagaland and Manipur will be added to the national cluster. He said, the Department is making all necessary arrangements to include all remaining 14 States under One Nation One Ration Card scheme by end of this year. Mr Paswan said that sufficient food grains are available in buffer stock and assured no one will go hungry in this difficult time. The Minister said that around ten States have written to the ministry to extend the distribution of free food grains under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana for three more months.

Mr Paswan asked the remaining States and UTs to speed up the authentication of biometric and ePoS, so that the beneficiaries can conveniently lift their entitled quota of subsidised food grains from anywhere across the country.

Indian Railways terminate Chinese Contract due to poor performance

Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) has decided to terminate the contract with Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signal and Communication Group limited. In a statement, DFCCIL said, the contract has been terminated due to poor performance of the company.
 
In 2016, the Chinese company had won the contract to install signalling system and telecommunications work in over 400 kilometre of rail lines of kanpur Deendayal Upadhyaya section.
 
DFCCIL said, despite the passage of four years there is only 20 per cent progress in the work. Non availability of their engineer and authorised personnels at site was serious constraint. The physical work also could not progress as they have no tie up with local agencies.

Health Ministry issues advisory for healthcare workers managing COVID, Non-COVID areas in hospitals

Health Ministry has issued an advisory for managing health care workers working in COVID and Non-COVID areas of the hospitals. The Health and Family Welfare Ministry said an Infection Control Officer cum Nodal Officer will be identified by each hospital to address all matters related to Healthcare Associated Infections to prevent and manage the Covid-19 infection among the health care workers.
 
The Nodal Officer will ensure that healthcare workers shall use Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) as per their risk profile while on duty.
   
In the advisory, it is said, all healthcare workers managing COVID-19 cases are being provided with chemo-prophylaxis under medical supervision.
 
Healthcare workers have been asked to use appropriate PPE during their duties and any breach in PPE and exposure should immediately bring into the notice of the Nodal Officer of the Department.
 
It is recommended that pregnant, lactating mothers and immuno-compromised healthcare workers shall inform their medical condition to the hospital authorities to get them posted only in non-Covid areas.
 
It is advised that all the health care workers must report every exposure to COVID-19 to the concerned nodal officer of Department immediately.
 
After the information, the Nodal officer will get the exact details of exposure to ascertain whether the exposure constitutes a high risk or low risk exposure.
 
The Nodal Officer will form a sub-committee to assess the level of exposure and the risk and further action will be taken on the basis of guidelines issued by the Health Ministry.