We May Lose Complete Sea Ice By 2035- A Study

Arctic melt ponds. Image retrieved from theconversation.com

Around 1,27,000 years ago, during the last inter-glacial, the high temperature at that time have confounded researchers for years. An international team of researchers authorized by the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre Climate Model was able to juxtapose Arctic sea ice conditions and last inter-glacial with today’s situation. Such discoveries have the capacity to change the current of ongoing research and can be used in better evaluation and prediction in future sea changes. An astounding study about Arctic sea being free of sea ice by 2035 published in a journal, Nature Climate Change, has given researchers a new lead to work on.

Appearance of shallow pools of water on the surface of Arctic sea- ice during every spring and prior summer help in the study of absorption of sunlight by ice and reflection of it into space. As a result of such studies every year, the team is able to culminate the result of such prediction, as there are many melt ponds which can be seen during recent summers created due to an impact of intense sun rays. 

INTERNATIONAL YOUTH DAY

 “A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.” –  Swami Vivekananda

International Youth Day is a United Nations-designated day when youth from different countries participate in events and discussions on socio-economic and socio-political issues. It is celebrated on august 12 every year.

This year the theme was ‘Youth Engagement for Global Action’. It focus on majorly three areas:

  • Engagement at the community level
  • Engagement at the national level (formulation of laws, policies, and their implementation)
  • Engagement at the global level.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year no huge events are planned but the UN has launched a social media campaign, Join #31DaysOfYOUth, to celebrate young people throughout the month of August to help spread the word and strike up a conversation surrounding youth engagement for global action. Many online debates and discussions were done to ensure that needs of the young are met. Several universities, colleges and schools had organised a webinar to spread inter generational understanding, organisation of a youth forum to exchange ideas are too done.

Over the past weeks, maybe months, young people have been taking action and developing many creative ideas to face these challenging times, whether by helping their community, finding innovative learning ways, keeping a positive spirit, taking care of their relatives and loved ones, and much much more.

In this time of pandemic, it is important that governments too should listen to youth alongside other sections of the population in responding to COVID-19 challenges.

A young mind and body is far more productive both economy and politically. If directed towards right path they could do wonders for the country as a whole. This day every year lays emphasis on up liftment of people and contribute in spreading awareness about importance of human resources for development of oneself as well as the country.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.

Is Work From Home next big thing as companies and individuals save resources like time and money?

Being up every morning to head to the workplace, looking for the car keys, hiring an Ola or Uber or racing to catch the subway now seems like a sight. Despite the proposal for a full shutdown owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, everything was shifting nearly overnight. Life was thrown out of balance and the modern standard was social distancing.

Indians and people around the world are also getting used to meeting up with phone calls with friends and families, waiting at grocery stores a few steps away, or just talking with neighbors. For several the greatest shift has been the idea of operating from home. About the country’s whole population is doing it right now. The world has never had a the exercise of magnitude.

Will the work from home stay temporary or here in its current format? Do companies see that as a feasible choice, especially with people arguing that the barriers between work and life are almost gone?

Pros of work from home:

1.Related to Transportation: First and foremost, it will save a lot of time-travel back and forth From work-Particularly in dense urban areas where traffic jams are high. It also saves a great deal of diesel, eases the pressure on public transport and road transport .

2.Savings on office facilities and infrastructure:

Companies require office room, work desk , chair, monitor, lighting, air State, meeting spaces, private car parking space etc. None of that Can be reduced, though can not be done away with completely, if we follow Wherever and whenever WFH can.

3.Can help in women empowerment:

This often restricts their job options. For further acceptances at WFH, They could have larger career options. Women can be involved in the work force Edited. Harassment in offices should be prevented.

Cons of Work From Home (WFH):

1.Loss of social interaction:Ideas pop up through group experiences in other artistic areas. For instance in Fresh suggestions for a tea or coffee break are explored at the seminar. This can not happen Occur in the case of WFH. Work becomes easier when the people surround you. Whenever you’re stuck you can ask your superiors for support. You got Meetings in meeting centers with proposals to present and improvise on. 

2.May affect women negatively:

When women are at the workplace, they can get relief from housekeeping jobs. This is especially of traditional households where harassment of women is recognized as a regular routine. We can never get off house hold job with WFM. Less on others Indian house holding has limited office service facilities.For example, they only have a single laptop- this is used by man head of the house, leaving women with no options. Internet connection is also not universal (not even 50%). In rural areas the situation is even worst.

3.Effects livelihood of small shop keepers:

Each office should have a small coffee shop nearby. As WFH has fresh Normally all of those people are going to be unemployed. Housekeeping, defense, work force of clerks Will be reduced to a minimal. Since they are not professional employees, it is going to be really hard To transferring them to a certain kind of work.

4.Lot of distractions and no leisure from work, change in lifestyle:

Kids are still around to annoy us. For most of us a daily career brings Following procedure. Which organizes our body and mind. On WFH- Habits to sleep and eat can go to a toss.

Can WFH be adopted universally?

Answer is a big no.There are other occupations where you need to be there for successful learning or some other learning on the ground. A laboratory technician, for example, can not guide an engineering student to conduct an online chemistry experiment. Likewise, education isn’t only a place to study academic topics, but instead a position of personality.

Conclusion:

First of all, we will decide what kinds of organisations had 100% WFH, Which partial and kind of employment may there be where WFH is not successful. Then figure out Dispose with such criteria to assess workplace performance when operating From Home and the School.Once we have done that, we can continue by giving 1 day or 2 WFH mandatory days in a week for all workers imaginable. When this fits perfectly, To both workers we will have obligatory working days of 1 or 2 days. Tweet Group workers will provide alternating working days.This will have a win-win situation as employees and employers will save cost and time, will not miss on socialization. To avoid discrimination towards women or any other potentialemployee, employers can offer a laptop to them from the savings they makeon infrastructure cost.

International youth day

Celebrating Hope for the Future

August 12 marks the annual celebration of International Youth Day. It is an international day of awareness, recognizing youth across the globe and empowering the world’s youth to make positive contributions to their communities and nations.

International Youth Day and World Youth Day

International Youth Day is not to be confused with World Youth Day. World Youth Day was founded by Pope John Paul II in 1986 as an invitation for youth to respond to the call to bring the love of Christ to the world. World Youth Day is celebrated each year on Palm Sunday.

International Youth Day is a United Nations supported celebration, while World Youth Day is a celebration founded within the Catholic tradition. Though technically different celebrations, both International Youth Day and World Youth Day recognize the value of young people across the world.

Understanding the World Programme of Action for Youth

The United Nations (UN) celebrated the first ever International Year of Youth in 1985. A decade later, the UN General Assembly adopted the World Programme of Action for Youth (WPAY), a set of policies and guidelines for nations to look to in improving the situation of the world’s youth. However, it was not until 2000 that the world celebrated the first International Youth Day.

The values and celebrations of International Youth Day are heavily influenced by the core principles of the WPAY.

The World Programme of Action for Youth is a strategic framework of policies and guidelines to guide nations in supporting, empowering, and improving the conditions of young people. The focus of the WPAY is to encourage national actions to improve the number of quality opportunities for youth, ultimately encouraging them to be active and effective participants in society.

The program also encourages youth around the world to gather and create awareness about the realities young people face within their own nation.

The Impact Potential of Youth

The world currently holds the largest generation of youth in history. Young people represent hope for the future. However, they are more than just that.

In a message about International Youth Day, Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, writes, “Young people are not only our future—they are our present…They are the most connected, the most outspoken and the most open-minded generation the world has ever seen.”

Today’s youth have potential to shape the world both in the present and in the future.

Sadly, this potential for impact is often inhibited. The tragedy is that many young people around the world battle the suffocating grip of poverty, disease, lack of resources, education, and more. The progress, dreams, and world-changing abilities are restricted for many young people.

Youth and You

The destructive nature of poverty often follows children out of their childhood and into their youth. Many young people around the world lack basic literary, reading, and writing skills. Without opportunities for education or to learn a trade, many teenagers in poverty get involved with gangs, drugs, and other dangerous activities.

We want the lives of youth across the world to tell a different story. We want better stories. And we want you to be a part of it.

Our work in youth development provides young people ages 12 and older with customized training and educational paths according to their unique God-given talents and potential. Our goal is for youth to be prepared, equipped, and able to support themselves while contributing positively to their families and communities. By partnering with us, your donation may support formal education, non-formal education, or income generation training.

Empowerment through education has the ability to bring positive change to the lives of young people and release them from the grip of poverty.

Much preferable source of entertainment – Movies or Webseries

The whole world is fighting with the pandemic called COVID-19. The pandemic has led many noticable changes in the lives of people. Even the working of people has now changed. Almost everything is taking place digitally nowadays. People are using internet to spend their leisure time and the best way they found to this by watching movies and webseries. But the question arises, what people prefer most among them and why?

To answer the question, let us first understand what are movies/webseries. A movie is a visual form of art/motion picture and is shown in movie theatres while a web series is basically a series/show which airs on internet/web for viewership.

The first series distributed via web was Rox with an episode titled “Global Village idiots”. This was released in 1995.

But few years back, the technique got popularity and many people even in India started to watch webseries. Why did this happened? The most basic reason for this was the low price of internet services. Almost everyone had the access to internet from past 2-3 years making webseries easily accessible to the audience and also gave rise to the OTT platforms which is another big reason for its popularity. Because of the tremendous response from the audience given to the web content, a lot of OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, AltBalaji, ErosNow, Zee5 came into existence.

Now let’s talk about the content of movies and webseries. One can’t disagree the fact that the contents of webseries are way much better than that of movies. Lack of quality content and good stories on TV and movies, and growth of social media in recent times provided an opportunity for web content. The variations in the stories of webseries are much more than movies.

Also, the dialogues of webseries are much relatable to the audience as there is no censorship. Many webseries have slangs in their dialogues but that’s what makes it original.

Just having a good content won’t do wonders for a show, even the role assigned to the actors should be done with conviction. Thus giving chance to so many unknown faces, who might not even have got a chance to make a mark in cinemas is what done by webseries. The combination of well settled actors and new faces makes it much better than movies.

Moreover, most web-series prefer to release all their episodes(or atleast a bulk) together which can be watched on a weekend or maybe while traveling at one stretch.

The OTT platforms where these webseries are available are also cheap as compared to movies. Some of them are also free. For example: YouTube, TVF, Airtel Xtreme (free with airtel recharge)

All these things makes the webseries way much better than movies and because of rise of OTT platforms, even movies are also also getting released on these platforms.

How to manage personal loans and financial during these tough times

The world is suffering from two aspects COVID-19 and financial crisis, the COVID-19 impacting communities,  businesses, the current economic situation of the country is  GDP rank is at 5 th (nominal; 2019) 3 rd (PPP;2020)

Family finances during tough times this places a significant burden on family finances, even for parents who have been working.

If money is affecting your family, use these tips to manage your finances during these tough times

Create a budget to add the cash to your family monthly income, then use the value to create a new budget for the family

Invest the money because the best way to grow your money is by learning how to invest

It’s as simple as reading and you can achieve 

Interest from savings

Cash flow from business or real estate

Appreciation of value from a stock portfolio, real estate, or other assets

Thanks to advance technology, you can invest from your home with a small amount, with no fees on accounts, learn the basics, and make good investment decisions

Investing allows you to grow your money over time thanks to the power of returns

You can buy stocks and bonds, at least mutual funds or exchange-traded funds

We can’t control the overall condition of public health during a pandemic but we can control the growth of money to help the medical expenditure 

Strategies for Primark to overcome risk in India :


Primark can follow the following strategies to have successful performance in business in India. Primark should partner and build relationships with with rooted local partners and with people of the country who have a say politically. Primark can also make use of sustainable and community programs and must engage in legitimate lobbying.
Political and legal :
Primark must strive to work with relevant bodies to apply for legal policies. Primark has a negative reputation when it comes to rights of workers and condition of employment. Therefore, primark can improve these areas. Primark must make informed hedging decisions and must look at various strategies into its risk exposure backed by professional treasurers, an efficient back office and good forecasting techniques.
Economical :
Primark must follow a joint venture which includes two or more business entities for mutual economic benefit. As India requiurss it’s foreign investments to be a joint venture it will make it easier for primark to have a stable capital growth. Primark should sought joint ventures to hold majority stake therefore a tighter control. Joint ventures have the advantage of sharing the costs and risks of opening a foreign market and to acquire local knowledge and political influence. The disadvantages include the risk of losing control over technology and the lack of strict control.
Social :
Considering India it is important for any foreign company which plans to start a business in India to change their focus point from forming global strategies to adapt to the local market conditions thereby becoming glocal brands that are characterized by both global and local considerations. This is possible in India if Primark decides to manufacture locally by producing products with Indianised variants of taste, preference etc. It is important to follow “Made In India, Only For India” stating that “Now for most of the successful MNCs operating in India, exclusively for India has become an integral part of their overall product development strategy”. For example, primark must focus on the store and sample products to create a strong first impression and Seasonal promotional campaigns, new lines of collections during festivals etc can be followed. The company should expand in big metropolitan cities in India like Mumbai and Delhi and also improve its supply of chain network locally. This will be quite easy for Primark since it already has its manufacturing units in India. Primark must find ways to build its brand reputation, image and equity even if it is not through advertisements and must strive to match the market share and volume of sales with its local and global competitors.
Technological :
Primark can incorporate it’s innovative, engaging and impactful website and promote it’s primania social networking platform for customers to be technologically engaged with the brand. Primark invests more on their women customers. This is evident in primark’s vast floor space for women’s clothing, dedicated clothing line and window posters. In India according to a report by Neilson Maiden on shoppers behaviour men in India buy more online clothes than women almost up to 70%. Therefore it would be a big boon to primark if they were to open online shopping facilities in India.

Environmental :
Primark Can tackle water scarcity by using methods which make use of sustainable cotton that is produced through various sustainable farming programmes. The company can also recycle and reuse processed water by which they can save a lot of water. By following these strategies Primark Can tackle the water scarcity which is to worsen in India in the coming years.

These are few strategies that Primark can use to overcome risk in India.

Pyramid shaped businesses or MLMs

Multilevel Marketing companies are big business around the world and they have rightfully attracted much criticism for questionable business practices. Many have called them illegal pyramid schemes. These companies continue to operate in most developed countries around the world and rake in billions of dollars in profit in any given year or with the blessing of local trade authorities. So what are these businesses? Let’s part personal opinions and how annoying it is to be roped into. Some of these MLM meetings for the moment and assess the fundamental economics behind these businesses so. Let’s start with what kind of businesses are they? Many businesses have referral programs. It is likely you have seen offers such as refer a friend and enjoy 50% off your next purchase or even refer a friend and receive $50 cash. These kinds of offers are pretty commonplace in general business world because any business person will tell you positive word of mouth is the best marketing one can receive. It is pretty likely that most people don’t have any major issues with this type of market. If you and your friend both enjoy product like pizza from a local pizza shop taking advantage of these referral offers is probably seen as a win win. Multi level marketing companies have in a sense is pretty benign business model and stretched into its absolute limits. Most multi level marketing companies work by getting a referral incentive, mostly in the form of cash to its members, who get other people to purchase product business but then go one step further and your referral incentives for the people that are signed up by the people You signed up and on and on until you get the mother of all referral programs. That is no longer just a marketing exercise, but the fundamentals of the business itself. This kind of referral program when laid out does tend to make a curious shape. OK, so the companies themselves could get away with calling their structure a very very complicated referral scheme. What kind of business is being formed by the individual participants in these kind of companies? The basic idea behind someone joining a multi level marketing company is that they will buy the products of the company at a discounted rate and sell them to friends and family. This in effect simply makes someone at best a Commission only sales person or at worse an individual retailer for a narrow group of products, which is often very different from the kind of opportunities that are presented to applicants upon joining these companies. This direct sales and retailing aspect is just one side of the business though, and the real opportunity is often presented as building your own sales team. Which more directly translates to convincing your friends and family to also sign up to the company and purchase products that they will then hopefully go out and sell. The big floor in all of this, though, is that most people don’t want and don’t have the experience to be salesman and or sales team managers. This is made worse by the fact that even a highly experienced salesman would find it very hard to sell no name products at a very over inflated price to an increasingly small group of friends that don’t seem to be returning their messages for some reason. Beyond this the fundamental structure of the business runs into a very real problem. Most multi level marketing companies will note that if you sign up for friends and they sign up for friends you will very quickly build a strong team so that you won’t have to worry about going out and selling products, door or friend a friend anymore. That all sounds great, but with that model you only have to repeat that cycle 17 times before you run out of people on Earth. Making the foundation of this whole business a little shaky. Now, a common remodel from hundreds of these businesses is that when you go into business there is always risk involved. Successful spokespeople will often point out that these kinds of companies give people the opportunity to go into business for themselves for only a few $100 it costs to sign up and purchase inventory of product as opposed to the 10s of thousands of dollars it can cost to start a regular business up here right now. On paper, this actually sounds pretty reasonable compared to starting your own business. Even the most expensive multi level marketing companies represent a lot smaller investment up front. This all starts to boil hard though when you consider that First off, not everyone really wants to go into business for themselves, and even if they did, it is likely that they don’t want to go into business selling whatever specific product, but they will be forced to sell here essential oils or vitamins or skin care products or anything else. The multi level marketing companies might deal in. The second factor is the likelihood of success. Now most businesses fail. It is a hard truth for the business world, but only about 40% of new businesses  ever end up making any money and this statistic is even worse for people starting a business for the first time. in the world of MLMs, it gets even worse. Fortunately, multi level marketing companies are obligated to release an income disclosure statement every year. This document details the payment of bonuses and how much is paid to what group of people. This breakdown of bonuses is of course different from every company, but the average from the top 10 multi level marketing companies reveals that only about 30% of active members in a multi level marketing company get paid anything at all, of which only that 12% make more than $1000 a year, 2% make more than minimum full-time wage and a few dozen make more than $100,000 in income in a company that could have hundreds of thousands of members. This income is before even factoring in the cost of products that members along we required to buy to maintain their bonus payments, meaning it is likely that these incomes biggest are overly optimistic.

Let’s say we ignore all of that and assume that you will start being most successful multilevel marketing business in the world. The most successful member of any of these companies worldwide is hard to pinpoint, and it does change frequently given the fundamental sales based nature of these businesses. My best estimate. The title belongs to Holly Chen.She is a member of the Amway Corporation, one of the oldest and currently the largest multi level marketing company in the world. From information gathered about her, it notes that she was one of the first members of Amway. When opened up shop in China. Today, China is the single biggest market for multi level marketing companies worldwide and holly chen was in the right place at the right time to ride the wave of this growth in the top of the business that she has today. Her annual income is calculated to be around. $8,000,000 a year, based on the bonus structure of an like this is on top of an additional $12,000,000 that she gets from the style of books and seminars and online courses that she sells. Although this figure is harder to say with certainty, two things become apparent here. First of all, a majority of this income is not actually coming from the business itself, but rather from running seminars on how to do well in the business. And it also has to be noted but $20,000,000 a year is actually not that great. Don’t get me wrong, $20,000,000 a year is a huge amount of money for someone at the top of a market as big as this. It’s a little bit underwhelming. It is estimated that there are around 18 million people involved in multi level marketing companies in the USA alone. Assuming that the top burner was making that $20,000,000 a year ago. It gives us a good idea of the pinnacle of success in these organizations. Now give other thing, United States has a population of 327 million people in 2019. That means that a staggering 5.5% of the population is involved in one of these companies. If we extrapolate this group of 18 million people out and just assumed it was a random sample of people rather than the MLM members, that would mean the single highest income earner from this randomly selected group would in all probability in the top 20 richest people in all of America. Even if we assume we got the lowest estimated from that list, that would mean we’re looking at an individual like Rob Walton with a net worth of 44 billion dollars. That is more. Is that this randomly selected group of 18 million people is likely to have over 30 billionaires in it and 3000 individuals making more than $20,000,000 a year. What this means is that you are, statistically speaking, 3000 times more likely to be as rich as the top multilevel marketing member by just not joining a multi level marketing company at all.

Wikipedia and donations

There are many Wiki websites like WikiLeaks, wikiHow, wikitravel, wikibooks, Wikipedia which have been helping people for a long time. The most famous of them, Wikipedia, was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001. it has been for a long time an online encyclopaedia used by people all around the world. But recently we have seen that Wikipedia has been asking us for donations. This is new thing in India. But not in the UK or US where Wikipedia already asks for donation. On the other hand Wikipedia also receives funding from US and UK since 2013.

This funding is handled by wikimedia a non-profit organisation based in California, USA. It has stated that Wikipedia requires funding to maintain International infrastructure to pay salaries and for many other expenses. It is to be noted that in June 2019 Wikipedia had total assets of $165 million with $110 million in cash. And its expenses were around $151 million. So it is clear that Wikipedia has enough money to support itself. Thus it has no  need of immediate money without which it would shut down.

In India it is Wikipedia’s first fundraising campaign where in it asks it users for a contribution of ₹150 as compared to $15 in UK/US which amounts to around ₹1100. The amount is said to be decided to be less in India because of less spending power of Asian countries. Wikipedia necessarily doesn’t need the donations because it has enough money to sustain itself. Rather it should work more on increasing the neutrality and credibility of its website. Not all its pages are properly moderated which leads to people changing many facts which are misleading and out of context.

Has the corona virus brought the family together or has it strained relations?

The coronavirus pandemic impacts relationships in several respects, the burden of imposed lockout has weakened others to the point of collapse. Yet, conversely, a number of people have moved back together.

After the pandemic, many witnessed dramatic changes in their marriages, be it together in lockdown or being isolated from each other. For others, establishing their relationship and strengthening the ties could be a wonderful moment. The lockout may have contributed to irreparable problems with some, contributing to possible break-ups or even divorces.

Not unexpectedly, the time together will either build or ruin a relationship; it just depends on individuals and their strategies. If a pair will exchange different activities and become together, such as participating in a joint activity or taking up a new interest together, such as cooking or planting, would be deciding variables. 

Some couples have found the quarantine experience nourishing and enjoyable to a point that they want to extend it beyond the lockdown; many have made plans to live together or maybe even get married in the near future

Yet India is seeing a increase in domestic violence incidents and more people are filing for divorce in China. 

Next, it’s necessary to remember that communities around the board are not the same either. Communities are the main causes to their mental health issues with certain individuals and some are members to emotionally dysfunctional families. Therefore this lockout is incredibly risky for these people.

There is a purpose that so many foreign workers want to return home, since you depend on your family in times of crisis. It is an extraordinary circumstance that lets you care of a lot about all that is significant in life and if your family is it for you; we can make effective use of the time we get with them.

In China, which was the world’s first nation to go into complete shutdown after the virus erupted there, and in Hong Kong – where classrooms were locked, shuttered stores, and workers sent home – the virus was put under control and life has returned to a sort of normality. But the pandemic has caused several Social Bond gaps.

Another survey showed that there were also beneficial effects, such as improving bonds with relatives and friends, with more than 60 percent of respondents claiming “they thought more for the emotions of their relatives members” during the health scare, and they had an intensified desire to concentrate on mental wellbeing.

This pandemic has shown us that the family is the greatest treasure. Any issue can be quickly solved with each other’s help. Ultimate joy resides in being with families. We all rely on each other in many respects and this pandemic has showed us our reliance either in the field of industry, or academics etc.This pandemic has shown us that the family is the greatest treasure. Any issue can be quickly solved with each other’s help. Ultimate joy resides in being with families. We all rely on each other in many respects and this pandemic has showed us our reliance either in the field of industry, or academics etc.

Yet this pandemic has instantly altered the entire situation. The busy human being has now instantly become workless. Entire human beings all over the world have lost their right to go anywhere. They are now restricted to homes. This danger has disrupted meetings of social and religious activities.So only the home remains to share ideas and views.

HEALTH AND COVID-19

“The human body has been designed to resist an infinite number of changes and attacks brought about by its environment. The secret of good health lies in successful adjustment to changing stresses on the body.” – Harry J. Johnson

Coronavirus has become a worldwide concern for everyone. The virus not only demands to stay indoors but also to take precautionary measures related to hygiene and sanitation.

Added to the fear of contracting the virus in a pandemic such as COVID-19 are the significant changes to our daily lives as our movements are restricted in support of efforts to contain and slow down the spread of the virus. Faced with new realities of working from home, temporary unemployment, home-schooling of children, and lack of physical contact with other family members, friends, and colleagues, we must look after our mental, as well as our physical, health.

But every coin has two faces, if we consider the positive aspects of this virus we will find out that people nowadays are more health-conscious. Many people by standing indoors had started doing exercises and yoga. Cycling also had become a good pass time for people.

Regardless of the precautions, we need to take it had made us develop some good and essential habits like washing hands-on regular intervals, washing vegetables and fruits before cooking, and much more which was not kept in mind precisely before.

COVID-19 had increased us to risk of getting infected and sick but at the same time had taught us important things to make our immune system much stronger than before. We are getting to understand the importance of good health which we had forgotten due to work stress and restless manpower.

This pandemic had made us stronger than before both mentally and physically we can appreciate the healthy homemade food and its importance now. Fast food is missed though but this time had told us that we can survive to live a healthy and peaceful lifestyle.

If considered this hard time had made us realize the essence of a healthy body and a subtle mind.

Sustainable Development goals by corporates: latest in 2020

5 Latest Sustainable Development Goals in the Corporate World. 

Sustainable Development Goals by private firms has increased noticeably since the last decade. Many big corporates like Google, Apple, Dell, Tech Mahindra, Hero MotoCorp, etc. are working with the view of sustainable development since the beginning. Let’s look at some recent sustainable development goals and initiatives by private firms.

1. Microsoft

Microsoft is setting multiple sustainable development goals and adopting different approaches to tackle environmental degradation. The company recently launched its initiative ‘Zero waste by 2030’ focusing on carbon, water, ecosystems, and waste. 

  • Building Microsoft Circular Centers to reuse and repurpose servers and hardware in their data centers.
  • Eliminate single-use plastics in packaging.
  • Improve their waste accounting technology.
  • Invest in circular economy ventures.
  • Help employees to reduce their own waste footprints.
Sustainable development goals Microsoft headquarters, Redmond.
Microsoft headquarters, Redmond. Source: Microsoft

2. Vestas

It is the first renewable energy manufacturer verified by ‘Science-based target initiatives’ for its sustainable development goals. Vestas has earlier made many contributions to environment protection.

  • Vestas announced its green initiative to become carbon neutral, without using offsets, by 2030.
  • IPCC in a recent report, states that limiting the rise in the global temperature to 1.5°C, as stated in the Paris Agreement, will significantly reduce the risk of extreme affects from climate change.
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% within its own supply chain.

3. Dropbox

The file-hosting company laid out some initiatives under the sustainable development goals to achieve by 2030.

  • Carbon neutrality and minimize energy consumption.
  • 100% renewable electricity for offices and data centers.
  • Remote jobs to reduce travel emissions.
  • Support other organizations in their climate actions.
  • Help employees to volunteer for environmental causes.

4. Crown

Packaging firm ‘crown’ laid out their initiative ‘Twentyby30’ containing 20 sustainable development goals aiming to get accomplished by 2025, 2030, and 2050. The initiatives include:

  • Send zero waste to landfill
  • Make aluminum and steel cans 10 percent lighter to reduce the usage of packaging material.
  • Increase the recycling of its plastic strapping by 10 percent.

5. Salesforce

The latest initiative of this AI-based CRM firm is to achieve 100% renewable power by 2022. This renewable energy deal is in collaboration with  Bloomberg, Cox Enterprises, Gap Inc., and Workday, Inc. and with guidance from LevelTen. The sustainable development goal is to provide renewable energy at a small scale, available to everyone. Currently, renewable energy contracts are made at a high scale involving large investments which are not feasible for small-scale organizations and individuals.

Advertisements: Their motto and functioning

Advertisement mainly is for communicating the message to the target audience, so now when we come to the segregation, there are the commercial advertisements and the non commercial one.

Non-commercial advertisements are non-profit and are only shown for giving some information or spreading awareness. Whereas, commercial advertisements are generally directed towards increasing the sale of a product or services or to increase the usage.

For instance, if you’re offering a distinctive product, service or value proposition to the customer, commercial advertising is a way to get the word out quickly and more broadly than through referrals from existing customers or waiting for people to find you by chance.

Reaching out to your audience via television and radio can let the public know about what you offer and how people can get your product or service. 

It gives you the opportunity to tell potential customers about your attributes, which can have a positive result over time. Exposing them to the message once or twice isn’t likely to make a difference. Moreover, once customers have a positive impression of your brand, future commercial advertisements underscore that positive impression.

The purpose of advertising is to gain the interest and trust of consumers. Advertisers seek to increase interest in buying a product, visiting a place, or using a specific service.

One important aspect of commercial advertising is that it creates a demand or a perceived need for something. As soon as the consumer has a reason to want, advertising is there to offer a solution to that need.

All the advertisements between the TV serials or in between the websites and blogs are a form of commercial advertisements as the one showing the advertisement is promoting it’s product and getting the revenue.

A research shows that a moderate level of repetition of advertisements has the greatest effect. That’s the reason why we are exposed to a single advertisement several times by a particular company. Our minds, even starts to memorize these advertisement along with their taglines and that’s how these advertisements plays with human brains.

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE: AGATHA CHRISTIE

And then there were none is an enigma novel written by the queen of crime, Agatha Christie. It is one of the best seller novels which takes murder mystery to a next level.

It is a story of ten strangers who were sent invitations they could not refuse to the illustrious Soldiers Island by the wealthy Mr.Owen. All of them notice an unusual nursery rhyme framed and hung off the wall of every room titled TEN LITTLE INDIANS which goes as-

Ten little Indians standin’ in a line,
One toddled home and then there were nine;
Nine little Indians swingin’ on a gate,
One tumbled off and then there were eight.
Eight little Indians gayest under heaven
One went to sleep and then there were seven;
Seven little Indians cuttin’ up their tricks,
One broke his neck and then there were six.
Six little Indians all alive,
One kicked the bucket and then there were five;

Five little Indians on a cellar door,
One tumbled in and then there were four.
Four little Indians upon a spree,
One got fuddled and then there were three;
Three little Indians out on a canoe,
One tumbled overboard and then there were two
Two little Indians foolin’ with a gun,
One-shot t’other and then there was one;                                                                                                        

One little Indian livin’ all alone,
He got married and then there were none.

                                                                                 

After supper, a gramophone record is played; the recording accuses each visitor of having committed murder and then asks if any of “the accused” wishes to offer a defense. This is not taken seriously by anyone. Later they find that the cook among them got dead after drinking. The next morning a lady corpse is found in her bed; she died in her sleep. One by one each one of them dies and the island becomes empty. For an instance, there were ten people and now there were none. Police inspector and crime branch do their investigations and found things, not of much importance. Later during the court hearing, one person found something which resolves the entire mystery of ten murders, and the murderer was found amongst those ten people only which is now dead.

The book completely binds thrill and suspense with an outstanding revival. The book deserves to get read once.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND HASHTAG ACTIVISM: THE NEW TREND !

Today, life is moving fast and in this fast-moving life, we explode to more changes in lifestyle. Today the use of the internet is very frequent. The Internet helps everyone to connect with everyone around the world. There are many good uses of the Internet but as there are always two sides to the coin similarly Internet has its pro and cons. This time when social media matters more than real life. Social media has taught people to share their problems but also to show off their happiness which is only limited to social media. We are a generation that needs more likes on social media than in real life.

This concept of social media is in some way creating a distance between the real-life and the reel life. The people pretend to be someone else on social media the negative impact does not stop here these days social media also create mental problems for people because of a new trend called trolls. People hide their identity and write some comments which are not appreciated on a social platform. Since the constitution allows us all to share our thoughts freely but these liberties have their restrictions that need to be taken care of.

Let’s not only focus on the bad impacts of social media there are also some good uses of Social media like making people aware of the wrong happening around the world and appreciating good work done by people. This new concept of the hash tag is helping people to share problems and happiness with the world.

These days’ social media connect everyone directly to the politicians which creates an easy way to address your problem with the support of many people. The benefit of hash tag activism is very real. The Hash tag Raise awareness, build communities, give voice to everyone afraid to speak, educate more and more people.

This is the new way of getting public support from all over countries. The hash tag makes it easy to build huge public support with a public platform that is accessible by many. The growing trend of bringing socio-political changes with the help of social media in the real world is making it easy for people to raise their voices and share their experiences. This is a new concept but surely there are many agenda which have been successfully joined by people from all over the world. The hash tag activism helps to divert the attention of major population on issues like a human rights violation, abuse of any other right, fundraising, opposition against the government, and these days also to earn more and more votes.

There are a few campaigns that emerge to be successful because of major participation. This rise in social media has influenced communication and information of all kinds. People can be judged and appreciated on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Naming a few famous examples of campaigns in recent times are #Blacklivesmatter, #oscarsowhite, , and many more.

The discussion cannot be ended without discussing the problems in hash tag activism. There can be many problems in social media but surely these problems can be avoided by being a little more aware of the problem. These problems can be easily avoided by awareness. The major disadvantage can be misinformation or disinformation. This problem is faced to a very large extent.

The information provided on social media cannot always be true; people must check facts before sharing anything on social media. This is the time when misuse of anything and everything is common so social media is no exception.

People use social media as weaponization for Trolls, Cyber hacks, or mobilization. The major concern these days on social media is the Privacy of the user. The private information which is given to the apps impacts the jobs/ visas and even relationship. There are different complaints, censorship, and platform that register such complaints and take care of these concerns.

The conclusion of this topic can be done by this sentence given by Mark Kersten which says “we must understand that in this age of persuasion social media is one of the tools available to social activists. But when social media is effectively employed in campaigns, it remains the activists, revolutionaries and dissidents who deserve the credit for challenging the status quo- and social media itself.”

There is no doubt that Hash tag activism gets involved in social justice issues but it can also be seen as the endpoint to social activism. These steps seek to change our culture for better; this will become a step in introducing potential activists.