Category: Life

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China Education Health India Life Science Social

India is world diabetes capital

Here’s some news that’s not ‘ sweet’ at all: Every sixth diabetic in the world is an Indian, making the country the world’s diabetes capital. New data released on Tuesday shows India has over 50 million diabetics out of the world’s 285 million. The disease is affecting more people in the working age group and is proving to be an economic burden, according to the figures released by the International Diabetes Federation. With 50.8 million diabetics, India tops the global tally. China with 43.2 million patients comes second, followed by the US where 26.8 million people suffer from the disease. The disease will cost the world economy at least $376 billion (over Rs 17 lakh crore) in 2010.

Read the article: India is world diabetes capital

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Education History Life Politics Science Technology Travel

0° 0′ 00″

The imaginary line now known as the Greenwich Prime Meridian not only allows us to navigate the globe but also keeps the world ticking to the same symbolic 24-hour clock. But it has not always been so. Until the 19th Century, many countries and even individual towns kept their own local time based on the sun’s passage across the sky and there were no international rules governing when the day would start or finish.

How did Britain get to be the centre of all time and space? The real reason the meridian is at Greenwich is that the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich was the first – indeed, really the only – person to have done the research required to calculate navigational tables. He naturally took his own telescope as the baseline, and once the nautical almanacs which resulted were published no-one could be bothered to do the research all over again merely to establish a different base. It’s important to note that the meridian is at Greenwich, not Charing Cross: so it honours a great scientist rather than Britain. And who was that scientist? None other than Nevil Maskelyne, the villain of Dava Sobel’s popular book Longitude, but arguably the real solver of the longitude problem.

Read the article: At the centre of time

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Business Education Innovation Life Productivity Science Social Technology

Fail Like You Mean It

Inventor Dean Kamen discusses how successful creative people fail frequently, rarely work linearly and never give up. Fascinating and clear thought process!

Read the article: Fail Like You Mean It

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Business China Education Finance India Life Science Social Technology

Skilled Immigrants on Why They’re Leaving the U.S.

A long wait for a green card, coupled with the soft U.S. economy, is prompting an exodus of some of the best and brightest — Lured by the prospect of climbing to the top of his field, New Delhi native Swaroop Ganguly came to the U.S. 10 years ago and earned a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005. He became an expert in an emerging technology called spintronics, used to power semiconductors, and worked at several chip companies, including Freescale Semiconductor. But Ganguly, now 32, is moving back to India this summer. Although he has been doing postdoctoral work at the University of Texas, he figures his prospects for research and professional development are probably better in his home country. “I feel quite excited about going back,” he says.

Read the article: Skilled Immigrants on Why They’re Leaving the U.S. – BusinessWeek

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Education Innovation Life Productivity Science

The Cone of Learning

Something very interesting, slightly questionable, but beautifully summarises how different ways of learning can affect retention of information. Taken from Robert Kiyosaki‘s book ‘Financial IQ’, the diagram is inspired by but a highly convoluted version of the second graph below known as the ‘Cone of Experience’ originally conceived by Edgar Dale in 1969 (notice that it did not have any numbers).

The Cone Of Learning by Edgar Dale
The Cone Of Learning (source Financial IQ by Robert Kiyosaki)

‘Cone of Experience’ originally conceived by Edgar Dale:

Original Cone of Experience Edgar Dale
Original Cone of Experience Edgar Dale

Verbal Symbols < Visual Symbols < Recordings Radio Still Pictures < Motion Pictures < Educational Television < Exhibits < Study Trips < Demonstrations < Dramatized Experiences < Contrived Experiences < Direct Purposeful Experiences.

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Art Business Education Finance Life Social

If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened

If you wish to be rich, however, you must grow a carapace. A mental armour. Not so thick as to blind you to well-constructed criticism and advice, especially from those you trust. Nor so thick as to cut you off from friends and family. But thick enough to shrug off the inevitable sniggering and malicious mockery that will follow your inevitable failures. Not to mention the poorly hidden envy that will accompany your eventual success.

Read the article: If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened

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Energy Finance Innovation Life Technology

10 Tools To Save on Electricity Bills

“Smart meters installed at homes can unleash data about the fluctuating price of electricity throughout the day, enabling consumers that have energy management tools to shift energy consumption to the time of day when power is cheapest. The utility-focused tools use smart meter info to provide a deeper dive into energy analysis and can even control smart appliances for utilities to implement demand response events.” – earth2tech.com

googlepowermetergreenenergyoptions

My picks: Google PowerMeter and Green Energy Options. (Both pictured above)


Read the article: 10 Monitoring Tools Bringing Smart Energy Home

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Business Education Life Productivity Social

The Brand Called You

“Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” (via Fast Company)

Read the article: The Brand Called You

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Business Education Innovation Life Productivity Science Technology

Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy — it looks like a large photocopier — but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

The Espresso Book Machine — which actually is a self-contained 150 pages-per-minute printing and binding machine — can produce a full book in five minutes from a catalog of 400,000 references. It only takes one button. High-speed all-in-one printing-and-binding machines are not new, but this idea is. Using the Espresso Book Machine, any customer can walk in, pick any book from a touchscreen (or bring its own in CD or USB stick,) and walk away with a “real book” in five minutes. The price? Around $43 for a 300-page out-of-copyright book.  Some photos here.

Read the article: Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London

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Art Education Finance Life Science Social

How to be clever

Poor people have I.Q.’s significantly lower than those of rich people, and the awkward conventional wisdom has been that this is in large part a function of genetics. If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong.

New research strongly advocates intensive early childhood education because of its proven ability to raise I.Q. and improve long-term outcomes.

Read the article: How to Raise Our I.Q.