The following Recruitment Results have been finalized by the Union Public Service Commission during the month of July, 2017. The recommended candidates have been informed individually by post.
NITI Aayog will launch the Mentor India Campaign, a strategic nation building initiative to engage leaders who can guide and mentor students at more than 900 Atal Tinkering Labs, established across the country as a part of the Atal Innovation Mission. CEO NITI Aayog, Shri Amitabh Kant will unveil the online nationwide initiative in the capital tomorrow on Wednesday, 23rdAugust.
Mentor India is aimed at maximizing the impact of Atal Tinkering Labs, possibly the biggest disruption in formal education globally. The idea is to engage leaders who will nurture and guide students in the Atal Tinkering Labs. These labs are non-prescriptive by nature, and mentors are expected to be enablers rather than instructors.
NITI Aayog is looking for leaders who can spend anywhere between one to two hours every week in one or more such labs to enable students experience, learn and practice future skills such as design and computational thinking.
Atal Tinkering Labs are dedicated works spaces where students from Class 6th to Class 12th learn innovation skills and develop ideas that will go on to transform India. The labs are powered to acquaint students with state-of-the-art equipment such as 3D printers, robotics & electronics development tools, Internet of things & sensors etc.
NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission is among one of the flagship programs of the Government of India to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the country to set up the Atal Tinkering Labs across the country. The Mission has / is in the process of setting up 900+ such labs across India and aims to have 2,000 such labs by end of 2017.
National Sports Awards are given every year to recognize and reward excellence in sports. Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award is given for the spectacular and most outstanding performance in the field of sports by a sportsperson over a period of four year, Arjuna Award is given for consistency outstanding performance for four years, Dronacharya Award for coaches for producing medal winners at prestigious International sports events, Dhyan Chand Award for life time contribution to sports development.
A large number of nominations were received for these awards this year, which were considered by the Selection Committees consisting of former Olympian, Arjuna Awardees, Dronacharya Awardees, Dhyan Chand Awardees, Sport Journalists/ Experts/ Commentators and sports administrators. Selection Committee for Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award and Arjuna Awards was headed by Justice C.K. Thakkar (Former Judge Supreme Court of India, Chief Justice of High Court of Himachal and Bombay). Selection Committee for Dronacharya Awards and Dhyan Chand Awards was headed by Shri Pullela Gopichand.
Based on the recommendations of the Committee and after due scrutiny, the Government has decided to confer awards upon the following sportspersons/coaches/organisations :
(i) Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna 2017
| S. No. | Name of the Awardee | discipline |
| 1. | Shri Devendra | Para Athlete |
| 2. | Shri Sardar Singh | Hockey |
(ii) Dronacharya Awards 2017
| S. No. | Name of the Awardee | Discipline |
| 1. | Late Dr. R. Gandhi | Athletics |
| 2. | Mr. Heera Nand Kataria | Kabaddi |
| 3. | Mr. G.S.S.V. Prasad | Badminton (Lifetime) |
| 4. | Mr. Brij Bhushan Mohanty | Boxing (Lifetime) |
| 5. | Mr. P.A. Raphel | Hockey (Lifetime) |
| 6. | Mr. Sanjoy Chakraverthy | Shooting (Lifetime) |
| 7. | Mr. Roshan Lal | Wrestling (Lifetime) |
(iii) Arjuna Awards 2017
| S. No. | Name of the Awardees | Discipline |
| 1. | Ms. V.J. Surekha | Archery |
| 2. | Ms. Khushbir Kaur | Athletics |
| 3. | Mr. Arokia Rajiv | Athletics |
| 4. | Ms. Prasanthi Singh | Basketball |
| 5. | Sub. LaishramDebendro Singh | Boxing |
| 6. | Mr. CheteshwarPujara | Cricket |
| 7. | Ms. Harmanpreet Kaur | Cricket |
| 8. | Ms. OinamBembem Devi | Football |
| 9. | Mr. S.S.P. Chawrasia | Golf |
| 10. | Mr. S.V. Sunil | Hockey |
| 11. | Mr. Jasvir Singh | Kabaddi |
| 12. | Mr. P. N. Prakash | Shooting |
| 13. | Mr. A. Amalraj | Table Tennis |
| 14. | Mr. SakethMyneni | Tennis |
| 15. | Mr. SatyawartKadian | Wrestling |
| 16. | Mr. Mariyappan | Para-Athlete |
| 17. | Mr. Varun Singh Bhati | Para-Athlete |
(iv) Dhyan Chand Award
| S. No. | Name (S/Shri) | Discipline |
| 1 . | Mr. Bhupender Singh | Athletics |
| 2. | Mr. Syed Shahid Hakim | Football |
| 3. | Ms. Sumarai Tete | Hockey |
The awardees will received their awards from the President of India at a specially organized function at the Rashtrapati Bhawan on August 29, 2017.
Apart from a medal and a citation, Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Awardee will receive a cash prize of Rs. 7.5 lakh. Arjuna, Dronacharya and Dhyan Chand Awardees will received statuettes, certificates and cash prize of Rs. 5 lakh each.
The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, has hailed the judgement of the Hon’ble Supreme Court on Triple Talaq. Calling the judgement historic, the Prime Minister said that it grants equality to Muslim women and is a powerful measure for women empowerment.
“Judgement of the Hon’ble SC on Triple Talaq is historic. It grants equality to Muslim women and is a powerful measure for women empowerment”, the Prime Minister said.
Fewer trips to the dentist may be in your future, and you have mussels to thank.
Inspired by the mechanisms mussels use to adhere to inhospitable surfaces, UC Santa Barbara researchers have developed a new type of dental composite that provides an extra layer of durability to treated teeth. The potential payoff? Longer lasting fillings, crowns, implants and other work.
“It’s as hard as a typical dental restoration but less likely to crack,” Kollbe Ahn, a materials scientist at UCSB’s Marine Science Institute, said of the composite. The research is highlighted in the journal Advanced Materials. The paper, of which Ahn is the corresponding author, is the result of collaboration between research and industry.
On average, a dental restoration lasts five to 10 or so years before needing replacement. The time frame depends on the type of restoration and how well the patient cares for the treated tooth. However, the continual onslaught of chewing, acidic and hard foods, poor hygiene, nighttime tooth grinding, generally weak teeth and even inadequate dental work can contribute to a filling’s early demise — and another expensive and possibly less-than-pleasant experience in the dental chair.
According to Ahn, one of the primary reasons restorations fall out or crack is brittle failure of the bond with the surrounding tooth. “All dental composites have micro-particles to increase their rigidity and prevent their shrinkage during their curing process,” he explained. “But there’s a trade-off: When the composite gets harder, it gets more brittle.”
With enough pressure or wear and tear, a crack forms, which then propagates throughout the entire restoration. Or, the gap between the tooth and the restoration results in restoration failures, including marginal tooth decay.
So Ahn and his colleagues looked to nature — mussels, to be exact — to find a way not only to maintain strength and hardness but also to add durability. Having perfected the art of adhering to irregular surfaces under the variable conditions of the intertidal zone — evolving to resist pounding waves, the blazing heat of the sun and cycles of salt water immersion and windy dryness — mussels presented the ideal model for more durable dental restoration materials. The byssal threads they use to affix to surfaces allow them to resist the forces that would tear them from their moorings.
“In nature, the soft collagenous core of the mussel’s byssal threads is protected by a 5-to-10 micrometer thick, hard coating, which is also extensible and thus, tough,” Ahn said. This durability and flexibility allow the mollusks to stick to wet mineral surfaces in harsh environments that involve repeated push-and-pull stress.
Key to this mechanism is what the scientists call dynamic or sacrificial bonding — multiple reversible and weak bonds on the sub-nanoscopic molecular level that can dissipate energy without compromising the overall adhesion and mechanical properties of the load-bearing material.
“Say you have one strong bond,” Ahn explained. “It may be strong but once it breaks, it breaks. If you have several weaker bonds, you would have to break them one by one.” Breaking each weak bond, he continued, would dissipate energy, so the overall energy required to break the material would be greater than with a single strong bond.
This type of bonding occurs in many biological systems, including animal bone and tooth. The mussel’s byssus contain a high number of unique chemical functional groups called catechols, which are used to prime and promote adhesion to wet mineral surfaces. The new study shows that using a catecholic coupling agent instead of the conventional silane coupling agent provides 10 times higher adhesion and a 50 percent increase in toughness compared to current dental restorative resin composites.
While research has proven this toughening mechanism in soft materials, this study is one of the first — if not the first — to prove it with rigid and load-bearing materials.
This proof-of-concept, which also demonstrates no cytotoxicity, could mean tougher, more durable dental fillings. And that, in the long run, could mean fewer dental visits. Because each replacement filling also requires the dentist to file the surrounding tooth to prime its surface, given enough replacements a tooth might need to be crowned or extracted; and if not replaced, the tooth loss could have adverse consequences for the individual’s diet and health.
The next step, Ahn said, is to increase the material’s durability even further.
“By changing the molecular design you could have even denser coupling agents that exist on the surface, and then we can have a stronger and more durable dental composite,” he said, estimating a commercial product within a couple of years.
Doctors are often deluged by signals from charts, test results, and other metrics to keep track of. It can be difficult to integrate and monitor all of these data for multiple patients while making real-time treatment decisions, especially when data is documented inconsistently across hospitals.
In a new pair of papers, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) explore ways for computers to help doctors make better medical decisions.
One team created a machine-learning approach called “ICU Intervene” that takes large amounts of intensive-care-unit (ICU) data, from vitals and labs to notes and demographics, to determine what kinds of treatments are needed for different symptoms. The system uses “deep learning” to make real-time predictions, learning from past ICU cases to make suggestions for critical care, while also explaining the reasoning behind these decisions.
“The system could potentially be an aid for doctors in the ICU, which is a high-stress, high-demand environment,” says PhD student Harini Suresh, lead author on the paper about ICU Intervene. “The goal is to leverage data from medical records to improve health care and predict actionable interventions.”
Another team developed an approach called “EHR Model Transfer” that can facilitate the application of predictive models on an electronic health record (EHR) system, despite being trained on data from a different EHR system. Specifically, using this approach the team showed that predictive models for mortality and prolonged length of stay can be trained on one EHR system and used to make predictions in another.
ICU Intervene was co-developed by Suresh, undergraduate student Nathan Hunt, postdoc Alistair Johnson, researcher Leo Anthony Celi, MIT Professor Peter Szolovits, and PhD student Marzyeh Ghassemi. It was presented this month at the Machine Learning for Healthcare Conference in Boston.
EHR Model Transfer was co-developed by lead authors Jen Gong and Tristan Naumann, both PhD students at CSAIL, as well as Szolovits and John Guttag, who is the Dugald C. Jackson Professor in Electrical Engineering. It was presented at the ACM’s Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in Halifax, Canada.
Both models were trained using data from the critical care database MIMIC, which includes de-identified data from roughly 40,000 critical care patients and was developed by the MIT Lab for Computational Physiology.
ICU Intervene
Integrated ICU data is vital to automating the process of predicting patients’ health outcomes.
“Much of the previous work in clinical decision-making has focused on outcomes such as mortality (likelihood of death), while this work predicts actionable treatments,” Suresh says. “In addition, the system is able to use a single model to predict many outcomes.”
ICU Intervene focuses on hourly prediction of five different interventions that cover a wide variety of critical care needs, such as breathing assistance, improving cardiovascular function, lowering blood pressure, and fluid therapy.
At each hour, the system extracts values from the data that represent vital signs, as well as clinical notes and other data points. All of the data are represented with values that indicate how far off a patient is from the average (to then evaluate further treatment).
Importantly, ICU Intervene can make predictions far into the future. For example, the model can predict whether a patient will need a ventilator six hours later rather than just 30 minutes or an hour later. The team also focused on providing reasoning for the model’s predictions, giving physicians more insight.
“Deep neural-network-based predictive models in medicine are often criticized for their black-box nature,” says Nigam Shah, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University who was not involved in the paper. “However, these authors predict the start and end of medical interventions with high accuracy, and are able to demonstrate interpretability for the predictions they make.”
The team found that the system outperformed previous work in predicting interventions, and was especially good at predicting the need for vasopressors, a medication that tightens blood vessels and raises blood pressure.
In the future, the researchers will be trying to improve ICU Intervene to be able to give more individualized care and provide more advanced reasoning for decisions, such as why one patient might be able to taper off steroids, or why another might need a procedure like an endoscopy.
EHR Model Transfer
Another important consideration for leveraging ICU data is how it’s stored and what happens when that storage method gets changed. Existing machine-learning models need data to be encoded in a consistent way, so the fact that hospitals often change their EHR systems can create major problems for data analysis and prediction.
That’s where EHR Model Transfer comes in. The approach works across different versions of EHR platforms, using natural language processing to identify clinical concepts that are encoded differently across systems and then mapping them to a common set of clinical concepts (such as “blood pressure” and “heart rate”).
For example, a patient in one EHR platform could be switching hospitals and would need their data transferred to a different type of platform. EHR Model Transfer aims to ensure that the model could still predict aspects of that patient’s ICU visit, such as their likelihood of a prolonged stay or even of dying in the unit.
“Machine-learning models in health care often suffer from low external validity, and poor portability across sites,” says Shah. “The authors devise a nifty strategy for using prior knowledge in medical ontologies to derive a shared representation across two sites that allows models trained at one site to perform well at another site. I am excited to see such creative use of codified medical knowledge in improving portability of predictive models.”
With EHR Model Transfer, the team tested their model’s ability to predict two outcomes: mortality and the need for a prolonged stay. They trained it on one EHR platform and then tested its predictions on a different platform. EHR Model Transfer was found to outperform baseline approaches and demonstrated better transfer of predictive models across EHR versions compared to using EHR-specific events alone.
In the future, the EHR Model Transfer team plans to evaluate the system on data and EHR systems from other hospitals and care settings.
Both papers were supported, in part, by the Intel Science and Technology Center for Big Data and the National Library of Medicine. The paper detailing EHR Model Transfer was additionally supported by the National Science Foundation and Quanta Computer, Inc.
Are you more likely to use words like “happy” and “family” in your social media posts? Or do you use emotional and cognitive words like “angry” and “thinking?” The words you use may be a clue to your religious affiliation. A study of 12,815 U.S. and U.K. Facebook users finds use of positive emotion and social words is associated with religious affiliation whereas use of negative emotion and cognitive processes is more common for those who are not religious than those who are religious.
The work replicates Ritter et al.’s 2013 results on religious and nonreligious language use on Twitter and appears in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. Researchers from the U.S., U.K., and Australia conducted the work.
Just as Ritter and colleagues discovered in 2013, “We also found that positive emotion and social words are associated with religious affiliation whereas negative emotion and cognitive processes are more associated with non-religious affiliation,” says David Yaden (University of Pennsylvania), lead author of the study.
And they found some additional insight; “non-religious individuals make more frequent mention of the body and of death” than religious people, says Yaden.
The researchers collected data from the MyPersonality application, which asked Facebook users to report their religious affiliation (among other things), and asks them for consent to allow researchers to analyze their written online posts and other self-reported information (Kosinski, Stillwell, Graepel, 2013). They ran two analyses, to see what words each group (religious vs. non-religious) used more than the other group.
The team conducted both a “top-down” and a “bottom-up” analysis. The top down approach, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), uses groupings chosen by researchers, and is useful in making sense of the data in terms of theory. The “bottom-up,” or Differential Language Analysis (DLA), approach allows an algorithm to group the words and can provide a more “transparent view” into the language.
Unsurprisingly, religious people used more religious words, like “devil,” “blessing,” and “praying” than do non-religious people. They also showed higher use of positive words like “love” and family and social words such as “mothers” and “we.” The non-religious individuals used words from the anger category, like “hate” more than did religious people. They also showed a higher use of words associated with negative emotion and cognitive processes such as “reasons.” Other areas where the nonreligious dominated: swear words (you can figure those out), bodies, including “heads” and “neck” and words related to death including “dead.”
The Role of Religion
While secularism is increasing in the west, “over 80% of the world’s population identifies with some type of religion – a trend that appears to be on the rise” write the authors. “Religion is associated with longer lives and well-being, but can also be associated with higher rates of obesity and racism.” For the researchers, understanding language use is part of the bigger picture of understanding how religious affiliation relates to these life outcomes.
Yaden and his colleagues do not know if the different linguistic behaviors between religious and non-religious people reflect the psychological states of those in the group, or if the language use reflects the social norms of being part of that group, or some combination of the two. They hope further research will offer more insights.
Originally Yaden and colleagues hoped to “compare different religious affiliations with one another. That is, how do Buddhists differ from Hindus? Christians from Muslims? Atheists from Agnostics?,” but they did not have enough specific data to conduct these analyses. “We hope to do so once a larger dataset becomes available to us,” says Yaden.
The Vice President, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu addressing the gathering after receiving a State Reception being hosted by the Government of Telangana, in Hyderabad on August 21, 2017. The Governor of Telangana, Shri E.S.L. Narasimhan, the Chief Minister of Telangana, Shri K. Chandrasekhar Rao, the Minister of State for Labour and Employment (Independent Charge), Shri Bandaru Dattatreya, the Deputy Chief Ministers of Telangana, Shri Mohammad Mahmood Ali & Shri Kadiyam Srihari and other dignitaries are also seen.
Sedentary time, for example, time spent sitting, increases the risk of death for middle-aged and older people who are frail and inactive, but does not appear to increase the risk for nonfrail people who are inactive, according to a new study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
Many studies have looked at the benefits of physical activity on health, although little data exists on sedentary behaviour and risk of death linked to levels of frailty. Frailty refers to a person’s overall health state, determined by the number of health problems this person has.
To understand if level of frailty and prolonged sitting are linked to a higher risk of death, researchers looked at data on 3141 adults aged 50 and over in the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2003/04 and 2005/06. Participants used activity trackers during waking hours and were assessed using a 46-item frailty index; they were then followed until 2011 or date of death.
“We found that in people who scored low on the frailty index, sitting time was not linked to risk of death,” states Dr. Olga Theou, Department of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. “Prolonged sitting was associated with a higher risk of death only in vulnerable or frail people who did not meet the weekly recommendation for 2.5 hours of moderate physical activity.”
The authors note study limitations such as limited activity tracking data for people with higher levels of frailty, which prevented them from segmenting people with severe frailty into one category for analysis.
“Physicians should stress the harms of inactivity with patients, similar to the harms of smoking, to encourage movement,” states Dr. Olga Theou. “Even something as simple as getting up and walking around the house with a walker or cane can benefit frailer people.”
The authors suggest this key public health message should be included in health promotions about the importance of healthy behaviours.
A recent study found an elevated risk of heart failure in more than half of older individuals, and this risk was significantly associated with vitamin D deficiency. Specifically, vitamin D deficiency was linked with a 12.2-times increased risk of heart failure.
The study, which involved an analysis of the medical records of 137 individuals in Brazil aged 60 years and older, also revealed increased heart failure risks in men, obese individuals, and those with heart arrhythmias.
The findings are published in ESC Heart Failure.
Traffic data submitted by various domestic airlines has been analysed for the month of July, 2017. Following are the salient features:
Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-July, 2017 were 657.21 lakhs as against 560.87 lakhs during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 17.18%.
Click below to see the performance of domestic airlines for the year 2017
http://pibphoto.nic.in/documents/rlink/2017/aug/p201782101.pdf
The last date for receipt of the nominations for the Padma Awards 2018 is September 15, 2017.
Everyone can nominate any one. People are encouraged to nominate unsung heroes who deserve these prestigious awards (Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri).
The nominations/recommendations for the Padma Awards will be received only on the Padma Award online portal available on the address www.padmaawards.gov.in
No other mode of nomination/recommendation will be accepted. Nominations received after September 15, 2017 will not be considered.
For further details click ‘Awards and Medals’ on the Union Home Ministry’s website: www.mha.nic.in
The statutes and rules relating to these awards are available on the Union Home Ministry’s website with the link http://padmaawards.gov.in/SelectionGuidelines.aspx
Knowing whether to stay in or leave a romantic relationship is often an agonizing experience and that ambivalence can have negative consequences for health and well-being.
Now a new study offers insights into what people are deliberating about and what makes the decision so difficult, which could help therapists working with couples and stimulate further research into the decision-making process.
The study, led by U psychology professor Samantha Joel, was published in Social Psychology and Personality Science. Co-authors were Geoff MacDonald and Elizabeth Page-Gould of the University of Toronto.
“Most of the research on breakups has been predictive, trying to predict whether a couple stays together or not, but we don’t know much about the decision process — what are the specific relationship pros and cons that people are weighing out,” Joel said.
In the first phase of the study, the researchers recruited three samples of people — including people who were in the midst of trying to decide whether to break up or not — to participate in an anonymous survey.
Participants were asked open-ended questions about their specific reasons for both wanting to stay and leave a relationship.
That yielded a list of 27 different reasons for wanting to stay in a relationship and 23 reasons for wanting to leave.
The stay/leave factors were then converted into a questionnaire that was given to another group of people who were trying to decide whether to end a dating relationship or marriage. Those dating had been together for two years on average, while married participants reported relationships that averaged nine years.
In both studies, general factors considered as the individuals deliberated what to do were similar.
At the top of the stay list: emotional intimacy, investment and a sense of obligation. At the top of the leave list: issues with a partner’s personality, breach of trust and partner withdrawal.
Individuals in both dating and married situations gave similar reasons for wanting to leave a relationship.
But the researchers found significant differences in stay reasoning between the two groups.
Participants who were in a dating relationship said they were considering staying based on more positive reasons such as aspects of their partner’s personality that they like, emotional intimacy and enjoyment of the relationship. Those who were married gave more constraint reasons for staying such as investment into the relationship, family responsibilities, fear of uncertainty and logistical barriers.
And about half of the participants said they had reasons to both stay and leave, indicating ambivalence about their relationships.
“What was most interesting to me was how ambivalent people felt about their relationships. They felt really torn,” Joel said. “Breaking up can be a really difficult decision. You can look at a relationship from outside and say ‘you have some really unsolvable problems, you should break up’ but from the inside that is a really difficult thing to do and the longer you’ve been in a relationship, the harder it seems to be.”
Most people, Joel said, have standards and deal breakers about the kind of person they want to date or marry but those often go out the window when they meet someone.
“Humans fall in love for a reason,” Joel said. “From an evolutionary perspective, for our ancestors finding a partner may have been more important than finding the right partner. It might be easier to get into relationships than to get back out of them.”
Older adults are drawn to Facebook so they can check out pictures and updates from family and friends, but may resist using the site because they are worried about who will see their own content, according to a team of researchers.
In a study of older people’s perception of Facebook, participants listed keeping in touch, monitoring other’s updates and sharing photos as main reasons for using Facebook. However, other seniors listed privacy, as well as the triviality of some posts, as reasons they stay away from the site.
“The biggest concern is privacy and it’s not about revealing too much, it’s that they assume that too many random people out there can get their hands on their information,” said S. Shyam Sundar, distinguished professor of communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Penn State. “Control is really what privacy is all about. It’s about the degree to which you feel that you have control over how your information is shared or circulated.”
The researchers, who report their findings in a forthcoming issue of Telematics and Informatics, available online now, said that Facebook developers should focus on privacy settings to tap into the senior market.
“Clear privacy control tools are needed to promote older adults’ Facebook use,” said Eun Hwa Jung, assistant professor of communications and new media, National University of Singapore. “In particular, we think that privacy settings and alerts need to be highly visible, especially when they [older adults] are sharing information.”
While older adults are leery about who is viewing their posts, they enjoy using the site to look at pictures and read posts from friends and family, according to the researchers.
“I am more of a Facebook voyeur, I just look to see what my friends are putting out there,” one participant told the researchers. “I haven’t put anything on there in years. I don’t need to say, ‘I’m having a great lunch!’ and things like that, I don’t understand that kind of communication.”
Sundar said that, in fact, many participants mentioned the triviality of the conversation that kept them from using Facebook.
“They believe that people reporting on the mundane and unremarkable things that they did — brushing their teeth, or what they had for lunch — is not worth talking about,” said Sundar. “That’s an issue, especially for this generation.”
Older users could be a significant resource to help drive the growth of Facebook and other social media sites, Sundar said.
“The 55-plus folks were slow initially in adopting social media, but now they are one of the largest growing sectors for social media adoption,” he said.
The researchers suggest that Facebook is helping to serve as a communications bridge between the generations and that young people are prompting their older family members to join the site.
“In particular, unlike younger people, most older adults were encouraged by younger family members to join Facebook so that they could communicate,” said Jung. “This implies that older adults’ interaction via social networking sites can contribute to effective intergenerational communication.”
The researchers recruited 46 participants who were between 65 and 95 years old to take part in in-depth interviews. The group included 17 male participants and 29 female participants, all of whom had a college degree. The participants also said they used a computer in their daily lives.
A total of 20 Facebook users and 26 non-users participated in the study. If participants had a Facebook account, researchers asked them about their experience and their motivations for joining. Participants who did not use Facebook were asked why they did not join.
Because all of the participants in this study lived in a retirement home, the researchers said that future research should look at the perception and use of Facebook by seniors who live alone.
Cedars-Sinai neuroscience investigators have found that Alzheimer’s disease affects the retina — the back of the eye — similarly to the way it affects the brain. The study also revealed that an investigational, noninvasive eye scan could detect the key signs of Alzheimer’s disease years before patients experience symptoms.
Using a high-definition eye scan developed especially for the study, researchers detected the crucial warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease: amyloid-beta deposits, a buildup of toxic proteins. The findings represent a major advancement toward identifying people at high risk for the debilitating condition years sooner.
The study, published today in JCI Insight, comes amid a sharp rise in the number of people affected by the disease. Today, more than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease. That number is expected to triple by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
“The findings suggest that the retina may serve as a reliable source for Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis,” said the study’s senior lead author, Maya Koronyo-Hamaoui, PhD, a principal investigator and associate professor in the departments of Neurosurgery and Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai. “One of the major advantages of analyzing the retina is the repeatability, which allows us to monitor patients and potentially the progression of their disease.”
Yosef Koronyo, MSc, a research associate in the Department of Neurosurgery and first author on the study, said another key finding from the new study was the discovery of amyloid plaques in previously overlooked peripheral regions of the retina. He noted that the plaque amount in the retina correlated with plaque amount in specific areas of the brain.
“Now we know exactly where to look to find the signs of Alzheimer’s disease as early as possible,” said Koronyo.
Keith L. Black, MD, chair of Cedars-Sinai’s Department of Neurosurgery and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute, who co-led the study, said the findings offer hope for early detection when intervention could be most effective.
“Our hope is that eventually the investigational eye scan will be used as a screening device to detect the disease early enough to intervene and change the course of the disorder with medications and lifestyle changes,” said Black.
For decades, the only way to officially diagnose the debilitating condition was to survey and analyze a patient’s brain after the patient died. In recent years, physicians have relied on positron emission tomography (PET) scans of the brains of living people to provide evidence of the disease but the technology is expensive and invasive, requiring the patient to be injected with radioactive tracers.
In an effort to find a more cost-effective and less invasive technique, the Cedars-Sinai research team collaborated with investigators at NeuroVision Imaging, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, University of Southern California, and UCLA to translate their noninvasive eye screening approach to humans.
The published results are based on a clinical trial conducted on 16 Alzheimer’s disease patients who drank a solution that includes curcumin, a natural component of the spice turmeric. The curcumin causes amyloid plaque in the retina to “light up” and be detected by the scan. The patients were then compared to a group of younger, cognitively normal individuals.
In what could be a small step for science potentially leading to a breakthrough, an engineer at Washington University in St. Louis has taken steps toward using nanocrystal networks for artificial intelligence applications.
Elijah Thimsen, assistant professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and his collaborators have developed a model in which to test existing theories about how electrons move through nanomaterials. This model may lay the foundation for using nanomaterials in a machine learning device.
“When one builds devices out of nanomaterials, they don’t always behave like they would for a bulk material,” Thimsen said. “One of the things that changes dramatically is the way in which these electrons move through material, called the electron transport mechanism, but it’s not well understood how that happens.”
Thimsen and his team based the model on an unusual theory that every nanoparticle in a network is a node that is connected to every other node, not only its immediate neighbors. Equally unusual is that the current flowing through the nodes doesn’t necessarily occupy the spaces between the nodes — it needs only to pass through the nodes themselves. This behavior, which is predicted by the model, produces experimentally observable current hotspots at the nanoscale, the researcher said.
In addition, the team looked at another model called a neural network, based on the human brain and nervous system. Scientists have been working to build new computer chips to emulate these networks, but these chips are far short of the human brain, which contains up to 100 billion nodes and 10,000 connections per node.
“If we have a huge number of nodes — much larger than anything that exists — and a huge number of connections, how do we train it?” Thimsen asks. “We want to get this large network to perform something useful, such as a pattern-recognition task.”
Based on those network theories, Thimsen has proposed an initial project to design a simple chip, give it particular inputs and study the outputs.
“If we treat it as a neural network, we want to see if the output from the device will depend on the input,” Thimsen said. “Once we can prove that, we’ll take the next step and propose a new device that allows us to train this system to perform a simple pattern-recognition task.”
The Vice President of India, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu has condemned the terrorist attack in Barcelona, Spain. In a message, he said that there can be no justification for such barbaric and reprehensible acts and terrorism is the biggest menace humanity is facing today. International terrorism can only be defeated by coordinated global efforts, he added.
Following is the text of Vice President’s message:
“I am deeply shocked by the terrorist attack in Barcelona, Spain. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and injured.
There can be no justification for such barbaric and reprehensible acts. Terrorism is the biggest menace humanity is facing today with all pluralist and open societies increasingly encountering new levels of threat.
International terrorism can only be defeated by coordinated global efforts. We stand with the people and Government of Spain and commend their swift action in dealing with the attackers. I join the nation in praying for the bereaved families and early recovery of the injured.”
In exercise of the powers conferred by Section 14 of the Customs Act, 1962 (52 of 1962), and in supersession of the notification of the Central Board of Excise and Customs(CBEC) No.75/2017-CUSTOMS (N.T.), dated 3rd August, 2017, except as respects things done or omitted to be done before such supersession, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) hereby determines that the rate of exchange of conversion of each of the foreign currencies specified in column (2) of each of Schedule I and Schedule II annexed hereto, into Indian currency or vice versa, shall, with effect from 18th August, 2017, be the rate mentioned against it in the corresponding entry in column (3) thereof, for the purpose of the said Section, relating to imported and export goods.
SCHEDULE-I
| Sl.No. | Foreign Currency | Rate of exchange of one unit of foreign currency equivalent to Indian rupees | ||
| (1) | (2) | (3) | ||
| (a) | (b) | |||
| (For Imported Goods) | (For Export Goods) | |||
| 1. | Australian Dollar | 51.30 | 49.50 | |
| 2. | Bahrain Dinar | 176.45 | 164.80 | |
| 3. | Canadian Dollar | 51.20 | 49.55 | |
| 4. | Chinese Yuan | 9.80 | 9.45 | |
| 5. | Danish Kroner | 10.35 | 9.95 | |
| 6. | EURO | 76.70 | 74.10 | |
| 7. | Hong Kong Dollar | 8.35 | 8.10 | |
| 8. | Kuwait Dinar | 220.35 | 205.80 | |
| 9. | New Zealand Dollar | 47.40 | 45.70 | |
| 10. | Norwegian Kroner | 8.25 | 7.95 | |
| 11. | Pound Sterling | 84.20 | 81.35 | |
| 12. | Qatari Riyal | 18.10 | 17.10 | |
| 13. | Saudi Arabian Riyal | 17.70 | 16.60 | |
| 14. | Singapore Dollar | 47.80 | 46.25 | |
| 15. | South African Rand | 5.00 | 4.65 | |
| 16. | Swedish Kroner | 8.10 | 7.80 | |
| 17. | Swiss Franc | 67.30 | 64.90 | |
| 18. | UAE Dirham | 18.10 | 16.95 | |
| 19. | US Dollar | 65.15 | 63.45 | |
SCHEDULE–II
| Sl.No. | Foreign Currency | Rate of exchange of 100 units of foreign currency equivalent to Indian rupees | ||
| (1) | (2) | (3) | ||
| (a) | (b) | |||
| (For Imported Goods) | (For Export Goods) | |||
| 1. | Japanese Yen | 59.10 | 57.10 | |
| 2. | Kenya Shilling | 64.10 | 59.90 | |
Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, launched the “Harit Diwali, Swasth Diwali” campaign, here today. Addressing a gathering of about 800 children from schools of Delhi and NCR, the Minister impressed upon the children the importance of their contribution towards reducing pollution by not bursting harmful fire crackers during Diwali.
Congratulating the teachers and students, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said that it is heartening to see that children have taken on the leadership role in combating air and noise pollution caused by burning of fire crackers during Diwali celebrations. The Minister added that whenever children take up any task, they do not spare any effort in ensuring its success. He urged the children to also learn about the chemicals present in the fire crackers and the impact of these chemicals on various parts of the human body. Dr. Harsh Vardhan impressed upon the children to celebrate this year’s Diwali by not buying fire crackers and instead buy a gift, food items, or sweets for the poor and underprivileged children living in their locality.
Later, Dr. Harsh Vardhan also administered a Pledge for a Green and Healthy Diwali to the gathering of students. The Pledge will be widely circulated to the schools/colleges and other educational institutions and the school administration will be requested to administer the said Pledge during their school assembly up to Diwali. Students presented ‘Nukkad Nataks’ (street plays) and also sang “Prakriti Vandana” on the occasion.
As a part of the campaign, the Environment Ministry will undertake various activities to create awareness among various stakeholders and encourage people to participate in combating air pollution.
Diwali is an integral part of our rich tradition and a festival that embodies joy and happiness. In recent times, the pattern of celebration has changed somewhat and has got associated with excessive bursting of crackers, which contributes significantly to air and noise pollution. As a result, there has been a significant impact on the environment and health of the people.
As has been the experience in the past few years, airborne pollution has been rising above safe limits during winter in many cities. The excessive burning of crackers during Diwali aggravates the problem. The pollution levels in Delhi last year, especially post Diwali, reached such levels that the government had to declare an emergency situation, which had socio-economic consequences like closing down of schools, construction sites and power stations.
In October this year, India will be hosting FIFA U-17 World Cup. It is an important occasion and a matter for pride for India. It is important for us to ensure that there is no inconvenience caused in the conduct of the event and our national image is protected and enhanced.
Some of the activities to promote Green Diwali among school children include stickers/logo distribution, poster competition, advertisement on public transport systems, public appeal using Radio/FM, involving industry associations and other stakeholders. As a part of the social media campaign, an online competition will be conducted, where any individual/organisation can make a video/audio clip on the theme ‘Pollution Free Diwali’. The best of these clips will be used officially to promote the theme across the country.
The Prime Minister today interacted with Young Entrepreneurs at the “Champions of Change” initiative organised by NITI Aayog at Pravasi Bharatiya Kendra.
Six groups of Young Entrepreneurs made presentations before the PM on themes such as – Soft Power: Incredible India 2.0; Education and Skill Development; Health and Nutrition; Energizing a sustainable tomorrow; and Digital India; New India by 2022.
Appreciating the new ideas and innovations envisaged in the presentations made by the entrepreneurs, the Prime Minister said, that in times past, social initiatives had catered to the requirements of people at large, and these movements were spearheaded by eminent people in society.
The Prime Minister described the “Champions of Change” initiative as one effort to bring together diverse strengths for the benefit of the nation and society.
The Prime Minister said this initiative would be taken forward and institutionalised in the best possible way. One possibility could be to associate the groups that made presentations today, with the respective departments and Ministries in the Union Government.
He gave the example of Padma Awards to say how processes can be transformed to recognise hitherto unknown heroes of society.
The Prime Minister said the team of senior officers in Union Government are keen to explore new avenues and ways for the betterment of people. He encouraged the entrepreneurs to continue their ideation in their respective groups. He said that if they did so, they could go a long way in furthering the cause of governance.
The Prime Minister said a lot of small changes have been brought in by the Union Government, which have brought significant results. He said trusting the common man, through self attestation of documents is one such initiative. He also mentioned the abolition of interviews for Group C and D positions in the Union Government.
Shri Narendra Modi said that today there is an “app” for filling every gap. He said technology and innovation should be harnessed to transform governance. He said decentralised structures are important to nurture the rural economy. In this context, he mentioned the role of startups in catalysing transformation.
The Prime Minister emphasized the importance of good teachers in society. He said technology can provide a big boost to the quality of education.
The Prime Minister encouraged the entrepreneurs to work towards promoting the social welfare schemes of the Government among their employees.
He emphasized that New India could only be built through the efforts of crores of ordinary citizens. He invited the entrepreneurs to join in this effort.
Several Union Ministers, Vice Chairman NITI Aayog Shri Arvind Panagariya, and senior Union Government officers were present on the occasion. The event was coordinated by CEO NITI Aayog, Shri Amitabh Kant.
