Think Pieces reviewed and written by Lakshmi and Seetha Ram

People in other wealthy countries aren't just entitled to take more vacation. They are able to enjoy their leisure time because they have less to gain, or lose, by putting in a few hours on Saturdays or reading emails in bed. Putting limits on work isn't just a perk. It's a matter of life and death. Less-affluent Americans need to be able to take time off. More-affluent Americans, who tend to focus on the benefits of hard work, should consider the costs, too. Working Less Is a Matter of Life and Death https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/opinion/work-hours-us-health.html?referringSource=articleShare — Best regards Seetha Ram

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2021/05/29/yuan-longping-died-on-may-22nd Yuan Longping died on May 22nd from TheEconomist — Best regards Seetha Ram

an early end to the pandemic could add as much as $8trn (at market exchange rates) to global gdp spread over the next few years, according to the imf https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/05/29/what-will-it-cost-to-end-the-pandemic What will it cost to end the pandemic? from TheEconomist — Best regards Seetha Ram

Around the world, students from poor backgrounds struggle to compete with their richer counterparts. https://www.economist.com/china/2021/05/27/education-in-china-is-becoming-increasingly-unfair-to-the-poor Education in China is becoming increasingly unfair to the poor from TheEconomist — Best regards Seetha Ram

controlling airborne infections can cost society less than it would to bear them https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/05/26/improving-ventilation-will-help-curb-sars-cov-2 Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2 from TheEconomist — Best regards Seetha Ram

Covid-19 has hastened the arrival of hybrid diplomacy, a blend of the physical and digital. Quite what the ideal mix turns out to be has yet to be worked out, but it is something international negotiators and foreign services are starting to think through. https://www.economist.com/international/2021/05/01/diplomacy-has-changed-more-than-most-professions-during-the-pandemic Diplomacy has changed more than most professions during the pandemic from TheEconomist — Best regards Seetha Ram

Ventilation is the forgotten part of the agenda for improved public health. Chadwick's report on sanitation lifted people's expectation that the water coming out of their taps would be clean. Covid-19 should lead policymakers to ensure, belatedly, that the same is true for the air in people's buildings. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/05/29/it-is-time-to-clean-up-the-air-in-buildings It is time to clean up the air in buildings from TheEconomist — Best regards Seetha Ram

1842 edwin chadwick, a British social reformer, published his "Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population". By documenting evidence of social and geographic inequalities in health, Chadwick showed that poor sanitation was associated with poor health. The report eventually led British cities to organise clean water supplies and to centralise their sewage systems, in turn reducing the prevalence of infectious diseases, in particular cholera. Similar reforms around the world in the 20th century tackled food safety and outdoor-air pollution. Now a new public-health priority is becoming apparent: making indoor air cleaner. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/05/29/it-is-time-to-clean-up-the-air-in-buildings It is time to clean up the air in buildings from TheEconomist — Best regards Seetha Ram

Very well written. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/viruses-can-cause-great-harm-but-we-could-not-live-without-them-feature

https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/18/how-ashish-jha-became-network-tvs-everyman-expert-on-covid/ — Best regards Seetha Ram

https://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=8807 scientists have discovered that plants can actually talk to each other. This short animated film, commissioned by BBC World Service, explores what has been nicknamed "The Wood Wide Web" - the intricate fungal network connecting plants across entire forests. "Trees are "social creatures" that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for humans, too." ~ Ecologist Suzanne Simard.

people generally perceive their voice as deeper and richer when they speak. The recorded voice, in comparison, can sound thinner and higher pitched, which many find cringeworthy. https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/why-do-we-hate-the-sound-of-our-own-voices?  

Sun and Son both give shadows! — Best regards Seetha Ram On May 15, 2021, at 8:32, KESLS RAM <no-reply@blogger.com> wrote:  In the dark night of the soul, when you lose your own reflection, when aching emptiness becomes unbearable loneliness, just sit tight and wait for the dawn. The sun will rise again and the shadows of joys will enthrall you one more time. Bear in mind though, shadows are just that — shadows. https://os.me/the-feeling-of-emptiness/ — Best regards Seetha Ram -- Posted By KESLS RAM to Think Pieces reviewed and written by Lakshmi and Seetha Ram at 5/15/2021 08:32:00 AM Unsubscribe from new post emails for this blog.

In the dark night of the soul, when you lose your own reflection, when aching emptiness becomes unbearable loneliness, just sit tight and wait for the dawn. The sun will rise again and the shadows of joys will enthrall you one more time. Bear in mind though, shadows are just that — shadows. https://os.me/the-feeling-of-emptiness/ — Best regards Seetha Ram

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/indias-crisis-shows-how-oxygen-is-a-vital-medicine-not-everyone-can-access — Best regards Seetha Ram

Vaccines experts are particularly curious to see CureVac's results, because its shot has an important advantage over the other RNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. While those two vaccines have to be kept in a deep freezer, CureVac's vaccine stays stable in a refrigerator — meaning it could more easily deliver the newly discovered power of RNA vaccines to hard-hit parts of the world. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/health/covid-vaccine-curevac.html — Best regards Seetha Ram

Knitting roads creates fewer emissions. And the stones and string are easily recyclable, says Dr Arraigada. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/05/08/knitting-a-road-with-stones-and-string — Best regards Seetha Ram

The geographically disruptive potential of information technology has long been apparent. In a book published in 1997 Frances Cairncross, formerly of this newspaper, imagined that it might yield a "death of distance". https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/05/06/a-new-age-of-suburbanisation-could-be-dawning — Best regards Seetha Ram

When savers deposit money in a bank, they postpone consumption. When borrowers take out loans they pull future consumption forward. Banks facilitate this by the magic of interest. When they make loans and charge interest, or pay interest on deposits, they are really putting a price on time itself. But when interest rates are zero, or even negative, this trick becomes much harder to pull off. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2021/05/06/when-interest-rates-turn-negative — Best regards Seetha Ram

What do you think? Because technology has disrupted so many industries, its impact on banking may seem like one more example of a stodgy, uncompetitive business made obsolete by slick tech firms. But money and banking aren't like taxis or newspapers. They make up the interface between the state and the economy. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2021/05/08/a-future-with-fewer-banks — Best regards Seetha Ram

One consequence of the internet is that "value has shifted away from companies that control the distribution of scarce resources to those that control demand for abundant ones," writes Ben Thompson, author of the tech newsletter, Stratechery, who calls such firms "aggregators". https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/05/08/the-new-rules-of-the-creator-economy — Best regards Seetha Ram

https://draravindan.wordpress.com/about/ — Best Regards Seetha Ram

http://www.civil.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FSO-UPDATE-08_3_ 最終.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2373372/ — Best regards Seetha Ram

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/news/article/how-to-become-saint-catholic-church-proof-of-miracles — Best regards Seetha Ram

Why the Meaning of 'Infrastructure' Matters So Much https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/opinion/infrastructure-definition-history.html?referringSource=articleShare Infrastructure makes other things possible. It is the stuff we take for granted, that we notice only when it breaks down. The infrastructure of driving is roads and bridges and gasoline pipelines. The infrastructure of the digital economy is glass cables and silicon chips and millions of lines of code. — Best regards Seetha Ram

Interesting. "You're ba­si­cally feel­ing more re­ward when you shop with credit cards. We don't see that with cash. It was ac­tu­ally a very stark dif­fer­ence." How Credit Cards Affect Our Brains—and Our Spending — Best regards Seetha Ram

https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/05/01/testing-sewage-for-covid-19 Given how long the power of sewage has been understood, it feels surprising that this rich data-stream was, until recently, merely being flushed down the toilet. Partly the problem was size. — Best regards Seetha Ram