on 31-Aug-2020 (Mon)

Caffeine: Sleep experts will often tell you to wean yourself off caffeine. However, I beg to disagree. A cup of early morning coffee or tea will likely have a beneficial effect. Its impact on the homeostatic sleep drive will increase your alertness, which on its own has a phase shifting power. Early caffeine will help you advance your phase! You should avoid caffeine in the later parts of the day though. Before sleep you will already be in mild withdrawal, which, theoretically, should boost your homeostatic sleep drive and allow for a slightly earlier bedtime. This way, caffeine may help you achieve phase advances at both ends of your night sleep

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i.e. drink it to get more active, which automatically gives more homeostatic sleepiness and coffeine crash. Triple profit.

India has the second highest number of children who are not vaccinated against measles, the report published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) says. With 2.4 million, Nigeria has the most number of unvaccinated children. The other four countries with the most number of unvaccinated children are Pakistan (1.4 million), Ethiopia (1.3 million), Indonesia (1.2 million) and the Philippines (0.7 million).

The first dose of measles vaccine was introduced as part of the national immunisation programme in the 1990s. Based on the WHO’s recommendation to administer a second dose to prevent infection and death in 90-95% of vaccinated children, India introduced the second dose from 2010 onwards. India was one of the last countries to add a second dose of measles vaccine as recommended by the WHO.

World's oldest artwork uncovered in Indonesian cave: study

At least 40,000 years old

The discovery comes after a painting of an animal in a cave on the Indonesian island of Borneo was earlier determined to have been at least 40,000 years old.

For many years, cave art was thought to have emerged from Europe, but Indonesian paintings have challenged that theory. There are at least 242 caves or shelters with ancient imagery on Sulawesi alone, and new sites are being discovered annually, the team said.

World’s oldest fossil forest uncovered in US

The team harvested water hyacinth leaves, removed the chlorophyll, dried and powdered it. The sieved powder underwent several treatments including heating at 150 degree Celsius to convert it to carbon dots. “When a nanoparticle is less than 10 nanometre we call it a dot or nanodot. Our carbon dots were able to give a green fluorescence under UV light. The extremely small oxygen functional groups on the surface of the dot are responsible for the fluorescence,” explains the first author of the paper Manash Jyoti Deka.

The herbicide pretilachlor is mixed with water and carbon dots, and studied using special equipment. The fluorescence intensity increases in the presence of the herbicide. The team also tested using different pesticides and other compounds having similar chemical structure and found that the carbon dot was extremely sensitive to pretilachlor and could detect even very small quantity of the herbicide. After successful testing in the laboratory conditions, the team collected soil samples from different places across the State and proved the efficiency of the carbon dots in detecting pretilachor in soil samples.

The verification of all the available records proved that the Chebrolu inscription of Satavahana king Vijaya issued in his 5th regnal year – 207 A.D. — is also the earliest datable Sanskrit inscription from South India so far, said Dr. Muniratnam.

So far the Nagarjunakonda inscription of Ikshavaku king Ehavala Chantamula issued in his 11th regnal year corresponding to the 4th century A.D. was considered the earliest Sanskrit inscription in South India, he added.

The place also yielded another inscription which is in Prakrit language and of Brahmi characters and belongs to the 1st century A.D. This is the earliest epigraphic reference to Mutts and records the gift of a cloister mandapa and chaitya to the bhavatho (Lord) of the Gadasa Mutt by a person hailing from Tabaava, according to Dr. Muniratnam.

Saptamatrika cult evidence dates back to 207 A.D. in Satavahana king Vijaya’s era

In a significant find, the Epigraphy Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India has discovered the earliest epigraphic evidence so far for the Saptamatrika cult. It is also the earliest Sanskrit inscription to have been discovered in South India as on date.

Saptamatrikas are a group of seven female deities worshipped in Hinduism as personifying the energy of their respective consorts. The inscription is in Sanskrit and in Brahmi characters and was issued by Satavahana king Vijaya in 207 A.D.

The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan organised food and cash transfers to urban residents of Gujarat and the Deccan as well as to rural migrants who had come into the towns. He set up langars to feed them, in much the same way that some State governments and civil organisations have done during the lockdown. Shah Jahan disbursed money to the poor on Mondays, the day he had acceded to the throne.

Historian André Wink details how, in 1690, the Maratha King Rajaram granted revenue privileges to ryots in order that they hold a “stake in the country”.

In the 18th century, the Peshwas offered abhaypatras or letters explicitly promising security to encourage migrants to return. They exempted ryots from land revenue. In 1752, the Nizam’s army encamped near Pune destroyed crops and scorched homes, pushing villagers to migrate. To induce their return, Peshwa Balaji Bajirao’s abhaypatra promised to forgo revenue collections the next year, increasing it to the full rate by the fourth year.

In the midst of the great famine of 1876-78, Viceroy Lord Lytton organised a grand Imperial Assemblage in Delhi — where Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India

In Odisha, an ancient temple has resurfaced in the Mahanadi river. It is believed to be around 500 years old. The temple got submerged in the river due to floods around 150 years ago.

It was found mid-river near Baideswar in the Padmavati area in Cuttack. The construction type of this temple indicates that it dates back to the late 15th or early 16th century. The region used to be known as ‘Satapatana’ in the past.

The ritual of placing terracotta horses is connected to deaths in the family. “I’ve seen families get a horse or a human statue made and placed by the seaside after the death of a loved one. They believe these departed souls will protect villages from natural disasters,” he says.

Odisha to give facelift to 11th century Lingaraj Temple

Swiss bank Credit Suisse said on August 25 that it plans to close 37 branches in its home country as part of an effort to streamline its business, and said that some job cuts are inevitable.

Major loss in subscriber base was recorded in the mobile telephony segment, with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea losing around 47 lakh mobile customers each in May

Reliance Jio led the broadband market share in the country with 39.37 crore connections, Bharti Airtel 14.59 crore, Vodafone Idea 11.3 crore, BSNL 2.2 crore and Atria Convergence 16.4 lakh subscribers.

India’s steel exports more than doubled between April and July to hit their highest level in at least six years, boosted by Chinese buying.

Who is the largest exporter of steel? China Global crude steel output increases by 3.4% in 2019

Top 10 steel-producing countries
Rank	Country	2019 (Mt)
1	China	996.3
2	India	111.2
3	Japan	99.3

Who is the largest exporter of steel? China Global crude steel output increases by 3.4% in 2019

Top 10 steel-producing countries
Rank	Country	2019 (Mt)
1	China	996.3
2	India	111.2
3	Japan	99.3

What are the main exports from India? Top 10

• Mineral fuels including oil: US$44.1 billion (13.7% of total exports)
• Gems, precious metals: $36.7 billion (11.4%)
• Machinery including computers: $21.2 billion (6.6%)
• Organic chemicals: $18.3 billion (5.7%)
• Vehicles: $17.2 billion (5.3%)
• Pharmaceuticals: $16.1 billion (5%)

Vietnam has been a regular buyer of Indian steel, but China’s emergence as a leading buyer, replacing New Delhi’s traditional markets, such as Italy and Belgium, is more surprising.

Also, according to RBI’s Financial Stability Report, gross NPAs of banks may rise to 12.5 per cent by March 2021 under baseline scenario, from 8.5 per cent in March 2020.

On consumer price index (CPI) inflation staying outside the mandated 2-6 per cent target for some months, Mr. Subbarao said he does not see that as a failure on the part of the MPC.

RBI bars People’s Co-operative Bank from granting fresh loans, accepting deposits for six months

On these grounds, we are going for an appeal to the appellate body at the GST Council with a hope that this order will be reversed

As per a recent Authority for Advance Rulings (Karnataka Bench) notification, parotas will attract 18 per cent GST, even as its siblings rotis, naans, kulchas and khakhras are under 5 per cent bracket.

Antagonists bind to receptors but do not activate them. This results in a receptor blockade, inhibiting the binding of agonists and inverse agonists. Receptor antagonists can be competitive (or reversible), and compete with the agonist for the receptor, or they can be irreversible antagonists that form covalent bonds (or extremely high affinity non-covalent bonds) with the receptor and completely block it. The proton pump inhibitor omeprazole is an example of an irreversible antagonist. The effects of irreversible antagonism can only be reversed by synthesis of new receptors

Note that the idea of receptor agonism and antagonism only refers to the interaction between receptors and ligands and not to their biological effects.

Learned industriousness theory asserts that reinforcing an individual for achieving a performance standard increases the likelihood of that individual's performing those behaviors again. If the individual exerted high levels of effort during the completion of the task, the effort takes on its own reinforcing value. This is because the individual enjoys the sensation of working hard because it is associated with reinforcement. Therefore, this individual is more likely to generalize this high level of effort to other tasks because it is less aversive and is associated with positive results. On the other hand, the theory also claims that if an individual has a history of being reinforced for completing tasks with very low levels of effort, that individual will eventually generalize this low level of effort to other tasks. This facet of the theory is termed "learned laziness."^[2] Evidence for these claims is provided below.

And there is one key difference between IQ and Conscientiousness: increasing IQ is a tricky and often impossible task, but there is weak evidence that Conscientiousness can be improved by trying harder tasks. (There is an irony here—it’s hard tedious work to develop the ability to do hard tedious work, so how does one start?) Interestingly, Conscientiousness increases steadily over a lifetime (in contradistinction to IQ’s steady fall), which is a hopeful observation. I like how Richard Hamming put it in “You and Your Research”:

Extensive research with animals and humans indicates that rewarded effort contributes to durable individual differences in industriousness. It is proposed that reinforcement for increased physical or cognitive performance, or for the toleration of aversive stimulation, conditions rewards value to the sensation of high effort and thereby reduces effort's aversiveness. The conditioning of second- ary reward value to the sensation of effort provides a dynamic mechanism by which reinforced high performance generalizes across behaviors. Applications to self-control, moral development, and education are described