WMC America Region announces Student Engagement Program (SEP).

World Malayalee Council (WNC),  the largest and oldest Kerala diaspora fraternity institution announced the initiative formulated to engage school going children in Middle and High schools through volunteering & leadership activities by focusing academically and socially, Thomas Philip, AR Chair; Sudhir Nambiar, AR President; Pinto Kannampally, AR General Secretary; and Cecil Cherian, Treasurer, jointly announced here last week.

The initiative intends to assist expat Malayalee children connect and fasten their heritage roots enabling successful adaptation to their homeland on  academics, civic, social and cultural ends. With the resourceful assistance of mentors who have proven excellence in their own respective professional and personal careers, WMC envisions to have an organized, structured reachout enabling the younger generation, the access of vetted and validated resource people-pool and programs. Felicitating professional advancements through volunteering opportunity is the integral part of this program.

This initiative aims at delivering individual as well group attention and guidance to enrollees in overall academic merit and professional success. Further the opportunity to volunteer and to the access of resources, the SEP participants shall be advantaged with the global exchange opportunities of the Malayalee fraternity – one of the most successful diaspora, internationally. Nambiar, American Region President, said.

WMC is the only Indian diaspora institution partnered and endorsed by the US Census Bureau. Having been approved as the credentialing partner for The US President’s Volunteer Certifying program, SEP enrollees will get increased, exclusive opportunities to reputed external organizations, proudly highlighted Mr. Pinto Kannampally, General Secretary of the Region.

The following are the key specs of the WMC SEP program:

  1. Opportunity to obtain validated academic advisement, mentors and professional opportunities.
  2. Automatically become a Volunteer of WMC SEP with Student’s wing activities and earn legible volunteer hours.
  3. US President’s Volunteer Service Awards is readily available to certify your credentials from WMC & other organizations.
    4. Network with meritorious Malayalee fellow students across America – An opportunity to exchange Views, Ideas, Tips – uplifting each other.
  4. Secured & validated opportunities to build quality friendships and a chance to know people before you meet them on campuses across the Nation!
  5. Become a Student leader in WMC Student’s wing.

WMC Global Chairman Dr. PA Ibrahim Haji, and President Gopala Pillai, extended congratulatory notes to the American Regional leadership in conceiving such a far reaching & futuristic initiative that has the potential to touch so many young lives affirmatively. Global V.P Org. Dev. Mr. P.C. Mathew stated his hopes that youngsters as well parents shall come forward recognizing the extra-mile travelled by the AR team to enable educative & volunteering opportunities to our diaspora families in the USA.

Instituted in the year 1995, by Late Dr. T. N. Seshan, – the iconic CEC of India, as WMC founding Chairman WMC is envisioned and committed to universal brotherhood of professional Malayalees. For more information please  visit www.WMCAmerica.org/SEP

India’s Village Teacher Wins $1 Million Prize For World’s Most ‘Exceptional’ Educator

In 2010, Indian teacher Ranjitsinh Disale heard that one of his teenage female students was going to marry a man in his 30s.

“I directly went to the girl’s house and told her father, ‘You cannot do this,’ ” says Disale, 32, who currently teaches third- and fourth-graders at a government school in Paritewadi, a small village in western India.

When the father didn’t agree, Disale called the police because child marriage is illegal in India. Together they counseled the father. Finally, he called off the wedding.

It’s actions like this that helped earn Disale the title of the world’s most “exceptional teacher.”

In December, Disale won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize, an annual award sponsored by the Varkey Foundation, a U.K.-based nonprofit working to improve access to education for underprivileged children, and by UNESCO, the U.N. agency for education, science and culture. He was one of more than 12,000 teachers from over 140 countries nominated for the prize.

The organizations praise Disale for going above and beyond his job description. Over the years, he has learned a new language, invented ways to help students learn with technology and even endured attacks — all to ensure his students, especially girls, can keep learning.

“[Disale has] transformed the life chances of young girls,” the Varkey Foundation said in a statement. “The impact of [his] interventions has been extraordinary: There are now no teenage marriages in the village and 100% attendance by girls at the school.”

Disale was declared the winner at a virtual ceremony broadcast from London. When British actor and comedian Stephen Fry announced his name, Disale, at home in India, screamed in excitement and hugged his overjoyed parents seated on either side of him. Congratulatory messages poured in from politicians including former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan and even the Dalai Lama.

His students rejoiced, too.

“They were dancing in celebration and they kept saying, ‘Sir, we are proud of you,’ ” says Disale. “That’s the biggest moment for a teacher, I can’t express that feeling in words.”

Disale hadn’t always planned to be a teacher. He was studying to be an engineer but dropped out because of bullying by his peers. He enrolled in a teacher training course on his father’s suggestion and was posted to Paritewadi in 2009 for his first assignment.

His classroom was overrun by cows and buffaloes. A farmer had turned it into a cattle shed and refused to leave.

“I had to register a police complaint,” says Disale. “[The farmer] would shout at me and throw stones at my bike.”

Even bigger challenges lay ahead.

Most of Disale’s students come from low-income families who depend on farming. Many belong to tribal communities where early marriage is common.

“They feel that girls are just made for [marrying],” says Disale.

Disale also says many parents thought school was a waste of money for their kids because they see even educated people struggling to get jobs.

“They felt the better option is to take the children to the farm [to work] so that they get some experience,” says Disale.

So Disale set out to change their mindset. When his students didn’t show up to class, Disale says he would go to the fields to talk to their parents. He learned their native language Kannada to gain their trust and translated the curriculum from Marathi, a language some students did not speak, into Kannada.

To further boost student attendance, around 2010, he introduced technology in the classroom.

He bought a new laptop with money from his dad and would show movies and play songs for his young students. “When they went back home, they would start talking about it with their friends who would then get interested in coming to school,” says Disale.

Once he had his students’ attention, he would play educational videos and songs that covered topics in their curriculum.

But some parents were still not sending their kids, particularly girls, to school, he says.

So Disale came up with a way to get the school curriculum to the girls.

He started making digital versions of his lesson plans. He created PowerPoint presentations, translated educational videos from YouTube and made videos of his classroom lectures. He called parents with female students at home to drop by the school on the weekends so he could transfer the digital files from his laptop to their mobile devices. His elementary school students, many of whom are mobile savvy, could then use their parents’ devices to keep up with what Disale was teaching in class — and Internet connectivity, he says, is good in the village.

There was one problem. The files were sometimes not supported by the mobile devices or would get corrupted during the transfer. So in 2014, Disale devised a workaround: He would make the videos, links, audio files and homework available to download over the Internet using QR codes, or quick response codes. He would print stickers with the QR codes and distribute them among his students.

The students were particularly interested in videos of Disale teaching lessons that they had trouble understanding, says Disale. It was used not just by kids at home, but also by kids coming to school, too. If they had a doubt or question about what they learned in class, they could revisit Disale’s recorded lectures.

“It was like a miracle,” says Disale, adding that the academic performance of his students, especially girls, improved drastically.

For this reason, he proposed the idea of QR-coded textbooks to the government in Maharashtra, the state where Paritewadi is located. And in 2017, the government announced it would introduce textbooks with QR codes in the entire state. The codes link to supplementary teaching materials, such as explanatory videos, for students who need a bit more help in grasping concepts in the book.

As for Disale, the QR codes in the textbooks proved to be a blessing when schools closed during the coronavirus lockdown. His students were able to continue doing their work from home on mobile phones and switch to virtual learning easily.

“The lockdown has taught us that we cannot rely on traditional ways of teaching,” says Disale. “Technology should be an integral part of teaching.”

What differentiates Disale from other teachers is that he did not depend on the system but paved his own way to fulfill his role as a teacher, says Francis Joseph, co-founder of an education nonprofit called School Leaders Network. He has known Disale for several years.

Government schoolteachers in India often lack motivation, says Joseph, because they get paid whether students learn or not. No one questions them. Teacher truancy is also common. According to a 2016 World Bank report, nearly 24% of teachers in some 1,300 Indian villages surveyed were absent during unannounced visits.

“You just need some champions [like Disale] to lead a revolution in increasing the motivation and interest among other teachers,” says Joseph.

Disale says he’s now working on a project to promote world peace by connecting tens of thousands of students from conflict zones around the world. The Let’s Cross the Borders project is a six-week program in which students are matched with a “peace buddy” from another country via Skype. Students interact with their buddies, prepare presentations and listen to guest speakers together to understand their similarities.

When he was named the winner, Disale announced that he would share half of his $1 million prize with the other nine finalists who come from different parts of the world including Italy, Vietnam, Brazil and Nigeria. He says he will use his share of the prize to build a network of like-minded teachers in India who are passionate about innovation in learning.

“I want to see many Ranjitsinh Disales from India,” he says.

The Impact of the U.S. Re-engaging with the World Health Organization

Newswise — The United States will begin participating in an international collaboration to distribute COVID-19 vaccines more equitably around the world after President Joe Biden reversed the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization on his first day in office.

Richard Marlink, the director of Rutgers Global Health Institute, discusses the impact COVAX, the global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines, will have on ending the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthening global health.

What is the significance of the U.S. move to reverse its withdrawal from the World Health Organization?

Part of it is symbolic. It was one of the very first acts of Biden’s presidency, and that sends an important message that the U.S. is prioritizing global health and a multilateral approach.

But in practical terms, the U.S. contributes significant funding and leadership resources to the World Health Organization. Historically, the U.S. has been the WHO’s largest donor. We are in the worst pandemic the world has seen in 100 years, and we will need all the world’s strongest resources to pull ourselves out of it.

One very concrete example is that the U.S. has finally agreed to participate in COVAX, which is co-led by the WHO. This commitment by the U.S. will strengthen efforts to distribute vaccines in countries that otherwise have no or very limited access.

COVID-19 has killed more people in the U.S. than in any other country, and most U.S. citizens are not yet vaccinated. Why is it a good thing to divert attention and resources to other countries?

There are two very good reasons to do this: one altruistic and the other selfish. First of all, it’s the right thing to do. All lives are valuable; someone who was fortunate enough to be born in a wealthy country should not have better access to health and quality health care than one who was not.

Second, the lack of a global vaccine strategy actually lengthens the pandemic. It is not possible to eradicate a virus this infectious in just one country. SARS-CoV-2 and its variants have demonstrated that they are fast, efficient travelers. As long as this virus continues infecting people, it will continue mutating, creating the more infectious variants. That puts all of us at risk. We won’t be protected until all countries are protected.

Given the criticisms the World Health Organization has faced for its response to the pandemic, is staying involved ultimately going to benefit the U.S.?

U.S. participation makes the World Health Organization stronger and gives us a seat at the table in creating important solutions, now and for the future. What improvements can we make to our pandemic alert system? How do we prepare for the next pandemic? How do we build resilience?

With the rate of global travel and instant worldwide communication we have today, unilateralism is not only ill-advised; it’s impossible. We’re all breathing the same air, so to speak. And infectious diseases are just one example of how global health issues affect us all.

What other issues are most in need of worldwide solutions?

Well, first, the impact of this pandemic will go far beyond the more than the 100 million people infected. By the time it’s over, how many businesses will have closed? How many more people will be food insecure or suffering mental health impacts? How many children will have suffered education losses because virtual education wasn’t a viable option for them, and how many will have dropped out? These are far-reaching problems with long-term effects on health in every country.

Second, there are the issues that existed long before the pandemic, and have even grown worse during the pandemic. Disparities in access to health care, or to the conditions necessary for good health, are limiting entire communities — and many countries — from realizing their potential. These disparities have economic and social costs, not to mention the fact that it is heartbreaking to know that there are places in the world where people are dying of completely curable and preventable conditions.

The U.S. can and should be a leader in solving these problems. The best way to do that is to work with the primary organization that’s set up to address human health across all borders, worldwide. Most health problems know no borders. We are all in this together.

New CDC Director Outlines 6 Big Fixes Needed To Crush COVID-19

As newly appointed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, steps into her new role leading the agency, the to-do list is long. Stay on top of breaking news, discover great discussions and never miss an update with our new and improved channels and tools.

Help get a pandemic under control. Create an equitable health system. Bolster public health infrastructure. Improve communication and combat misinformation circulating on social media and elsewhere. Build relationships with people at the state, community and tribal levels. Boost internal morale for scientists at the agency. Assess the collateral damage of the past year, including falling behind on childhood immunizations. And more.

Dr. Walensky, who heads to the CDC after serving as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and practicing as an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is ready for the challenge.

“I’m calling it my midcareer residency. I’m going to dive in. I got called during a code and when you get called during a code, your job is to be there to help,” Dr. Walensky told viewers during a JAMA Network™ livestreamed interview on the eve of her officially taking over as the CDC’s new director.

Combating COVID-19

On her first day on the job, Dr. Walensky announced that as a protective public health measure, she will extend the order that temporarily halts residential eviction until at least March 31. She said in a statement that the pandemic is a historic threat to the nation’s health and that it has “triggered a housing affordability crisis that disproportionately affects some communities.” Learn more with the AMA about why eviction moratorium key weapon in the pandemic fight.

In the livestreamed interview led by Howard Bauchner, MD, editor-in-chief of JAMA and senior vice president of AMA scientific publications and multimedia applications, Dr. Walensky talked about key areas that need improvement to help crush the pandemic and secure longer-lasting public health gains.

Vaccines. President Joe Biden is aiming to have the nation reach 100 million doses administered within his first 100 days in office, a goal she believes is attainable. Dr. Walensky said more thought should be devoted to vaccine eligibility to hit the sweet spot between supply on the shelf and the number of people eligible.

Vaccinators. Dr. Walensky said the U.S. must ensure there are enough people who can administer vaccinations, which means looking broadly for help from medical military, Public Health Service Commissioned Corps members, medical students and nursing students, dentists, veterinarians and more.

Vaccination sites. A four-pronged approach to reach people is being worked on: Community vaccination centers, such as stadiums and gymnasiums; mobile units to do the outreach to communities that otherwise wouldn’t be reached; federally qualified health centers; and a pharmacy program.

Collaboration. The federal government needs to work with the states, offering support and resources available from the national level to help get vaccines distributed. Dr. Walensky said the role of the federal government will be to step in and ask each state “What is the help you need?”

Public health investment. The pandemic has laid bare the nation’s frail public health infrastructure. “We need to fix that public health infrastructure and we need resources to do it,” Dr. Walensky said. “One of my challenges is to make sure Congress knows and understands that we are in this because we had warning for many, many other public health scares over the last 20 years and we didn’t fix our public health infrastructure and our data infrastructure.”

Agency morale. Internally, Dr. Walensky said she needs to figure out how to make sure the CDC’s many talented scientists—who fortunately have not left in a mass exodus—understand and feel the value that should be given to them.

“They’ve been diminished. I think they’ve been muzzled. Science hasn’t been heard. This top-tier agency, world renowned, hasn’t really been appreciated over the past four years … I have to fix that,” she said. “I need to make sure that those voices get heard again—that I’m leading with trust.”

Public communication. Lastly, the CDC must better communicate with the American people: “I want to be able to convey in layman’s terms what the science shows, when guidelines change. … And not just me, but subject-matter experts who can convey that.” Subscribe to the “Conversations with Dr. Bauchner” podcast. Each week, he interviews leading researchers and thinkers in health care about their recent JAMA articles.

The AMA has created a COVID-19 vaccine resource center that features an array of information relevant to physicians about the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. The AMA also partnered with the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration to provide a series of educational webinars that help explain the process of vaccine development and offer a deeper dive into the data to understand safety and efficacy results. These webinars are also available on the AMA COVID-19 vaccine resource center.

(Picture: AP News)

Five Indian Colleges In Top 100, ISB Offers Best Course In Country

Globally, Insead based in France and Singapore is ranked as the top B-school followed by London Business School, and the University of Chicago: Booth. Even as European colleges have got the top places, it’s the US-based institutes which have continued to retain their dominance over the ranking index.

FT Global MBA ranking 2021: The Indian School of Business (ISB) is ranked as the best institute in India by the Financial Times’ Global MBA rankings which lists the top 100 MBA courses offered across the world. ISB has taken the 23rd spot across the globe. A total of five institutes from India have been ranked among the best 100 MBA colleges in the world. Apart from ISB, the rest of the representations from India are from the IIMs.

Globally, Insead — based in France and Singapore — is ranked as the top B-school followed by London Business School, and the University of Chicago: Booth. Even as European colleges have got the top places, it’s the US-based institutes which have continued to retain their dominance over the ranking index. A total of 9 out of the top 20 institutes are from the US.

Here’s the list of top B-schools in India –

Rank 23: Indian School of Business
Rank 35: IIM Bangalore
Rank 44: IIM Calcutta
Rank 48: IIM Ahmedabad
Rank 94: IIM Indore

Top 10 in the world –

Rank 1: Insead
Rank 2: London Business School
Rank 3: University of Chicago: Booth
Rank 4: Iese Business School
Rank 5: Yale School of Management
Rank 6: Northwestern University: Kellogg
Rank 7: Ceibs
Rank 8: HEC Paris
Rank 9: Duke University: Fuqua
Rank 10: Dartmouth College: Tuck

The ranking is calculated based on the salaries drawn by the alumni three years after graduation, quality of research, value for money, among others. This year, Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton have suspended participation.

(Picture: Indian Express)

Biden Administration Withdraws Yale Admissions Lawsuit Alleging Discrimination Against Asian Americans

In another reversal of Trump-era policy, the Biden administration Feb. 3 dropped its discrimination lawsuit against Yale University that alleged the Ivy League school was illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants. Federal prosecutors said the Justice Department’s underlying investigation, aimed at ensuring Yale complies with federal anti-discrimination laws, continues.

The government accused Yale in October of violating civil rights laws because it “discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process, and that race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year.” The investigation stemmed from a 2016 complaint by the New Jersey-based Asian American Coalition for Education coalition against Yale, Brown and Dartmouth. Yale said its practices comply with decades of Supreme Court precedent and that it looks at “the whole person” when deciding which applicants to admit.

“We were part of the Asian American Coalition for Education in Harvard Case and the Indian Americans students would like to see equal opportunity with students of other races, period,” said Dr. Thomas Abraham Chairman of the Global organization of People of Indian Origin.  “We have no problem, if African and Hispanic students are given due considerations to increase their admission rate, however, in the open competition, all races should be treated equally,” Dr. Abraham added.

A department spokesperson said in a statement that it was dropping the suit “in light of all available facts, circumstances, and legal developments” but didn’t specify further. The government also notified Yale that it had withdrawn its determination letter that the university discriminated based on race and national origin. Yale was gratified and pleased by those two developments, spokesperson Karen Peart said.

But Swan Lee, a co-founder of the group behind the complaint, called it “a racist decision because it preserves discrimination in education. It’s a setback in our fight against racial discrimination against Asian Americans in education.”

The change in administrations brought an end to the suit, but the challenge to college admissions policies that take race into account is alive in a case against Harvard’s practices. The challengers have lost at each round in the lower courts, but their appeal is expected in the coming weeks at the Supreme Court, where a conservative majority may well be more receptive.

“The challenge to race-based affirmative action in higher education will continue regardless of any change in the Department of Justice,” said Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, which filed the lawsuit against Harvard. The department, under President Donald Trump, had backed the challenge in the lower courts.

The Yale investigation also found that the university used race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process and that Yale “racially balances its classes.”

The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity and should be limited in time. Schools also bear the burden of showing why their consideration of race is appropriate.

“I am totally shocked by the Biden DOJ’s hasty decision to drop the Yale lawsuit, only eight days after President Biden signed an executive order claiming to combat anti-Asian discrimination,” said Yukong Zhao, the president of the Asian American Coalition for Education.

But the decision was lauded by other civil rights groups, including one run by the Biden administration’s incoming assistant attorney general for civil rights.

“It has been proven in the courts that race-conscious admissions programs are lawful, and Black students and other students of color who come from all walks of life can rest a little easier knowing our government is looking to lift them up, not divide and suppress,” said David Hinojosa, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The group’s president, Kristen Clarke, is Biden’s nominee to run the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Biden’s Justice Department is working to undo Trump policies, including “zero tolerance,” the immigration policy that was responsible for family separations. Also on Feb. 3, the Supreme Court agreed to requests from the Biden administration to put off arguments in two challenges to Trump-era policies involving the U.S.-Mexico border wall and asylum-seekers as Biden works to change the policies that had been challenged in court.

(Associated Press writers Mark Sherman, Collin Binkley in Boston, and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.)

8-Year-Old Indian Boy In Johns Hopkins ‘Brightest Students In The World’ List

Advay Misra, 8, an Indian student in New York, has been named among 1,400 of the “brightest students in the world” by the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) in Baltimore which counts among its alumni the founders of Facebook and Google, Rhodes Scholars and MacArthur Fellows.

Hopkins said Misra, a student at PS 59 Beekman Hill International Elementary School, was honoured for “exceptional performance on the SAT, ACT, or similar assessment” taken by 15,000 students in grades two through eight as part of CTY’s Talent Search program. Test scores are based on above-grade level testing.

“It was a little hard…um, the verbal part but the mathematics part wasn’t as hard,” Misra told IANS, over phone. Misra said he took “some practice tests to get familiar” with the Johns Hopkins test but “didn’t have to do a lot of preparation.”

Misra credits his “mom!” for his academic smarts. The 8-year-old cheerfully rattled off his bucket list of favourite geek outs: “Reading, Python programming and Khan Academy videos.”

When contacted by IANS, Hopkins did not confirm how many Indians or Indian Americans took the test but said “several” students were living in India during the testing period.

More than 15,000 students from the US, Europe and 70 other countries in grades two through eight tested through CTY’s Talent Search over 12 months ending June 2020. Nearly 1,400 students finished in the top 9 per cent, like Advay Misra. Five test takers got a perfect score on the reading or math section. More than 160 testers under age 13 scored 700 or higher on the math or verbal section of the SAT.

“This is especially commendable in a year that has been difficult for students everywhere. The global pandemic has affected nearly every part of your lives, from daily school routines to the special celebrations you look forward to all year. Nonetheless, you have demonstrated outstanding academic potential, and we hope you and your family will take the time to celebrate it together,” said Dr. Virginia Roach, CTY’s Executive Director, in a prepared statement that IANS has reviewed.

According to the Hopkins CTY site, the center’s origin story goes back to the late 70s when a seventh grade boy from Baltimore had exhausted all options for math courses he could take at school by the time he was thirteen and a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins then designed above grade level courses that could challenge gifted students around the world. (IANS)

(Picture: EWOKE TV)

Applications Surge After Big-Name Colleges Halt SAT And ACT Testing Rules

The University of Virginia drew a record 48,000 applications for the next class in Charlottesville – about 15 percent more than the year before.
Freshman applications to the University of California at Berkeley crossed into six figures for the first time, totaling more than 112,000, up 28 percent. Harvard University’s total spiked to an all-time high of 57,000. That’s up 42 percent.
The sudden explosion in demand for these and other big-name schools is another ripple effect of the coronavirus pandemic that could reshape college admissions for many years to come. The pandemic has given huge – and in some places, decisive – momentum to a movement to reduce or even eliminate the use of admissions testing at highly competitive colleges and universities. That, in turn, has lured more applicants to the upper tier of the market. U-Va. and Harvard were among a large bloc of schools that temporarily suspended their requirements for SAT or ACT scores because the public health emergency prevented many college-bound students from taking the exams. Students could choose whether to send scores to these schools under a policy known as “test-optional.”
On Friday, U-Va. President James Ryan said the public university will extend its test-optional policy for another two years, covering students who are now sophomores and juniors in high school.
“We believe this is a reasonable and humane response to one pressure that our prospective students are facing as a result of COVID-19,” Ryan said in a statement. “We want students to focus on things they can control: doing their best in school; cultivating their curiosity; contributing to their families, schools, and communities. In a moment where so many things are uncertain, we hope this decision makes the admissions process more accessible and equitable for students who are considering the University of Virginia.”
Harvard said Friday it will be test-optional for one more year – covering those who are now high school juniors – and reiterated that those who do not submit scores “will not be disadvantaged in the application process.”
UC-Berkeley has taken a more radical step. It removed the SAT and ACT from admission decisions, a policy known as “test-free” or “test-blind.” A state court last fall ordered the UC system to apply that policy across all its campuses for this year’s applicants. The system’s approach to admission testing for coming years is still in some flux, but the UC governing board voted last spring to phase out the SAT and ACT.
The College Board, which owns the SAT, said it supports “flexibility in admissions during the pandemic.” The rival ACT takes much the same position.
“I think a lot of schools are going to stay test-optional,” said ACT chief executive Janet Godwin. But she said research shows that “higher ed still does see value in scores for a whole bunch of reasons.”
Testing, she said, helps colleges connect with potential applicants and vice versa. She said she worries that many students might miss out on opportunities if they don’t take an admission test. Access and equity, she said, are “the driving force behind everything we do.” About a quarter million students are registered for the ACT’s next test date on Feb. 6.
Overall, the strength of the student pipeline into higher education during the pandemic appears uneven.
The Common Application, an online portal for hundreds of colleges and universities, reports that about 1 million students applied this year ahead of January deadlines. Application totals fell modestly at public universities with fewer than 10,000 undergraduates and at small private colleges that tend to admit most applicants.
There was also a 2 percent dip in applicants with enough financial need to receive fee waivers, and a 3 percent drop in those who would be among the first in their families to go to college. Jenny Rickard, president and chief executive of the Common App, said she was “very concerned” about those declines.
But the Common App found a surge of applications to schools with national and global reputations. At large public universities, including state flagships, totals rose more than 11 percent. At private schools with more selective admissions, they rose more than 17 percent.
Shifts in admissions testing policy, experts say, played a key role.
“This barrier, i.e. standardized testing, was taken down, and maybe some students put their hats in the ring who otherwise wouldn’t have,” said Eric Furda, who recently stepped down after 12 years as dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania.
Test-optional policies have helped hundreds of thousands of students this year who struggled to find a time and a place to take the SAT or ACT. But advocates say they also are helping students realize that their courses and grades in high school are what matter most.
Stephanie Sylla, 17, a high school senior from Woodbridge, Va., spent months last year preparing to take the SAT in August. Sylla said she went “hard core” starting in June, practicing as much as two hours a day, reading test-preparation books, getting the feel of the three-hour exam. She wanted a score to align with her credentials as a student with a strong grade-point average, a transcript full of challenging classes and time spent on extracurricular activities such as debate and varsity volleyball. A daughter of immigrants from the West African nation of Guinea, Sylla said college is vital to her and her family. Shortly before the test date, she got an email saying her SAT session had been canceled because of the pandemic.
She tried to register for a September session but found nothing available. It sunk in for her that she could forgo testing. Initially skeptical of test-optional policies, she had learned more about the issue from a U-Va. admissions officer who assured Sylla and other classmates that applications would be judged, regardless of whether they submitted a score, on the strength of their entire academic record and other accomplishments and life experiences.
So Sylla has applied, without scores, to U-Va. and a range of other competitive schools. The test-optional policy, she said, “really changed my perspective on how I look at my achievements.” What she has done in and out of school is enough, she said, to give a picture of her college potential. “It’s really helped build confidence in what I’ve been able to do.”
Some schools, such as Bowdoin College in Maine, have been test-optional for decades, while others joined the movement more recently, including the University of Chicago in 2018. But the pandemic has accelerated the trend. Many universities launched multiyear experiments with test-optional policies last year or ended testing requirements permanently.
Several ultra-selective schools that had announced one-year pauses in testing requirements are extending those measures. Williams and Amherst colleges, prominent liberal arts schools, will be test-optional for those applying to enter in 2022 and 2023. Columbia and Cornell universities, like Harvard, have suspended testing requirements for the 2022 cycle, and others in the Ivy League appear likely to follow suit.
“All of the challenges that we saw last year still remain,” said Logan Powell, dean of admission at Brown University. Powell said Brown’s applications under the test-optional process are up 26 percent, with gains across demographic groups including first-generation students.
Cornell said it received 17,000 more applications than the year before. That was a major increase, although 2020 figures were not immediately available for comparison. Jonathan Burdick, the vice provost for enrollment, said applications rose from first-generation, low-income, rural, Black and Hispanic groups. Some of Cornell’s programs, in business, agriculture and architecture, are experimenting with test-blind admission.
“We’re accumulating great information about how students respond and how to conduct whole-person reviews with either far fewer or no SAT/ACT scores,” Burdick wrote in an email. “We expect to put this new knowledge to use as we consider how to continue reducing admission barriers while maintaining highly selective standards over the next couple of years.”
This month, Pennsylvania State University added two years to its test-optional policy. What was once a pandemic-driven emergency measure has become, effectively, a longer-term experiment for the public university. Applications to the Penn State flagship campus are way up, said Robert Springall, executive director of undergraduate admissions. More than half of the 78,000 applicants did not submit scores.
“We wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to really think and assess how the first test-optional cohort does,” Springall said. Two more years, he said, “gives us the opportunity to really do a fair assessment.”
Maryland higher education officials will soon weigh testing policies for coming years. The University of Maryland at College Park reports that applications in this test-optional year surpassed 41,000, up more than 25 percent. Just over half did not send SAT or ACT scores. “We are seeing increases across the spectrum in diverse applicants,” said James Massey, U-Md.’ s director of undergraduate admissions. “We’re happy to have a deeper pool, obviously, as most institutions would be.”
(Picture: Times Herald)

College Campuses Are COVID-19 Super-spreaders

Newswise — College campuses are at risk of becoming COVID-19 superspreaders for their entire county, according to a new vast study which shows the striking danger of the first two weeks of school in particular.

Looking at 30 campuses across the nation with the highest amount of reported cases, experts saw that over half of the institutions had spikes – at their peak – which were well above 1,000 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people per week within the first two weeks of class.

In some colleges, one in five students had been infected with the virus by the end of the fall term. Four institutions had over 5,000 cases.

In 17 of the campuses monitored, a new computer model developed by scientists at Stanford University shows outbreaks translated directly into peaks of infection within their home counties.

Out today, the team’s research – published in the peer-reviewed journal Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering – crucially shows, however, that tight outbreak management, for example the immediate transition from in person to all online learning, can reduce the peaks within about two weeks.

Lead author Hannah Lu, from Stanford’s Energy Resources Engineering program, says the incidence levels of 1,000 cases per 100,000 people per week – when compared to the first and second waves of the pandemic with peak incidences of 70 to 150 – means colleges are at real risk of developing an extreme incidence of COVID-19.

“Policy makers often use an incidence of 50 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people per week as a threshold for high risk counties, states, or countries. All 30 institutions in our study exceeded this value, three even by two orders of that magnitude,” she states.

“The number of students who had become infected just throughout the fall is more than twice of the national average since the beginning of the outbreak of 5.3%, with 17.3 million reported cases at a population of 328.2 million.

“At the University of Notre Dame, for instance, all 12,607 students were tested before the beginning of class and only nine had tested positive. Less than two weeks into the term, the seven-day incidence was 3083, with a reproduction number R0 of 3.29.

“However,” she adds, “with around 90 reported deaths nationwide, mainly college employees and not students, the campus-related death rate of 0.02% remains well below the average death rate of COVID-19.”

Members of the research team used advanced modelling, which assesses the real-time epidemiology of the COVID-19 outbreak using an SEIR (susceptible, exposed, infectious, and recovered) model to map how the disease spread across the campuses.

They drew COVID-19 case reports from 30 publicly available college dashboards across the United States throughout the fall of 2020. These institutions were either teaching in person, online or a hybrid of both. They selected colleges for which case numbers are reported on a daily basis and the total cumulative case number exceeded 100. During this time window, the nationwide number of new cases had dropped below 50,000 per day.

A limitation of this study is that the true on-campus student population was often unreported and had to be approximated by the total fall quarter enrollment. “This likely underestimates of the real maximum incidence and the fraction of on-campus students that have been affected by the virus,” the authors state.

Senior author, Ellen Kuhl, adds: “Strikingly, these local campus outbreaks rapidly spread across the entire county and triggered a peak in new infections in neighbouring communities in more than half of the cases.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that these initial college outbreaks are unrelated to the national outbreak dynamics. Instead, they are independent local events driven by campus reopening and inviting students back to campus.

“Our results confirm the widespread fear in early fall that colleges could become the new hot spots of COVID-19 transmission. But, at the same time, college administrators should be applauded for their rapid responses to successfully manage local outbreaks.”

All reported campuses pursued regular surveillance testing, weekly or even twice per week, combined with aggressive test-trace-isolate strategies.

“The majority of colleges and universities were able to rapidly manage their outbreaks and suppress campus-wide infections, while the neighbouring communities were less successful in controlling the spread of the virus. As a result, for most institutions, the outbreak dynamics remained manageable throughout the entire fall of 2020 with narrow spikes of less than 300 cases per day,” Lu states.

The team believes that this methodology, in combination with continuing online learning, is the best way to prevent college sites from becoming the major hub of the disease.

“Our study suggests that tight test-trace-isolate strategies, flexible transition to online instruction, and-most importantly-compliance with local regulations will be critical to ensure a safe campus reopening after the winter break,” she added.

Professor Kuhl concludes: “We anticipate that the most important aspect upon campus reopening within the coming weeks will be the human factor. Unfortunately, the fall term has shown that the best of all strategies can become meaningless if people do not follow the recommendations.”

(Picture Curtesy: ABC News)

A Rift In The Retina May Help Repair The Optic Nerve

Newswise — In experiments in mouse tissues and human cells, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have found that removing a membrane that lines the back of the eye may improve the success rate for regrowing nerve cells damaged by blinding diseases. The findings are specifically aimed at discovering new ways to reverse vision loss caused by glaucoma and other diseases that affect the optic nerve, the information highway from the eye to the brain.

“The idea of restoring vision to someone who has lost it from optic nerve disease has been considered science fiction for decades. But in the last five years, stem cell biology has reached a point where it’s feasible,” says Thomas Johnson, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The research was published Jan. 12 in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

A human eye has more than 1 million small nerve cells, called retinal ganglion cells, that transmit signals from light-collecting cells called photoreceptors in the back of the eye to the brain. Retinal ganglion cells send out long arms, or axons, that bundle together with other retinal ganglion cell projections, forming the optic nerve that leads to the brain.

When the eye is subjected to high pressure, as occurs in glaucoma, it damages and eventually kills retinal ganglion cells. In other conditions, inflammation, blocked blood vessels, or tumors can kill retinal ganglion cells. Once they die, retinal ganglion cells don’t regenerate.

“That’s why it is so important to detect glaucoma early,” says Johnson. “We know a lot about how to treat glaucoma and help nerve cells survive an injury, but once the cells die off, the damage to someone’s vision becomes permanent.”

Johnson is a member of a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute looking for ways scientists can repair or replace lost optic neurons by growing new cells. 

In the current study, Johnson and his team grew mouse retinas in a laboratory dish and tracked what happens when they added human retinal ganglion cells, derived from human embryonic stem cells, to the surface of the mouse retinas. They found that most of the transplanted human cells were unable to integrate into the retinal tissue, which contains several layers of cells.

“The transplanted cells clumped together rather than dispersing from one another like on a living retina,” says Johnson.

However, the researchers found that a small number of transplanted retinal cells were able to settle uniformly into certain areas of the mouse retina. Looking more closely, the areas where the transplanted cells integrated well aligned with locations where the researchers had to make incisions into the mouse retinas to get them to lie flat in the culture dish. At these incision points, some of the transplanted cells were able to crawl into the retina and integrate themselves in the proper place within the tissue.

“This suggested that there was some type of barrier that had been broken by these incisions,” Johnson says. “If we could find a way to remove it, we may have more success with transplantation.”

It turns out that the barrier is a well-known anatomical structure of the retina, called the internal limiting membrane. It’s a translucent connective tissue created by the retina’s cells to separate the fluid of the eye from the retina.

After using an enzyme to loosen the connective fibers of the internal limiting membrane, the researchers removed the membrane and applied the transplanted human cells to the retinas. They found that most of the transplanted retinal ganglion cells grew in a more normal pattern, integrating themselves more fully. The transplanted cells also showed signs of establishing new nerve connections to the rest of the retinal structure when compared with retinas that had intact membranes.

“These findings suggest that altering the internal limiting membrane may be a necessary step in our aim to regrow new cells in damaged retinas,” says Johnson.

The researchers plan to continue investigating the development of transplanted retinal ganglion cells to determine the factors they need to function once integrated into the retina.

Other researchers involved in the study include Kevin Zhang, Caitlyn Tuffy, Joseph Mertz, Sarah Quillen, Laurence Wechsler, Harry Quigley and Donald Zack of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

This work was funded by the National Eye Institute (K12EY015025, K08EY031801, R01EY002120, P30EY001765), the ARVO Dr. David L. Epstein Award, Research to Prevent Blindness, the American Glaucoma Society, the Johns Hopkins Physician Scientist Training Program, and generous gifts from the Guerrieri Family Foundation, the Gilbert Family Foundation, and the Marion & Robert Rosenthal Family Foundation. The authors declare no competing interests.

(Picture Credit: Thomas Johnson and Johns Hopkins Medicine. Transplanted retinal ganglion cells marked with a fluorescent tag.)

Indian AmericanWins Prestigious Infosys Prize In Mathematical Sciences

Sourav Chatterjee, a world-renowned mathematician, and a professor of mathematics and statistics at Stanford University’s School of Humanities and Sciences, has been awarded a prestigious mathematics prize – Infosys Prize in Mathematical Sciences.

Now for his contribution to mathematics, the Infosys Science Foundation, awarded Chatterjee the prestigious Infosys Prize in Mathematical Sciences, which is a $100,000 reward.

The award aims to recognize outstanding researchers and scientists around the world. Through the award, the Foundation aims to encourage the spread of science in India, particularly among young people.

“I’m very honored and humbled to receive this prize,” said Chatterjee, who first came to Stanford as a doctoral student in 2002 after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. “It means a lot to be recognized by the group of esteemed mathematicians assembled by The Infosys Science Foundation, and I feel encouraged to continue pushing ahead with my research.”

Deeply embedded in probability and statistics, Chatterjee’s work has had significant impacts not only in mathematics but also broadly in physics, technology and other fields. Across his many papers, Chatterjee has devised novel mathematical approaches for scientists to apply in their own research.

“One of the big guiding practices in my work has been making mathematical tools other people can use,” Chatterjee said.

Topics that have benefitted from his mathematical insights include occurrences of rare events, the dynamics of social as well as technological networks, the behavior of magnets and efforts to further solidify a mathematical basis for quantum mechanics.

Chatterjee enjoys the challenge of breaking down a problem to its tiniest form and figuring out a fresh perspective. Reflecting both this range of applications and the helpfulness of Chatterjee’s work, the jury of the Infosys Science Foundation, composed of academics from around the world, described Chatterjee as “one of the most versatile probabilists of his generation” and praised his “formidable problem-solving powers.”

Chatterjee completed his Bachelor and Master of Statistics from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Later he moved to Standford to complete his Ph.D in 2005, where he worked under the supervision of PersiDiaconis, another renowned mathematician.

Chatterjee later joined University of California, Berkeley, as a Visiting Assistant Professor, then received a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in 2006.

(Picture Courtesy: Stanford News)

Pfizer, Moderna Vaccines May Vanquish Covid Today, Cancer Tomorrow

The night is darkest just before dawn, they say. Dark it certainly is right now. The more contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2 coming out of the U.K. and South Africa will make the pandemic worse before mass vaccination can make it better.

But take another look at some of these new vaccines. And then contemplate the dawn to come — not just its first rays in the coming months but also the bright light of future years and decades. It looks increasingly plausible that the same weapons we’ll use to defeat Covid-19 can also vanquish even grimmer reapers — including cancer, which kills almost 10 million people a year.

The most promising Covid vaccines use nucleic acids called messenger RNA, or mRNA. One vaccine comes from the German firm BioNTech SE and its U.S. partner Pfizer Inc. The other is from the U.S. companyModerna Inc. (its original spelling was ModeRNA, its ticker is MRNA). Another is on the way from CureVac NV, also based in Germany.

Ordinary vaccines tend to be inactivated or weakened viruses which, when injected into the body, stimulate an immune response that can later protect against the live pathogen. But the process of making such vaccines requires various chemicals and cell cultures. This takes time and provides opportunities for contamination.

mRNA vaccines don’t have these problems. They instruct the body itself to make the offending proteins — in this case, the ones that wrap around the viral RNA of SARS-CoV-2. The immune system then homes in on these antigens, practicing for the day when the same proteins show up with the coronavirus attached.

Therein lies mRNA’s bigger promise: It can tell our cells to make whatever protein we want. That includes the antigens of many other diseases besides Covid-19.

In its day-to-day function, mRNA takes instructions from its molecular cousin, the DNA in our cell nuclei. Stretches of the genome are copied, which the mRNA carries into the cytoplasm, where little cellular factories called ribosomes use the information to churn out proteins.

BioNTech and Moderna shortcut this process, by skipping the whole fiddly business in the nucleus with the DNA. Instead, they first figure out what protein they want — for example, a spike on the coat around a virus. Then they look at the sequence of amino acids that makes this protein. From that they derive the precise instructions the mRNA must give.

This process can be relatively fast, which is why it took less than a year to make the vaccines, a pace previously unimaginable. It’s also genetically safe — mRNA can’t go back into the nucleus and accidentally insert genes into our DNA.

Researchers since the 1970s have had a hunch that you can use this technique to fight all sorts of maladies. But as usual in science, you need huge amounts of money, time and patience to sort out all the intermediary problems. After a decade of enthusiasm, mRNA became academically unfashionable in the 1990s. Progress seemed halting. The main obstacle was that injecting mRNA into animals often caused fatal inflammation.

Enter KatalinKariko — a Hungarian scientist who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s and has heroically devoted her entire career to mRNA, through its ups and downs. In the 1990s, she lost her funding, was demoted, had her salary cut and suffered other setbacks. But she stuck with it. And then, after battling cancer herself, she made the crucial breakthrough.

In the 2000s, she and her research partner realized that swapping out uridine, one of mRNA’s “letters,” avoided causing inflammation without otherwise compromising the code. The mice stayed alive.

Her study was read by a scientist at Stanford University, Derrick Rossi, who later co-founded Moderna. It also came to the attention of UgurSahin and OzlemTureci, two oncologists who are husband and wife and co-founded BioNTech. They licensed Kariko’s technology and hired her. From the start, they were most interested in curing cancer.

Today’s weapons against cancer will one day seem as primitive an idea as flint axes in a surgery room. To kill a malignant tumor, you generally zap it with radiation or chemicals, damaging lots of other tissue in the process.

The better way to fight cancer, Sahin and Tureci realized, is to treat each tumor as genetically unique and to train the immune systems of individual patients against that specific enemy. A perfect job for mRNA. You find the antigen, get its fingerprint, reverse-engineer the cellular instructions to target the culprit and let the body do the rest.

Take a look at the pipelines of Moderna and BioNTech. They include drug trials for treating cancers of the breast, prostate, skin, pancreas, brain, lung and other tissues, as well as vaccines against everything from influenza to Zika and rabies. The prospects appear good.

Progress, admittedly, has been slow. Part of the explanation Sahin and Tureci give is that investors in this sector must put up oodles of capital and then wait for more than a decade, first for the trials, then for regulatory approvals. In the past, too few were in the mood.

Covid-19, fingers crossed, may turbo-charge all these processes. The pandemic has led to a grand debut of mRNA vaccines and their definitive proof of concept. Already, there are murmurs about a Nobel Prize for Kariko. Henceforth, mRNA will have no problems getting money, attention or enthusiasm — from investors, regulators and policymakers.

That doesn’t mean the last stretch will be easy. But in this dark hour, it’s permissible to bask in the light that’s dawning.

(Story Courtesy: Business Standard; Picture Courtesy: Moneyweb)

2021: Year of Living Dangerously?

Goodbye 2020, but unfortunately, not good riddance, as we all have to live with its legacy. It has been a disastrous year for much of the world for various reasons, Elizabeth II’s annus horribilis. The crisis has exposed previously unacknowledged realities, including frailties and vulnerabilities.
For many countries, the tragedy is all the greater as some leaders had set national aspirations for 2020, suggested by the number’s association with perfect vision. But their failures are no reason to reject national projects. As Helen Keller, the deaf and blind author activist, noted a century ago, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight, but no vision.”
After JFK’s assassination in November 1963 ended US opposition to Western intervention in Indonesia, President Sukarno warned his nation in August 1964 that it would be ‘living dangerously’, vivere pericoloso, in the year ahead. A year later, a bloody Western-backed military coup had deposed him, taking up to a million lives, with many more ruined.
Further economic slowdown
Lacklustre economic growth after the 2009 Great Recession has been worsened in recent years by growing international tensions largely associated with US-China relations, Brexit and slowing US and world growth although stock markets continued to bubble.
Economic growth has slowed unevenly, with Asia slowing less than Europe, Latin America and even the US. With effective early pre-emptive measures, much of East Asia began to recover before mid-2020. Meanwhile, most other economies slowed, although some picked up later, thanks to successful initial contagion containment as well as adequate relief and recovery measures.
International trade has been picking up rapidly, accelerating rebounds in heavily trading economies. Commodity prices, except for fossil fuels, have largely recovered, perhaps due to major financial investments by investment banks and hedge funds, buoying stock and commodity prices since late March.
Very low US, EU and Japanese interest rates have thus sustained asset market bubbles. Meanwhile, new arbitrage opportunities, largely involving emerging market economies, have strengthened developing countries’ foreign reserves and exchange rates, thus mitigating external debt burdens.
Unbiased virus, biased responses
The pandemic worsened poverty, hunger and vulnerability by squeezing jobs, livelihoods and earnings of hundreds of millions of families. As economic activities resumed, production, distribution and supply barriers, constrained fiscal means, reduced demand, debt, unemployment, as well as reduced and uncertain incomes and spending have become more pronounced.
While many governments initially provided some relief, these have generally been more modest and temporary in developing countries. Past budget deficits, debt, tax incentives and the need for good credit ratings have all been invoked to justify spending cuts and fiscal consolidation.
Meanwhile, pandemic relief funds have been abused by corporations, typically at the expense of less influential victims with more modest, vulnerable and precarious livelihoods. Many of the super-rich got even richer, with the US’s 651 billionaires making over US$1 trillion.
On the pretext of saving or making jobs, existing social, including job protection has been eroded. But despite hopes raised by vaccine development, the crisis is still far from over.
Don’t cry for me, says Argentina
Meanwhile, intellectual property blocks more affordable production for all. Pharmaceutical companies insist that without the exhorbitant monopoly profits from intellectual property, needed tests, treatments and vaccines would never be developed. Meanwhile, a proposed patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines has been blocked by the US and its rich allies at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Hence, mass vaccination is likely to be very uneven and limited by intellectual property, national strategic considerations (‘vaccine nationalism’), prohibitive costs, fiscal and other constraints. Already, the rich have booked up almost all early vaccine supplies.
The main challenge then is fiscal. Economic slowdowns have reduced tax revenues, requiring more domestic debt to increase spending needed to ensure the recessions do not become protracted depressions. Meanwhile, rising debt-to-GDP ratios and increased foreign debt have long constrained bolder fiscal efforts.
But despite the urgent need for more fiscal resources, we are told that if the richest are required to pay more taxes, even on windfall profits, they will have no incentive to ‘save’ the rest of us. Nevertheless, new wealth taxes have just passed in Argentina.
This time is different
As the pandemic economic impacts began to loom large, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva quickly offered debt relief for low-income countries on terms much better than the G20’s miserly proposal.
Unlike well-meaning debt-fixated researchers and campaigners, even new World Bank chief economist, erstwhile debt hawk Carmen Reinhart has urged, “First you worry about fighting the war, then you figure out how to pay for it”.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is concerned that “in the policies against the present pandemic, equity has not been a particularly noticeable priority… Instead, the focus has been on drastic control and sudden lockdowns…with little attention paid to labourers who lose their jobs or the many migrant workers, the poorest of the poor, who are kept hundreds of miles from their homes”.
COVID-19 may still bring major reforms, such as Roosevelt’s New Deal response to the Great Depression. But now, it seems likely to usher in a world where insecurity and unpredictability define the new normal. While professing to protect victims’ interests, ethno-populism blames ‘Others’ as the enemy responsible.
Still, many hope for a silver lining. Sen suggests that “a better society can emerge from the lockdowns”, as happened after World War Two, with greater welfare state provisioning and labour protections in much of the West and agrarian reforms in East Asia. But there is nothing to guarantee a better ‘new normal’.
Beyond neoliberalism?
For many, Joe Biden’s election to succeed Trump is being celebrated as a resurgent triumph for neoliberalism, enabling the US and the rest of the world to return to ‘business as usual’.
Incredibly, another Nobel laureate Michael Spence has even called for structural adjustment programme conditionalities for countries seeking help from the Bank and Fund, repudiating the Bank’s Growth Commission he once chaired, i.e., which found that seemingly fair, often well-intentioned conditionalities had resulted in “lost decades” of development.
But thankfully, there is widespread recognition that all is not well in the world neoliberalism and Western dominance created. Incredibly, Klaus Schwab, transnational capitalism’s high priest, has conceded, “the neoliberalist … approach centers on the notion that the market knows best, that the ‘business of business is business’…Those dogmatic beliefs have proved wrong”.
Instead, he advised, “We must move on from neoliberalism in the post-COVID era”, recognising: “Free-market fundamentalism has eroded worker rights and economic security, triggered a deregulatory race to the bottom and ruinous tax competition, and enabled the emergence of massive new global monopolies. Trade, taxation, and competition rules that reflect decades of neoliberal influence will now have to be revised”.
Will we ever learn?
The philosopher Santayana once warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Hegel had observed earlier that history repeats itself, to which Marx added, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. Nevertheless, hope remains an incurable disease that keeps us all striving and struggling.
As FDR reminded his supporters, no progressive policies will come about simply by relying on the goodwill of those in authority. Instead, they will only be enacted and implemented thanks to popular pressure from below. As Ben Phillips has put it, “the story of 2021 has not yet been written: we can write it; we can right it”.

Anshumali Shrivastava Discovers New Way to Filter Fake News

Using machine learning, a team of U.S. researchers led by Indian American computer scientist Anshumali Shrivastava at Rice University has discovered an efficient way for social media companies to keep misinformation from spreading online.
Their method applies machine learning in a smarter way to improve the performance of Bloom filters, a widely used technique devised a half-century ago.
Using test databases of fake news stories and computer viruses, Shrivastava and statistics graduate student Zhenwei Dai showed their Adaptive Learned Bloom Filter required 50 percent less memory to achieve the same level of performance as learned Bloom filters.
To explain their filtering approach, Shrivastava and Dai cited some data from Twitter.
The social media giant recently revealed that its users added about 500 million tweets a day, and tweets typically appeared online one second after a user hit send.
“Around the time of the election they were getting about 10,000 tweets a second, and with a one-second latency that’s about six tweets per millisecond,” Shrivastava said.
“If you want to apply a filter that reads every tweet and flags the ones with information that’s known to be fake, your flagging mechanism cannot be slower than six milliseconds or you will fall behind and never catch up.”
If flagged tweets are sent for an additional, manual review, it’s also vitally important to have a low false-positive rate.
In other words, you need to minimize how many genuine tweets are flagged by mistake.
“If your false-positive rate is as low as 0.1%, even then you are mistakenly flagging 10 tweets per second, or more than 800,000 per day, for manual review,” Shrivastava said.
“This is precisely why most of the traditional AI-only approaches are prohibitive for controlling the misinformation.”
The new approach to scanning social media is outlined in a study presented at the online-only 2020 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020).
Shrivastava said Twitter doesn’t disclose its methods for filtering tweets, but they are believed to employ a Bloom filter, a low-memory technique invented in 1970 for checking to see if a specific data element, like a piece of computer code, is part of a known set of elements, like a database of known computer viruses.
A Bloom filter is guaranteed to find all code that matches the database, but it records some false positives too.
“A Bloom filter allows to you check tweets very quickly, in a millionth of a second or less. If it says a tweet is clean, that it does not match anything in your database of misinformation, that’s 100% guaranteed,” Shrivastava noted.
Within the past three years, researchers have offered various schemes for using machine learning to augment Bloom filters and improve their efficiency.
“When people use machine learning models today, they waste a lot of useful information that’s coming from the machine learning model,” Dai said.

Why Does Early Treatment of COVID Matter?

Hooray for COVID Vaccines:  An Ounce of Prevention of COVID is Worth a Pound of Cure.  Let’s Use That Same Rationale for People Who Already Have COVID. 
To be a proponent for early treatment of coronavirus infection shouldn’t automatically mean there is a disregard for the much-needed prevention efforts represented by the mRNA vaccines.  This should not be an “either-or” argument.  Though there are some who have concerns about the rapid release and production of these novel vaccine interventions, no one can question that we are indeed in a public health crisis and an urgent and expedited effort is what is absolutely warranted (i.e., Operation Warp Speed is actually a fitting name for the rapid response).  We get it.  However, the broad media coverage on the vaccines seems to obscure any discussion or consideration of formal early treatment interventions for the COVID-positive patient before hospitalization is absolutely required.  Early treatment intervention of COVID has the potential to save lives, reduce hospital burden and reduce the need to limit a hospital’s capacity to render other standards of care such as routine surgical interventions. 
The death rate of COVID is actually much lower than the actual infection rate, something like only 2% or a little less than 3% maximum.  This is a good thing, unless the death rate includes one of your loved ones; then 2% doesn’t seem so negligible.  Regardless, complications of COVID can be really challenging for clinicians and downright scary for the rest of the public.  It’s been stated at least 10% of COVID survivors develop after effects for up to 6 months or more.  Early treatment intervention could potentially reduce the risk of these complications by reducing the progression of COVID to the most serious symptoms and a drastic dash to the local E.D. requiring hospital admission as a minimum, intubation for mechanical ventilation as a maximum.
The reports abound of hospital capacities stretched to their limits and physicians and other clinicians pushed beyond their normal capacities to perform, amidst caring for patients who were originally told to go home and manage on their own, until they have difficulty breathing (of course).  Really?  This is not the best we can do nor should it be the only consideration.  
Let’s take the Ohio State University (OSU) COVID-athlete study into perspective: 26 student athletes who recovered from COVID.  Some had symptoms and some actually were asymptomatic (meaning no headache, fever, sniffles or cough, etc.).  Myocarditis was observed in 4, or 15%, of these student athletes and in 8, or 30%, the student athletes were observed to have developed cardiac scar tissue.  If this is the impact of COVID on young and healthy student athletes (some of whom never developed symptoms), just waiting around until you can’t breathe really shouldn’t be the only outpatient option.  
Rather than waiting around for approval from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), physicians should at least begin to treat the symptoms of COVID in recognition of the over-activation of the inflammatory response is a signal for an advancement of the COVID assault on our bodies.  The forecasted intention should be to prevent the COVID-triggered advancement in inflammatory response. So, doctors, what’s the rationale for awaiting a rushed emergency room visit versus a purposeful effort to prevent the mad dash to the E.R. in the first place?   Shouldn’t we be activated in preventing this progression of an unchecked inflammatory response (especially since we already know how to keep it from happening)?  We must believe in ourselves and standardize an approach to common COVID symptoms using the current medications already in our FDA-indicated/FDA-approved arsenal.
If we were living in a house and heard the alarm sound from the smoke detector, there is no way we would say that there has to be a flame before we take any action (whatsoever).  There is no way you would acknowledge that the smoke will transition from a flame to a full-on blaze and only then determine the fire department should be called.  Doctor, you would pursue a focused effort to ensure the origin of the smoke was determined and then implement swift action to address whatever caused the smoke in the first place.  We would want to make sure the smoke never, ever became a flame and the flame allowed to become the dreaded blaze.  Yes, without a doubt, we Early Interventionists are grateful for the new COVID vaccines.  The vaccines are a brilliant and valiant effort at a much-needed, long-awaited prevention effort to interrupt the plaque of COVID across our great nation and our world.  Nevertheless, these COVID vaccines are not destined for people who already have COVID (at home or in the hospital); the people who are sick at home need prevention too- prevention from hospitalization.  Today, as we exhale and celebrate the release of the vaccine to prevent COVID, there are tens of thousands of Americans who are already COVID-positive and not yet hospitalized.  By the way, are you wondering about the great mutations?

If You Defend the Body, the Strain Won’t Matter 
 
Treating symptomatic expressions of COVID, before hospital admission, bypasses the need for a specific COVID regimen per se.  If your patient has a fever, you address it.  If there is evidence of pulmonary dysfunction (like coughing or symptoms of bronchitis, for instance), you would treat it with the standard go-to corticosteroid that you normally would (i.e., prednisone or methylprednisolone).  If there is a concern that steroids could further suppress the immune response, then boost the immune system as a precaution.  Is anybody concerned that there is now a whole multiple of new COVID strains reported?  If we focus on active management of the symptoms (within FDA-indications and -approval, of course) we have a strong likelihood of avoiding the most severe consequences of the infection.  Perhaps if we can limit the development of COVID complications in the body, the variations of the strain shouldn’t matter.  These efforts are only until the rest of the country has access to the vaccines.  However, if essential workers and long-term care, or nursing home, residents are the appropriate priority, there has to be a mitigation plan for treating COVID patients until all who want to be vaccinated can receive the vaccine.  Otherwise, are folks to simply try to avoid COVID infection until their vaccine number is called up in April?
We simply must reconsider the intentional plan that says “do nothing until…” it’s a mad panic and rush to the emergency room.  The ounce of prevention, to avoid the ambulance, is early treatment intervention of COVID before the infection progresses to the point where hospitalization is required.  As staggering as the death toll, the numbers do indeed reflect that more are infected and survive from COVID than those who die from COVID.  Nevertheless, there is little comfort in numbers when someone you love and care about is taken from you so tragically and often without any gift of closure in sharing a loving goodbye.  Early medicinal intervention in COVID infections as a measure of prevention, against the progression of COVID complications, is critical.  Different clinicians have varied approaches towards this end (i.e., Ivermectin, ICAM-similar regimens , etc.) and I have no particular preference.  I’m simply grateful they recognize the need to intervene early is undeniable.  

Take care of all who want the highly valued prevention effort of the vaccines as soon as possible, but plese don’t forget the folks who already have COVID.  Just like the flu vaccines are for people who have not yet contracted the flu, the COVID vaccines are destined for people who have not contracted the COVID infection.  Right now, prior to hospitalization, the best effort a COVID patient can obtain is probably thoughts and prayers because their told to ‘go home and come to the E.D. if you get worse or sick or have trouble breathing.  However, more and more clinicians have determined that the COVID patient deserves a valiant effort at prevention as well.  Let’s not forget, an ounce of prevention could be a great alternative to the need for a COVID ambulance.   
(By An Anonymous Healthcare Provider)

Applications To Medical School Up Big. Is It The “Fauci Effect”?

“Now more than ever we need your talent, your energy, your resolve and your character.” Those were the words Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last spring to new medical school graduates as part of the AMA’s “Tribute to the Medical School Class of 2020.”
FAQs about med school
Get answers to all your biggest questions about getting into medical school, the application process, the MCAT and more. 
It appears another flock of potential physicians may have been listening, however. With medical school applications up nearly 20% from last year, some are attributing that bounce to the “Fauci effect,” in essence crediting the nation’s most famous and most visible physician with inspiring a new generation.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the number of students applying to enter medical school in 2021 is up 18% from this time last year. The bump is unprecedented, and the reasons behind it are not entirely clear.
“This large of an increase is unprecedented,” said Geoffrey Young, PhD, the AAMC’s senior director of student affairs and programs. ”We can’t say for sure why so many more students have applied this year. Some students may have had more time for applications and preparing for the MCAT exam after their college courses went online. Some may have been motivated by seeing heroic doctors on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
At Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU), one of 37 member schools of the AMA Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium, the number of applications received to date—a 14% year-to -date increase—has surpassed the number received in the entire 2020 cycle, with two months before the application submission deadline.
“The fact that we as a society are dealing with this pandemic and people are seeing the challenges that our health care workforce are dealing with, and the pain and suffering of those who deal with COVID, it certainly could have fanned the flames for applicants who were thinking about a career in medicine,” said John D. Schriner, PhD, an associate dean for admissions and student affairs at OU. “They want to make a difference similar to what Dr. Fauci is saying.”
Other factors to which the spike could be attributed include an unfriendly economic climate for new graduates and more time to prepare applications.
“It is certainly encouraging to see an increase in applicants to medical school, and there are likely multiple drivers involved,” said Kimberly Lomis, MD, the AMA’s vice president for undergraduate medical education innovations. “The pandemic disrupted many students’ intended plans and has caused all to reconsider their educational and career options. Medicine needs people inclined to step up in times of crisis, and current medical students across the country demonstrated that ethos this year.”
At the November 2020 AMA Special Meeting, Dr. Fauci gave an exclusive interview to AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, MD. Read more about Dr. Fauci’s 2021 forecast on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments.
In interviews, Dr. Fauci has downplayed his impact on the application increase. Schriner isn’t so sure, however.
“There are a lot of great physicians who inspire students to go toward medicine and make a difference,” Schriner said. “Dr. Fauci is such an inspiring figure, a trusted figure. I think there may be something to it.”
While the factors contributing to the increase in applications are likely manyfold, the pandemic has caused an increase, Schriner says, in applicant altruism. And it has done so at a needed time— according to data published this year by the AAMC, the United States could see an estimated shortage of between 54,100 and 139,000 physicians, including shortfalls in both primary and specialty care, by 2033.
“Folks are just seeing such suffering and such sacrifice on the part of the patients and their families, and also the sacrifice and suffering made by the health care delivery team,” Schriner said. “There’s an altruistic spirit that is reflected in the increase in applications.”
Medicine can be a career that is both challenging and highly rewarding but figuring out a medical school’s prerequisites and navigating the application process can be a challenge into itself. The AMA premed glossary guide has the answers to frequently asked questions about medical school, the application process, the MCAT and more.

From Polio To The COVID Vaccine, Dr. Peter Salk Sees Great Progress

(NPR Editor’s Note: As this year winds down, we’re looking back at some people we spoke to earlier in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic was in its early stages. Now that there’s a vaccine, we wanted to check in with someone whose family has a long history with vaccines.
When I spoke to Dr. Peter Salk back in May, he told me the tale of receiving an early polio vaccine – the one invented by his father, Dr. Jonas Salk.
“I just hated injections. And my father came home with polio vaccine and some syringes and needles that he sterilized on the kitchen stove by boiling in water, lined us kids up and then administered the vaccine,” Salk said. “Somehow the needle must have missed a nerve, and I didn’t feel it. And so that has fixed that moment in my mind.”
Peter Salk was just 9 when he got that shot in 1953 at the family home outside Pittsburgh.
At that time, polio terrorized the country every summer. In the worst single year, 1952, nearly 60,000 children were infected. Many were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. Frightened parents kept their children away from swimming pools, movie theaters and other public places.
The vaccine helped eradicate polio, made his father world famous, and shaped Peter Salk’s own life — he also became a doctor of infectious diseases.
Yet when we talked last spring, Peter Salk was worried about the race for a COVID-19 vaccine. He feared corners might be cut. He noted that his father, who died in 1995, needed seven years to develop a vaccine that was both effective and safe.
“What concerns me is knowing that, in the past, there have been unexpected things that have taken place with vaccines that had not been foreseen,” Salk said at the time.
Back in the 1950s, one bad batch of the polio vaccine was blamed for 10 deaths, 200 cases of paralysis and for making many Americans wary of getting the shot.
But in a recent phone chat with Salk at his home in San Diego, he was very upbeat about the COVID vaccine. “I was bowled over when the first news came out about the Pfizer, BioNTech results and being somewhere on the order of 95 percent effective,” he said. “I just had a really strong emotional reaction that I totally had not anticipated.”
He’s following the vaccine news closely and has been hugely impressed by the development of a vaccine in less than a year. There could still be hiccups, he said, but none that can’t be solved. “In my mind, so far, so good,” he said.
Dr. Salk is a bit concerned about the number of people who are reluctant, or outright opposed, to getting the vaccine. But he believes those numbers will shrink as people see the benefits. And, he said, this “vaccine hesitancy” is nothing new.
“I was surprised when I first learned a few months ago about a Gallup poll in 1954 that indicated that about half the population did not want the polio vaccine,” he said.
That was the year before the U.S. government authorized nationwide use. In the end, most everyone received it. The current pandemic has sharply curtailed Salk’s movements. He’s still a part-time professor of infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh, and has stopped traveling there.
He spends most of his time at home and says his aching knees, as well as the threat of the virus, keep him from getting out much in the neighborhood.
“My wife [Ellen] and I have been extremely careful during this whole period,” he said. “I’m probably going to continue to do social distancing and wear masks and take the precautions that I’ve been taking really until this thing is practically gone.”
Dr. Salk was at the front of the line when he got the polio vaccine as a kid. And he’s eager to get the new vaccine. But at age 76, and in good health overall, he said he’s content to wait his turn.
“We’re going to be somewhere down the line” when it comes to the vaccine, he said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s fine with me. I think it’s really important to prioritize the limited supply of vaccine.”
As a nation, he predicts it could take until the end of 2021 before life returns to normal for the country as a whole. Until then, he’ll be playing it safe. “I’m not ready to throw away the mask,” he said.

The Rate Of The Universe’s Expansion Explained

Newswise —A combination of astrophysical measurements has allowed researchers to put new constraints on the radius of a typical neutron star and provide a novel calculation of the Hubble constant that indicates the rate at which the universe is expanding.
“We studied signals that came from various sources, for example recently observed mergers of neutron stars,” said Ingo Tews, a theorist in Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who worked with an international collaboration of researchers on the analysis to appear in the journal Science on December 18. “We jointly analyzed gravitational-wave signals and electromagnetic emissions from the mergers, and combined them with previous mass measurements of pulsars or recent results from NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer. We find that the radius of a typical neutron star is about 11.75 kilometers and the Hubble constant is approximately 66.2 kilometers per second per megaparsec.”
Combining signals to gain insight into distant astrophysical phenomena is known in the field as multi-messenger astronomy. In this case, the researchers’ multi-messenger analysis allowed them to restrict the uncertainty of their estimate of neutron star radii to within 800 meters.
Their novel approach to measuring the Hubble constant contributes to a debate that has arisen from other, competing determinations of the universe’s expansion. Measurements based on observations of exploding stars known as supernovae are currently at odds with those that come from looking at the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which is essentially the left over energy from the Big Bang. The uncertainties in the new multimessenger Hubble calculation are too large to definitively resolve the disagreement, but the measurement is slightly more supportive of the CMB approach.
Tews’ primary scientific role in the study was to provide the input from nuclear theory calculations that are the starting point of the analysis. His seven collaborators on the paper comprise an international team of scientists from Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and the United States.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

Endowed Chair in Hindu and Jain Studies Established at University of California

Since antiquity, according to religious studies scholars, two of the world’s oldest traditions, Hinduism and Jainism, co-existed on the Indian subcontinent. They share many spiritual practices, philosophical paradigms and ethical principles while simultaneously maintaining their unique, independent identities.
Over two dozen families, individuals and foundations have come together to create the Endowed Chair in Jain and Hindu Dharma at Fresno State. The groundbreaking partnership between the Jain and Hindu communities and the University underscores a mutual commitment to educating current and future generations of students about the principles of nonviolence, dharma (virtue, duty), justice, pluralist philosophy, the interconnectedness of all beings and care for the environment through Hindu-Jain texts, philosophies and traditions.
Fresno State President Joseph I. Castro called the partnership historic. “The California State University has never seen a partnership like this one with the Jain and Hindu communities. I’m very pleased that this has happened at Fresno State. It establishes a model for other campuses in the CSU and around the country to do the same.”
“Because of the beautiful Peace Garden and what it represents here, we feel California State University, Fresno is the rightful place for this endowed chair. How beautiful and remarkable it is that both traditions will now be represented, taught and researched at Fresno State,” said Dr. Sulekh Jain, of Las Vegas, who has a prominent role in developing Jain education in the United States. “This is the first joint chair in the two traditions, not only in North America, but most probably in the whole world. This is historic.”
“Like two rivers running parallel and at times intertwined create a rich ecosystem, Hinduism (traditionally known as Sanatana Dharma) and Jainism (Jain Dharma), originated on the Indian subcontinent, for over three millennia serve as a model to building pluralistic and peaceful relations,” explained Dr. Veena Howard, a Fresno State religious studies professor. “Mahatma Gandhi was a product of both Jain and Hindu traditions and teachings. Gandhi was born in a Hindu family but was strongly influenced and molded by Jain friends, monks and Jain vows.”
Dr. Jasvant Modi, of Los Angeles, a prominent Jain philanthropist and supporter of this chair, added, “We hope that the younger generation, when they come to the college, they’re exposed to this philosophy as we know that Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and others followed a nonviolent way of solving the countries and the world’s problems.”
Monika Joshi, of Clovis, who collaborated with other local Hindu community members, expressed her enthusiasm. “In today’s world with conflict, fear and division, it becomes essential to explore and share the teachings of Hindu Dharma that have existed for thousands of years. Mutual respect, truth within and working towards eternal happiness are the core values of Hinduism that can pave the way for unity as a common goal for all.”
Dr. Harsh Saigal, a Hindu leader in Fresno, added, “We are proud to give back to the Valley that has given us so much.”
The Endowed Chair in Jain and Hindu Dharma will be housed in the Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Humanities and will be an integral part of the University’s religious studies program. A professor who is an expert in both the Jain and Hindu Dharma traditions will be appointed as interim chair in 2021.
“The chair will teach Jainism and Hinduism, furthering Fresno State’s efforts to promote understanding of religions and communities. The teaching of these ancient traditions reflects our community’s diversity and our donors’ trust in the value and impact of Fresno State’s programs,” said Dr. Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, Fresno State provost and vice president for Academic Affairs.
Additionally, the endowed chair also will support Jain and Hindu scholarly endeavors for students, including scholarships, stipends and research funds. For the professor who holds the chair, the funds may support research and academic publications, conference travel and campus-sponsored events.
“We are so grateful to the unprecedented number of generous donors who have collaborated to create this remarkable gift,” said Dr. Honora Chapman, interim dean of the College of Arts and Humanities. “This new chair represents an enhanced opportunity for Fresno State’s students to learn how they can change their own lives and the world through pursuing Jain and Hindu enlightenment in their studies while putting nonviolence and peace into action.”
The Jain and Hindu community leaders and organizations that generously donated include J.P. Sethi, the Ravi & Naina Patel Foundation, Dr. Harsh Saigal, Anil Mehta, Dr. Vinod K. Gupta, Dina Bahl, Bankim Dalal, Dr. Girish Patel, Vardhaman Charitable Foundation, Andy Chhikara, Dr. Prem Kamboj, Dr. Madhav Suri, Dr. Krish Rajani, Monika Joshi, Ela and Bhavesh Muni, Rama Ambati, Dr. Shashi Sharma, Dr. Dinesh Sharma, Dilbagh Ghilawat, Sangita and Yogesh Shah, Rita and Narendra Parson, Komal and Prashant Desai, Kala and Surendra Jain, the Wadher Family Foundation, Dr. Sulekh Jain, Ronak and Mitul Shah, and Pinal and Hardik Modi.

AAPI To Observe January 7th As Global Wear Yellow Day For Obesity Awareness & Health

(Chicago: IL: December 20, 2020) Obesity has been identified as a leading cause for early death as it leads to hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, heart attacks, strokes, some kinds of cancer and adversely affecting almost all organs in the human body. Describing Obesity as a major disease, World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized that PREVENTION is the most feasible option for curbing the obesity epidemic. Parents, schools, communities, states and countries can help make the Healthy choice the Easy choice.

Continuing with the goal of creating awareness by educating the public and healthcare professionals, American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) is observing January 7th, 2021  as the Global Wear Yellow Day for Obesity Awareness & Health, showcasing Yellow for Energy, Motivation, Hope, Optimism, Joy and Happiness. AAPI’s theme and campaign around the world is to: “Be Healthy, Be Happy.” And, the  “Secret to Living Longer is to Eat half, Walk double, Laugh triple and Love without measure.”

During an educational webinar on NObesity held on December 12th, 2020 and led by internationally renowned healthcare leaders, Dr. Sudhakar Jonnalagadda, President of AAPI said, “The impact and role of AAPI in influencing policy makers and the public is ever more urgent today. AAPI being the largest ethnic medical organization in USA and the second largest organized medical association after AMA, we have the power and responsibility to influence the state and the public through education for health promotion and disease prevention. Hence AAPI is trying ‘To Educate to Empower’ as ‘An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure.’ In this context, AAPI is in the process of getting Wear Yellow for Obesity Awareness Proclamation from the White House so it can be implemented nationwide. So far, we got official proclamations from   Mayors from several States,” he added.

The interactive webinar was moderated by Dr. Uma Jonnaladadda, Chair of AAPI’s Physicians Section; Board Certified Family Medicine Secretary, GAPIO, and AAPI’s First Lady. Other moderators were: Dr. Padmaja Adusumilli, and Dr. Pooja Kinkhabwala.

The eminent speakers at the Webinar included: Muamer Dajdic, a Motivational Educator, who had struggled with obesity his whole life. He shared with the audience his own inspiriting life’s story of how weighing nearly 500 lbs, with obesity almost killing him, he lost over 300 lbs. in 1.5 years. The author of an upcoming book: The Healthy Living Process, he earned the Melting Snowman nickname & set out on a mission to help 100 000 000 people across the world overcome obesity & maintain a healthy body for life.

Kevin J. Finn, Ph.D., a Professor of Kinesiology in the School of Nutrition, Kinesiology, and Psychological Science at the University of Central Missouri, addressed the audience on “Exercise is Medicine” stressing the importance of including daily activities that enhance one’s health. Swarna Mandali, a well known Nutritionist, having obtained a Doctoral Degree from Oklahoma University, with having extensive experience in Neutrino Counseling, and serving as an Educator on Medical Nutrition, spoke about “Partaking Portions: Road to Prevention” shedding light on practical ways to manage food intake, especially among South Asians and their food habits.

Dr. Hira Nair, a Professor of Psychology at Kansas City Kansas Community College, the Coordinator of the Teacher Education Program, believes that education is transformative and psychology prepares students to live an introspective and collaborative life. She has recently joined efforts with AAPI to educate the local community about food addiction and anti-obesity. She works tirelessly on social justice issues within the context of the community, and around the globe. She shared with the audience, her own experiences while actively participating in building community awareness of important global issues such as hunger and the importance of educating the girl child.

Major contributors for the success of AAPI’s obesity awareness campaign over the years include, Dr. Uma Koduri, who had organized the pilot programs for childhood obesity in USA since 2013, childhood obesity in India in 2015 and Veteran obesity in USA in 2017 with the help of Drs. Sanku Rao, Jayesh Shah, Aruna Venkatesh for childhood obesity, Vikas Khurana, Satheesh Kathula for Veteran obesity, and Janaki Srinath, Uma Chitra, Avanti Rao for childhood obesity in India.

Presently, AAPI Obesity Committee’s Chair is Dr. Uma Koduri and co-chairs are Drs. Padmaja Adusumili (Veteran obesity), Pooja Kinkabwala (Childhood obesity) and Uma Jonnalagadda (Adult obesity) with chief advisors Dr. Kishore Bellamkonda and Dr. Lokesh Edara.
“American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) has embarked on an ambitious plan, launching Global Obesity Awareness Campaign 2021,” said Dr. Uma Koduri, Founder of NObesity Revolution, Chair of National AAPI Obesity Committee, and Founding President of AAPI Tulsa Chapter. According to Dr. Koduri, “AAPI will *GO YELLOW* on first Thursday, Jan 7, 2021 (Thursday is a working day,  so tell your colleagues at work to wear yellow that day): *G – Get your BMI* (measure height, weight and calculate your BMI…ask google to calculate for you ?); and, *O*- *Own your Lifestyle.  It’s up to you. No one can do it for you*. Loose weight, exercise, eat healthy – whole food, plant predominant diet. *YELLOW – energy, motivation  hope,  optimism, joy and happiness*.”

“I am proud to announce today that we have been successful in successful in making this a global a reality by 12-12-2020 by covering 100 cities in USA, 100 cities in India and 100 countries around the World, including on the 7th continent on Earth, the Antarctica,” Dr. Koduri, who has been in the forefront of the obesity awareness campaign for years now, explained. “What had started off in 2011 at 11-11-11-11-11-11 seconds as AAPI Health Walkathons were held in all 5 Continents – Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America was successfully completed in 2020 by Obesity Walkathons by Dr. Suresh Reddy in the remaining 2 Continents – South America and Antarctica,” Dr. Koduri added.

 “While following in the footsteps of American Heart Association initiatives, “National Wear Red Day, on the first Friday in February,” which has become an annual campaign to raise awareness about heart disease in women, AAPI is leading a campaign to create awareness on Obesity,” said Dr. Sajani Shah, Chairwoman of AAPI BOT.

Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President-Elect of AAPI said, “With obesity proving to be a major epidemic affecting nearly one third of the nation’s population, we have a responsibility to save future generations by decreasing childhood obesity. And therefore, we at AAPI are proud to undertake this national educational tour around the United States, impacting thousands of children and their families.”

According to Dr. Ravi Kolli, Vice President of AAPI, “AAPI has it’s chapters in almost every city and town of USA. With this extensive network around the nation, we should be able to spread the message on obesity by following the template plan. We are also exploring the use of social media and phone ‘apps’ as healthy lifestyle tools.”

“As a professional organization that represents the interests of over 100,000 physicians of Indian origin, who are practicing Medicine in the United States, one of our primary goals is to educate the public on diseases and their impact on health. The Obesity campaign by AAPI is yet another major role we have been focusing on,” said Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, Secretary of AAPI.
Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Treasurer of AAPI, said, “AAPI has taken this initiative as a “main stream” issue in both children and adults, in the US and in India. AAPI has helped organize several childhood obesity and veterans obesity programs across the US. We have the right team to take this project forward”.

AAPI is a forum to facilitate and enable Indian American Physicians to excel in patient care, teaching and research and to pursue their aspirations in professional and community affairs. For more details on AAPI’s Global Obesity Awareness Campaign,   please visit: www.aapiusa.org

Biden Leads the Way with Receiving COVID-19 Vaccine

President-elect Joe Biden received his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on December 21st in front of cameras to help build confidence in the vaccine across the country.
Biden joined a list of high-profile politicians and millions of other font line healthcare workers and Seniors across the nation, vaccinated Dressed in a navy blue mock turtleneck and wearing two masks, Biden pushed up his left sleeve for the vaccination at ChristianaCare’s Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware.

“I’m doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared, when it’s available, to take the vaccine. There’s nothing to worry about. I’m looking forward to the second shot,” Biden said shortly after receiving his vaccination.

“We owe these folks an awful lot. The scientists and the people who put this together and frontline workers, the people who were the ones who actually did the clinical work, it’s just amazing,” Biden said. “We owe you big, we really do.”

Biden’s vaccination comes as a second coronavirus vaccine, produced by Moderna, has begun to be distributed across the country, and as the death toll from the virus nears 320,000 Americans.
As the number of Covid-19 cases reported in the United States passed 18 million, the second vaccine given emergency authorization was being administered Monday for the first time outside of clinical trials.

One of the first people to get a public dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine was a doctor in Texas who has gone to work, fighting the virus for 277 consecutive days. “This is like having gold,” Dr. Joseph Varon told CNN as he held a box of doses shortly before he was vaccinated. “I don’t cry, but I came very close … You know how many lives you can save with this?”

The president-elect said the Trump administration “deserves some credit” for getting the vaccine and distribution off the ground with Operation Warp Speed, but stressed that while the vaccines marked progress, the country needs to continue taking precautions to slow the spread of coronavirus, particularly around the upcoming holidays.

“I don’t want to sound like a sour note here, but I hope people listen to all of the experts and the Dr. Faucis on … talking about the need to wear masks during this Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Wear masks, socially distance. And if you don’t have to travel, don’t travel. Don’t travel. It’s really important because we’re still in the thick of this,” Biden said

Biden, 78, had long promised to take the vaccine if advised by Dr. Fauci to do so. In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week, Fauci recommended Biden receive the vaccine as soon as possible.

“Dr. Fauci recommends I get the vaccine sooner than later. I want to just make sure we do it by the numbers, and we do it — but when I do it, you’ll have notice and we’ll do it publicly. Thank you,” Biden told reporters last Tuesday.

Vice President-elect Harris and her husband, incoming second gentleman Doug Emhoff, are also expected to receive the vaccine at a later date.

“Consistent with security and medical protocols, the Vice President will not receive the vaccine at the same time as the president. We expect she and Mr. Emhoff will receive their first dose of the vaccine the following week, and we will have additional details on that next week,” the incoming White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Friday.

Biden joins several political leaders who have received the vaccine, including Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and several members of Congress.

One politician yet to take the vaccine is President Donald Trump, who has largely been out of public sight since the two COVID-19 vaccines have received emergency use authorization from the FDA.

As of Monday morning more than 614,000 Americans have received a vaccine shot, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid Data Tracker.
Most Americans will have to wait months before getting their inoculations.

In the meantime, new infections, hospitalizations and deaths keep soaring, prompting health experts to urge the public to stay home this Christmas week.
“This is really not the time to be traveling,” epidemiologist Dr. Celine Gounder said.
But millions of airline passengers ignored such advice and traveled over the weekend.
Now travelers risk getting infected with a variant of coronavirus that might be even more contagious.

Beyond Covid-19, A Book By Dr. Chalil & Ambassador Kapur Is Now On “Amazon Best Sellers List”

(New York, NY: November 29th, 2020) Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Envisioning a Better World by Transforming the Future of Healthcare, authored by Ambassador Pradeep Kapur, a practitioner of Public Policy, and Dr. Joseph Chalil, an expert in healthcare policy, is now on Amazon’s Best Sellers List.

Around the world, providing quality and affordable healthcare remains a challenge. As the COVID-19 pandemic began, it quickly became apparent that public policy and current healthcare systems were ill-prepared to deal with the challenges. Ambassador Kapur and Dr. Chalil discuss the lessons learned and the way ahead in the book, Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Envisioning a Better World by Transforming the Future of Healthcare.

The authors offer sustainable and revolutionary solutions to change healthcare delivery in the United States and a model for other countries. With a combination of a public SafetyNet and free-market competition, they offer their “Grand Plan.” The advances and adoption of current and new technology will revolutionize the field of healthcare. They offer critical strategies that countries can adopt during natural disasters, wars, or a pandemic.

The authors focus on breaking the chain of employer-based health insurance, where your health insurance is not tied to your employment. Too often, the benefits of providing healthcare for all is lost in discussions about health insurance. Yet, this book does not allow these issues to control the analysis of healthcare delivery.

This book offers practical solutions, addressing citizens’ needs now and into the future while empowering them to be more responsible for their health. As envisioned by the authors, the emerging global scenarios address healthcare needs, education, and sustainable lifestyle choices, reducing the need for more intensive and costly interventions to improve the overall quality of life. There is a roadmap for U.N. and WHO, which are not living up to their initial promise, beyond just reform. They challenge the world to have the political consensus to create meaningful change for all, both in the United States, the United Nations, and around the globe.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that ensuring affordable and timely access to health care is a priority for all. It has shown us the limitations of each country in combating a healthcare crisis like the one we are experiencing today. As the pandemic began, it quickly became apparent that public policy and current healthcare systems were ill-prepared to deal with a pandemic’s challenges. Providing quality and affordable healthcare remains a challenge.

Esteemed personalities worldwide have much acclaimed the timely and insightful edition of the book released in October this year. Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a globally revered spiritual and humanitarian leader, wrote: “Ambassador Pradeep Kapur and Dr. Joseph Chalil discuss the lessons learned in the book, Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Envisioning a Better World by Transforming the Future of Healthcare. The authors offer sustainable and revolutionary solutions to change healthcare delivery in the United States and a model for other countries. With a combination of a public SafetyNet and free-market competition, they offer their “Grand Plan.” The advances and adoption of current and new technology will revolutionize the field of healthcare. They offer critical strategies that countries can adopt during natural disasters, wars, or a pandemic.”

The authors are will donating the profits from the sale of their book to AAPI Charitable Foundation and WHEELS!

Ambassador Pradeep Kapur is an acknowledged “luminary diplomat,” with a distinguished career working with leaders and policymakers in different continents of the world: Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. He was the author and editor of many books. Kapur was Ambassador of India to Chile and Cambodia and Secretary at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs before joining as an academic in reputed universities in the USA and India. A graduate of the globally acclaimed Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D), he is Executive Director of Smart Village Development Fund (SVDF); International Economic Strategic Advisor, Intellect Design Arena; and Chairman, Advisory Council, DiplomacyIndia.com. His healthcare contributions include setting up of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences in Eastern Nepal, which is acclaimed as an exemplary bilateral India Nepal initiative.

Dr. Joseph Chalil, an author of several scientific and research papers in international publications, is the Chairman of the Complex Health Systems Advisory Board, H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship at Nova Southeastern University in Florida and a member of Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine (NSU MD) Executive Leadership Council. A veteran of the U.S. Navy Medical Corps, he is board certified in healthcare management. He has been awarded a Fellowship by the American College of Healthcare Executives, an international professional society of more than 40,000 healthcare executives who lead hospitals, healthcare systems, and other healthcare organizations. Dr. Chalil is the Chairman of the Indo American Press Club (IAPC). He is an expert in U.S. healthcare policy and a strong advocate for patient-centered care. With years of experience working in the U.S. healthcare system, he discusses healthcare delivery challenges, including providing quality, affordable patient care to all and alternate templates for health insurance.

The authors challenge the world to have the political consensus to create meaningful change for all, both in the United States, the United Nations, and around the globe. For more information, please visit https://beyondcovidbook.com.

Merriam-Webster’s Top Word Of 2020

If you were to choose a word that rose above most in 2020, which word would it be? Ding, ding, ding: Merriam-Webster on Monday announced “pandemic” as its 2020 word of the year.  “That probably isn’t a big shock,” Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster, told The Associated Press.

“Often the big news story has a technical word that’s associated with it and in this case, the word pandemic is not just technical but has become general. It’s probably the word by which we’ll refer to this period in the future,” he said.

The word took on urgent specificity in March, when the coronavirus crisis was designated a pandemic, but it started to trend up on Merriam-Webster.com as early January and again in February when the first U.S. deaths and outbreaks on cruise ships occurred.

On March 11, when the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, lookups on the site for pandemic spiked hugely. Site interest for the word has remained significantly high through the year, Sokolowski said.

By huge, Sokolowski means searches for pandemic on March 11 were 115,806% higher than lookups experienced on the same date last year.

Pandemic, with roots in Latin and Greek, is a combination of “pan,” for all, and “demos,” for people or population. The latter is the same root of “democracy,” Sokolowski noted. The word pandemic dates to the mid-1600s, used broadly for “universal” and more specifically to disease in a medical text in the 1660s, he said.  That was after the plagues of the Middle Ages, Sokolowski said.

He attributes the lookup traffic for pandemic not entirely to searchers who didn’t know what it meant but also to those on the hunt for more detail, or for inspiration or comfort.

“We see that the word love is looked up around Valentine’s Day and the word cornucopia is looked up at Thanksgiving,” Sokolowski said. “We see a word like surreal spiking when a moment of national tragedy or shock occurs. It’s the idea of dictionaries being the beginning of putting your thoughts in order.”

Merriam-Webster acted quickly in March to add and update entries on its site for words related to the pandemic. While “coronavirus” had been in the dictionary for decades, “COVID-19” was coined in February. Thirty-four days later, Merriam-Webster had it up online, along with a couple dozen other entries that were revised to reflect the health emergency. “That’s the shortest period of time we’ve ever seen a word go from coinage to entry,” Sokolowski said. “The word had this urgency.”

Coronavirus was among runners up for word of the year as it jumped into the mainstream. Quarantine, asymptomatic, mamba, kraken, defund, antebellum, irregardless, icon, schadenfreude and malarkey were also runners up based on lookup spikes around specific events.

Particularly interesting to word nerds like Sokolowski, a lexicographer, is quarantine. With Italian roots, it was used during the Black Death of the 1300s for the period of time a new ship coming into port would have to wait outside a city to prevent disease. The “quar” in quarantine derives from 40, for the 40 days required.

Spikes for mamba occurred after the January death of Kobe Bryant, whose nickname was the Black Mamba. A mass of lookups occurred for kraken in July after Seattle’s new National Hockey League franchise chose the mythical sea monster as its name, urged along by fans.

Country group Lady Antebellum’s name change to Lady A drove dictionary interest in June, while malarkey got a boost from President-elect Joe Biden, who’s fond of using the word. Icon was front and center in headlines after the deaths of U.S. Rep. John Lewis and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The Merriam-Webster site has about 40 million unique monthly users and about 100 million monthly page views.

(By LEANNE ITALIE)

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