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A first in China cryonics: Dead woman put in deep freeze – EJ Insight – EJ Insight

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

A 49-year-old Chinese woman who died from lung cancer has been put in deep freeze in the hope that she will be brought back to life and reunited with her husband once science has found a cure for her fatal illness.

Thecryonics procedure was performed at Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute in Jinan on May 8, several minutes after Zhan Wenlian died at Shandong Universitys Qilu Hospital, the Hong Kong Economic Journal reports.

Zhan and her husbandGui Junmin had agreed to put her through the procedure, which involves low-temperature preservation of a person whose life can no longer be sustained under current science and medical knowledge, with the hope that he or she can be resuscitated and restored to full health in the future.

While some people suspect that the procedure is just another hoax, Gui expressed in a letter of consent that he knew it was not possible to revive his wife in the near future but he still he would like to give it a try.

He said he and his family believe that future advances in science and medicine will enable experts to revive his wife.

The cryopreservation was the first for a whole human body in China, although a female writer in Chongqing had had her brain frozen and preserved in 2015.

The procedure was done by Aaron Drake, a specialist in cryogenics, in cooperation with doctors from Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute and specialists from the hospital.

After more than 60 hours of work, Zhans body temperature was lowered to below minus 190 degrees Celsius before she was kept in a liquid nitrogen tank that provides a stable temperature of minus 196 degrees.

The procedure is said to cost more than 7 million yuan (US$1.05 million) plus an annual charge of 50,000 yuan for the refilling of liquid nitrogen.

But Gui only needs to pay a small portion of the amount since his wife volunteered.

Jia Chunsheng, who is in charge of Shandong Yinfeng, said cryogenics projects remain asserious scientific studies and the institute has no intention to commercialize the procedure anytime soon, news website hk01.com reported.

Jia also praised Zhan for being willing to contribute her body to scientific research, adding that her consent fuels the hope that dead people can be revived and restored to full health in the future.

In the United States, there have been about 250 people placed in cryopreservation as of 2014.

TL/JC/CG

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A first in China cryonics: Dead woman put in deep freeze - EJ Insight - EJ Insight

Treating your cancer with all-natural alternative medicine may double your risk of dying – Mic

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Treating curable cancers with alternative medicine techniques is a choice that at least one in three Americans makes, including former Apple CEO Steve Jobs before his death from a curable form of pancreatic cancer in 2011. But even if treating the body with these natural methods sounds appealing, a recent study suggests that using alternative medicine to treat cancer more than doubles the risk of dying within five years.

Scientists examined a decades worth of medical records and found 281 patients with curable forms of breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancer. All of these 281 patients decided to try alternative forms of medicine instead of more conventional treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation. Compared to the 560 patients who opted for regular treatment, the alternative medicine patients overall were two and a half times more likely to be dead five years later. Among specific cancers, that rate was higher breast cancer patients were 5.68 times more likely to die, while those with colorectal were 4.57 more likely to die.

We now have evidence to suggest that using alternative medicine in place of proven cancer therapies results in worse survival, study author and oncologist Skyler Johnson said in a release. It is our hope that this information can be used by patients and physicians when discussing the impact of cancer treatment decisions on survival.

Alternative medicine is a loose term, but it can encompass anything from hypnosis, yoga and aromatherapy to ingesting herbs and dietary supplements. Steve Jobs reportedly tried hydrotherapy, consulting psychics and limiting his diet to just fruits and vegetables before his death at the age of 56, according to Scientific American. But at the end of his search for cutting-edge treatments, Jobs reportedly regretted his choice to delay traditional surgery for alternative medicine, biographer Walter Isaacson told CBS.

He said, I didnt want my body to be opened. I didnt want to be violated in that way. Hes regretful about it, Isaacson said. I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you dont want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. And it had worked for him in the past.

The study also showed that some people are more likely to try alternative medicine than others. It may be counterintuitive to survival rates, but those who chose alternative medicine generally had the advantages of higher incomes and higher education levels, plus they tended to be much younger.

These patients should be doing better than the standard therapy group, but theyre not, James Hu, the studys senior author and the director of Yales prostate and genitourinary cancer radiotherapy program, told MedPage Today. Thats a scary thing to me. These are young patients who could potentially be cured, and theyre being sold snake oil by unscrupulous alternative medicine practitioners.

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Treating your cancer with all-natural alternative medicine may double your risk of dying - Mic

Alternative Medicine Treatments for Cancer Linked to Lower Survival Rate – Laboratory Equipment

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Patients who choose to receive alternative therapy as treatment for curable cancers instead of conventional cancer treatment have a higher risk of death, according to researchers from the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Cancer Center.

The findings were reported online by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

There is increasing interest by patients and families in pursuing alternative medicine as opposed to conventional cancer treatment. This trend has created a difficult situation for patients and providers. Although it is widely believed that conventional cancer treatment will provide the greatest chance at cure, there is limited research evaluating the effectiveness of alternative medicine for cancer.

While many cancer patients use alternative therapy in addition to conventional cancer treatments, little is known about patients who use alternative therapy as their only approach to treating their cancer.

We became interested in this topic after seeing too many patients present in our clinics with advanced cancers that were treated with ineffective and unproven alternative therapies alone, said the studys senior author, James B. Yu, associate professor of therapeutic radiology at Yale Cancer Center.

To investigate alternative medicine use and its impact on survival compared to conventional cancer treatment, the researchers studied 840 patients with breast, prostate, lung, and colorectal cancer in the National Cancer Database (NCDB) a joint project of the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society. The NCDB represents approximately 70 percent of newly diagnosed cancers nationwide. Researchers compared 280 patients who chose alternative medicine to 560 patients who had received conventional cancer treatment.

The researchers studied patients diagnosed from 2004 to 2013. By collecting the outcomes of patients who received alternative medicine instead of chemotherapy, surgery, and/or radiation, they found a greater risk of death. This finding persisted for patients with breast, lung, and colorectal cancer. The researchers concluded that patients who chose treatment with alternative medicine were more likely to die and urged for greater scrutiny of the use of alternative medicine for the initial treatment of cancer.

We now have evidence to suggest that using alternative medicine in place of proven cancer therapies results in worse survival, said lead author Dr.Skyler Johnson.It is our hope that this information can be used by patients and physicians when discussing the impact of cancer treatment decisions on survival.

Its important to note that when it comes to alternative cancer therapies, there is just so little known patients are making decisions in the dark. We need to understand more about which treatments are effective whether were talking about a new type of immunotherapy or a high-dose vitamin and which ones arent, so that patients can make informed decisions, added Cary Gross, co-author of the study.

Dr Libby: How to get the most out of food supplements | Stuff.co.nz – Stuff.co.nz

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

DR LIBBY WEAVER

Last updated14:45, August 15 2017

Istock

While nutritional supplements can help to bridge any gaps or to address deficiencies, they cannot replace a nutritious way of eating.

Nutritional supplements are very common these days.

For some people, supplements are necessary to cover nutritional gaps that can arise from excluding certain foods from their diet, regardless of whether this is by choice or necessity. For others, supplementation is something they view as an insurance policy, to ensure their nutrient intake is adequate if they don't always eat as well as they know they should.

Perhaps you choose to take a multivitamin to top up your intake of a range of nutrients, or maybe you take a specific vitamin or mineral that is lacking in your diet. Or you might take an omega-3 fatty acid supplement, or use a greens powder as a convenient way to increase your vegetable intake.

Good quality nutritional supplements are a financial investment, so you definitely want to be sure you are getting the maximum benefit from what you are taking.

READ MORE: *The problem with vitamin pills and supplements *Why this naturopath won't take supplements *Ask Dr Libby: the best supplements for joint health

If you're not effectively absorbing the nutrients from your supplements, you're not going to be getting all of the potential benefits from these. The old adage that you are what you eat isn't quite correct. You are what you eat, absorb and assimilate, and this is something to consider when it comes to supplementation, too.

Let's consider some common nutritional supplements and how you can get the most out of these.

IRON

Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency in the world, and it can be difficult to restore depleted iron levels without a supplement. Many iron supplements lead to constipation, but most people find this does not happen with liquid iron supplements.

If you take an iron supplement, avoiding tea, coffee or red wine within at least an hour of taking your supplement is essential, as the tannins inhibit iron absorption. Consuming calcium-rich foods away from iron-rich foods and iron supplements can also make a difference to iron absorption, as iron and calcium compete for absorption in the gut.

If you take a calcium supplement, it's important that this is taken at a different time to your iron supplement. The same goes for zinc supplements to maximise absorption, they should be taken at a different time to iron supplements.

Vitamin C, however, significantly enhances the absorption of iron. So if you take an iron supplement, you might like to check the label to ensure it also contains vitamin C.

ZINC

To maximize absorption, zinc supplements are best taken away from food (before bed is a good time) and away from any iron, calcium and folic acid supplements. Tannins in tea, coffee and red wine can also inhibit zinc absorption, as can fibre, so these are best avoided for at least an hour either side of taking zinc.

VITAMIN D

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin, so absorption of vitamin D supplements will be enhanced when taken with a source of dietary fat. This means it's best to take your vitamin D supplement with a meal that includes nourishing fats from foods like avocado, nuts, seeds, extra virgin olive oil or oily fish such as salmon. There are two different forms of vitamin D they are vitamin D2 and vitamin D3. Vitamin D3 is the more bioavailable form.

MULTIVITAMIN

Multivitamin supplements are best taken with a meal. When you eat, stomach acid is produced to help digest your food properly, and this will also enhance absorption of some of the nutrients in your multivitamin. The fats that are present in the meal will also help your body to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins (vitamins A, D, E and K). It's also best to avoid drinking coffee, tea and red wine within an hour of taking your multivitamin to get the most out of it.

While nutritional supplements can help to bridge any nutritional gaps or to address nutrient deficiencies, please be aware that they cannot replace a highly nutritious way of eating. Nothing in this world can.

Dr Libby is a nutritional biochemist, best-selling author and speaker. The advice contained in this column is not intended to be a substitute for direct, personalised advice from a health professional. Join Dr Libby for her upcoming Food Frustrations New Zealand tour. For information and to buy tickets, visit drlibby.com

-Stuff

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Australian bodybuilder with rare disorder dies eating high-protein diet – CNN

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Urea cycle disorder, which causes a deficiency of one enzyme in the urea cycle, stops the body from breaking down protein, according to the nonprofit National Urea Cycle Disorders Foundation. Normally, the body can remove nitrogen, a waste product of protein metabolism, from the blood. However, a urea cycle disorder would prohibit this. Therefore, nitrogen, in the form of toxic ammonia, would accumulate in the blood and eventually reach the brain, where it can cause irreversible damage, coma and death.

"The enzyme deficiency can be mild enough so that the person is able to detoxify ammonia adequately -- until there's a trigger," said Cynthia Le Mons, executive director of the foundation. The trigger could be a viral illness, stress or a high-protein diet, she added.

"There was just no way of knowing she had it because they don't routinely test for it," said Michelle White, Hefford's mother and a resident of Perth. "She started to feel unwell, and she collapsed."

White blames protein shakes for her daughter's death.

Since 2014, Hefford, who worked at Princess Margaret Hospital for Children and studied paramedicine, had been competing as a bodybuilder.

It was only after Hefford's death that White discovered containers of protein supplements in her daughter's kitchen, along with a strict food plan. White understood then that her daughter, who had been preparing for another bodybuilding competition, had also been consuming an unbalanced diet.

"There's medical advice on the back of all the supplements to seek out a doctor, but how many young people actually do?" White asked.

Le Mons said, "typically, there are nuanced symptoms that just go unrecognized" with mild cases of urea cycle disorder. Symptoms include episodes of a lack of concentration, being very tired and vomiting.

"Sometimes, people think it's the flu and might even go to the ER thinking they have a really bad flu," Le Mons said, adding that a simple serum ammonia level test, which can detect the condition, is not routinely done in ERs.

It's unclear whether Hefford suffered symptoms of her condition. White, who hopes her daughter's story will serve as a warning to help save lives, believes protein supplements need more regulation.

The Australian Medical Association says there's no real health benefit to such supplements. And, while they may not be necessary for most people, they're not dangerous to most, either.

The estimated incidence of urea cycle disorders is 1 in 8,500 births. Since many cases remain undiagnosed, the exact incidence is unknown and believed to be underestimated.

"There's a myth that this disorder only affects children," Le Mons said, noting that one patient reached age 85 before diagnosis.

Regarding Hefford, Le Mons said that "this is not the first time this has happened." Other athletes, who like Hefford were unaware of their condition, have died when a high-protein diet triggered their condition.

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Australian bodybuilder with rare disorder dies eating high-protein diet - CNN

Supplement maker on FDA blacklist after deadly bacteria found in water system – Ars Technica

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Enlarge / A scanning electron microscopic image of Burkholderia cepacia.

The Food and Drug Administration advised consumers and healthcare providers Friday to avoid all liquid products made by PharmaTech LLC of Davie, Floridaafter finding dangerous Burkholderia cepacia bacteria in the water system used to manufacture its products. Those products include liquid drugs and dietary supplements labeled under Rugby Laboratories, Major Pharmaceuticals, and Leader Brands.

An outbreak of B. cepaciainfections affecting at least 60 people in eight states led the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to PharmaTech. Late last year, the agencies tracked the source to more than 10 lots of PharmaTechs oral liquid docusate sodium, a stool softener. But suspicion of contamination crept to the companys other products, and this month PharmaTech issued a voluntary nationwide recall of its other liquid products, such as its liquid vitamin D drops and liquid multivitamins that are marketed for infants and children.

B. cepacia poses a serious threat to vulnerable patients, including infants and young children who still have developing immune systems, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. These products were distributed nationwide to retailers, health care facilities, pharmacies and sold onlinemaking it important that parents, patients and health care providers be made aware of the potential risk and immediately stop using these products.

A representative for PharmaTech reached by Ars declined to comment beyondthe recall announcement. The announcement includes a full list of products affected with images.

Burkholderia cepacia poses little risk to healthy people, the CDC notes. But it can be deadly in people with weakened immune systems or other conditions, such as cystic fibrosis. Infections can cause a range of symptomsfrom little to none or to severe respiratory distressand spread from person-to-person or through the environment. The bacteria is known to lurk in health care settings and is often found to be resistant to many common antibiotics.

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Doxycycline time release capsules – Shelf life extension program doxycycline – Filipino Express

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Doxycycline time release capsules - Shelf life extension program doxycycline
Filipino Express
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Doxycycline time release capsules - Shelf life extension program doxycycline - Filipino Express

How Did Political Terminology and Alignments Develop Differently in the US and Europe? – HuffPost

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Why did conservatism and liberalism develop so differently in Europe than in the United States? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Charles Tips, Retired entrepreneur, Founding CEO of TranZact, Inc., on Quora:

Political outlooks took different routes in Europe and the United States but developed quite similarly.

Even prior to the Age of Enlightenment, Europe was home to several republican (non-monarchical) governments. During the Enlightenment, a great variety of thinkers began to oppose monarchy and the divine right of kings with concepts formed around the republican idea of popular sovereignty. Liberalism is the name for the range of ideologies, from constitutional monarchy to the radical republicanism adopted in the United States following its Revolutionary War.

The United States at the time of that war had been home to four separate waves of British immigration, only one of which was largely Tory, or supportive of British monarchy. The others tended to be separatist in order to escape the oppression experienced in England. These waves were joined by Dutch Reform republicans, French Huguenots, German Lutherans and Swedish Lutherans (two distinct outlooks), with most of the representatives of these groups happy to have left Europe behind. Support for monarchy was to be found only in certain pockets, and, after the war, never reasserted itself.

Liberalism was strong in Europe and increasingly truculent toward monarchy. The attempt to reprise the American Revolution in France, the French Revolution, became shockingly bloody as the antagonisms on all sides were much harsher than had been the case in the American Colonies. When that revolution was followed by Bonapartism, the Counter-Enlightenment took much of the wind out of the sails of the liberal movement.

Early in the 19th century, various experiments in socialism represented an in-place effort to duck out from under monarchism. With the Revolutions of 1848 and the publication that year of The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, socialism joined liberalism as a second threat aimed at monarchism.

A generation later, however, the popular working-class revolts Marx had predicted were nowhere in evidence. Meanwhile, Otto von Bismarck, tasked with unifying the many German principalities under Kaiser Wilhelm I, noted the strong appeal of the socialist message to the people. He began exploratory discussions with certain social democrats.

Social democracy was the name for the non-revolutionary form of Marxs communism, something of a ruse made necessary by revolutionary communism running afoul of sedition laws all around Europe. Bismarck decided between the fact the social democrats had no power of their own and that the leadership seemed every bit as monarchistic as he was, just for themselves rather than the House of Hohenzollern to simply steal their platform from them and implement it in the name of the Kaiser.

After many leaders of the SPD, the social democratic party in Berlin, crossed over to work in Bismarcks government (he was by then chancellor), he simply outlawed those remaining socialists who had not. This capture of social democracy vaulted social democracy to the right, authoritarian extreme and left Marx fuming mad and declaring that the use of state power to offer state aid could only result in a dictatorship by a bourgeois elite in need of a permanent underclass to justify their rule.

Still, the paternalistic welfare state, or, sometimes, the high modern state, that Bismarck wrought, became the wonder of the world. As Bismarck later in 1880 told an American interviewer, "My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare."

Bismarck had solved the problem socialism represented, but most of the monarchies of Europe were too benighted to grasp that. Their inability to resist the resulting popular pressures led to World War One which proved lethal to the more brittle monarchies and empires of Europe. Rising were two new socialisms on the Bismarckian authoritarian planfascism and state communism. These emergent socialisms despised each other. Social democracy was despised for having accepted capitalism and for having stayed loyal to the Kaiser throughout the war. Fascism was despised for having updated all of Marxs concepts to better fit the current zeitgeist. And state communism was despised for having stuck to the original Marxian template (the use of state authority apart) that was widely considered in Europe to be terribly out of date.

As all three considered themselves the inevitable end state of mankind and all three were attempting to appeal to the same target audience, World War Two launched as largely the rivalry between the emergent state socialisms. That war left fascism in the dustbin of history, and the ensuing Cold War began putting soon-to-be-fatal pressure on state communism. Social democracy alone retains currency, and throughout Europe even it is retrenching to more liberal economic approaches and has otherwise devolved away from its attachment to socialism, often being referred to these days simply as mixed economies.

The American Civil War had been a triumph for liberalism, ending slavery and resulting in three constitutional amendments that bolstered our republicanism. However, as the Reconstruction Era wore on, the Conservative Democrats in the South greatly strengthened their resistance in both numbers and cunning. At the same time, the North increasingly found itself inundated by farmhands arriving by train seeking factory jobs, freed slaves arriving from the South hoping for the same and teeming masses of Southern and Eastern European Catholics and Jews.

Very swiftly, the great majority of staunch northern liberals switched to an embrace of progressivism, the movement to bring Bismarckian social democracy to the United States. It was a native-stock reaction to protect Anglo-Saxon Protestant privilege that was hyper-democratic (that is, changing our laws to be more majority-rule oriented). Allied with southern Conservative Democrats and dominating both parties by the Progressive Era, progressivism caught on with some ninety percent of Western European-stock Americans, thus representing approaching two-thirds of the total population at the time.

Liberalism was flat on its back. Such facially illiberal progressive programs as forced sterilization of mental and criminal inferiors garnered only single digits of opposition. However, the many anti-liberal excesses of the Wilson administration and, especially, the swiftly growing recoil against Prohibition greatly revived liberalism while cutting progressive numbers roughly in half.

Progressives lost the boldness that came of being a strong majority and soon adopted the deceptive tactics of their Fabian cousins in the UK. One of those was that, not wanting to risk running for president under his actual label of progressive in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt cast himself as a liberal. He doubled down on that ruse beginning in 1937 once he got a majority progressive Supreme Court in the hopes of getting his positive rights agenda passed disguised as liberal rather than state socialist. The use of liberal to refer to progressives is spurious.

After World War Two, the United States, feeling that its heritage of liberalism had won the war (and not FDRs social democracy) and could best oppose state communism, had a widespread revival of liberalism in both parties, Conservative Democrats apart. The resulting civil-rights pressure from both parties destroyed the Conservative Democrats, while the turmoil within the Democratic Party and especially the rise of student radicals in the anti-war and civil-liberties movements gave rise to a third wave of progressivism, this time half again the size of the second wave and in need of alliance with the very cohorts its grandparents and great-grandparents had despised.

As progressivism peaked prior to World War One, liberalism survived in primarily academic realms and largely based on the study of the conservative outlook of Irish Whig parliamentarian Edmund Burke, who, being a Whig, was not conservative in the European sense of moderate support of monarchy. That movement survives as mainstream conservatism along with several other stances wishing to conserve our liberal heritage.

After the war in the 1920s, a stronger version of liberalism revived, largely based on the wonderment of newly arrived immigrants where Americas famous freedoms had gone. This movement referred to itself as libertarian to express the fact that it wished to go beyond our early republicanism, which, while radical, had managed to secure the Lockean social contract largely only for Western European males, and extend it to all.

Conservative, where not connected to a party as in the UK, is properly a stance; one is conservative about something. There are some dozen conservative stances in the US, most wishing to conserve our liberal heritage (though not in as radical a form as libertarians do) and some being partly statist. All of the liberal ones wish to conserve a form of liberalism much more radical than is found in Europe.

Meanwhile, our progressives have been pushing hard to change our form of government from liberal to state socialist even as their social democratic brethren in Europe retrench toward more economic liberalism. It is fair to say that while political outlooks in Europe and North America have common roots and similar development, they have little pull on each other, far less than events and developments at home, though the push toward globalism hopes to change that.

The United States moved far to the left of Europe, a position our conservatives seek to retain against the progressive desire to pull us back center-right. Europe has stayed center-right. This chart depicts the Enlightenment swing to increasing liberty followed by the Counter-Enlightenment swing back to statism.

This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:

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This couple are going to get married in every country where it’s legal – PinkNews

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Fleur Pierets and Julian P. Boom

A queer couple are planning to visit every country where its legal for same-sex couples to get married and hold a wedding in each one.

The plan will seeFleur Pierets and Julian P. Boom travel the world over the next year and a half in order to tie the knot in all the legally-permitted countries.

The project was titled 22 after the 22 countries with equal marriage, but rather unhelpfully for the couple Germany and Malta have both recently legalised same-sex marriage.

The female art duo have now extended their trip to accommodate the two extra countries, taking the tally to 24. It could rise even further, if Australia votes in favour of equality this year.

Their first wedding for the project will take place in New York next month, with their final wedding planned more than a year later in New Zealand, in October 2017.

The trip will take them across the diverse range of countries around the world with marriage equality from Colombia to Canada, and South Africa to Sweden.

The pair, who first married in Belgium in 2012, explained: 22 is an art project that speaks of evolution and optimism. A time capsule that instantly refers to the possibility of change.

That captures the zeitgeist of a world in the midst of change when it comes to gender equality and human rights.

22 celebrates the places that legalised gay marriage, and highlights the work that still needs to be done in the 170 countries that dont.

At the current rate we will reach global recognition of same-sex marriage in the year 2142. Thats 125 years from now so lets see if they can get it to go a bit faster.

Of the abruptly out-of-date name, they added: Naming our project 22 shows that the world is in constant movement.

Were building a time capsule that instantly refers to the possibility of change and we ourselves dont know to how many countries we will have to go, or have to add over the 18 month course of this project.

We hope many, because this goes beyond being merely a work of art.

22 can raise levels of awareness that may lead to changing laws and giving people the equal opportunities they deserve.

The pair added:Fascinated by gender, identity and community, our research-based practice functions as a mirror in which viewers can confront themselves with ideologies or beliefs.

We are working towards cultural awareness when it comes to gender equality and gay imagery in mainstream art history.

At the end of the performance, an art/video installation will be exhibited.

As a performance piece, we are getting married in: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States & Uruguay.

You can follow their journey online.

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Circular economy – Effective resource management | Benzinga – Benzinga

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Luxembourg (PRWEB) August 14, 2017

In recent years, efficient use of resources and a low-carbon society have become the focus of global discussions on the transition to a circular economy. Transition to a circular economy is one of the fundamental development challenges of our society, which will have an ever more important role in the future due to its environmental and climate impacts, and because of the economic potential deriving from it. Therefore, the transition to a circular economy cannot only be a vision, but is a necessity. Circular economy connects several concepts, such as green growth, the green economy, industrial symbiosis, resource efficiency and sustainable development. With wider or narrower focus, the common goals are generally three: to improve the efficiency of resource use, to ensure resilience of ecosystems and to strengthen social equity. Global demand for natural resources is rising steeply. In the 20th century, the world's population increased by 4 times, economic output by 40 times, consumption of fossil fuels 16 times, and water consumption by 9 times. The same trend will continue in the future. By 2050, the global population will increase to 9.6 billion people, and it is clear that the linear economic model will soon come to its limit as it is based on the exploitation of natural resources and the increasing production of goods with a short lifespan.

The Seventh Environmental Action Program of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union for the period up to 2020 sets out the priority objectives to be achieved during this period. With this environmental action program, the EU has committed itself to further strengthening its efforts to protect our natural capital, promote low carbon growth by effectively using resources and innovation, and protecting the health and well-being of people - while respecting the natural limitations of the planet. The program contains nine priority objectives and tasks that the EU must undertake to achieve by 2020, among which a special focus is on improving resource management.

According to Eurostat data, most EU countries are still ineffective in terms of material productivity because they use too many natural resources for the unit of GDP generated, which puts them in an extremely precarious situation in the long run from a competitive point of view. The reason for this is the overwhelming inheritance of the surviving linear model of thinking in the economy and service activities (acquired, used, discarded). We need to start thinking about how to set up a circular economic system in which raw materials, water, energy and other resources will circulate, as they circulate in nature. By introducing the circular economic system, the company will be a step closer to not considering environmental policy as a factor of limiting growth, but as a key development opportunity for a new development paradigm.

The notion of "circular economy", in which nothing is discarded, is crucial in seeking to increase the efficiency of resource use. Prevention and preparation for the reuse and recycling of waste enable the company to acquire substances or materials from existing, already produced sources. This reduces the need for natural resources, and consequently reduces the use of energy and the negative impacts on the environment. Therefore, when introducing circular economy, there is no question if, but only when the economies of the countries will do so.

Moon Stone International Investment S.A. from Luxemburg is a company, which has come to realize that proper waste management is a new industry for the future for those who will recognize this opportunity. Expert studies and operational experience of the company show that the limited processing of only certain waste by a certain technology reduces the possibility of their processing into new usable materials, the scope of the possibilities of implementing certain services is limited, while lower added value and lower operating profit are achieved. On the contrary, the combined processing of waste from different areas of their production by combining different processing methods gives the greatest possible degree of their conversion into new useful materials, the maximum extent of service delivery, unsurpassed development opportunities and the achievement of higher added value and higher operating profit. And all of this is the strategic business goal of Moon Stone International Investment S.A. from Luxembourg, which has its own business model for the efficient management of material resources based on circular economy policy as a new economic model for resource management.

Moon Stone International Investment S.A. Is mainly focused on handling large masses of waste from construction, mining, industry, energy, utilities and debris of inland water bodies. Among municipal waste, priority is given to the treatment of sludges from wastewater treatment plants, the remains of so-called unusable heavy fractions after mechanical biological treatment of municipal solid waste, and ashes resulting from the thermal treatment of alternative fuels from treated waste. The use of recovered waste as new materials, composites and soils is primarily intended for the implementation of earthworks, focusing on the implementation of remediation of degraded areas in the past, improving the quality of soil for agricultural production and for new provincial construction, with an emphasis on the implementation of measures for the construction of flood protection for threats to the operation of high flood water.

In the strategy of its operation, the company does not use the words "disposal or incineration of waste" since it is at all times looking for recycled waste with comprehensive project support at the highest level for its predominantly strategic clients under its own patent procedure and its own business model for useful permitted re-use for the purpose of implementing the circular economy strategy - efficient resource management.

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Circular economy - Effective resource management | Benzinga - Benzinga

How to wake a sleepwalking economy – The Hill (blog)

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

By one key measure, the U.S. economy looks sick. Growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) the stuff that fuels future prosperity, pays for our debts and funds our government is sleepwalking. The annual growth rate is just scratching the 2.0-percent mark. GDP, the economic elixir of life, is determined by just two activities: the number of people working and their productivity. More people working and doing so more effectively yields more goods and services for all to enjoy.

Labor force growth in June was increasing at a 0.8-percent annual rate and is projected to average just 0.5 percent over the next few years. We know that labor participation is low, we also know that the Trump administration is discouraging immigration, and we know that there are more than 6 million unfilled jobs begging for workers. So the burden for GDP growth now rests on productivity.

When we add the 1.2-percent productivity increase to the current 0.8-percent labor force growth, we get a pale 2.0-percent growth in GDP. And that expected 0.5-percent labor force growth in the future spells trouble. The economy is sleepwalking, for sure, and is not likely to awaken any time soon.

By this reckoning, things look pretty bleak, but the same bad news has been flowing for a long time. From 2005-15, productivity grew at a 1.3-percent rate, but that included the Great Recession. From 1995-2004, productivity grew by 2.8 percent. But that included the microchip-based information technology revolution. And from 1974-94, the productivity count came in at 1.6 percent. Lets face it: From 1974-2015, the United States, on average, did better than what we are doing now.

Why might productivity be so weak?

Sources of the slow growth economy: over last 6 years output has grown 2.1% avg/year, labor productivity 0.5%/year. https://t.co/Njh0yePrUH pic.twitter.com/GGz2koVkbX

As might be expected, when considering human beings the ultimate resource working in a dynamic economy, there are lots of moving parts to consider. First off, the amount of new capital assets employed in the economy matters a lot. New capital investment plummeted across 2007-2013 and remains below par. Perhaps tax reform could change that, but weak is still weak.

Then, government regulation, which expanded markedly in the last eight years, has laced the economy with production restrictions. Current regulatory reform efforts might loosen some of those restrictions.

The fact that we have more than six million open jobs indicates a problem in matching available skills to the needs of a more sophisticated, knowledge-based economy. Steps now being taken to enhance the educational experience by way of apprenticeships and applied learning may improve this situation.

Finally, theres the matter of how we measure what is produced and whether measuring output has become increasingly difficult and therefore less accurate in recent years.

Is it possible that the labor force is really producing a lot more? As pointed out by Google economist Hal Varian in a 2016 Brookings productivity conference, in the last decade, a revolution in smartphones has merged phones and cameras. Meanwhile, the production of cameras, film and developing has plummeted, pushing down GDP growth. Important medical breakthroughs bring new life-extending pharmaceutical products and hospital procedures, while also shaking up the healthcare economy.

It is always difficult to properly account for new products and procedures. Last of all, there is the matter of producing things that never have been counted in GDP calculations and never will be. Things like reductions in carbon emissions and water pollution, which are not sold in the economy and therefore do not get counted.

Remember, GDP growth however it is measured provides a rough estimate of how we are doing. Given the political constraints on labor-force growth, the burden for future prosperity gains rests heavily on improved labor productivity. As a nation, we need to employ more capital physical and human and we need to reduce the number of regulatory restrictions that limit the implementation of improvements in how we produce and distribute our bountiful supply of goods and services.

Productivity matters.

Bruce Yandleis a distinguished adjunct fellow for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Dean Emeritus of the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences, and a former executive director of the Federal Trade Commission.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

Wall cuts his way right out of office – Winnipeg Free Press

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Walls intuitive decision to step down one year and four months into a new mandate had some Saskatchewanians scratching their heads last week.

Others, like me, who understand the demanding electorate, observe that Wall had no other choice. It was either go now, or face leadership opposition within the Saskatchewan Party or, even worse, humiliation at the polls in 2020.

This time last year, Wall first elected in November 2007 was riding high in the polls after the April 2016 election in which he received a majority mandate to govern for the next four years.

So what happened?

One unpopular budget and the Saskatchewan Party premier, a member of the Mennonite faiths conservative wing, is folding up his evangelists tent and moving on like Steve Martin in Leap of Faith.

After the miserly April 2017 budget, Wall, who was once the most popular premier in Canada, watched on helplessly as his SaskParty approval ratings dipped to a record low of 40 per cent.

It was a small cut to the coffers and the elimination of the government-owned, money-draining Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC) that left Wall stranded.

Outside the provinces major centres, if you want to get on the bus, Gus, or make a new plan, Stan, youll have to hitch a ride, Clyde, cause Uber doesnt service rural Saskatchewan.

Walls rural stronghold of conservative seniors has evaporated, since those without drivers licences and with city medical appointments can no longer ride the STC, which has been the lifeline for rural people since 1946. That senior demographic can no longer rally for Wall in Regina.

Sure, there was a literate outcry over the de-funding of libraries in that same ill-fated budget. But the library funding was soon restored for just one more year. The funding structures will be re-evaluated in 2018 after a consultation with librarians.

When Wall and his government sharpened their pencils with this most recent budget, they made a massive miscalculation: the SaskParty didnt spend money during a downturn.

Instead, the government punished the electorate with a philosophical budget that off-loaded the treasurys shortfall onto voters. Walls ill-advised April budget was an act of fiscal conservatism, which was an attempt to bolster his credibility with his conservative base a rookie move for a premier of almost 10 years.

Like other western Canadian resource-based provinces, Saskatchewans economy has been listing like an old navy destroyer. Perhaps Wall, who has always had a good grasp on the mood of the electorate, knows his party is facing imminent failure at the polls in 2020.

Still, its a kick in the teeth to the loyal voters who elected his SaskParty based on the reassurance that a moderate would be at the helm for four more years.

The majority of voters in this polarized province chose between two extremes: the socialist NDP and the free-enterprise SaskParty. There hasnt been a Liberal premier since W. Ross Thatcher (1964-1971).

The so-called polarized major political parties are more alike then theyll admit: both are dominated by prudish social conservatives who thrive on the status quo; nothing changes in Saskatchewan not even the time zone.

Wall the populist knew this, so he assumed the position of the appearance of change, without any bold policies that would set off the stuffy electorate. His moderate stance endeared him to the voting majority while alienating the far-right factions of his party.

So its farewell to Brad Wall. His 2016 winning election platform of "Keeping Saskatchewan Strong" has been an epic fail. All it did was fortify the NDP, who are now poised to steal the province from the SaskParty, thanks to the erosion of Walls rural base.

So what are Brad Walls future career options? Open a surf shop in Tofino or sit on the board of PotashCorp? Will Brad and Tami Wall buy a Class A motorhome, become roadies and tour with their 22-year-old musician son, Colter, a rising blues-folk-Americana star in North America and Europe?

Perhaps Wall knew the voters were ready to run him, and his party, out on a rail. Its the only other way out of town now that the STC has been cut. To drown their transportation sorrows, rural voters thanks to a quasi-privatization scheme for liquor stores can now buy a cheap bottle of Golden Wedding rye at the same hotel bar where the STC once stopped.

Patricia Dawn Robertson is an independent journalist in Wakaw, Sask.

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Wall cuts his way right out of office - Winnipeg Free Press

Ingram Micro to Invest $10 Million in Warehouse Automation Startup … – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Ingram Micro to Invest $10 Million in Warehouse Automation Startup ...
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
HDS Global, the warehouse automation startup founded by entrepreneur Louis Borders, has lined up Ingram Micro as its first logistics customer.

and more »

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Ingram Micro to Invest $10 Million in Warehouse Automation Startup ... - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

How 27-year-old Akash Gupta built the largest automation startup of India – YourStory.com

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

For Akash Gupta, a journey which started with building humanoids has shaped into one of the largest automation companies of the world today. Our candidate for this weeks Techie Tuesdays, Akash is the Co-founder and CTO of GreyOrange, an automation startup that provides warehousing solutions.

What does it take to be the CTO of one of the largest hardware and automation startupsin India and the world at the age of 27? The secret, according to Akash Gupta, the Co-founder and CTO of GreyOrange, lies in having strong fundamentals, the ability to quickly learn and unlearn new technologies and learning from the mistakes/failures even more quickly.

A BITS Pilani graduate in Mechanical Engineering, Akashs interest in building robots (humanoids) was strong that he built one in his college days. Unlike most students who tend to get emotionally attached to college life, our Techie Tuesdays candidate of the week, Akash, was was happy to finish his degree in three years and be out of the college.

YourStory caught up with Akash recently at his Gurgaon office to retrace his journey.

Akash was born in Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh, situated 400 km from Delhi. His father worked in railways and was posted at Dibiyapur railway station. He studied there till class IV. When his family moved to Kanpur he joined the Puranchandra Vaidyaniketan school there.

Akash started coding in class VI with GW-BASIC and learnt C the next year from his sisters book Let Us C. Subsequently, he developed an interest in 3D animation and learnt 3ds Max and Maya. This kept him busy in class IX and X. Akash believes that his interest in 3D animation plateaued partly because of limited exposure to algorithm at the time.

Incidentally, this geeky student was the 100m champion in school. However, the IIT JEE preparation in class XI and XII weaned him away from track and field activities forever.

Akash joined the Mechanical Engineering department at BITS Pilani in 2008. One of the predominant thoughts in his mind then was that he had solved enough problems on paper, and now wanted to do things in real life. He says,

I could draw a DC or an AC motor on paper very well, but looking at the motor of the ceiling fan, I couldnt tell which one of those it was.

Related read Meet Kiran Bhatthe man who engineered Hulk and Tarkin to win 2017 sci-tech Oscar

In his first year, Akash saw a demo of the AcYut humanoid project. To join the team, he gave the AcYut test where he was asked to make a 3D emblem of BITS Pilani on Inventor software. Being good at 3D animation, Akash made the cut easily and started working with the team AcYut in his very first month in college. He wanted to learn as much as possible.At AcYut, Akash started by designing the mechanical parts and then manufacturing them.

As a team member, he had full access to the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) Lab for manufacturing. He learnt to write G Code (input for CNC machines) and to run CNC machines. In the first year, the team made three versions of the complete mechanical structure of AcYut. Akash says,

I was so much into it that I couldnt see anything else and fortunately BITS (Pilani) gives you that flexibility.

In October 2008, Akash went to Japan to participate in a robotic competition. This was his first exposure to an international technology-based competition which helped him understand the global benchmarks for such competitions. Team AcYut was then planning to participate in the Robo Games next year (2009) for which they started building two robots. Akash picked up micro-controller programming and took his understanding of robotics further.

In AcYut-II, the team used bust motors (motors serially connected to each other using RS-485). There were two series of 16 motors each and hence, writing fool-proof protocols was not easy for them. Akash says,

In humanoids, the most complicated thing is stability. We underestimate how easily we walk (and balance). Walking is very difficult to simulate. With a lot of enthusiasm, we chose six DOF (degree of freedom) leg and then we spent good two months solving the inverse kinematics for them.

Even after figuring out the right inverse kinematics model, it took the team another six months to put it in codes and ensure that those signals go to the motors at the right time and they behave as intended. Team AcYut used ATmega1280 for controlling the complete bot and 3mm sheets of 6061 aluminium to manufacture the brackets (chassis structure on which you mount motors etc) of AcYut.

Since the workshop occupied the day time, Akash (and team AcYut) got to work only at night.

Eventually, the team won the bronze model at the Robo Games in San Francisco..The main competition at the Robo Games was humanoid Kung-Fu where the robot which can knock down the other robot three times wins.

At the end of his first year, Akash and Samay Kohli (Co-founder GreyOrange and team member AcYut) got an internship at University of Louisiana where they worked at the CajunBot Lab on an autonomous vehicle project for some time. At the university, they met Thomas Chance, CEO, C&C Technologies, which built equipment for underwater surveying. This was their first exposure to industrial robotics. The duo worked at C&C Technologies in the areas of mechanical design, electronics and microprocessors.

One of the major projects Akash worked on was the SONAR stabilising system which solved the problem of mapping the ocean bed accurately and get rid of the inconsistency caused by the waves. This included fair amounts of mechanics and electronics. Since Akash and Samay had time on their hands, they went on to build a kind of Disney ride (by joining two trailers) in a haunted house owned by Thomas. Akash says,

One could sit on a trolly and go through the rooms which were themed differently like earthquake room, laser room. More than 200 microcontrollers were working in sync with 5 computers and 1,000 air pistons (for doing a lot of actuations) to make it all happen. The entire setup cost almost $250,000.

In his second year, Akash spent a lot of time on electronics, designing and manufacturing PCBs end to end. The AcYut team won the gold and silver medal at the Robo Games. They built an exoskeleton suit wherein if a person wears this suit and moves his/her hands, then the robot will copy/replicate it. They went to the Ideen Expo in Germany with this project. Akash visited the BMW manufacturing plant there which helped him understand the importance of factors like reliability in the automation industry.

Akash recalls meetingWolfgang Hoeltgen during the visit. He is one of the earliest angels and a strategic mentor to the founding team at GreyOrange.

In January 2011, Akash and Samay were invited to take part in a humanoid hand (robotics) workshop at IIT Bombay. Soon, other colleges too invited them and thats when they started thinking about starting a company. Also, since the work had started, Akash was very keen to come out of college as soon as possible. At the time he was juggling between AcYut, GreyOrange and his studies (curriculum). He used to be in Delhi from Saturday to Monday (running GreyOrange) and back in Pilani from Tuesday to Friday (to attend the labs, as a part of the curriculum were on Tuesdays and Fridays).

Akash and Samay started making kits for the workshops which gave them an experience of doing things at scale. By now, they were done with the Robo Games and started targeting the Robo Cup. While the Robo Games had remote controlled robots, the Robo Cup had completely autonomous (robot) 2*2 soccer.

While preparing, Akash got into image processing, cognitive understanding,vision systems andstarted solving the localisation problems. He understood the complexities of gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer.

Akash finished his college degree in three years somehow and took the final-year internship at GreyOrange. In June-July 2011, he shifted to Samays house in Delhi marking the formal start of GreyOrange.

Also read From UP to the US: The journey of Abhinav Asthana and his affair with APIs

Even though Akash and Samay were making good money through workshops, they were clear that they were not going to do it for long. Soon, they started building white labeled products for other companies. These included:

This gave Akash an exposure to different standards of coding and manufacturing. He used Qt language (application development framework based on C++) for the software. He says,

I started understanding the importance of getting the right abstraction (very well structured in programmes) from the real world. For example, while programming for a pump, youve to make sure that all the different attributes of that pump are kept in your data structure in order to perform different actions on it. This becomes even more important when were building longer-term products.

After building 3-4 white label products, Akash realised that he (and Samay) were playing with way too many technologies and products. Hence, they decided to choose an industry and build products only for that. While researching to finalie the industry, they wrote down some rules to help them choose the right industry:

They finally zeroed in on three industries:

They chose option #1 and built a prototype. They proposed the idea of maintenance of tanks to a company. They even gave them the design. Unfortunately, the company floated the tender with their requirements sharing the design submitted by GreyOrange and somebody else bought the tender. Akash recalls, Being a startup we were left with nothing. We even filed a complaint but couldnt give more time to it and had to let it go.

They then moved to supply chain. Akash visited a lot of warehouses, enough to convince him that a lot needed to be done there. He started looking at goods to person systems and found that it could be made much more efficient using Grey Pranges solution of using an elegant hardware and a complex software. The first thought was to build a bot.

You may also like Meet Mitesh Agarwalthe brain of BITS whos heading technology at Oracle India

According to Akash, building a butler system is almost like bringing four large products together to make a complete system. It will have bots, pick-put stations, MSUs (mobile storage units) and a software that runs robots and business logic of inventory management. Akash and Samay spent the first few days understanding the entire problem and figuring out what the solution will be like. Akash says,

Our thought process was slightly different than what Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics) was doing. Kiva had a lot of Swan robotics which refers to distributed intelligence. Only the main server didnt have the onus of being intelligent. Bots were intelligentas well. We wanted to have a simple hardware and table up all the complexity on the server side.

This gave Grey Orange a flexibility which is desirable in the warehouses. Keeping the product software centric helped it and the hardware acted as more of generic agents.

Akash and Samay knew that its going to take them more than two years to build a butler system. And they also understood that survival of a startup for two years without revenues is very difficult. This thought coupled with an opportunity to build a sortation system for warehouses, made the duo explore it after visiting Flipkarts first ever warehouse. Akash says,

We decided to build a sortation system on the side while working on the butler system. It was a hard decision to take as we were a team of only ten people and bulter system itself was hard enough problem to solve. Technically its not advisable to do such a thing.

For two years, the team kept switching between sortation system and butler systems as working in parallel wasnt possible.

Lifting (500 kg weight) was one of the most challenging problems to be solved in order to build a butler system. The team at GreyOrange used a complex dual scissor lift mechanism to lift and built multiple prototypes. Akash says, In the hardware world, its better to build as many prototypes as possible and fail rather than getting stuck with building a perfect prototype.

Akash drew the architecture of the robot (butler) with safety system, navigation system and communication system. On server side, the team chose Erlang as the language for the main system. It was a hard decision as there were very few programmers who knew the language. Akash says,

At that point we had a dream to run 1,000 robots in a single warehouse. We couldnt find any other language or stack which allowed so many agents running in a soft real-time system.

Initially, the team used Hub motors where the motor and suspension was on wheels but later on scrapped it as it created a lot of problems. After three revisions, they got the design and production of the gear box right. Akash adds, Lack of prototyping ecosystem in India created further problems and delays. We resorted to doing things in-house as we couldnt be dependent on outside shops.

Finally, in November, Grey Orange launched its first prototype. Now, the challenge was to make them manufacturable (so that robots arent handcrafted). That took another 8-9 months. In the meanwhile, the team received an order for building sortation system. They decide to build a completely modular sortation system, so that even when one of the arms stops functioning, the rest can still work. An overall control system was designed for this. Akash says, Because PLCs (programmable logic controllers) had a lot of limitations, we built our own control systems. The sortation system was relatively less complex on the server side and fairly complex on the embedded side.

The first butler system was installed in Hong Kong. It had a small ten bot system, 200 MSUs, 2 pick-put stations, auto charging.

Related read Meet the co-creator of Julia programming language, Viral Shah

Usually, sortation systems are built to sort boxes. Akash too thought so and used IR (infra red) sensors. But when he received the sample packs from Flipkart, he realised they are poly packs (and not boxes). The IR sensors behaved very differently for these poly packs. Akash adds, This was the first ever sorter built for e-commerce company in India. And outside India, everyone used a box. So, this problem was left virgin.

Akash and his team fixed the problems of motor heating, slipping of belt, incorrect counting of the package, before installing the system at Flipkart warehouse. Moving the sorter from Gurgaon to Bangalore was very challenging. It was only now that the team started thinking about transporting the machine. It was a 40-45-ft-long machine which had to be dis-assembled and transported. It was a humongous task which taught that designing to make it work isnt enough. One has to design while making sure that the system is assembled, dis-assembled, supported, moved comfortably.

From the current capacity of supporting 1,500 to 2,000 butlers (bots), GreyOrange wants to build systems which can support infinite number of bots. The team has converted its monolithic architecture to micro services based architecture to achieve scale.

For GreyOrange, if servers go down, its not just the website which will go down, but also hundreds of robots with 500 kg weight on each will crash with each other. Hence, Akash and his team has to be even more careful while writing algorithms and ensure that any path reserved by a bot isnt taken by anyone else and that the orders are optimised in the best possible ways. According to Akash, right choices of architecture, stacks, thinking it through, being flexible and ensuring that the team focuses in-depth into modules has helped the company.

Some of the key challenges which Akash and his team are solving at GreyOrange are as follows:

In the last few months, rapid expansion to multiple geographies has brought in some operational problems like translating documentation, communication, screens, APIs, databases in five languages. To solve this, the team has built a clear framework and web interface for translators who get notifications sprint by sprint of new strings that are coming.

Akash believes that the hardware ecosystem in India has definitely evolved in this decade but the change is minimal. He says, People have become more supportive of working for prototypes of startups because somewhere they have seen startups becoming big.

Four years ago, when Akash went to a company which produced suspensions for automobiles, he was turned down immediately because of the low production volume requirement (relative to what the company produced for automobiles) and a lack of understanding of startups. But a year ago, when he spoke to them again, they agreed.

In the early days of GreyOrange, Akash used to hire people who were ready to learn and had a good understanding of basic sciences physics and mathematics. Lately, he has changed his approach and now he looks for the following kinds of people:

Also read How a small-town commerce graduate became CTO of a multibillion-dollar company

Akash is a big fan of flexibility and believes that the way supply chain is growing, the only way to build an efficient supply chain is by making it extremely flexible. He says,

In next three to five years, were looking at warehouses running with mobile platforms with changeable accessories. We really want to get to the point where you dont have any fixed infrastructure thats running in the warehouse. These mobile platforms can attach themselves with different accessories and can work as lifting units, or conveyers or robotic arms or static platform.

In order to get there, therere certain technology platforms that need to be built which will enable that. Akash and his team is already working on it at the moment (along with architecturing the entire solution). Once thats done, itll take another year or two to integrate with the system. The team is also working towards introducing the concept of unibots (similar to human beings) in the next five to seven years.

Akash wants to run one of the largest warehouses with 10,000 robots very soon. He is also keen to build GreyOrange as a company where he would still want to work ten years hence. Hes making sure that the company retains the culture of innovation and building new products. He adds, GreyOranges products are disruptive. For example, while other companies in the world offering linear sorters have a lead/installation time of at least three-four months, we do it in as less as four weeks.

He wants to stick to producing simple elegant hardware with extremely complex software which disrupts the industry.

Akash believes in being sincere to oneself and ones work. For the first three-four years of the company, he was always the first to reach office and last to leave. He felt it as a responsibility that till any employee was in the office, he should be there with him/her to support, to help.He says,

The biggest fear that you have as an entrepreneur is that if you fail, then you shouldnt have this in your heart that you didnt give your best.

You can connect with him on Linkedin or Twitter.

How 27-year-old Akash Gupta built the largest automation startup of India - YourStory.com

ThinkSmart Automation Platform Launches New, More Powerful Features – Markets Insider

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --ThinkSmart, a leading provider of Business Process and Workflow Automation software and solutions, launched new features on its Automation Platform (TAP) today expanding integration capabilities and improving the end user experience to further enable organizations to digitally transform the way they work.

In order to better serve enterprise and government, ThinkSmart has developed tools to allow users toconfigure integrations with any system that has an API ranging from Salesforce to Google, with no rip-and-replace required. Users can now configure and deploy flexible integrations utilizing the following new capabilities:

"Our expanded integration capabilities are not an afterthought," said ThinkSmart's CEO Paul Hirner. "Since day one, our platform was built to enable easy integration with nearly any system. This is a huge benefit to government entities that have to work within the constraints of legacy systems as well as businesses that need to grow and scale quickly in the cloud."

These intregration features are beneficial to companies like Australasian legal start-up, lexvoco, which provides custom legal services to in-house teams, with the aim of bringing together legal expertise and technology to enhance in-house value, effectiveness and performance. By leveraging TAP, lexvoco becomes an all-in-one management consultant, law firm and technology vendor, and offers an integrated end-to-end solution to assist its clients to automate and optimize in-house legal workflows, processes and documentation.

"The new integration features are going to open numerous new possibilities for workflow builders," said Claire Vines, Head of Technology & Senior Legal Counsel, lexvoco. "We can't wait to get them incorporated into our processes and explore what new systems we can create with TAP."

ThinkSmart has incorporated form and workflow updates to improve ease of use in a number of ways. Form updates include Google address integration, expanded field types, more flexible wizard form views, and speadsheets within a form. The Designer workflow building toolset has also been expanded and allows users to configure more advanced workflows using a wide set of features including group roles, expanded auto-submit triggers, user self-registration, enhanced workflow revision management and expanded formulas.

A new and improved Learning Center is also now available to customers and houses product support and documentation in one centralized portal. The portal includes training videos, release notes and new product and feature updates making it easier for users to find answers to common questions.

ABOUT THINKSMART

ThinkSmart LLC, a leading SaaS provider of Digital Transaction Management (DTM) software, helps people to design, deploy and build smart automated workflows that accelerate their business processes and operations and transform their enterprises. The ThinkSmart Automation Platform (TAP) provides intuitive drag and drop tools enabling companies and government entities to quickly design, build and implement any workflow with no additional IT support required. TAP easily integrates with any internal legacy system, platform, or top tier eSign solutions, making it easy for organizations that need to operate more efficiently, cutcosts and save time. TAP operates anytime, anywhere and on any device; mobile app available to download in iTunes or Android app stores.

For more information, visitwww.thinksmart.com, call +1-888-489-4284, or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

ThinkSmart LLC is the owner of ThinkSmart LLC and all of its other marks. All other marks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners.

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ThinkSmart Automation Platform Launches New, More Powerful Features - Markets Insider

Qt Introduces Qt for Automation to Help Organizations Reduce Operating Costs and Improve Business Process Efficiency – Markets Insider

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

HELSINKI, August 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today The Qt Company introduced the Qt for Automation offering, a new set of libraries and development tools for the building, services and industrial automation sectors. Built on Qt for Device Creation and Qt for Application Development, Qt for Automation is designed to enhance the performance and capabilities of edge devices for the Internet of Things (IoT). With Qt for Automation's modular, scalable and secure libraries and interoperability capabilities, organizations in the automation industry can reduce operating costs and improve the efficiency of business processes. Qt's technology is currently in use by millions of developers across the world and eight of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies.

With Gartner, Inc. forecasting earlier this year that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017 and 5.5 million new devices being connected every day, the IoT is one of the most opportunity-rich areas across today's global technology landscape. Furthermore, McKinsey & Company found that the potential value that could be unlocked with IoT applications in factory settings which represent a significant portion of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) could be as much as $3.7 trillion in 2025, which is approximately one-third of all potential economic value of the IoT estimated by McKinsey. Consequently, organizations in the automation industry are increasingly looking for ways to pursue the market opportunities created by both the IoT and the IIoT.

The modern architecture and extensibility of the modular, scalable and secure tools and QtKNX libraries within Qt for Automation guarantees rapid innovation and future warranties, independent of any changes to the hardware or operating systems. By leveraging these features and the device interoperability capabilities of Qt for Automation, organizations in the industrial and home automation sectors are able to significantly reduce operating costs and streamline mission-critical business processes.

"With the rise of IoT, we realized thatthe amount ofsensors and I/O we collected in our control systems was increasing exponentially, and we needed to aggregate the data and present it in a better way to becomemore efficient," said Rune Volden, R&D Manager, Ulstein Power & Control. "Qt provides a very good tool for programming control systems as well as graphical user interfaces, which saved us a significant amount of development time."

Qt for Automation extends Qt's comprehensive portfolio of application development and device creation tools. The primary features of Qt for Automation include:

"Qt has been focused on the automation sector since our inception two decades ago, and our presence in the industry has expanded alongside the exponential growth of the global IoT market," said Lars Knoll, CTO, The Qt Company. "With the new Qt for Automation offering, we are bringing our automation capabilities together in an integrated and comprehensive set of software development tools and libraries that have been designed for edge devices in industrial and home automation. This enables our automation customers to quickly and easily gain tangible business benefits, including reduced costs and improved efficiencies across their entire organization, and further extends our leadership position in the automation industry."

Qt will share additional details about Qt for Automation during a webinar taking place at 4:00 p.m. CEST on Thursday, September 7th. You can register for the webinar here.

Additionally, to learn more about Qt for Automation, please read our blog post detailing the new offering.

Furthermore, you can learn more about The Qt Company and Qt for Automation at this year's Qt World Summit, the largest annual event dedicated to Qt developers, business leaders and product managers. The event will take place in Berlin, Germany from October 10-12 and will feature thought-provoking keynotes and demos, insightful breakouts, and industry highlights. For more information on the Qt World Summit 2017, please visit: http://www.qtworldsummit.com/

About The Qt Company

The Qt Company develops and delivers the Qt development framework under commercial and open source licenses. We enable a single software code across all operating systems, platforms and screen types, from desktops and embedded systems to wearables and mobile devices. Qt is used by approximately one million developers worldwide and is the leading independent technology behind millions of devices and applications. Qt is the platform of choice for in-vehicle systems, medical devices, industrial automation devices, and other business critical application manufacturers, and is used by leading global players in more than 70 industries. The Qt Company is owned by the Qt Group, which operates in China, Finland, Germany, Japan, Korea, Norway, Russia and USA with more than 200 employees worldwide. The Qt Group is headquartered in Espoo, Finland and is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki Stock Exchange. The company's net sales in year 2016 totaled 32,4 MEUR. To learn more visit http://qt.io

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Qt Introduces Qt for Automation to Help Organizations Reduce Operating Costs and Improve Business Process Efficiency - Markets Insider

Globalisation, the sledgehammer battering Africa Part Two – The Zimbabwean

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Today, we will look at more reasons why this is so. And you will see they are one of the major reasons who extreme poverty is still the norm in Africa when it could have been eradicated years ago.

This says that globalisation and free trade will allow you to sell globally the products you are best at producing. As a backward country, the products you are best at producing will be the cheap, labour-intensive ones because you can pay your workers at well below what is legally allowed in the developed world, and at near slavery levels.

The theory is that, as your business develops, you will then be able to pay your workers more and thus lift them out of poverty. In practice, this wont happen because the minute you try to pay your workers more, your customers will just go to another company or another country which is charging less than you. So you cant increase your workers wages, and what you are really doing is locking them into not just poverty, but abject poverty.

For example, the world is applauding Ethiopia for its initiative in developing a fast-developing textile, clothing & footwear manufacturing trade. This may be good news for the country and its manufacturing bosses, but what is happening to its workers?

To find that out, lets look at the history of textile, clothing & footwear manufacture. Originally, many European and African nations had their own thriving, home-grown industries. And their workers were well-paid by local standards.

Then China and Bangladesh (and other developing countries) came out with dramatically lower costs, just by paying their workers what can only be described as slave wages. Result: widespread destruction of the European and African textile, clothing & footwear manufacturing. Yes, the general public benefited greatly from being able to buy much cheaper clothes and shoes, but it was at the cost of huge unemployment in Europe and Africa in those particular trades.

Then China and Bangladesh start to pay their workers more. So now what happens? Ethiopia steps in and takes trade off them by paying its workers only US$1.32 a day (which, by the way, is well below the UN and World Banks threshold of $1.90 a day). Ethiopia and its industry bosses will do very well out of this (but the workers certainly do not), until a point when it wants to pay its workers more.

Then another country will step in and take Ethiopias trade by cutting workers pay. This will put Ethiopias workers out of work. The bosses will be OK because they will generally be the ones who move their manufacturing out of Ethiopia and to the new country.

So what the Law of Comparative Advantage actually does is create a cycle of never-ending abject poverty with manufacturing moving to ever-cheaper countries. This is called The Race To The Bottom.

The other side of the Law of Comparative Advantage is that if you are good at producing high-value technically advanced products, then that is what you will specialise in. In practice, the only countries able to do this are wealthy ones. So what actually happens is that, as a backward nation, you are swapping low profit products that keep your workers in abject poverty for high profit ones from the wealthy nations that can pay their workers well.

Japan understood this very well when it came under immense pressure from the USA to open its borders after World War II. The Japanese government told the USA it was not going to be consigned to exporting tins of tuna to the USA in exchange for Cadillacs. Instead, it put up barriers to importing American cars to give its automobile industry (at the time virtually non-existent) a chance to develop. The incredible rise of the Japanese car industry is history.

Agenda 2063 has learnt the vital lesson of protectionism to allow Africas domestic industries to develop, which is why it focuses on building up an African financed, owned and led business-base, and wants to heavily reduce its reliance on globalisation.

If African nations want the living standards of their citizens to rise, they, too must learn from the experience of Japan, China and South Korea. However, the big problem there is either incompetence (they dont know what to do, so they just accept the story of globalisation), or corruption: a large part of their illicit fortunes come from supporting foreign commercial and financial interests.

Even if this is true for weak nations that want to develop their GDP (although that is debatable), it is certainly not true for their workers as we have seen.

Where wealthy nations are concerned, it is true for them and their higher-end businesses. But it is definitely not true for companies specialising in lower-end products, or their workers.

That is because it is not a level playing field when the laws of developed nations prevent them from competing on labour costs against nations that have no minimum wage or have one but dont enforce it, as hardly any developing nations do. So labour-intensive companies and those dealing in lower-end products are forced to sack their workers and either take their manufacture abroad or go bankrupt. On balance, wealthy nations can and do benefit in GDP terms, but at a big cost to their workers.

We have already seen this is definitely not true where weaker trading nations are concerned. Yes, the owners of some manufacturing businesses can do well out of it. Yes, globalisation and free trade produce jobs and someone who earns nothing will grasp at the opportunity to earn US$1.90 or $1.32 a day. But that doesnt get them out of poverty in fact, nowhere near it.

And what it does not do is put them into a system where their standards of living will steadily rise and keep rising. And that is the system everyone should be concentrating on.

In the long run, it may not even be win-win for wealthy nations. It is true that all of them achieved their huge wealth via globalisation. But the cracks are already starting to appear for them. Once a developing nation like China or South Korea can get itself into a position of having the expertise to produce technical products, it can suddenly forge ahead for the simple reason that, as it pays its scientists, designers and engineers very much less than developed nations do, it can put a lot more manpower into product development.

The other problem that is already reaching an advanced stage in the UK and USA is a rapidly widening gap between rich and poor. The rich are getting richer at a rate that often far exceeds increases in GDP. In contrast, the wages of workers is not only stagnating, the incidence of poverty is increasing year by year, as witness what can only be described as a dramatic rise in food banks and increase in starvation among children. We saw earlier how the Race to the Bottom affects developing nations. This is how it affects developed ones.

And when workers pay reduces, this has a knock-on effect to middle class incomes as well, as is happening. The only people to benefit, and they benefit out of all proportion, are those at the top income level.

Up to now, the USA has been the architect and biggest promoter of globalisation. Now, however, it intends to embark on a programme of selective protectionism. Love or hate President Trump, he has recognised that, while the affluent nations, the big multinationals and the ruling elite all do very nicely out of globalisation, it can be very damaging to vast swathes of the working class, with serious consequences to the fabric of society.

For any supporter of globalisation and free trade, this is absolute proof that it is not what it is cracked up to be. In some situations and under some circumstances, it may be a good thing. But not in all.

The sooner all Africa realises that their only route out of poverty and into wealth in fact, their ONLY such route is via an African financed, owned and led business-base, just as Agenda 2063 is proposing, the sooner they will start to progress rapidly to a Western-quality lifestyle.

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Globalisation, the sledgehammer battering Africa Part Two - The Zimbabwean

From promises in 2014 to Majestic India of 2022 – The Indian Express

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

Written by Ravish Tiwari | New Delhi | Published:August 16, 2017 2:58 am Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress President Sonia Gandhi greet each other as Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan looks on during At Home function on the occasion of Independence Day at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Tuesday. (PTI/Shahbaz Khan)

In his four Independence Day speeches from the ramparts of Red Fort so far, Prime Minister Narendra Modis narrative has followed a pattern of progression from ideas through their implementation to new hopes that look beyond the end of his current tenure. From announcing schemes to justify the popular hope behind his election at the beginning of his tenure (2014), Modi moved on to projecting his governments success in resolving legacy issues from the previous government (2015). And after he highlighted the delivery of his initiatives in his third speech (2016), the Prime Minister used the penultimate speech of his current tenure to showcase the dream of a New India that goes well beyond the 2019 elections.

This gradual progression becomes strikingly obvious from one substantial difference between his first speech in 2014 and his latest Tuesday. As against seven initiatives Jan Dhan Yojana, Skill India, Make in India, Digital India, Swachh Bharat, Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana and abolition of the Planning Commission that paved the way for NITI Aayog that he had announced in 2014, there was the announcement of only one launch today: of a website to provide account of the valour of Gallantry Award winners.

In his fourth speech, Modi chose to set out goals for a majestic India by 2022, well beyond his current tenure that ends in 2019. I shall urge you to take up the New India Pledge and move ahead, Modi said. So for Team India, for the 125 crore countrymen, we have to take the pledge to achieve the goal by 2022. We will do it with dedication to see a great, majestic India by 2022.

Modis goals included pucca houses for the poor, farmers earning double of their current earnings by 2022, enough opportunities for the youth and women, and a country that is uncompromising with corruption and nepotism, and free of terrorism, communalism and casteism.

We are trying to put the whole country on a new track without decreasing the speed, Modi said. We have maintained the speed. So, if Modis first Independence Day speech was full of promises, he used his second address in 2015 to project his governments success in clearing the contentious legacy challenges from the previous UPA government.

That year, Modi announced acceptance of One Rank, One Pension for armed forces and dwelt at length on how he had managed to clear the mess in allocation of natural resources coal, minerals and spectrum by instituting auction mechanism. He pointed out how these issues hung fire during the UPA government. It has been 15 months (in power), there is not a single taint of corruption against your government, Modi said in 2015 after highlighting his success in tacking the legacy challenge of alleged corruption in allocation of natural resources.

Having been in power for 15 months, Modi used the 2015 speech to announce the launch of Start-Up India, Stand-Up India along with a promise to provide power to remaining 18,000 villages within the next 1,000 days. He also announced initiatives such as abolition of interviews to benefit job-seekers in Group C and D.

Modis third speech, in comparison, sought to project his governments record in delivery of his promises. I can present before you a very detailed account of work done and also multiple issues regarding the performance of the government, he had said last year. During the tenure of two years, the government has taken innumerable initiatives and multiple tasks have been done. If I start giving details, I am afraid I will have to talk about it for a week.

Modi highlighted achievements big or small, such as online appointment in AIIMS, 15,000 train ticket bookings per minute, online tax refund, swift issuance of passports to major improvements such as improved pace of road construction, acceleration in wind power generation, and laying of power transmission lines. He also gave account of progress in Jan Dhan accounts, MUDRA scheme, electrification of villages, toilet construction, reviving stalled irrigation and development projects and steps to settle sugarcane farmers dues, among others.

Modi has used his fourth Independence Day address to communicate a message of empathy in Jammu and Kashmir, even as he had used his 2016 speech to corner Pakistan by referring to Balochistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

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From promises in 2014 to Majestic India of 2022 - The Indian Express

Liz Sayce: ‘The UK thinks it is a leader in disability rights. But it has a long way to go’ – The Guardian

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

The culture of pressurising people to take up ineffective, one-size-fits-all programmes has failed disabled people, says Liz Sayce. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

In the quarter century that Liz Sayce, 63, has been an advocate for disability rights, she has witnessed momentous changes. But the former chief executive of Disability Rights UK (DRUK), who stepped down from the role earlier this summer, believes that the movement has reached a critical moment.

Next week a delegation from DRUK and other organisations is travelling to Geneva and is expected to highlight concerns about the governments response to a UN committees investigation into the upholding of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Last year, the committee concluded that the government was guilty of grave and systematic violations of disabled peoples rights under the convention, and made 11 recommendations for improvements. All were rejected by ministers. Sayce says this unfortunate response is discouraging.

She believes it is crucial that protecting and securing rights is a priority, during a time when people with disabilities have borne the brunt of austerity policies and disabled peoples organisations have had to vociferously resist a vast array of cuts to benefits and social care. Initiatives such as the Work Programme, policies like the bedroom tax and benefits sanctions, moves to alter social care criteria so it is harder for people to access support, and the abolition of the Independent Living Fund for severely disabled people have made resistance essential, she adds.

A damning 2013 DRUK report called for the Work Programme to be scrapped for unemployed disabled people. The culture of pressurising people to take up ineffective, one-size-fits-all programmes has failed disabled people, she says. She asserts that the wider goal of the disability rights movement, pushing for equal participation in society, needs to underpin actions. Were not just saying [individual policies] are important. Were saying that belonging and participating in society are critical. They are human rights and they are crucial to human wellbeing. Sayce believes that being an organisation led largely by people with disability or long-term health conditions is central to DRUK achieving its objectives, including lobbying and influencing.

Earlier this year, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) concluded that despite progress over the years, disabled people are still not treated as equal citizens. Its report outlined a litany of missed opportunities and failures across six key areas of life. These included gaps in educational attainment between disabled children and their non-disabled peers, and high rates of unemployment and poverty. This analysis came just months after the UN investigation.

All of this means extreme inequalities are exacerbated, says Sayce. It feeds into an unacceptable othering of disabled people, which in turn hinders further progress and contributes to a pattern of disability being couched in terms of vulnerability, rather than rights and equal citizenship.

Having worked early on in psychiatric hospitals, Sayce says she witnessed the way that institutionalisation and discrimination drastically curtailed peoples rights to participate and was always motivated to do something about it. Highlighting burning social justice issues affecting disabled people became the hallmark of her long career. Despite the low points seeing the clock turned back by successive governments (she singles out the erosion of independent living) she is also keen to acknowledge advances along the way.

As policy director at Mind, she was on the frontline of lobbying in the lead up to the landmark Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in 1995. Remember that before that point it was completely legal to refuse somebody [entry] into a cafe because they were disabled, or to refuse somebody a job overtly. No law against it whatsoever.

Sayce stresses that proactive moves in the 1990s and 2000s helped to shift and shape the rights agenda. She cites the introduction of public sector equality duties in 2005 as one example. Absolutely pivotal, she says, is the degree to which progressive policies were, and continue to be, conceived and shaped by disabled people. Referring to developments such as personal budgets for social care, Sayce says: It happened with independent living in the 90s and thats exactly how it should work.

Among the highlights of her career, she says, was being a director at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in the 2000s: A time when disabled people and allies set and secured a new agenda; new rights and new enforcement, for example the recent supreme court case on access to public transport.

Her career has not been without controversy. In 2011 she headed a highly charged government review into disability employment, and described Remploy sheltered factories as ghettos that reinforced stigmas and were obstacles to inclusion in mainstream workplaces. Despite the government accepting all of her recommendations, and extending the access to work initiative to apprenticeships, she says there has been real backsliding.

Government has continued to focus on influencing individuals to change their behaviour, rather than influencing the behaviour of employers to open up employment opportunities [to disabled people]. You cant just keep putting pressure on the individuals. You have to change the way employment works and the way [we] support individuals into work. What we want is policy across government whether it is transport, social care, education or employment policy that is all working to an agenda of full participation and independent living.

Sayce is not leaving the disability rights arena entirely (shes a member of the Healthwatch England Committee and the Social Security Advisory Committee and will continue to mentor) and eagerly awaits the outcome of the UN assessment later this year. She welcomes new disabled MPs including Marsha de Cordova and Jared OMara to parliament, and believes it will be critical for the government to demonstrate it can build trust with disabled people through an action plan (in response to the UN committee) with short- and long-term policies to achieve rights to full participation. The UK has often thought of itself as a world leader in disability rights, she says. Well, to earn that title it needs to be ahead of the game. Its got some way to go to demonstrate that.

Curriculum vitae

Age 63.

Lives Tooting, south London.

Family Civil partnership.

Education Oxford high school; University of Kent, English and French; University of London, MSc social work and social policy.

Career 2012-2017: chief executive, Disability Rights UK [following merger of Radar, National Centre for Independent Living and Disability Alliance]; 2007-12: chief executive, Radar; 2000-07: director, policy and communications, Disability Rights Commission; 1998-2000: director, Lambeth Southwark and Lewisham Health Action Zone; 1990-98: policy director, Mind; 1987-90: programme coordinator, research and development for Psychiatry (now Centre for Mental Health); 1985-87: good practices in mental health project worker, which included visiting Bexley hospital in south London and visiting people coming out of both Bexley and Cane Hill hospitals.

Public life Member, Healthwatch England Committee; member, Social Security Advisory Committee; OBE in 2008; honorary doctorate, University of Kent, 2014.

Interests Long evenings with friends, long-distance walking, social history of movements for change, and London.

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Liz Sayce: 'The UK thinks it is a leader in disability rights. But it has a long way to go' - The Guardian

PM: Youth entrepreneurial empowerment to be ‘major focus’ of … – Bahamas Tribune

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Danzig

By Natario McKenzie

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis said that youth entrepreneurial empowerment will be a major focus of his administration, while urging the private sector to be "bold and imaginative".

Dr Minnis, who was speaking at the recent launch of the Bahamas Striping Group's Investment Group funding arm, said: "Youth entrepreneurial empowerment will be a major focus of my administration as we see this as a means of tackling some of our long-entrenched problems in our urban areas such as unemployment, crime and social anomie."

Dr Minnis applauded the efforts of the striping group, while noting there are countless examples of young individuals who have ideas to start a business enterprise but who have nowhere to turn to find the necessary funding to advance their proposals. "They are unable to obtain funding through the established commercial banks and quite naturally they would not have the connections or the knowledge to obtain private financing. And so what happens, the dream is deferred, and the dream dies. Needless to say, this leads to personal frustration and social explosion."

Dr Minnis also stressed that the private sector must expand. "One of today's realities is that the private sector must expand. It must be that sector of our economy that must be bold and imaginative. We know that the public sector is already overburdened when it comes to creating new employment and so any opportunity that the private sector has to expand and create new employment should be welcomed," said Dr Minnis.

He added: "Our economy needs small and medium enterprises to grow and become successful. More often than not, these are the companies that employ those who are marginalised and who may not fit into the conventional mainstream of employable skills. But the market place must find room for such young men and women, and often the best way to do this is allowing such persons to do their own thing."

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PM: Youth entrepreneurial empowerment to be 'major focus' of ... - Bahamas Tribune

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Monthly Archives: August 2017

A first in China cryonics: Dead woman put in deep freeze – EJ Insight – EJ Insight

Treating your cancer with all-natural alternative medicine may double your risk of dying – Mic

Alternative Medicine Treatments for Cancer Linked to Lower Survival Rate – Laboratory Equipment

Dr Libby: How to get the most out of food supplements | Stuff.co.nz – Stuff.co.nz

Australian bodybuilder with rare disorder dies eating high-protein diet – CNN

Supplement maker on FDA blacklist after deadly bacteria found in water system – Ars Technica

Doxycycline time release capsules – Shelf life extension program doxycycline – Filipino Express

How Did Political Terminology and Alignments Develop Differently in the US and Europe? – HuffPost

This couple are going to get married in every country where it’s legal – PinkNews

Circular economy – Effective resource management | Benzinga – Benzinga

How to wake a sleepwalking economy – The Hill (blog)

Wall cuts his way right out of office – Winnipeg Free Press

Ingram Micro to Invest $10 Million in Warehouse Automation Startup … – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

How 27-year-old Akash Gupta built the largest automation startup of India – YourStory.com

ThinkSmart Automation Platform Launches New, More Powerful Features – Markets Insider

Qt Introduces Qt for Automation to Help Organizations Reduce Operating Costs and Improve Business Process Efficiency – Markets Insider

Globalisation, the sledgehammer battering Africa Part Two – The Zimbabwean

From promises in 2014 to Majestic India of 2022 – The Indian Express

Liz Sayce: ‘The UK thinks it is a leader in disability rights. But it has a long way to go’ – The Guardian

PM: Youth entrepreneurial empowerment to be ‘major focus’ of … – Bahamas Tribune