AI company Lapetus Solutions has been developing analytical solutions for the insurance market that leverage biometric facial recognition with selfies to treat the face as a biomarker of human aging, writes Longevity Technology.

Professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Karl Ricanek holds a PhD in computer science and has specifically focused on facial analytics. He founded Lapetus Solutions in 2015 together with Jay Olshansky, professor of gerontology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and founder of the field of biodemography.

Ricanek explained in an interview with Longevity Technology that just 10 years ago, insurance companies created life expectancy models based on blood analysis. In a meeting with life insurance companies, Ricanek heard Olshanskys presentation on people who are biologically aging slower and the indicators on the face that present themselves for long-lived individuals.

Its about understanding your origins, your genes, those things that are just innate in you, Ricanek told the publication. So, it was natural that we would look at the components of the face to understand biological age, or what were now calling in our product, our senescing rate. This is the rate at which youre aging, and it can be faster or slower, or normal. So, if you are senescing slower than normal, it basically means that you are likely to live longer than average. If youre senescing faster, then youre likely to live shorter.

Next year, Lapetus plans to release Janus, a facial analysis product that life insurance companies can integrate with their online application process. The company claims a medical selfie is all it takes for the system to accurately detect gender, age and BMI in less than two minutes. Another feature it is working on is susceptibility to chronic diseases.

After working in AI for some 30 years, Ricanek says that Only now are we getting to the point where the artificial intelligence, the hardware, and the ability to scale it up using cloud technology, has presented itself in such a way that we can solve these really challenging and, before now, just intractable problems.

Lapetus focus areas are longevity risk, life expectancy, medical underwriting and wealth management. Future plans include adding sensory analytics and saliva-based genetic testing, while researching other innovation related to aging measurement.

When you blend all of these things together, we can give you a more detailed picture of your life expectancy and your potential for chronic disease, says Ricanek. We havent done the blending part yet but thatll come next year.

With roughly eight or nine million secured, Lapetus has received support from a number of investors including SixThirtyandPlug and Play.

ageing | artificial intelligence | biometric data | biometrics | face photo | facial recognition | insurance | Lapetus Solutions

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Lapetus Solutions working on biometrics-based selfie face analytics for aging - Biometric Update

Marie Kondo is the star of Netflixs hit series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. In the show, the best-selling author shares how audiences can organize and declutter their homes. Aside from creating a cleaner space, spring cleaning and decluttering can also provide you with many health benefits.

In her best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Kondo explains how the Japanese art of tidying up can help us clear our lives and homes of clutter which, in turn, does wonders for our health.

Clutter can accumulate when you inherit stuff from loved ones. Attaching sentimental value to things can also make it harder to let go of them. Before you know it, you have a big pile of stuff that you love but have zero use for.

It also doesnt help that youre spending all your days indoors, causing you to buy stuff in an effort to pass the time, only to have zero use for your new purchases.

Read on to find out why you should get into tidying up your house as soon as possible.

A studypublished in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletinfound that a cluttered and disorganized house can increase stress levels as if you didnt already have enough to worry about.

Moreover, a Scottish Health surveyfound that just 20 minutes of housework can help to cut stress by 20%. So, next time youre feeling overwhelmed with the worlds events, why dont you try to clean out the garage? Youll be surprised at how much calmer you feel once you complete the task.

According to the same aforementioned study, cluttered homes seem to leave their occupants increasingly depressed throughout the day.

The same study found that coming home to an organized and clean space can help to improve mood and even reduce the risk of depression.

Staying fit and active is challenging on its own, and its made even harder during a pandemic. However, you may be surprised to know that household chores such as cleaning are its own effective workout. In fact, researchfrom Indiana University found that those who are motivated to clean are more likely to be motivated to exercise.

Instead of spending all your time scrolling through newsfeeds, why dont you set aside some time to do a little spring cleaning? In addition to slowly helping to declutter your house, experts have found that sitting for just half an hour less every day can help to lower your mortality risk (1).

It can be hard to focus a disorganized space, with one studyfrom Princeton University presentingthat a cluttered space can make it harder to concentrate. So, if youre working from home, its best that you do so in a clutter-free environment especially if you want to get any work done.

This is because, according to the same study, clutter limits the brains processing capacity yet clearing out the clutter can help to free up the brain and allow it to make more decisions.

Sticking to healthy eating practices is easier said than done, especially when youre spending more time indoors in the midst of a pandemic.

That said, a study published in Psychology Science found a strong association between a cleaner space and healthier food options. I suppose the cleaner the home, the cleaner the food?

A cluttered home may be responsible for a number of senior falls and child injuries.

Both of these accidents can be prevented if you rid your home of unnecessary junk that may be making it difficult to navigate through the home.

Battling with allergies? Well, astudyby the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunity found that keeping your home clean and decluttered can help you avoid allergy symptoms.

If youre battling with decluttering your home, here are a few things we can learn from Marie Kondos book:

The best criterion for choosing what to keep and what to discard is whether keeping it will make you happy, whether it will bring you joy. she writes in the book.

Changing how you see the act of decluttering your home can make the process much easier.

..We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of. writesMarie.

Keep only those things that speak to your heart, Marie explains. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest. By doing this, you can reset your life and embark on a new lifestyle.

Being health-conscious should involve keeping your home safe and healthy too. So here are our hacks to a healthier home.

Dohrn, I. M., Kwak, L., Oja, P., Sjstrm, M., & Hagstrmer, M. (2018). Replacing sedentary time with physical activity: a 15-year follow-up of mortality in a national cohort.Clinical epidemiology,10, 179186. https://doi.org/10.2147/CLEP.S151613

McMains, S., & Kastner, S. (2011). Interactions of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in human visual cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience,31(2), 587597. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3766-10.2011

Saxbe, D. E., & Repetti, R. (2010). No Place Like Home: Home Tours Correlate With Daily Patterns of Mood and Cortisol. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(1), 7181. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167209352864

Vohs, K. D., Redden, J. P., & Rahinel, R. (2013). Physical Order Produces Healthy Choices, Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity. Psychological Science, 24(9), 18601867. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613480186

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7 Health Benefits Of Tidying Up - Longevity LIVE

Smart apparel is poised to shake up the $30 billion health and fitness industryand, potentially, carve out a lucrative new market. And while the category is exploding, it remains a tough product type to get right.

Join us Wednesday, Aug. 12at 12:30 p.m. ETas we examine this rapidly growing segment of the sports tech industry.

Register for Free

All registrants will receive a link to watch the recording once the session concludes.

The lineup of speakers includes:

* * * * *

Human Performance: Next Level Body& Mind

Bigger. Stronger. Faster. More resilient. Athletes are constantly pushing the boundaries of whats possible, mesmerizing us not just with their exploits but also their longevity. Human sweat will always rewrite the record books, but technology is now collecting troves of data that can give athletes the best chance of success while allowing us to reverse-engineer how the elite keep evolving. From every conceivable angle, well explore whats new and next (and futuristic) when it comes to human performance on the fields of play and in everyday life. Sessions are free to attend.

Originally posted here:
Form Meets Function: Smart Apparel and the Prosumer Markets - SportTechie

Authored by: Jaykhosh Chidambaran

Be vocal about local are the new buzzwords in Indian economic circles, propagated by populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alluding to a resurgence of its manufacturing sector, congruent to a previous reform agenda of Make in India. The global backlash against China as the malefactor of the novel coronavirus pandemic has reached a crescendo. Political leaders from both sides of the Atlantic have consensus on de-risking economies from monopoly dependence on China, touted as the factory of the world. An indignant Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has earmarked 245 billion Yen to assist infrastructure spending for those Japanese firms, exhorting to shift production facilities out of China. Can India ride the crest of this global anti-China sentiment, and use this opportunity to revamp local manufacturing and attract greenfield investments from multi-national companies?

The challenges: Pitfalls in the education and skill development ecosystem

Notwithstanding the lack of integrated infrastructure or active labour market legislations, the singular determinant of Indian emergence as the global manufacturing hub will be a skilled workforce. But it is also the current lacunae, which impedes this goal. Of the 450 million labor force, more than 50 percent are illiterate or only possess primary education, 50 million with secondary education, 7.9 million underwent vocational training, and a mere 10.5 million fall under the technically qualified gambit. Industry statistics reveal that an alarmingly high 83 percent of graduates are unemployable owing to the dearth of essential technical and management skills required to survive in the 21st century, new-age industries.

Indias education system has traditionally been based on rote learning. Post-independence India established, across the country, polytechnics, industrial training institutes (ITI), government engineering colleges, and institutes of higher learning to redirect the nation to a path of industrialisation and modernization. Their curriculum is predominantly input focused and there is little or no emphasis on experiential learning except for a few institutes like Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT).

The Annual Employability Survey 2019, done by an employability assessment company Aspiring Minds revealed that more than 95 percent of engineers are unfit for Information Technology jobs, stirring a controversy. These findings were corroborated by a veteran industry leader, CP Gurnani, CEO of Tech Mahindra, an Indian IT major that top IT companies in India hire only 6 percent of all engineering graduates. A decade-old McKinsey report had tabled similar findings that only a quarter of the graduating Indian technocrats have employability quotient, an indication of the retrogression in Indian technical education not commensurate with rapid technological advances.

The solution: Productivity-based skill development

Any sustainable educational goal should inevitably involve industry experts with sector-specific knowledge, from formulating curriculum to providing a roadmap for mandatory skills and capabilities warranted in creating a knowledge society and an innovation economy. The German dual skilling model for developing sustainable and state-of-the-art Vocational Education Training (VET) is worthy of emulation in India. Under this hugely successful program, students receive theory and conceptual lessons in the classroom for a week, followed by an apprenticeship in manufacturing facilities of companies, the week after, and alternating until successful completion of the courses.

This can be bolstered by nation-wide collaborative initiatives between the government and Indian industries should be rolled out for upgrading and redeployment of existing skills, enabling closure of skill gaps. Such large to medium and small industries participation in this synergetic program should be incentivised by corporate tax rebates, access to low-cost capital, re-classification of loans as subordinated debt, etc.

The public-private participation between government and industry will mitigate budget, resource, and time constraints, often a deterrent to social programs in emerging economies. An entry-level accountant could acquire basic conceptual and functional skills within a year, doing an accounting software course like Tally rather than enrolling in a three-year undergraduate commerce course. Similarly, a welder who had completed a two-year ITI course exposed to theories on different types of welding techniques might be grossly unemployable in an automobile production line welding job, that requires to perform 9 precision welds in an hour. If the German model is applied here, a student receives on-the-job training with an automobile manufacturer, as an apprentice for 45 days and become readily fit for employment.

Skilled workforce and foreign investments

Internationalisation of production has expanded opportunities for knowledge spillovers from the industrial world to developing markets. Unique, cutting edge skill sets are inevitable to compete and emerge as winners in New-Age economies dominated by semiconductors, fintech, artificial intelligence, robotics, and machine learning. The flow of technology and capital from the developed world to the developing world will rise exponentially, if the emerging market of India can offer highly skilled labor force, reciprocally, for setting up Greenfield investments or Brownfield acquisitions by MNCs.

In India, creating a highly differentiated ecosystem, skilled in producing a wide basket of goods that is technology-intensive, requiring superior learning and therefore not easily replicated, is critical to income leveling, wealth creation, and economic growth in the future. When MNCs strategically unbundle non-core functions in the service sector in developed markets and decide on outsourcing to competitive third world destinations, tapping into the availability of cost-effective, top-quality talent pool is always the primary criteria. Service sector contribution as a percentage of GDP is steadily increasing in almost all emerging markets, emulating the pattern in developed, free markets of the West. Complexity and income have positive correlations.

Re-imagining Indian education and the role of R&D

Annually, more than 12 million new job seekers enter the Indian labour market but create employment for only 5 million-odd jobs, and the major lacunae are unemployability due to skill gaps. Structural and institutional reforms are long overdue in the Indian educational sector. India is still home to over 600,000 villages and providing free access to qualitative primary and secondary education in rural heartlands is critical in empowering rural population (especially women folk), generating capacity employment, resuscitating rural demand, poverty alleviation, and edifying rural infrastructure in MSME sectors.

Ever since the First Industrialisation Revolution, if there is one input that is fundamental to improving the quality and longevity of human life on earth, indubitably, it is Research. Innovations and discoveries which, engendered quantum advancements in transport, telecommunications, medicine, and technology, that had transformed the world into a Global Village and Global Audience were consummated on establishing sophisticated R&D facilities in developed economies. It has created a stellar global fraternity of scientists.

A far-sighted and symbiotic public-private participation in the R&D sector, harnessing the powers of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, and Deep Learning should receive legislative support as part of the Skilling India initiative. Such synergetic partnerships have the potential to catapult India into a global leader in genome engineering, pharmaceuticals, connected devices in pro-active healthcare management, low-cost online education, and integration of virtual universities, fintech, clean renewable energy solutions, manufacturing, and agriculture.

The vision of the Indian Government, encompassing slogans such as Make in India, Skill India, Start Up India, Digital India to transform its socio-economic landscape by capitalising on its demographic dividend and assume global leadership in 21st century is contingent on a highly skilled and competent workforce. Creating that leadership capital is the order of the present that defines the future of India.

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VIEW: Revolutionizing Indias skills landscape to create a future-ready workforce - CNBCTV18

Los Angeles is beaches, eclectic food and sunshine kissed boulevards. But its also not. Its a crime to whittle any city down to its most superficial assets and forget the good stuff that makes it pulse with vitality, its heart.

Walter Thompson-Hernndez is a reporter dedicated to telling stories. Hes done just that over several years for such publications as the New York Times, NPR, Fusion, the BBC and the Guardian.

With the support of LAist Studios, Thompson-Hernndez recently published his newest storytelling venture, a podcast series appropriately titled California Love.

Inspired by the 1995 2Pac song by the same name, he explains in the show's prologue episode that Pac and Dr. Dres lyrics and deliciously addictive beat were revelatory for a young kid.

Dres voice eventually listed cities and landmarks throughout the state; it made the song feel not just flashy and cool but also informative, Thompson-Hernndez said in the shows opening salvo. It felt like a social studies class that I always wanted but never had.

The 32-year-old is holding class in this love letter to the city. A town in which he was raised, cutting his teeth on avenues that arent always represented in mainstream media or in the pages published on this here Internet.

Theres a kinship of telling stories that are grossly underrepresented that drew me to the podcast.

One of the more engrossing episodes thus far is that of the Compton Cowboys. Familiar to so many out there but unfortunately foreign to far more, they recently joined the chorus of protests that took place in the wake of George Floyd's death.

The group remains a beacon of calm and healing for a community that is often without either, abeloved contingent of horse-riding African-Americans who hail from a part of Los Angeles more renowned for hip-hop shoutouts than bucolic ranch living.

Thompson-Hernndez covered the community back in 2018 for the N.Y. Times and again in his book The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America's Urban Heartland, for which he won the Whiting Creative Non-Fiction Award in 2019.

The Cowboys ride again, making an appearance in the Aug. 6 episode of the podcast. Its a refreshingly deep dive into a group and a location that remains an important source of peace.

The ranch isnt just a ranch, Thompson-Hernndez explains in the episode. Beneath all the jokes and the shit-talking, theres something more profound taking place that can maybe help Compton heal from some of its wounds.

Its a refreshing but harrowing narrative into a group that has found their slice of heaven but also struggles to maintain its longevity.

Ranch owner and Cowboy leader Randy Hook doesnt hold back as he expresses the stress and dismay at keeping the ranch and the cowboys riding into the next generation, a generation that is already hooked.

One of the parting shots is from a boy named Keenan who says with bursting energy, When youre on top of the horse, its like the world just chills out for a minute. Its like youre in control of something.

Stories matter. From book to movie to podcast, the human experience deepens when you walk a mile in anothers boots. Empathy is in short supply these days, and Thompson-Hernndez has us going back to the well.

The sports world will certainly love the episode dedicated to Kobe Bryant and the impact he had on a budding writer.

My favorite in the series has to be Parrots: A Parable. Los Angeles is a city made up of natives and transplants. So many of the latter came to the City of Angeles of their own accord, seeking vitality in a bustling city.

But some, like the ubiquitous and often chatty parrot, came here without much of a say.

Thompson-Hernndez stretches his pen in a story that not only explains how L.A. came to house this prolific bird but also addresses humanity's ability to cage our own kind, something that is especially salient in 2020 with an administration that has separated migrant children from their parents.

The show makes the connection seamlessly and without a heavy hand, delivered with a moving story you will carry with you long after the episodes conclusion.

California Love resonates and educates. And like a great song from the 90s, you cant get it out of your head.

California Love is available from LAist Studios and can be heard wherever you stream your podcasts.

Continue reading here:
From Parrots to Black Cowboys, Walter Thompson-Hernndez is Telling the Stories That Matter - Sports Illustrated

Fossil Fuels

Published on August 13th, 2020 | by Steve Hanley

August 13th, 2020 by Steve Hanley

On August 5, Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth science at Duke University, appeared before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Shindell is the lead author of the two most recent IPCC reports. He told the committee the latest study by his colleagues and NASA shows that Over the next 50 years, keeping to the 2 C pathway would prevent roughly 4.5 million premature deaths, and about 3.5 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits. He said many of these preventable deaths are tied to diseases resulting from poor air quality, including stroke, heart disease, and pulmonary diseases. The 2 C pathway refers to the guidelines adopted at the COP 22 climate conference in Paris in 2015 designed to prevent average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Centigrade.

As Dave Roberts of Vox points out, Shindells testimony reveals that the effects of air pollution are roughly twice as bad as previously estimated. That is a bombshell in a sane world, it would be front page news across the country. But we do not live in a sane world. We live in a world dominated by a lunatic who wants to bring back incandescent light bulbs because LEDs make his skin look orange and to trash low-flow shower heads because his hair has to be perfect.

The air quality scientific community has hypothesized this for at least a decade, but research advances have let us quantify and confirm this notion, over and over, says Rebecca Saari, an air quality expert who teaches in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Waterloo. The air quality co-benefits are generally so valuable that they exceed the cost of climate action, often many times over. (emphasis added).

So lets see if we have this straight. Pollution from burning fossil fuels is making millions of people sick and many of them are dying prematurely as a result. The benefits of cleaning the air and making it safe to breathe would far outweigh the costs of doing so, and still we cannot find the political will to make that happen? It is enough to make a sentient person question whether humans are not, in fact, a form of environment-eating virus bent on destroying the only home they will ever have. That is the theory put forth in the movie The Matrix.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern a virus. How fitting that the world today is in the grip of just such a virus and yet we shrug our shoulders and wonder when things will get back to normal as if normal will somehow save us from ourselves.

The Shindell report says, The avoided deaths are valued at more than $37 trillion. The avoided health care spending due to reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits exceeds $37 billion, and the increased labor productivity is valued at more than $75 billion. On average, this amounts to over $700 billion per year in benefits to the US from improved health and labor alone, far more than the cost of the energy transition.

Roberts writes, Scientists now know that exposure to smog (tiny, microscopic particulates) hurts prenatal and young brains. Even though they dont yet fully understand the biological mechanism, they know it reduces impulse control and degrades academic performance. Similarly, they know it hurts the kidneys, the spleen, even the nervous system.

Shindell adds. The well understood pathways, things like strokes, lower respiratory infections, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, only seem to capture about half the total. When you look at the [new] studies, you find that air pollution seems to affect almost every organ in the human body. About twice as many people die in total as die just from the pathways we understand. Weve been underestimating all along.

A recent study from the national academies of multiple countries, including the US, concludes, The scientific evidence is unequivocal: air pollution can harm health across the entire lifespan. It causes disease, disability and death, and impairs everyones quality of life. It damages lungs, hearts, brains, skin and other organs; it increases the risk of disease and disability, affecting virtually all systems in the human body.

What accounts for the latest study finding the effects of dirty air are twice as high as previously thought? Access to more data specifically information on 60 million Medicare patients. Such massive amounts of data allow researchers to control for socioeconomic status, temperature, hypertension and other existing conditions, says Shindell. You can convincingly demonstrate that correlation is in fact causal, because you can rule out essentially every other possibility.

The finding that the impacts of dirty air are twice what they were previously thought to be probably still underestimates the actual situation. On both air pollution and climate change, the study omitted many effects that are clearly present but cannot yet be reliably quantified. The true numbers are almost certainly higher, Dave Roberts writes.

And thats precisely where the so-called president of the United States and his cohort of deplorables have decided to attack the science. This group of fossil fuel industry apologists proposes to prohibit research based on randomized data because, you know, we need to be able to interrogate each and every one of the people in the survey to make sure they are not malingerers or immigrants or people of color or any of the other categories of people despised by Trump and his acolytes. They also want to exclude any secondary effects of air pollution from consideration, even thought those so-called co-benefits are by far the most significant when it comes to determining the total impact air pollution has on peoples health.

Dave Roberts concludes his remarks with these thoughts:

The extraordinary level of suffering humanity is currently experiencing from air pollution is not necessary for modernity; it could be reduced, at a cost well below the net social benefits, with clean energy technologies on hand..The millions of lives ended or degraded by fossil fuels every year are a choice (emphasis added). And when suffering on this scale, that is this brutally inequitable, becomes a choice, it enters the same ethical terrain as war, slavery, and genocide. The effects are more distributed over time and geography, as are the decision-making and the moral culpability, but the cumulative impact on human well-being on our longevity, health, learning, and happiness is comparable, and every bit as much worth fighting.

US policymakers have a chance to kick start an energy transition that could save 1.4 million American lives over the next 20 years, especially among the most vulnerable, even as it creates jobs and saves consumers money. As Shindell says, it would be unconscionable not to act on it.

As we at CleanTechnica often put it: Earth Justice = Social Justice = Racial Justice. This administration has not taken the actions needed to prevent 166,000 Americans from dying from COVID-19. What in the world makes anyone think they care a flying fig leaf about 1.4 million more unnecessary deaths over the next 20 years? They have shown absolutely no compassion for those afflicted so far. Instead, they plan to roll back pollution standards on mercury emissions from coal-powered generating plants, auto emission standards, and rules limiting how much climate killing methane fracking companies can spew into the atmosphere free of charge.

A seasoned criminal prosecutor could probably find grounds to charge most members of the current maladministration, industry lobbyists, and fossil fuel company heads with negligent homicide if not worse. Is that over the top? Perhaps, but when one considers the amount of harm being done deliberately to defenseless people who are innocent of any wrong doing, the idea may not be so far fetched. Perhaps they should be in the dock at the World Court in The Hague charged with crimes against humanity? You can form your own opinion on that subject.

What cannot be denied any longer is that burning fossil fuels is killing us and the planet that sustains us. At this point, nothing else matters. We must immediately find ways to stop making the burning of fossil fuels the basis of our economic system or perish. Make of that what you will.

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Tags: air pollution, dave roberts, Dr. Vox, Drew Shindell, IPCC, secondary effects of air pollution

Steve Hanley Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his homes in Florida and Connecticut or anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. You can follow him onTwitter but not on any social media platforms run by evil overlords like Facebook.

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Cleaning Up Our Polluted Air Would Save More Money Than It Costs - CleanTechnica

Rumki Majumdar

With the movement restrictions easing gradually, India is striving to bounce back to normalcy. However, some uncertainties continue to exist. The economic rebound to the pre-COVID-19 levels is likely to be gradual as the rising number of infections, the intermittent regional lockdowns, social distancing norms, and safety concerns result in a vicious cycle of low demand and supply. According to a consumer survey by Deloitte, uncertainties around employment and financial anxieties have reduced the spending intent amongst Indian consumers on discretionary goods. Lower demand is expected to translate into constrained business investment in capital projects and delay in hiring.

Policymakers and businesses will require resilience to prepare in the months ahead to recover from this crisis. Five factors will be key in determining the pace and time of the recovery. The availability of treatment and vaccines will be the most important factor, and the sooner people have access to either of these, the quicker will be the economic revival. This is because the spread of the virus and its longevity are slowly leading to another contagionof caution and fear (the second factor). Caution amongst consumers may change their consumption behaviours and demand patterns, while businesses may modify business practices leading to rapid automation or business models, such as reshoring.

The third factor will be the intensity of the secondary impact of supply-chain disruptions spilling across industries and the financial sector. Initially, a few industries, such as hospitality and manufacturing, felt the immediate impact of the virus and the movement restrictions that followed. Possibilities of several outbreaks and prolonged pandemic may impact productivity, and capacity building across all industries, all of which may also lead to slower credit growth.

The strength of domestic consumer demand, the primary pillar to growth, will be the fourth factor. While rural demand may hold up for some time because of better rainfall and the governments support to provide employment opportunities in rural areas, the rapid spread of the infections in urban areas may keep the demand subdued. That said, the infection curve in larger urban areas (such as NCR and Mumbai) appears to be flattening and economic activity is expected to gather steam as these regions gradually open up. Simultaneously, global economic growth and trade will influence domestic demand as well. A coordinated effort to curb the infection spread will translate into a synchronised recovery across the world. However, there is less evidence suggesting harmonised efforts to curb the spread as different countries are at different stages of the infection.

Finally, the extent and effectiveness of the fiscal and monetary stimulus by the government will determine the human cost and economic disruption, as India strides towards a new normal on the other side of the pandemic. So far, the government has announced a wide range of health, tax, financial, business, and social measures and reforms to help people and businesses respond to COVID-19. Fresh measures aimed at improving infrastructure, regulations, and job opportunities will likely aid in a sustained recovery and rebuilding. In other words, government measures will be crucial in cushioning the pandemic impact on industries and economic activity.

The variations around these five factors will likely determine Indias economic growth for the next few years. This could range from a moderate economic impact with gradual recovery (most likely case) to severe economic damage with sluggish recovery (extreme worst case with low likelihood). We are optimistic about the outlook and assuming that the contagion is under control by the end of this year, consumer spending will quickly pick up pace due to strong pent-up demand. Private investment growth, which has been in the negative territory for over three quarters now, will recover after it picks up cues from a sustainable increase in demand. Under the most likely scenario, recovery is likely to gain momentum from the start of FY2022 after negative growth in FY2021.

A quick economic recovery will likely have a moderate impact across all industries and may lead to a relatively uniform revival, with a few bouncing back sooner than others. Once the recovery begins under the most likely scenario, prices may escalate faster. Pent-up demand backed by high government spending may cause demand to overshoot supply.

If the pandemic prolongs, essential goods segment of retail, the pharmaceutical industry, and the technology and communication industry will likely weather the storm in due course of time. However, the hospitality and banking industry may continue to see difficult times ahead. Industries must prepare themselves for uncertain times while hoping for the best.

Rumki Majumdar is an Economist at Deloitte India. Views expressed are the authors personal.

Do you know What is Cash Reserve Ratio(CRR), FinanceBill, Fiscal Policy inIndia, ExpenditureBudget, CustomsDuty? FE Knowledge Desk explains each of these and more in detail at Financial Express Explained. Also get Live BSE/NSE Stock Prices, latest NAV of Mutual Funds, Best equity funds, Top Gainers, Top Losers on Financial Express. Dont forget to try our free Income Tax Calculator tool.

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Hiring, investments likely to slow down; these 5 factors to decide time, pace of Indias economic recovery - The Financial Express

In the beginning, there were nonprofit agencies about 15,000 in the five-county region.

Then COVID-19 divided them into essential and nonessential organizations. On the necessary side, are the nonprofits that provide the basics that millions of Americans depend upon to survive. On the wrong side of the coronavirus tracks is the arts and cultural organizations whose offerings are deemed wonderful but dispensable in this time of pandemic.

And that inequality has begat escalating unemployment.

Russell Johnson, president and CEO of HealthSpark Foundation, said that its too early to tell the impact statistically but anecdotally there have been many layoffs. We are carefully monitoring this question. Some agencies have laid-off staff. Some were forced to close such as child care centers, senior centers, YMCAs and have either not yet reopened or are slowing reopening.

HealthSpark was a founding partner and investor in the MontCoPA COVID-19 Response Fund, a partnership effort between local philanthropic organizations, nonprofits, government, and public citizens, which has raised nearly $800,000 towards pandemic relief efforts and has supported 127 nonprofits to date most of them health and human service agencies.

"Nearly all organizations that are not providing safety net services are laying off their staff especially as their PPP (Payroll Protection Program) runs out."Nancy Burd

Nearly all organizations that are not providing safety net services are laying off their staff especially as their PPP (Payroll Protection Program) runs out and no further allocation is on the horizon, said Nancy Burd of The Burd Group, a Philadelphia-based strategic planning consultancy for grantmakers.

According to a recent study, there were 242,000 nonprofit employees earning more than $11 billion in annual wages in the five-county Philadelphia region.

In May, the results of the Rapid Response: the PHL Nonprofits and COVID-19 Survey, showed that about one out of every five nonprofits in the 10-county region had already laid off staff and one in four anticipated more furloughs to come within the year. Most of these nonprofits were small agencies with a staff of less than 20 people, a large volunteer force and annual budgets between $1 million to $2.49 million.

The nonprofit sector is one-fourth of the economy of Montgomery County, said Johnson, (This survey) gives you a sense of what the nonprofit sector is going through.

For workers, the pandemic s longevity is turning temporary furloughs into permanent unemployment. For the nonprofits that are hibernating programs versus shutting down completely, (they) are trying to keep some programming alive virtually and would hope to re-open in 2021. At that time they would staff up as programs come back. Maybe the staff will be different, but that is the current strategy for many organizations, added Burd.

In our area, one of the first to announce furloughs was the Greater Philadelphia YMCA of Conshohocken, states largest coronavirus-related layoff. We had to make this really tough choice, CEO and President Shaun Elliott told the Philadelphia Inquirer, so that we could survive as an organization to reopen when its possible.

A $100 million organization, the Greater Philadelphia YMCA was taking in only $500,000 a month on expenses of $45 million after the state shuttered the agency.

The YMCA laid off 4,000 people, about 700 of them fulltime employees, leaving a skeletal staff of about 60 people. Elliott stopped collecting a paycheck and the pay of remaining staff was reduced.

On the stronger side of the corona divide are the health and human service agencies.

Here in Philadelphia, and elsewhere, nonprofits providing important safety net services are responding to greater demand and resources appear to be plentiful at all levels philanthropy, government and individuals, Burd said. The Covid 19 Fund run by the Philadelphia Foundation has raised $17 million+ and has distributed most all of it, but only to the social safety net nonprofits.

However, the cultural and arts sector, which was a $4 billion economic driver in Philadelphia alone, is faring much worse. Donors, who may be historically committed to the arts or their colleges are diverting their philanthropic dollars to those in need, that is their first impulse, Burd explained.

The irony is many nonprofits were traveling the right fiscal path and had diversified their revenue streams to decrease dependency on grants and government contracts. It was, in the time before COVID-19, sound business practice.

The great recession of 2008 was the wake-up call. We had encouraged the sector to increase earned income, to become less dependent upon contributed income which has too many strings attached and little control. And those that intentionally recalibrated their business model, were among the healthiest orgs. They became adept at maximizing earned income by monetizing their assets and using them aggressively all to promote financial health and growth and prepare for crisis, Burd said.

Then she added: But today, these are precisely the organizations who have been hurt the most in this pandemic.

After careful reflection, we have determined that reopening Please Touch Museum at this time presents a significant public health risk as well as a financial one. With that, The Please Touch Museum announced it was extending its temporary closure into 2021. After three rounds of layoffs in six months, the staff dropped from 71 employees to 18. Patricia D. Wellenbach, president and CEO of Please Touch Museum called the decision, agonizing.

(Photo by P. Meyer for Visit Philadelphia)

Before COVID-19 the museum had an operating budget of $700,000 per month, almost 90% of it was funded from earned revenue including ticket sales and facilities rentals. With the shutdown of the state and schools, its operating budget had slid to $200,000 per month.

The Kimmel Center too earned 93% of its income and had reduced its dependency on philanthropy. But that was before large public gatherings were forbidden. With no audience for its money-making shows and concerts, Kimmel Center President and CEO Anne C. Ewers announced it was furloughing 80% of its staff and cutting pay and hours for the others.

In general, nonprofits are waiting for state and federal budgets (to provide funding), Johnson said. In June, Moodys Analytics announced that based on their calculations, states collectively would need to find $312 billion while the local governments would need uncover close to $200 billion to balance their budgets.

We are forever changed, Johnson. We will never go back to the way things were.

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Layoffs plague nonprofits some more troubled than others - Generocity