Examify - Hack Your Exams!

Hacking and the first thing that comes to my mind- Abhishek Bachchan in Om Jai Jagadish - the movie with Anil Kapoor, Fardeen Khan, the Cinthol girl and a lot of cast! Well, if you don't remember, let me take you to a flashback. Om (Anil Kapoor) who was a man of morals who was honest, self-dependent, never cheated anyone and a god-fearing person. Jagdish (Abhishek bachchan), Om's younger brother, liked playing with websites and all, so to help his friends, he hacked their college website and stole the exam papers!

 Now obviously Om got angry

and killed Jagdish! 

LOL just threw him out! :P Kuch yaad aaya?

Well, there is a guy who does the same work and nobody throws him out! In fact, he was featured on the  TEDxgateway event which was held in Mumbai in December 2012 partnered by the Franklin Templeton Investments. Surprised? So was I! But apparently, what he does is called social service and what Jagdish did was fraud! I am still confused - Either Om's morals were wrong or our society's are! Actual answer is Nobody's!

What this guy, Angad Nadkarni, does is that he hacks into universities, schools and colleges website, gets their last years exam papers and makes a database - EXAMIFY! Now according to the database, they compile which questions are most probable to come in the exam - be it school level or graduation! Now, as they are not really telling you exactly which question will appear in the exam, they aren't cheating, right? 

They also take your feedback as to how you rate each question - easy, medium or difficult? Their logic is - if everybody thinks a question is difficult, then you definitely don't need to study it. Cool?

Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012. (video)

I wonder if they could create such softwares which could directly hack into professor's mind and know the questions directly. Whatsay?
   

Times like these aren't too far! :D

Here's a link to my other reviews about TEDxGateway Talks - they were more helpful for humanity in general as I feel! - Link! Happy reading :)

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Science Fact - 12

Sheep can recognize individual human and sheep faces, and remember them for years.

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Vedic Maths - the best of maths!

How many of us are actually aware of Vedic Maths and its benefits? Is it same as the maths we generally study and a fancy name has been given only to grab attention or its something completely different? The thoughts kept churning in my mind after I saw one of the TEDxGateway talks held in December by Franklin Templeton Investments.

The Vedic Maths is a super-fast method of doing calculations - just like we just to do in Mental Maths when we were kids! It provides simplified, short methods which gives a very systematic method to us for calculating long operations in few seconds without the use of pen & paper or calculators! How many of us can perform 998*997 mentally - leave apart doing that in few seconds! Well, vedic maths teaches us exactly this. Here's how:

The Vedic Maths dates back to early 1900s and was consists of major 16 sutras. These sutras help us to solve any type of calculations with ease. There are 13 sub-sutras as well so as to further simplify the calculations by stream-lining towards a particular topic! These sutras and sub-sutras were discerned by Jagadguru Shankaracharya Shri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji Maharaja, a great philosopher and The Father of Vedic Maths.

However, this great field of mathematics has not got all the attention it should have achieved. Very few people were aware of it and even lesser actually practiced it, but not anymore. Gaurav Tekriwal is one of those few who used it and started popularising it for the benfit of others. He is the founder President of The Vedic Maths Forum India - an organisation which teaches people the concepts of Vedic Maths and their use in our daily lives. 

The forum mentions the following benefits of Vedic Maths:

• High Speed Vedic Mathematics is 10-15 times faster than normal Maths.
• Better and Much Improved Academic Performance in school and Instant Results.
• Sharpens your mind, increases mental agility and intelligence.
• A Complete System comprising all the benefits of Mental Maths .
• Develops Left & Right Sides of the brains by increasing visualization and concentration abilities.
• Vedic Mathematics cultivates an interest for numbers and eliminates the math-phobiapresent in the students.
• Vedic Maths is easy to understand, easy to apply and easy to remember.
• Increases your speed and accuracy . Become a Mental Calculator yourself.
• Improves memory and boosts self confidence.

Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012. (video)

It's my turn to do my bit for the humanity. :)

This post is a part of The Idea Caravan contest organised by Franklin Templeton Investments and IndiBlogger.

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Deaf are not Dumb

As I have said, time and again, there is so much that people are doing in the world for other people that it has started to dawn upon me about my responsibilities towards the world and our fellow beings. I haven't really done much for the people so here's my chance to at least popularise the ones who have so that their initiative becomes a success. 

My last TEDxTalks were concerned with providing mental health for all by task sharing, harnessing passive human energy and easy accessibility of water in desert rural areas. Both of these were brought about by TEDxgateway event which was held in Mumbai in December 2012 partnered by the Franklin Templeton Investments. This post will deal about the deaf people and the problems faced by them.

Ruma Roka

Ruma Roka is a just a common person like all of us who look at the disabled people and empathize, however, there was one difference. She took it upon her to help the deaf people and bring them out from their dark world. Everybody believes that deaf are also dumb but she wanted to change this - provide them with opportunities, train them to face the world. Today, she is the Founder of the Noida Deaf Society, which uses specialized vocational programs to help the deaf achieve gainful employment and more fully integrate into their communities.

She started out as a small organisation who helps the deaf people and teach them to train for the value additions. As she mentions, they are better workers than the so-called normal people as there is nothing to disturb them. It happens with almost all of us, when we are working and suddenly people on next seat start gossiping, or listening to music, or chatting on their phone on a loud voice- we lose our focus. Well, they don't - they cant hear them so can't be disturbed by them. They give their full concentration to their work and are more efficient. Makes sense to me!

So here lies the cache- if they can't hear you, how will you train them for the work? Complicated problem but a bit simpler solution - you can get to their level. Learn sign language and then you can communicate with them - be able to teach them what you already know, understand their problems and work on the solution together. That's exactly what Ruma Roka did. 

Today, she has 1500 students being trained in her supervision and 580 of her students recruited in large firms! I think this calls for an applause! :D

Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012. (video)

It's my turn to do my bit for the humanity. :)

This post is a part of The Idea Caravan contest organised by Franklin Templeton Investments and IndiBlogger.

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Mental health for all, by all

From my past few posts, you may be aware by now of my obsession with the TEDxtalks. :D There is so much that people are doing in the world for other people that it has started to dawn upon me about my responsibilities towards the world and our fellow beings. I haven't really done much for the people so here's my chance to at least popularise the ones who have so that their initiative becomes a success. 

My last TEDxTalks were concerned with harnessing passive human energy and easy accessibility of water in desert rural areas. Both of these were brought about by TEDxgateway event which was held in Mumbai in December 2012 partnered by the Franklin Templeton Investments. This post will deal about mental health issues.

The problem:

According to Vikram Patel, the co-founder of Sangath, a local NGO dedicated to mental health and family well being  about 50 million people in India suffer from a mental or neurological illness. As we know in America, there are a lot of psychiatrists for the increasing amount of depression and anxiety cases due  to the stressful lifestyle of people. In India, if we have started living a similar lifestyle but if follow the same model, we would need 1.5 lakh psychiatrists for a population of 1.2 billion. However, the actual number available are 3500 which is pretty miniscule. 

The problem is we do not have so many psychiatrists and as a matter of fact, not everybody in India can afford a psychiatrist! The common people who are striving to make both ends meet with rise in prices of essential commodities everyday, cannot afford to get treated for problems like depression or anxiety by paying huge fee to the psychiatrists. 

The solution:

So Vikram Patel has started a new concept - task-sharing. So what if we cannot afford the expensive psychiatrists? He has started training the people in the rural areas itself - one among their own- to treat mental illness, to counsel people. He started this exercise with his NGO as a randomized controlled trial, The MANAS trial, in which one group is given the aid and the other isn't.

They observed 70% recovery rate in aided people as opposed to 50% in the control group. The suicidal behaviour reduced from 20% to 9% which is more than 50% reduction. Then they conducted similar trials on people with dementia and other neurological disorders. He has given the concept of SUNDAR for such task sharing activities:

Simplify the message

UNpack the treatment (break down in their terms)

Deliver where they are

Affordable and available human resources

Reallocation of specialists to train and supervise

I know that most of us believe that the treatment of "dangerous" medical diseases is more important and these mental disorders can be dealt later on. But trust me, they are as dangerous and life-taking as the other medical problems. A lot of people are suffering from depression and stressful life but either they are unaware as of whom to approach or too shy to actually discuss their problems with anyone. We should take upon ourselves this task of helping as much people as we know. This year the Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxgateway event in December 2012 which showcased all these initiatives with people. I just feel sad that I couldn't be a part of it but we must definitely be a part of the initiatives in even as little way as is possible for us.

Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012. (video)

It's my turn to do my bit for the humanity. :)

This post is a part of The Idea Caravan contest organised by Franklin Templeton Investments and IndiBlogger.

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Science Fact - 11

In Death Valley, California the rocks move along a valley floor without any human or animal intervention.

Sailing stones, sliding rocks, and moving rocks refer to a geological phenomenon in which rocks move from one place to another leaving long trails without any human or animal intervention. The trails (or tracks) may be linear or nonlinear and even two rocks which start from same position may end in totally different directions. 

Tracks from these sliding rocks have been observed in various locations, including Little Bonnie Claire Playa in Nevada, and most notably Racetrack Playa, Death Valley National Park, California where the number and length of tracks are notable. 

It has been postulated that the movement is caused due to strong winds or ice-formation on the surface of rocks  which reduces the frictional forces, however, it is difficult to find the actual reason behind the movement as the rocks move once in three-four years and the duration of movement lasts up to ten seconds.

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Wello Waterwheel: Wheel Reinvented with a Watery Twist

In my last post, AIRE Concept: Converting Passive Human Energy to Electricity!, I mentioned about the innovations in technology to solve the basic problems of the world brought about by TEDxgateway event which was held in Mumbai in December 2012 partnered by the Franklin Templeton Investments. The last post was concerned with the production of electricity from passive human energy which was brilliant according to me!

This year the Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxgateway event in December 2012. As I mentioned in my last post, I was hugely inspired by the ideas presented by the speakers that I couldn't resist telling the world about it through my blog and doing my bit in spreading the young innovations that we need now. So here's another such innovation to provide clean water to people.

The problem:

One billion people on the planet lack access to safe drinking water. They have to travel large distances carrying a huge amount of water on their heads. This can be observed even in villages of Rajasthan and nearby desert areas. The problems in this process are as follows:

1. Time-consuming. On an average, women have to be spend a quarter of a day in travelling these large distances. 
2. Too Heavy. A person needs 5 gallons of water per day which weighs 20 kg. Now, a family of five will need 25 gallons which will weigh 100 kg! 
3. Large number of trips. As, in India, this work of bringing water is done only by women, the mother and daughter have to together carry 100 kgs for which they will have to undertake a large number of trips or manage with lesser amount of water.
4. Missing out on other opportunities. The girls tend to drop out school at an early age so that they can help their mother in this very necessary daily chore. At the age when they can get educated and a find a job to bring themselves out of poverty and hence, this misery, they lose the opportunities and thus remain entangled in this cycle of poverty-trap.
5. Health problems. Carrying so much weight everyday for almost their entire life, the women suffer from chronic back problems in the spinal cord, become weak and thus, lead a very disturbing life health-wise.

The solution:

Cynthiya Koenig has taken into consideration the problems of these people and worked upon them She reinvented the wheel and created Wello Waterwheel (in the right picture). This water wheel solves almost all the problems of carrying water safely. 

It provides the people with the following features:

1. Convenient. With this, women can carry 50 L water at once - which means more water in less time.
2. Hygienic. It is closed form the top and thus prevents any sort of contamination on the way back.
3. Easy to transport. The waterwheel just have to be pushed and not carried on the head which means no more back problems.
4. Saves time. It requires lesser time and energy and thus the children are not required in the process anymore. They can go back to studying and making a career for themselves and their family. 
5. Affordable and long lasting. By local manufacturing and CSR partnerships, the estimated cost will be between Rs 750- Rs 1000.

Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012. (video)

It's our turn to do my bit for the environment. :)

This post is a part of The Idea Caravan contest organised by Franklin Templeton Investments and IndiBlogger.

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