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#BasicHumanity Goes Beyond Nepal: 6 Countries in 7 Languages
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Amidst a global pandemic, Outreach Nepal initiated a small gesture to bring forward the simple message of 'empathy'.
Each of us has experienced how the pandemic has locked us all inside our homes with limited access. In this restriction, we are turning to small happiness within the boundaries of our homes and sharing it with the outside world -be it our family time, cooking, social media challenges – ranging from the book one has read to the best films we have ever watched. Thanks to technology that is keeping us going.
In the meantime, we noticed that there is a popular trend of displaying food preparations on social media, or glimpses of daily menus which are nice, lavish and appetizing cuisine from around the world. But, is this the right time to exhibit such luxuries?
Outreach Nepal initiated a reminder campaign from Nepal, which requested to stop showcasing our lavish cooking or food we have prepared. The campaign was promoted using #BasicHumanity, which caught attention of our advertising friends across the world.
This simple message of 'empathy' has been replicated now in 5 countries (Brazil, China, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) beside Nepal and the idea has already been translated into 7 languages.
The first country to adapt the idea is Brazil led by Daniel da Hora, Chief Creative Officer, DH, LO Creative Boutique. He reached out to Ujaya, he was moved by the idea. Speaking about the idea, he said, "The pandemic made us reflect that we, as humanity, are deeply connected to each other. What affects one, affects us all. Besides, the lack of equal opportunities and access to the basics is also a global threat." He further added, "Empathy is when you put yourself on the position of another person. In a times such as this we see so many privileged people sharing their quarantine routine, so full of everything and so easily because of having everything can be a trap in a world so full of inequality."
Rashid from Bangladesh, founder of Creoto, who became part of this campaign, applauding our initiative, has stated, "#ORNKnowledge is a knowledge platform initiated by Outreach Nepal who lifted this campaign to raise empathy in current pandemic situation which is worth to support."
We were apprehensive that the campaign would receive mixed response, but to our surprise positive support poured in from across the world.Dr. Owen Jia, The President of ECI Awards, has voiced his support through his message: "In fighting this COVID 19, the common viral enemy of mankind, this movement is very timely, reminding us that human beings must care for each other, help each other and be friendly with each other no matter whatever language, faith and race they belong to."This was followed by another international boost from Sri Lanka.
Rohith Hettiaratchi, Director Business Strategy & Planning at Media Factory Pvt. Ltd., Sri Lanka, wrote, "This campaign opened up the insensitivity of such uploads encouraging people to be more humane." He further added, "The problems are the same across the subcontinent in terms of food availability and scarcity, hence it is very relevant to our market in Sri Lanka."
Lastly, the most reassuring note came from the Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury, Pro Vice Chancellor of Adamas University, India. Prof. Chowdhury penned, "Many people and professionals think of path-breaking ideas but do not take them beyond the drawing board. Ujaya Shakya and his team behind #BasicHumanity have actually acted on what they have thought of. Social sensitivity and physical distancing in times of pandemic and its aftermath will be hallmark of #BasicHumanity indeed."
"In the unprecedented situation, there is no better time to reaffirm our humanity and empathy for each other. Unfortunately this outbreak has also led to lot of people cocooning themselves in their own world, where it becomes difficult to see the suffering and desperation of many people who are affected by the virus or affected by the economic devastation. So the need for spreading awareness and reminding each other of the need for empathy is even more. Due to this reason, we supported #BasicHumanity campaign, as it directly speaks of this", says Protik Basu, Managing Partner, Weaddo based in Gurgoan, India.
Jitendra Gupta, FMCG professional from India reinforces and says that, "The campaign touches the heart & soul. It is very simple but straight forward to understand & shakes the inner calling of an individual towards his duties for others. This was a great cause for me to get attracted towards and connected with this campaign. "
Daniel further emphazies and says, "It's very clear the campaign is not to make us feel bad about our privileged condition, but to make us think about how, through small practices, we can help."
In Outreach we believe advertising now has a bigger role to play. And we thought, in these uncertain times, let us be more empathetic, more humane towards the less privileged. Our small initiative is simple, just a reminder of the basic humanity which we all have inside us. This campaign is not meant for those who are actually suffering – they might have little access to social media in these tormenting times. On the contrary this is meant to sensitize us, the forgetful privileged.
The team at Outreach is very happy that people across countries are reacting positively to the message. The new normal will makes it necessary that we have new insights and new visions. And now we know that there cannot be a bigger insight than 'Empathy'.
Tags: #BasicHumanity campaign.#ORNKnowledgeOutreach Nepal
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Gertrud & Ad Konings
Cacti have fascinated Gertrud and Ad Konings since they moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1996. A few years later it became more than a fascination and they have traveled extensively throughout the state in order to locate and photograph each and every cactus species in its natural setting. With over nine years of cactus hunting (shooting with a camera exclusively!) under their belt, they are some of the very few people who have seen and photographed each of the 136 species in the wild. Almost all of these species were photographed while in bloom; not a minor achievement when one considers that many species flower for just a single afternoon per year, if at all.
Gertrud Konings has a PhD in biology and teaches at the El Paso Community College. She is the newsletter editor of the El Paso Cactus and Rock Club. Ad Konings is a biologist by profession and specializes in underwater observation and photo- graphy of cichlids (tropical freshwater fish) and has authored more than 20 books relating to these fishes.
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Copyright©2004-2010 Cichlid Press


1 hour ago 2 min read
Home > News > ICC World Cup 2019: MS Dhoni Will Be My Dream World XI Team Captain – Harbhajan Singh
ICC World Cup 2019: MS Dhoni Will Be My Dream World XI Team Captain – Harbhajan Singh
Prashanth Relangi, 8 months ago 2 min read 661
Photo Credit: Getty Images.
MS Dhoni became the first captain to win the ICC World Cup despite being the host team. Meanwhile, the veteran off-spinner Harbhajan Singh showers words of praise on the Jharkhand Dynamite by calling him the greatest captain ever to grace the game after Sourav Ganguly.
It was quite a journey for Indian National Cricket team under the captaincy of MS Dhoni. They took an act of revenge against Bangladesh in the first game and then thrashed Ireland, Netherlands and Windies before losing to South Africa and drawing a game with England.
Then they knocked Australians out of the tournament in the knockout game before thrashing Pakistan in the semifinal. In the final, they outsmarted Sri Lankan side, courtesy an incredible knock from MS Dhoni and the blistering 99 from Gambhir.
No doubt, My captain is MS Dhoni – Harbhajan Singh
He once again led the team in 2015, which took place in Australia and New Zealand. This time, he led India like a champion in the league stage and in the quarterfinal before losing to Australia in the semifinal of the tournament.
"No doubt, my captain is MS Dhoni. After Sourav Ganguly, if the world has seen a better captain, it has to be MS Dhoni. Even in the present scenario, there is not a smarter captain than him. I have played with him at Chennai Super Kings for the last two years," Harbhajan Singh said.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni is 10 steps ahead:
Further, he went on to add saying that there is no current skipper, who can come close to his captaincy tactics. Harbhajan Singh believes that MS Dhoni will be 10 steps ahead of the opposition skipper during the course of the game.
"There is no one in world cricket right now who can match MS Dhoni when it comes to game awareness. People say a captain has to be 2 steps ahead of his opposition. MS Dhoni is 10 steps ahead," Harbhajan Singh said at India Today's Salaam Cricket conclave 2019.
However, he hasn't revealed his full playing XI. Recently, Harbhajan Singh played a vital part in seeing Chennai Super Kings reaching the finals of the Indian Premier League 2019. Meanwhile, MS Dhoni will be in the action when the Indian team takes on South Africa on June 5th.
Tags #Harbhajan Singh #Mahendra Singh Dhoni
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Tata's governance is still faulty
The group has finally ejected the ex-boss who has been a thorn in its side
BusinessFeb 9th 2017 edition
PROFIT is to good corporate governance what tides are to swimming trunks: when the former is high, absence of the latter tends to go unnoticed. The ebbing of profits at Tata, India's largest conglomerate, in recent years has prompted a power struggle that in turn has exposed the often dysfunctional relationship between several dozen businesses, holding companies, people and charities that use the Tata name. The struggle is now over: on February 6th, Cyrus Mistry, Tata's boss until last October (pictured on next page, on the right) was finally booted out of the company. Natarajan Chandrasekaran (on the left), the boss of one of the group's key operating firms, Tata Consultancy Services, takes over as chairman on February 21st.
Executives at the 149-year-old group hope that will close a grim chapter in its history. Mr Mistry, whose family owns an 18% stake in Tata Sons, the main holding company, which is unlisted, reacted badly to being evicted as its chairman last year. The move to oust him was set in motion by Ratan Tata, the group's 79-year old patriarch (and Mr Mistry's interim successor). During Mr Mistry's reign, Mr Tata had remained at the helm of the Tata Trusts, charities that control 66% of Tata Sons.
For months, Mr Mistry refused to step down from chairing the boards of listed Tata firms, such as Tata Steel or Tata Motors (owner of Jaguar Land Rover), which the group effectively controls but in which Tata Sons typically owns a 30% stake (see chart). The very last board he clung on to, that of Tata Sons itself, is rid of him as of this week.
Before leaving he made all manner of claims of financial and corporate-governance impropriety at Tata. Regulators are said to be looking into some of them; Tata denies them all. But in the hundreds of pages of affidavits filed in various tribunals by both sides, and seen by The Economist, a recurring theme emerges, that the relationships between the Trusts, Tata Sons and Tata companies are governed primarily by personal relationships and deference to tradition. There is little sense that things are going to change. The hope seems to be that Mr Chandrasekaran can grow profits again and put such problems out of mind.
Mr Mistry's most striking claim is about the current board of directors of Tata Sons. It is arguably India's most august corporate body—directors include the dean of Harvard Business School (HBS), a former Indian defence secretary and several respected industrialists. Mr Mistry contends that it is little more than a rubber stamp for decisions made by the Trusts, ie, by Mr Tata. A change to the articles of association of Tata Sons in 2014 gave the Trusts more access to information across the entire group. The Trusts already had the ability to influence decisions by nominating a third of the Tata Sons board. Acting together, those directors can veto the entire board's decisions.
The ousted man says Mr Tata ramped up meddling into the activities of both Tata Sons and some operating firms, aided by a roster of long-retired executives who serve as Tata trustees. This view is backed by the Tata Group's top lawyer, who in January 2016 wrote that if internal documents were somehow leaked to the media, they would "project to the external world that the Trusts are controlling our empire, and Tata Sons board is more a dummy."
A lack of clarity over what authority the Trusts have in relation to Tata Sons, and vice versa, was also acknowledged in internal e-mails by Nitin Nohria, the dean of HBS, who has served on the Tata Sons board as a Tata Trusts appointee since September 2013. Some governance experts have criticised his position there, because the Trusts and some group firms made a $50m gift to HBS to fund a building that was named in Mr Tata's honour. Mr Nohria wrote in court documents that neither the donation, arranged shortly before he became dean in 2010, nor the fact that he was appointed by the Trusts, should mean that he is not acting in the interest of Tata Sons.
The main corporate-governance problem is that the interests of minority shareholders, whether they are invested in Tata Sons or in the various operating companies, risk being trampled over if unaccountable trustees are ruling the roost. But at the level of the businesses, improvised governance processes also slowed down decision-making to a crawl. Turf battles created confusion among executives as to who was in charge.
Mr Tata, in the legal filings, says it is untrue that the Trusts call the shots: he merely gave his advice when asked to, and infrequently at that. Other trustees say they chipped in recommendations to Tata companies on important matters in a personal capacity. On behalf of the Trusts, they merely sought better visibility into what money the charities might receive as dividends from Tata Sons.
Yet at least one internal letter from Mr Tata suggests that he clearly expected the directors nominated by the Trusts to convey the Trusts' views to the Tata Sons board rather than exercise their own judgment. In one instance, in June 2016, two directors nominated by the Trusts left a Tata Sons board meeting for nearly an hour to confer with Mr Tata. Mr Mistry says this proves Mr Tata controlled the board; both directors have said that the matter discussed was trivial.
In India, "good corporate governance" is often used as a euphemism for "not being crooked". By that standard, Tata still does well. Yet the manner in which Mr Mistry was defenestrated has raised eyebrows in Mumbai's business community. On Mr Tata's recommendation, the Tata Sons board was suddenly increased in size from six to nine directors just weeks before it voted to oust the chairman, which helped secure Mr Mistry's dismissal.
Tata insiders who reckon the crisis that befell them was purely driven by lacklustre profitability are misguided. The poor governance that goes with the group's Byzantine, multi-layered structure contributed to those low profits as well as to the bruising power struggle of recent months. Will Mr Chandrasekaran have the skill or the mandate to simplify the group's structure and rein in the influence of Tata Trusts? Although Mr Tata will leave the board of Tata Sons later this month, he shows little sign of retiring from his job as the chairman of the Trusts. But Mr Chandrasekaran's allies say in private that he has one huge advantage: having fired one successor, Mr Tata knows he cannot sack another without further damaging his legacy.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Tata's governance is still faulty"


Nano Lab
in parvitate immensitas
Federico Rosei
Characterization Services
Maryam Ebrahimi
maryam.ebrahimi@emt.inrs.ca
I graduated for my B.Sc. in Pure Chemistry from the University of Tehran, and M.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry from Bahonar University of Kerman, both in Iran. Afterwards, I continued my education at the University of Waterloo, where I completed my PhD in Physical Chemistry in the area of surface science in 2009. My research was focused on the reactions of several organic molecules with Si(100)-2×1 and Si(111)-7×7 as the foundation for making materials for molecular electronics.
I continued my research as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the prominent group of Nobel Laureate Professor John C. Polanyi at the University of Toronto. In Polanyi's laboratory, I studied the kinetics and reaction dynamics of hydrogen halides and haloalkanes on Si(100)-2×1 and Si(111)-7×7. My research was inspired by the nature of the molecules and surface, and the applied conditions to build "bottom-up" nanostructured materials − containing atomic and molecular pattern with well-defined electronic properties.
In 2011, I joined the University of California at Riverside, as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar, where I worked on the kinetics of the catalytic hydrogenation of hydrocarbons on platinum surface. By bridging the "pressure gap" between ultra-high vacuum (UHV) and high-pressure chemistry, I achieved the very first steady-state catalytic reactions with high reaction yield inside UHV. This study provides a fundamental platform to understand the mechanism of the reactions in "real" catalysis in comparison with "model" studies.
In my current position as a Research Associate at INRS, I supervise the surface science subgroup of Professor Federico Rosei. The motivation of our research is to design and form two-dimensional (2D) materials for various applications. Our research is based on the molecular level understanding of surface phenomena to make self-assembled molecular networks (SAMNs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), or 2D conjugated polymers on different surfaces such as Au(111), Ag(111), Cu(111), and HOPG. We use Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), and other surface characterization techniques, together with Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations to provide a molecular level understanding of the interactions and reactions at surfaces.
A very short description of our projects is:
Two-dimensional (2D) conjugated polymers on metal surfaces: The growing interest in nanostructured materials stems from the remarkable effects arising from dimension reduction. As the only 2D conjugated material, graphene has unique properties such as high charge mobility; however, its zero band gap limits its applications in electronics. On the other hand, the flexibility of organic synthesis offers a broad playground to create organic analogues of graphene with high charge mobility and tunable band gap. Therefore, 2D p-conjugated polymers are good candidates to make "bottom-up" materials for smaller and faster transistors and organic electronic devices.
Self-assembled molecular networks (SAMNs): The interactions between molecule and substrate in addition to intermolecular interactions including van der Waals interactions and hydrogen bonding altogether is driving force for the formation of surface confined SAMNs.
Covalent Organic Framework (COF) for Host/Guest material: These materials might find useful for host/guest architectures because they provide a novel route towards porous materials for applications in molecular recognition, catalysis, gas storage and separation.
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