Tag: Indian news

Blood type

Do you know your blood type? If you haven’t been in any medical situations where blood type is important, you might not.

We know that there are 8 main blood groups that make up most of the world’s population.

But it turns out that scientists still don’t know why we evolved different blood types. And that may remain a mystery for a long time. But from now, science can at least tell you about your own blood.

Knowing your Blood type

In develops parts of the world, it’s not crucial to know your blood type off the top of your head. Doctors will typically run tests before any major procedure and if there’s any doubt in a medical emergency, you’ll most likely receive O negative blood, because that’s the universal donor blood that’s save to give to any A, B, AB or O recipient.

Blood type experiments

For thousands of years nobody really understood blood. A Greek doctor Claudius Galenus from 200 CE believed that it was created food and liver, and this school of thought lived on for nearly 1500 years.

It wasn’t until in the 17th century A british doctor named William Harvey, discovered that blood actually circulated through the body. This spawned A new age of experimentation with blood.

In 1665, an English physician successfully kept one dog alive by transfusing it with a blood of another dog. Just two years later, doctors began experimenting with Xenotransfusions. That is transfusing humans with animal blood, such a sheep. And those human patients died.

It wasn’t until 1900 that we finally realised people and animals actually have different types of blood that determine whose blood can mix with whose. That’s where different letters came into play.

If you’re type A, your immune system will perceive type B blood as an intruder and trigger auto immune response that can cause

  • kidney failure,
  • extensive blood clotting, and
  • even shock.

The reverse is true of type B blood. The immune system will attack type A.

AB blood however, accept both A and B blood without triggering the auto immune response. These things get little bit complicated when introduced there negative and positive part of your blood type. Positive can’t accept negative, but the opposite is extremely dangerous.

Other than 8 Blood types

To further complicate things scientists have discovered dozens of more blood type, such as the Duffy blood group, which can determine your susceptibility to malaria. Or the Hh blood type, which 1 in 10,000 people in India have. But the vast majority of the humans fall into this A, B, O system.

As per why humans evolved this complicated system of blood types and compatibility, we really don’t know. The original mutations are thought to date back nearly 20 million years. But whatever the biology is behind blood typing, it’s a real practical thing that matters.

It’s just not a bad idea to know your blood type. If you’re traveling somewhere that’s rural, or doesn’t have access to advance medicine, it’s good for you and your travelling companion to know your types, just in case of an accident along the way. In big emergency closer to home, blood banks often put in calls for donors of a specific type. And remember if you’re type O Negative, you’re an extremely useful universal donor. So, knowing your type can give you a peace of mind.

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Being Bilingual

People have very different opinions on what bilingualism really is. For some it means speaking two languages fluently and with little to no effort rather strongly consider a person bilingual, if it has perfect pronounciation in both languages and makes very few grammatical errors while talking.

  • Illustration of language concept

The truth is that, even with a bad accent and making some mistake, being able to speak in two or more languages rather than one has practical benefits in an increasingly globalised world.

Multilingualism

Multilingualism has been shown to have many psychological and social advantages that can go something simply as

  • watching movies with no subtitles
  • to having less problems in traveling and
  • even getting a job or business opportunities specially in tourist areas.

Types of Bilingualism

It is considered to be two types of Bilingualism

1. Compound Bilingualism

Compound Bilingualism, also called addictive Bilingualism happens for example when a child is raised by bilingual parents and both languages are used in home, the child grows when both languages are used simultaneously in the same environment.

With this type of Bilingualism, the person does not see the two languages as separate it is common to hear such people speaking different languages in the same sentence or using a word of a different language from the one they’re talking to better express themselves.

2. Coordinate Bilingualism

This is the second type of Bilingualism also know as Subtractive Bilingualism. In this type, the person perceive two languages as separate because he learns them separately and in different environments in context.

I am an example of coordinate Bilingualism, most of the time i talk Hindi when I’m in my college environment or to people who talks only that language, I use the language specifically for those context but to my family members i usually talk in Bengali which is my native language, the language related to my home environment. I see these two language as separate since I learned and used them in completely different environments.

Officially Monolingual Countries

Only a few countries in the world including the U.S, England, and Australia are officially Monolingual but even in these countries only a considerable percent of people who speaking and understand more than one language.

Advantage

Researchers suggest that bilingualism can slow the advance of age-related mental issues such as Dementia and Alzheimer’s by up to 4 years.

Also in bilingual adult, brain tissue called grey matter is denser compared with Monolingual adults.

Although speaking more than one language does not necessarily make you more intelligent person, it helps stimulates and increase brain connections. Learning a new language is like an excercise to the brain that will improve your Cognitive skills and even if you grew up in a Monolingual environment, it is never too late to start learning a different language.

BODY DYSMORPHIC DISORDER(BDD)

Body Dysmorphic disorder is a mental disorder marked by an obsessive of perceived defects or flaws in once appearance. A flaw that to others is considered minor or not observable.

People suffering from BDD

  1. Can feel emotion such as shame and disgust concerning a part or parts of their body part and fixate on this.
  2. The obsession is so intense that the person repeatedly checks and compares the perceived flaw seeks reassurance sometimes for several hours each day.
  3. The person can also adopt unusual routines to avoid social contact that exposes the perceived flaw.
  4. This pervasive thoughts about their appearance and body image interfere with their daily life via
    • Educational
    • Occupational dysfunction and
    • Isolation

No matter how many times people assure them that there is no flaw, they cannot accept that the issue doesn’t exist.

The most common features about which people obsess includes:-

  • Nose
  • Wrinkles
  • Acne
  • Complexion
  • Blemishes
  • Hair
  • Skin
  • Vein appearance
  • Muscles size
  • Tone
  • Breast size
  • Buttocks
  • Genitalia

BDD is estimated to affect up to 2.4% of the population. The condition usually starts during adolescence affecting both men and women. BDD does not go away on its own if Untreated it may get worse with time leading to

  • severe depression
  • Anxiety
  • Substance abuse
  • Suicidal thoughts and behavior

Causes

The exact cause is unknown, but like every other disorder BDD may result from a combination of causes such as:-

  1. Brain differences
  2. Environmental factors; special if they involve negative social evaluations about the body or Self-image
  3. Childhood trauma
  4. Genetics; studies suggest that BDD is likely to run in family.

Certain factors that may increase the risk of developing the condition may include:-

  1. A family history
  2. Negative body image
  3. Perfectionism
  4. Negative life experiences such as bullying or teasing
  5. Introversion
  6. Media influence.

Symptoms

Extreme preoccupation with a perceived flaw in your physical appearance that appear minor to others for at least one hour a day. Attempting to hide perceived flaw with –

  • styling, makeup or clothes – to seeking plastic or cosmetic surgery,
  • avoiding social situations,
  • constantly comparing appearance with others,
  • always seeking assurance about appearance from others,
  • low self-esteem, compulsive behaviour such as skin picking and frequent clothes changing.

Extreme preoccupation with an appearance that interferes with social life work, school, or other functionality.

Diagnosis

A medical evaluation will be carried out other medical conditions after which further evaluation is carried out by a mental health professional.

Diagnosis is based on:-

  1. A psychological evaluation; which aims at assessing risk factors and thoughts feeling as well as behavior can be associated with a negative self-image.
  2. Personal, medical, family and social health history.

Treatment

Treatment option may include therapy and medication includes:-

  1. Cognitive behavioral therapy; that helps you learn how to cope and behave to improve your mental health
  2. Medications; such as SSRIs may help is control obsession and control repetitive behaviours

Psychiatric hospital may be suggested if the symptom is severe such as when you’re in immediate danger of harming yourself.

Famous personality with BDD

Here is a list of people with BDD;

  • Michael Jackson(singer, dancer)
  • Billie Elish (singer)
  • Robert Pattinson (from twilight)
  • Ileana D’Cruz (from Rustom)
  • Miguel Herrán (from money heist)

Why does a student need to be industry ready & how they can be?

What do you mean by industry ready?

An industry expects their employees to have Non-technical skills and personal attributes such as team work, communication skills, integrity, reliability and self-motivation are considered more important than purely technical skills to get industry ready.

Importance

A study shows that 50% of the curriculum that are been taught in college/universities, by the time students will graduate, it will get auxiliated with new technologies in the market.

Let’s say for example, a product manager of a company who advertises the product, collects data and analysis the data to improve the marketing strategies of company. He can do it manually, but with time if an app is developed for this work, the company won’t be requiring any product manager.

Although degrees are important for future but it is also important to have a knowledge about what all techniques and skills that will be there in future and also to start developing those skills.

How can students be industry ready?

Here are some ways of getting industry ready:-

  1. Practical Knowledge of Doing Things:- If you can demonstrate how to implement the theoretical knowledge you have then your chances of getting hired will improve significantly.
  2. Sharpen Your Communication Skills:- If you are not able to communicate properly, your knowledge will be of little use to you.
  3. Inculcate the Habit of Innovation:- Form a habit to think out of the box, if you can provide a company with a method to save on expenditure or increase their profit, you have better chances of getting hired.
  4. Read Books and Newspapers Regularly:- Form a habit to read a newspaper or book at least half an hour daily, as this will improve your thinking process as well.
  5. Build Your Profile to Show Your Accomplishments:- One needs to be presentable and be able to exhibit his or her qualifications and capabilities convincingly.
  6. Pursue Online Courses to Hone Your Skills:- To make yourself industry ready, it is better to learn some new skills online.
  7. Work on Your Weak Areas:- The trick here is to present your weaknesses in a way that it looks profitable to the company for whom you want to work for.
  8. Learn to Organize and Manage Your Time:- It is about getting the maximum output in a given amount of time. Productivity matters a lot when you are working for a company.

So start investing more on prolonged and sustainable skills because knowledge and degrees are not going to be most required in future. This is the time to decide what is to be done and how should the steps be taken forward.