Knowledge Update

Here's an experiment to illustrate how ambiguous and complex a term "the metaverse" might be: Replace the phrase "the metaverse" with "cyberspace" in your mind. Ninety percent of the time, the meaning will not vary significantly.

The G20 leaders led the world in celebrating the 8 billion mark of the world’s human population on the 15^th of November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia. This happened under the shadow of war and the post-Covid 19 pandemic.

Metaverse, which alludes to the next generation of the Internet, has become popular in our society's most contemporary contexts.

Many academics have highlighted that the organizations of the twenty-first century differ from those of the previous centuries in a number of significant ways (Cascio, 2006).

Social Media means engaging people to create videos or thoughts or share them with others using virtual network. Social Media started with simple platforms such as GeoCities, launched in November 1994, and Classmates.com in 1995 and then SixDegrees.com in 1997 (Wikipedia, 2022)

‘Take this time to complete as many courses as you can’. ‘Uplift yourself’. ‘Upskill yourself’. ‘Don’t let your body get out of shape’. ‘Exercise!’ ‘Don’t think because you are working from home you can slack off’. ‘Meetings! Meetings! Meetings!’.

I’m sure that anyone who just read that first paragraph can relate at this point in time. The world as we knew it has come to a complete standstill. As humans, we always want to ensure that we are ‘being all we can be’. In a world-wide pandemic this has never been more prevalent. It seems as if our bosses, colleagues, friends, family and, indeed society, have collectively come together to place on us the expectation of exceptional productivity. We are being encouraged to work harder so as not to let the pandemic destroy our work ethic. We are being encouraged to train or exercise harder, or even to start to exercise, so as not to let the pandemic affect our physical health. Harder. Faster. Consistent.

Stop! Where are the questions about and motivation to take care of our mental health? Mental health is, after all, the one thing that enables our productivity and enables our ability to get out of bed to do exercise. Yet, it still appears to be a taboo topic. Why are we so afraid to say ‘I’m sad’? Why are we so afraid to say ‘this situation has really made me question my choices’? Why are we so afraid to say ‘no, I can’t take on anymore work as I’m overloaded already’? We are afraid because even in this day and age we are taught to prioritize everything over our mental health. Physical health, productivity, likeability, ego; all these things are what we as a society are taught to value. What we need to realize is that we also need to give priority to ‘the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy”, otherwise known as well-being. Specifically, we need to give priority to our mental well-being.

The point of this article is not to discount all the wonderful things that we can do and achieve during these times of social distancing, masks, gloves and working from home. The point is to point out how important it is to take time for yourself. The point is to ask you to give yourself permission to get out of bed later than usual for once, or twice. The point is to ask you to be good to yourself and not criticize yourself for needing time to regroup and think about where you are in life. The pandemic has brought out a reaction in all of us. Of course there are as many different reactions as there are people on the planet. This is ok. This is reality.

If you need time; take it. If you need help for your mental health; ask for it. If you need to just ‘be’ for the day; claim it. You as a whole are valued. Not just your brain capacity, not just your physical being, but YOU as a whole. Don’t let this pandemic or anyone make you forget that.

By: Umer Mehmood Dadu

In everyday life, a person does many things like managing home, family, work, shopping, saving pocket money, purchasing vegetables, managing social life, and many more. If one observes keenly, unknowingly, in all these activities, a person actually manages many things in the daily life. Activities like money management, saving, expenditure, things to purchase, giving priority to immediate activities, and postponing the unimportant things are all part of life. At the time of shopping or purchasing items, importance is given to the quality of product as well as its features. In summary, all these activities can simply be called as ‘Management.’ There is a perfect correlation between the management thoughts and theories proposed by famous management gurus in our lives.

F.Y.Taylor defines management as “the art of knowing what you want to do and then seeing that it is done in the best and cheapest way.” This definition is highly apt for our personal lives too.

To increase the efficiency in organizations, the management is used in a broader prospective. The main objective of all organizations is to earn profit and be responsible to the stakeholders. Similarly, in one’s personal life, we manage money, price, quantity, quality, budget to get a quality product for a low price. Organizations also manage money, plan for their budgets and expenditure, procure raw material economically, manage people, and manage the organizational processes to achieve targeted productivity. In all these management activities, various functions of management like Planning, Organizing, Directing, Controlling, Staffing, Leading and Motivating are involved. These activities belong to several departments like Marketing, Finance, HR, Business Strategy, Operations Management, IT and Systems among others. Management is a dynamic process and whether organizations or human beings, it is essential to adapt the management strategies to the ever changing external environment. Organizations and people do constantly interact with the external environment and change their management styles as per the requirement.

For example, due to the introduction of the VAT (Value Added Tax) in UAE, organizations have to immediately make lot of modifications to their cost structure, profit margins and competitive strategies to sustain the business. Similarly, the citizens of UAE also need to modify their daily lives and habits by looking at their spending patterns and tune them to VAT. In organizations, every activity or process are inter-related and mutually dependent on one another. For example, production depends on market demand, market demand depends on economy and spending habits of individuals, and customer behavior. Requirement of manpower depends on production capacity and in turn production capacity and manpower planning depends on the availability of budget. Thus, management process is a highly dynamic one.

Management can be compared with the clutch, accelerator, break and steering of a car which control the entire movement of the car. Similarly, in a personal life, individuals apply all these parts of a car to their lifestyle by using one or the other part, whenever and wherever it is required to manage according to the ever changing dynamics of external environment. Thus, all the human beings perform several management activities in their everyday life unknowingly.

Human beings can manage their personal lives by learning management skills, like organizations train their employees to learn the management skills. This requires a formal management education in some reputed Business School. Undergraduate and Post-graduate programmes like BBA and MBA programmes in various disciplines of management i.e., Marketing, Finance, HR, Operations, Business Strategy, International Business, Information Systems will develop these management skills with specific emphasis on these disciplines.

​New York, Jan 12 (IANS) People suffering from chronic non-specific lower back pain can find solace in yoga, say researchers, adding that yoga asanas under proper guidance can help reduce pain and allow movement in such people over the short term. The trials for the study were conducted in India, the UK and the US.

​New York, April 23 (IANS) Researchers have found that 10 minutes of walking up and down stairs at a regular pace is more likely to make you feel energised than ingesting 50 milligrams of caffeine -- about the equivalent to the amount in a can of soda. "We found, in both the caffeine and the placebo conditions, that there was not much change in how they felt," said study co-author Patrick J. O'Connor, Professor at University of Georgia in the US. "But with exercise they did feel more energetic and vigorous. It was a temporary feeling, felt immediately after the exercise, but with the 50 milligrams of caffeine, we didn't get as big an effect," O'Connor said. The study, published in the journal Physiology and Behavior, aimed to simulate the hurdles faced in a typical office setting, where workers spend hours sitting and staring at computer screens and do not have time for a longer bout of exercise during the day. For the study, participants on separate days either ingested capsules containing caffeine or a placebo, or spent 10 minutes walking up and down stairs -- about 30 floors total -- at a low-intensity pace. O'Connor wanted to compare an exercise that could be achieved by people in an office setting, where they have access to stairs and a little time to be active, but not enough time to change into workout gear, shower and change back into work clothes. "And a lot of people working in office buildings have access to stairs, so it's an option to keep some fitness while taking a short break from work," O'Connor said. Study participants were female college students who described themselves as chronically sleep deprived - getting less than 6 and half hours per night. To test the effects of caffeine versus the exercise, each group took some verbal and computer-based tests to gauge how they felt and how well they performed certain cognitive tasks. Neither caffeine nor exercise caused large improvements in attention or memory, but stair walking was associated with a small increase in motivation for work.

New York, April 22 (IANS) With an estimated 10 per cent of people worldwide having chronic kidney disease (CKD), and about nine in 10 of them being unaware of their condition, health experts have called for making kidney health a priority in both developed and developing countries. Presenting a new global report - The Global Kidney Health Atlas - presented at this week's World Congress of Nephrology in Mexico City being held from April 21-25, the researchers highlighted the huge gaps in kidney disease care and prevention, with many countries not prioritising kidney health. Globally, estimated CKD prevalence varies from seven per cent in South Asia and eight per cent in Africa to as high as 11 per cent in North America and 12 per cent in Europe, The Middle East, and East Asia, and Latin America, according to the report. Among high-income countries, Saudi Arabia and Belgium have the highest estimated CKD prevalence (24 per cent), followed by Poland (18 per cent), Germany (17 per cent) and Britain and Singapore (16 per cent). Norway and the Netherlands have the lowest estimates at five per cent, the report, which was also published in the journal JAMA, said. "Our Atlas shows that, across countries of all incomes, many governments are not making kidney disease a priority. This makes no sense, as the costs for treating people with end stage kidney disease are enormous, along with the devastating effect it has on patients and their families," said Adeera Levin, President of the International Society of Nephrology which produced the Atlas. "A diagnosis of CKD does not mean that you will need dialysis or a transplant, but does signal that you are at risk for many health problems, including heart disease, strokes, and infections," Levin, who is also a Professor of Medicine at the University of British Colombia in Canada, added. While CKD can affect anyone, people are at higher risk if they have any one or more of a number of risk factors: these include high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity smoking, being aged 60 years or over, having established cardiovascular disease, having a family history of kidney failure, and being from a high-risk ethnic group or having a history of acute kidney injury. Acute kidney injury can be caused by infections, dehydration or damage from medications or ingesting toxic drugs. "A general lack of awareness of CKD, among patients and family doctors alike, and a lack of symptoms in the early stages, means that kidney function is usually hugely reduced by the time symptoms arise," said Professor David Johnson, co-chair of the Global Kidney Health Atlas, and Professor at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. The kidneys are vital organs in our bodies, removing waste and excess water and controlling the acidity balance of our blood. Chronic kidney disease is the gradual loss of the kidneys' abilities to perform these essential functions, and can be caused by high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, smoking and other risk factors.