Let's be Awake & Aware (May Edition)

Let's be ke re EDITION 2021

A Post-Covid Outlook: The Future of the Supply Chain I \"~ As the coronavirus wreaks economic turmoil around the world, our modern supply chains are facing unprecedented stress. For months prior to the Covid-19 crisis, trade tensions had been mounting due to the escalating tariff war between Washington and Beijing. A rise in protectionism, coupled with concrete costs and new financial barriers, has fuelled broader challenges and concerns for worldwide logistics networks. Against this backdrop, our modern supply chain infrastructure is well overdue for a rethink. Today's globalised supply chain networks have been optimised to identify minimum lead times at the lowest possible costs. However, rapid political developments, extreme climate events and now a global pandemic have all revealed the hidden costs of single-source dependencies and poor flexibility in adapting to real-time shocks, with fast changes to supply and demand. Over the next several years, as we undertake a broader overhaul of our logistics infrastructure, I believe that a new order will emerge based on three key dimensions

From Globalisation to Regionalisation Similar to what we had in the 1980s, logistics hubs will re-emerge at the regional level. To eliminate single- source dependencies and establish a flexible supply chain, product integrators, subsystem suppliers and component suppliers will all have to source, assemble and deliver from their own backyards. A shift to multi-level sourcing, on the regional level, is already underway in the medical industry as equipment manufacturers and pharmaceutical supply chains are moving in high gear to respond to government orders. Dyson, the British technology company best known for its vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and fans, received an order from the British government to produce 10,000 ventilators for Covid-19 patients. In the United States, General Motors, Ford and Tesla have stepped in to address the ventilator shortage. Beyond the medical field, the electronics supply chain is quickly following suit. The overnight shift to a global remote work force has sharply increased demand for laptops and notebooks. Under the circumstances, companies may well be willing to pay a 10 or 20 percent premium to have laptops delivered to their workforce right away, rather than wait until back orders are filled due to stalled production at plants in China.

Supply chain stress tests: Anew norm After the 2008 financial cr1s1s, financial institutions around the world were forced to stress test their balance sheets to ensure they were prepared for an economic shock. Similarly, a series of large-scale cyber-attacks over the past 10 years have forced technology companies to begin penetration tests to identify any vulnerabilities and check the robustness of their cyber-security mechanisms. In a post-Covid-19 world, supply chain stress tests will become a new norm. Large suppliers and logistics operators will have to prepare themselves for major catastrophes such as weather events (fires, flood, tsunami and so on), lethal pandemic outbreaks, strikes, social unrest and associated disruptions. International commercial air travel has effectively ground to a halt, and one can easily imagine harbour blockades and shipping disruptions in the near future. Independent of the Covid-19 crisis, more and more externalities are causing shocks to the supply chain that require firms to forecast how they will operate in crisis environments.

The human dimension returns Although unemployment rates have risen across the US and around the world, certain key industries actually face labour shortages. Businesses operating in the healthcare industry, in agriculture, in supermarkets and other \"essential\" fields are ramping up their recruitment. Amazon announced 100,000 new roles in fulfilment centres and delivery networks to support the surge in service demand during the pandemic. The human dimension is back, and it will play a premium role in rebalancing the global supply chain, during this crisis and well beyond. Rather than viewing labour as a commodity, it should be managed as a key asset ensuring flexibility and adaptation, as well as playing a fundamental part in crisis response programmes. To put this in perspective, each smartphone is touched by 80 human beings during the manufacturing process. So moving an assembly line from China to Mexico, for example, requires training 80 individuals to produce the same quality output as the original operation. A post-Covid-19 view of the workforce will have to accommodate this outlook.

Investment Opportunity These three trends demand a brand-new generation of software systems. To realise these solutions and norms, entrepreneurs in AI, mathematical modelling, machine learning algorithms and cloud services will have to find ways to extract critical data from the enterprise supply chain and correlate it with external \"major events\" data to deliver real-time business insights. These insights must be directly relevant and actionable to workers on the factory floor. At the same time, management must be able to use them to identify and consolidate high-level logistics trends. To deliver insights in days, hours or minutes, rather than quarters, these solutions will have to be integrated with, and embedded in, existing workflow processes. As such, they need to be industry-specific, leveraging deep domain knowledge, and customised to specific verticals. The trends of Enterprise 4.0, in motion since 2017, are now occurring much faster than we had imagined. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the oncoming wave, and this new generation of enterprise innovation will emerge much sooner than anyone had anticipated.

How affordable clean energy solutions can tackle energy poverty According to the United Nations, 700 million people (10°1o of the world's population) still live in poverty. A shocking statistic by any account, but one that many of us forget as we get on with our busy lives and deal with our own personal stresses. What is less well known, or less discussed, is that people living in poverty need access to energy far more than their more affluent peers - to keep warm, to provide and prepare healthy food, and to access clean water. For those of us not living in poverty, access to energy is of course just as vital, but we have the means to provide warmth and food for ourselves and our families in multiple, easily accessible ways. We typically take these fundamental needs for granted. We in the energy industry focus so keenly on achieving the energy transition, and rightly so. This work is encapsulated by two UN Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 7 Affordable and Clean Energy and Goal 13 Climate Action. The UN defines its 17 Sustainable Development goals as \"integrated and indivisible\". Have you ever stopped to consider how the energy transition is linked to the others, especially to Goal 1 \"Ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere\"? According to the UN: \"The world is making progress towards Goal 7 [Affordable and Clean Energy], with encouraging signs that energy is becoming more sustainable and widely available. Access to electricity in poorer countries has begun to accelerate, energy efficiency continues to improve, and renewable energy is making impressive gains in the electricity sector. Nevertheless, more focused attention is needed to improve access to clean and safe cooking fuels and technologies for 3 billion people.\" What if we could do more? Here's the thing - we can. Working towards the energy transition offers a unique and very important opportunity to also address energy poverty and poverty in the broader sense. The solution is in how we pursue the energy transition.

What's the World Economic Forum doing about the transition to clean energy? Moving to clean energy is key to combating climate change, yet in the past five years, the energy transition has stagnated. Energy consumption and production contribute to two-thirds of global emissions, and 810/o of the global energy system is still based on fossil fuels, the same percentage as 30 years ago. Plus, improvements in the energy intensity of the global economy (the amount of energy used per unit of economic activity) are slowing. In 2018 energy intensity improved by l.20Jo, the slowest rate since 2010. Effective policies, private-sector action and public-private cooperation are needed to create a more inclusive, sustainable, affordable and secure global energy system. Benchmarking progress is essential to a successful transition. The World Economic Forum's Energy Transition Index, which ranks 115 economies on how well they balance energy security and access with environmental sustainability and affordability, shows that the biggest challenge facing energy transition is the lack of readiness among the world's largest emitters, including US, China, India and Russia. The 10 countries that score the highest in terms of readiness account for only 2.60Jo of global annual emissions. To future-proof the global energy system, the Forum's Shaping the Future of Energy and Materials Platform is working on initiatives including, Systemic Efficiency, Innovation and Clean Energy and the Global Battery Alliance to encourage and enable innovative energy investments, technologies and solutions. Additionally, the Mission Possible Platform (MPP) is working to assemble public and private partners to further the industry transition to set heavy industry and mobility sectors on the pathway towards net-zero emissions. MPP is an initiative created by the World Economic Forum and the Energy Transitions Commission.

Energy Transition Index 2020 D Top 10 countries EC MOMIC : : SWeden f RUM ~ D Swltzer1and m + Rnland Ranking : : Denmark 1 ;fl Norway •• 2 3 -- Austria 4 :I= United Kingdom 5 6 -11France 67 3 7 8 - Nether1ands 9 10 II Iceland --rlf.-•....• . .Noll: llw&wg\\'T,._,,,.,,_t.d,10b~onlt,..-b11a,.,.,J. ...._b.__,,,10•-a---.albdlllla.nl ,.....,,..-w...-,.enm>-ona.-o10- ,oo.aa.-~Eccncmcfot\\tl\\\"-\"'9~&wrvr-..-m> Some countries will be able to invest massively in new infrastructure - according to a new Wood Mackenzie analysis, the US will need to spend an estimated $4.5 trillion over the next decade to convert to 1000/o renewable energy) - but in less affluent countries this type of investment simply isn't an option. How utilities execute their investment in the energy transition is of great importance because these choices will most directly i1npact lower income customers in the form of increased bills. Countries and their utilities are rightly being thoughtful about how they do this.

Colombian example shows energy transition can be low-cost Take Colombia for example - where they are finding clever, innovative, and low-cost ways to pursue the energy transition and provide affordable electricity to their citizens - of whom more than a quarter live below the poverty line. One of Colombia's leading utilities, Empresas Publicas de Medellin (EPM), has recently announced its successful application of Modular FACTS (Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems), which manages the power flow on the grid and is having broad economic and environmental benefits. This technology is allowing EPM to optimize its existing infrastructure, rather than needing to invest in the construction of new infrastructure and improve energy access throughout Medellfn. EPM is serving this growing load by facilitating the connection of renewable generation. Through this work, EPM is improving system reliability while lowering operational costs and this translates into lower bills for their customers. EPM' s vision and commitment to leverage innovation is benefiting Medellfn ratepayers, and the broader Colombian electric sector. It is this kind of creative action the energy industry must consider, if we are going to achieve the energy transition, and more importantly, address energy poverty. We have an opportunity to do something about it, as citizens of the world we have an obligation to do something about it. Now is the time to start talking, thinking, and most importantly take action. By Peter Wells

Cricket bats should be made from bamboo & not willow? Co-author Ben Tinkler-Davies examines a prototype bamboo cricket bat. Credit: Ben Tinkler-Davies \"The sound of leather on willow\" may have delighted cricket lovers for generations but the sport should now consider making the blades of its bats with bamboo, say researchers from Cambridge's Centre for Natural Material Innovation. Dr. Darshil Shah and Ben Tinkler-Davies compared the performance of specially made prototype laminated bamboo cricket bats, the first of their kind, with that of typical willow bats. Their investigations included microscopic analysis, video capture technology, computer modelling, compression testing, measuring how knocking-in improved surface hardness, and testing for vibrations. The study, published today in The Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology, shows that bamboo is significantly stronger-with a strain at failure more than three times greater-than willow and able to hold much higher loads, meaning that bats made with bamboo could be thinner while remaining as strong as willow. This would help batsmen as lighter blades can be swung faster to transfer more energy to the ball. The researchers also found that bamboo is 220/o stiffer than willow which also increases the speed at which the ball leaves the bat.

During manufacture, the surface of cricket bats is compressed to create a hardened layer. When the team compared the effect of this 'knock-in' process on both materials, they found that after 5 hours bamboo's surface hardness had increased to twice that of pressed willow. Perhaps most excitingly, they found that the sweet-spot on their prototype bamboo blade performed 190/o better than that on a traditional willow bat. This sweet-spot was about 20 mm wide and 40 mm long, significantly larger than on a typical willow bat, and better still, was positioned closer to the toe (12.5 cm from the toe at its sweetest point). Co-author, Dr. Darshil Shah, a former member of Thailand's under-19 national cricket team, said: \"This is a batsman's dream. The sweet-spot on a bamboo bat makes it much easier to hit a four off a Yorker for starters, but it's exciting for all kinds of strokes. We'd just need to adjust our technique to make the most of it, and the bat's design requires a little optimisation too.\" The pair also tested for comfort and found that bamboo had a similar 'damping ratio' to willow meaning that a similar amount of force is transferred to a player's hands when they strike the ball. In other words, players using bamboo bats wouldn't feel any more vibration than if they tried out a willow bat. The study points out that there is a shortage of good-quality willow, which takes up to 15 years to mature-mostly in England-to the point where the wood can be used to make cricket bats. Even then, bat makers often have to throw away a large quantity (up to 300/o) of the wood they source. By contrast, Moso and Guadua, the two most suitable types of structural bamboo, grow abundantly in China, across Southeast Asia and South America. These bamboos mature twice as fast as willow and because the cell structure in the laminated material is more regular, less raw material is wasted during manufacture. The researchers believe that high performance, low-cost production and increased sustainability could make bamboo cricket bats a viable and ethical alternative to willow. Co-author Ben Tinkler-Davies said: \"Cricket brings you really close to nature, you spend hours out in the field, but I think the sport can do a lot more for the environment by promoting sustainability. We've identified a golden opportunity to achieve that while also helping lower income countries to produce bats at lower cost.\"

In the nineteenth century, cricket bat makers experimented with various types of wood but from the 1890s, they settled on the sapwood of Salix Alba, a light coloured willow, for the blade as it offered high stiffness, low density and visual appeal. The use of cane in cricket has been limited to bat handles and pads. Working with local a cricket bat manufacturer Garrard & Flack, the researchers made a full-size bamboo bat prototype. They first had to split the bamboo culms into lengths (about 2.5 metres long), plane them flat and then stack, glue and laminate them into solid planks ready to be cut into different sizes. While this sounds laborious, using laminated bamboo avoids the rolling processes needed to harden willow. The cell structure of bamboo naturally has a higher density than willow. The materials used to make cricket bats are regulated by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the sport's governing body, and Law 5.3.2 states that \"The blade shall consist solely of wood\". Shah said: \"Bamboo is a grass not a wood so there would need to be discussions with the MCC but we think playing with a bamboo bat would be within the spirit of the game because it's a plant-based material and cane, a type of grass, is already used in the handle.\" But what about that iconic sound of leather on willow? \"We tested that too\", Tinkler-Davies said. \"The frequency when willow strikes the ball is very similar-whether you're playing or spectating, you wouldn't notice much of a difference.\" To those left feeling \"It's just not cricket\", Dr. Shah said: \"Tradition is really important but think about how much cricket bats, pads, gloves and helmets have already evolved. The width and thickness of bats have changed dramatically over the decades. So if we can go back to having thinner blades but made from bamboo, while improving performance, outreach and sustainability, then why not?\" The researchers now hope to enter into discussions with the MCC and leading bat manufacturers. Tinkler-Davies said: \"Our first prototype bat is 400Jo heavier than most full-size willow cricket bats so we now need to work out the optimum design to reduce that. Because laminated bamboo is so strong, we're very confident we can make a bamboo bat light enough, even for today's fast- scoring, short forms of the game.\"

Rude Food by Vir Sanghvi: Indian food isn't unhealthy As the West tries to make us rethink our food choices, debunk the myth and relish your favourite Indian dishes, don't fall for the lie that Western food is healthier than Indian food; \"When I think back On all the crap. I learned in high school, It's a wonder. That I can think at all.'' Unlike Paul Simon, I did learn some useful things in school. But on the subject of nutrition, nearly everything I was told was crap. Much of it embodied the Indian assumption (born out of some inferiority complex) that our food was rich and unhealthy and that Western food was much healthier. As our primary source of Western food then was the processed food industry, this was completely untrue. And now that the fast food business has joined processed food as our primary source of Western cuisine, it is even less true. Let's take breakfast. I was repeatedly told that to eat, say, a thepla with dahi and pickle (which is the sort of thing we ate at home) was unhealthy. Why didn't I have some healthy cereal, instead? In fact, as we now know, the propaganda on behalf of breakfast cereals is one of the most insidious things that the processed food industry has done over the years. Even the claim that breakfast is the most important meal of the day was spread around the world by the food industry. At one stage (around the time people were singing the praises of cereal to me), many American breakfast cereals contained up to 50 per cent sugar and were ticking time bombs which, when they exploded, led to America' s obesity crisis.

There is less sugar in American cereals now (less is relative; they are still very sugary), but I don't know what the US food giants do in their overseas markets. (Mainly because it is not a big issue in countries like India and there is not as much scrutiny.) Almost everything I learnt about nutrition then was wrong. For instance: wheat is healthier than rice. Really? I kept being told that wheat would make me strong while rice would make me fat. At first, when I discovered that this was a lie, I attributed it to North Indian vs South Indian prejudice. But I worked it out later. Wheat is the backbone of the global processed food and fast food industries. It made sense to demonise rice and to sing the praise of wheat. (The fast food industry is essentially a way to tum wheat into money; burgers, pizzas, sandwiches, wraps etc. So is the bakery industry.) And on and on the lies went. Eat bread, I was told, it is healthier. (Actually, no, a chapati is healthier.) Don't have any chaat. Eat packaged, sweet biscuits, sandwiches, etc., instead. (Atta is almost certainly better for you than the maida these are made from.) Some of it was vaguely justifiable on grounds of hygiene. Yes, the chaatwallahs did not always follow the highest sanitisation standards. And when we were told to turn down sherbets because the water was not safe, there may have been something to it. But orange squash (entirely synthetic and filled with sugar: it had never been near a real orange), which also depended on water, was exempt from such injunctions. And as for sugar, nobody gave a damn. It was sophisticated to eat highly over-sweetened strawberry jam with added synthetic flavour. Ketchup (25 per cent sugar!) was preferred to chutney. And nobody even considered the sugar overdose in such soft drinks as Coke or Pepsi. A movie-hall sized paper glass of a cola will have up to 18 spoons of sugar in it. Even a normal glass of cola can have around eight spoons of sugar. Would you ever think of putting eight spoonfuls of sugar in your tea? In your nimbu paani? I reckon that we were all so enamoured of the West and its ways that we sought to emulate what we saw as its finesse and sophistication. Even now, we don't realise how much sugar there is in processed or fast food because we are misled by the savoury flavour. It does not occur to us that mass-produced soups, pizzas, noodles, crackers, chips and even processed cheese products are packed with sugar. And while sugar awareness is finally growing, we are still largely in the dark when it comes to fat. Foreigners will often tell you that Indian food is too heavy or too rich for them. We take that to mean that it is too oily or too full of fat. And yes, there is often something to this. But here's the thing: Indian food is not meant to be oily. If we call the food at a restaurant 'greasy' or 'oily', we mean it as a complaint, not a compliment. Home food is rarely oily and the fear-of-fat is so deeply ingrained in Indians that we gave up too readily on ghee and switched to dalda and vanaspati (marketed by multinationals) which, as we now know, are much worse for our health than ghee. This is not true of the West. In France, fat is a good thing: it is the building block of the cuisine. The great chef Auguste Escoffier was not joking when he said that the three great secrets of French cuisine were \"butter, butter and butter.\" Even cheese, which Westerners love, is fat filled. A hunk of cheddar cheese is one third fat. A fast food hamburger patty can be up to 40 per cent fat. A chocolate milkshake is packed with fat. A KitKat, a Snickers bar, a frozen pizza - they are all about fat. Packaged foods deliver their calories from fat. Deep-frying is a way of adding fat to ingredients like onion rings, potatoes or chicken. And yet, it is Indian food that is \"too heavy\"? Research conducted by the fast food industry has shown that while people recognise sugar and at some stage say that a dish is \"too sugary\" , we have no such mechanism when it comes to dealing with fat. This is why, as much as we try and control our oil intake at home, we are conned into eating vast quantities of fat the moment we eat packaged or fast food. I make no value judgments about this. For years, the French who love fat, had lower rates of heart disease than Americans. Then, McDonald's and the processed food business arrived. And French heart disease rates have shot up. So, maybe it is not all fat, but a certain kind of industrial fat that is bad for you. But the basic lesson - which they did not teach us in high school - remains the same. Don' t fall for the lie that Western food is healthier than Indian food. Respect our cuisines and take pride in them.



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National Current Affairs > •Sil BRO Celebrates 61st Raising Day On 7th May > ISM\\◄ Serum Institute To Invest £240 Million To Expand Its Vaccine Business In UK •St¥••> India, Russia To Establish A '2+2 Ministerial Dialogue' > IS@'t'i PM Modi Launches Extension Of 'SVAMITVA Scheme' Across India > •Sf4 India Elected To 3 Bodies Of U.N. Economic And Social Council > Prahlad Singh Patel Inaugurates First-Ever Online Exhibition On Ramayana > Piyush Goyal Launches The Startup India Seed Fund Scheme > Gender Samvaad Event Launched By Ministry Of Rural Development

International Current Affairs > litii Nepal's Kami Rita Scales Everest For Record 25th Time > •s@ti PESCO: EU Approves US Participation For The First Time > •iii UK Become The First Country To Allow Driverless Cars On Roads > lit#• China Launches Robot Prototype 'NEO-01' Clear Space Debris > li@M China Names Its First-Ever Mars Rover \"Zhurong'' > Migu,el D1az-Canel To succeed Raul Castro As The President Of Cuba > New Zealand Make,s World's 1st Climate Change Law For Financial Firms > US President Biden Announces Complete Troop Withdrawal From Afghanistan

Appointments > liM Indian-Origin Expert Sankar Ghosh Elected To National Academy Of Sciences > •iii Ujjwala Singhania Takes Over As 38th National President FICCI FLO •st#ti> Vijay Goel Takes Over As CMD Of THDCIL > lst44 RM Sundaram Appointed As Director Of Indian Institute Of Rice Research > ii@i Justice Pant Appointed NHRC Acting Chairperson > Kotak Mahindra Life Appoints Mahesh Balasubramanian As MD

Sports Current Affairs > li#i Pakistan's Babar Azam Wins ICC Players Of The Month For April 2021 > Iii#• Alexander Zverev Beats Matteo Berrettini To Win His 2nd Madrid Title > liN Aryna Sabalenka Wins Her Maiden Madrid Open Women's Singles Title > ii@ti Lewis Hamilton Clinches His Fifth Successive Spanish Grand Prix > •iii AICF Launches Checkmate Covid Initiative > Nuwan Zoysa Banned For 6 Years For Breaching ICC's Anti-Corruption Code

Awards > •§WI Anupam Kher Wins Best Actor Award At New York City International Film Festival > 11@4 Naomi Osaka Wins Top Title At 2021 Laureus World Sports Awards > 1§@\\j Gita Mittal To Be Awarded Arline Pacht Global Vision Award > 1§#1 Singer Pink Bags Icon Award At Billboard Music Awards > lltii Maria Ressa Conferred UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize 2021 > Japan's Order Of The Rising Sun Honour To Shyamala Ganesh > Krithi Karanth Becomes 1st Indian Woman To Get 'Wild Innovator Award' > Uttar Pradesh Won E-Panchayat Award > 93rd Academy Awards (Oscars Awards 2021) Announced > National Panchayat Awards 2021

Link for General Awareness Quiz httP-s://forms.gle/71 dndo7voCnQ4hs46