ETCETERA
MNC's Pledge on Ethical Ads
Conscious conscience
Under the banner of Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), 240 persons, including 50-60 industry leaders, have signed a pledge of creating advertising with a conscience.
This pledge has been taken to sensitise the younger people in the industry to create responsible advertising. CEOs and mid-level managers across advertising agencies have come forward to vouch for a movement which began at Goa Fest, an annual conclave of advertisers and creative agencies.
The pledge reads: To my organisation, business associates, industry and to society at large, I pledge to ensure honesty and truthfulness, decency in advertising, non- exploitation of vulnerable sections of society, especially children, fairness in competition. I commit myself to advertising with a conscience.”
Ethically creative
Social networking sites leading to identity crisis
London: If you are among those who spend hours on twitting or interacting with Facebook friends, please note: Repeated exposure to social networking sites causing an ‘identity crisis’ among the users, a leading scientist has warned.
Baroness Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, said Facebook and Twitter have created a generation obsessed with themselves, who have short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback on their lives. Professor Greenfield believes the growth of internet “friendships” as well as greater use of computer games could effectively “rewire” the brain.
This can result in reduced concentration, a need for instant gratification and poor non-verbal skills, such as the ability to make eye contact during conversations, she said.
“What concerns me is the banality of so much that goes out on Twitter. Why should someone be interested in what someone else has had for breakfast?” Professor Greenfield was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. “It reminds me of a small child (saying): ‘Look at me Mummy, I’m doing this’, ‘Look at me Mummy, I’m doing that’. It is almost as if they are in some kind of identity crisis. In a sense it’s keeping the brain in a sort of time warp.” The academic suggested that some Facebook users feel the need to become “mini celebrities” who are watched and admired by others on a daily basis.
They do things that are “Facebook worthy” because the only way they can define themselves is by “people knowing about them”. More than 750 million people in the world use Facebook to share photographs and videos and post regular updates their movements and thoughts.
Millions have also signed up to the micro-blogging site Twitter which lets members circulate short text and picture messages about themselves.
Professor Greenfield, former director of research body the Royal Institution said: It’s almost as if people are living in a world that’s not a real world, but a world where what counts is what people think of you (if they) can click on you, she said.
“Think of the implications for society if people worry more about what other people think about them than what they think about themselves.” Her views were echoed by Sue Palmer, a literacy expert and author, who said girls in particular believe they are a “commodity they must sell to other people on Facebook. She said “People used to have a portrait painted but now we can more or less design our own picture online. It’s like being the star of your own reality TV show that you create and put out to the world."
Why singing helps people with speech disorders
London: It’s a method therapist Lionel Logue was shown using to help stuttering monarch George VI in ‘The King’s Speech’. Now scientists say they have discovered why singing is so effective at treating a stammer, reports PTI.
It has nothing to do with melody but instead is based on the rhythm, according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The researchers found that highly familiar song lyrics and formulaic phrases expressed rhythmically had a strong impact on articulation-regardless of whether they were sung or spoken. The results, they said, may lead the way to new therapies for speech disorders, the Daily Mail reported.
In the past patients had trouble talking but could often sing complete texts relatively fluently. Singing was thought to stimulate areas in the right hemisphere, which would then assume the function for damaged left speech areas. Recent research has shown that changes indeed occur in the right brain hemisphere of patients after singing formulaic phrases like “How are you?” over a period of months.
To find out how singing works, the Max Planck researchers conducted a study in which 17 stroke patients with resulting speech problems had to articulate several thousand syllables, which were sung and recited with rhythmic or arrhythmic accompaniment.The texts selected were linguistically similar but varied greatly in their level of familiarity and how formulaic they were.
The results showed that singing was not the decisive factor for the patients. Singing the texts did not produce better results than speaking them rhythmically. “The key element in our patients was, in fact, not the melody but the rhythm,” said lead researcher Benjamin Stahl.
The level of familiarity with the song lyrics and whether the texts contained formulaic phrases was found to be even more important. Daily expressions like “How are you?” are highly automatised at the motor level, and common song lyrics can be recalled from long-term memory.
Benjamin Stahl is presently conducting further studies which aim to tap into the resource of rhythmic and formulaic speech for rehabilitative therapies. This could offer exciting prospects for improving the quality of life for patients, he said. “Even small gains in the ability to speak can mean a lot to aphasics, who sometimes have been unable to communicate easily for years,” he added.
Conscious conscience
Under the banner of Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), 240 persons, including 50-60 industry leaders, have signed a pledge of creating advertising with a conscience.
This pledge has been taken to sensitise the younger people in the industry to create responsible advertising. CEOs and mid-level managers across advertising agencies have come forward to vouch for a movement which began at Goa Fest, an annual conclave of advertisers and creative agencies.
The pledge reads: To my organisation, business associates, industry and to society at large, I pledge to ensure honesty and truthfulness, decency in advertising, non- exploitation of vulnerable sections of society, especially children, fairness in competition. I commit myself to advertising with a conscience.”
Ethically creative
Social networking sites leading to identity crisis
London: If you are among those who spend hours on twitting or interacting with Facebook friends, please note: Repeated exposure to social networking sites causing an ‘identity crisis’ among the users, a leading scientist has warned.
Baroness Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, said Facebook and Twitter have created a generation obsessed with themselves, who have short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback on their lives. Professor Greenfield believes the growth of internet “friendships” as well as greater use of computer games could effectively “rewire” the brain.
This can result in reduced concentration, a need for instant gratification and poor non-verbal skills, such as the ability to make eye contact during conversations, she said.
“What concerns me is the banality of so much that goes out on Twitter. Why should someone be interested in what someone else has had for breakfast?” Professor Greenfield was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. “It reminds me of a small child (saying): ‘Look at me Mummy, I’m doing this’, ‘Look at me Mummy, I’m doing that’. It is almost as if they are in some kind of identity crisis. In a sense it’s keeping the brain in a sort of time warp.” The academic suggested that some Facebook users feel the need to become “mini celebrities” who are watched and admired by others on a daily basis.
They do things that are “Facebook worthy” because the only way they can define themselves is by “people knowing about them”. More than 750 million people in the world use Facebook to share photographs and videos and post regular updates their movements and thoughts.
Millions have also signed up to the micro-blogging site Twitter which lets members circulate short text and picture messages about themselves.
Professor Greenfield, former director of research body the Royal Institution said: It’s almost as if people are living in a world that’s not a real world, but a world where what counts is what people think of you (if they) can click on you, she said.
“Think of the implications for society if people worry more about what other people think about them than what they think about themselves.” Her views were echoed by Sue Palmer, a literacy expert and author, who said girls in particular believe they are a “commodity they must sell to other people on Facebook. She said “People used to have a portrait painted but now we can more or less design our own picture online. It’s like being the star of your own reality TV show that you create and put out to the world."
Why singing helps people with speech disorders
London: It’s a method therapist Lionel Logue was shown using to help stuttering monarch George VI in ‘The King’s Speech’. Now scientists say they have discovered why singing is so effective at treating a stammer, reports PTI.
It has nothing to do with melody but instead is based on the rhythm, according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The researchers found that highly familiar song lyrics and formulaic phrases expressed rhythmically had a strong impact on articulation-regardless of whether they were sung or spoken. The results, they said, may lead the way to new therapies for speech disorders, the Daily Mail reported.
In the past patients had trouble talking but could often sing complete texts relatively fluently. Singing was thought to stimulate areas in the right hemisphere, which would then assume the function for damaged left speech areas. Recent research has shown that changes indeed occur in the right brain hemisphere of patients after singing formulaic phrases like “How are you?” over a period of months.
To find out how singing works, the Max Planck researchers conducted a study in which 17 stroke patients with resulting speech problems had to articulate several thousand syllables, which were sung and recited with rhythmic or arrhythmic accompaniment.The texts selected were linguistically similar but varied greatly in their level of familiarity and how formulaic they were.
The results showed that singing was not the decisive factor for the patients. Singing the texts did not produce better results than speaking them rhythmically. “The key element in our patients was, in fact, not the melody but the rhythm,” said lead researcher Benjamin Stahl.
The level of familiarity with the song lyrics and whether the texts contained formulaic phrases was found to be even more important. Daily expressions like “How are you?” are highly automatised at the motor level, and common song lyrics can be recalled from long-term memory.
Benjamin Stahl is presently conducting further studies which aim to tap into the resource of rhythmic and formulaic speech for rehabilitative therapies. This could offer exciting prospects for improving the quality of life for patients, he said. “Even small gains in the ability to speak can mean a lot to aphasics, who sometimes have been unable to communicate easily for years,” he added.
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