Health Check: what happens to your body when you’re dehydrated?

Water is essential for human life. It accounts for for 50-70% of our body weight and is crucial for most bodily functions.

Any deficit in normal body water – through dehydration, sickness, exercise or heat stress – can make us feel rotten. First we feel thirsty and fatigued, and may develop a mild headache. This eventually gives way to grumpiness, and mental and physical decline.

We continually lose water via our breath, urine, faeces and skin. Most healthy people regulate their body’s water level remarkably well via eating and drinking, and are guided by appetite and thirst. But this is more difficult for infants, the sick, the elderly, athletes, and those with strenuous physical occupations, especially in the heat.

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When three is a company -- SEBI consultation paper on equity-based crowdfunding in India.

As SEBI tries to regulate equity crowdfunding, the Internet promises to play disrupter.

Roughly a year ago, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued a consultation paper setting out its proposal to regulate equity-based crowdfunding in India. Comments were solicited from the public. Earlier this week, SEBI announced that it was working on the norms and that a decision may be taken soon.

A quick review of the SEBI paper gives us pointers to what the possible regulations could be. Under the proposed terms, three entities, namely, the crowdfunding platform, the investor, and the issuing company, would be regulated. The issuing company is restricted in terms of its size, the amount of funds to be raised and its age. The investor is restricted in terms of its accreditation, minimum net worth and, in case of eligible retail investors, the maximum investment that may be made overall or in a single crowdfunding event. Crowdfunding platforms are also restricted in terms of who may set them up and the checks and balances to be put in place.

Read the op-ed article in TH dt. 7th Jul 2015

Redefining the digital divide

Access to the Internet has greatly expanded and the focus should now be on the willingness and ability of citizens to use it for productive purposes, according to a new report “Redefining the digital divide” published by The Economist Intelligence Unit. Current strategies for overcoming the digital divide do not necessarily address the underlying gaps such as affordability, usage and relevance of content, with country approaches varying significantly in terms of leadership, funding and technologies. The report, commissioned by Huawei, compares the strategies of Australia, France, India, Russia, the UK and the US. It includes a survey of 218 telecommunications industry executives and government policymakers.

The report’s key findings include:

Affordability remains a key obstacle to ICT adoption;

The urban/rural divide is a key concern, particularly the need for greater speeds outside major urban areas;

Policymakers and telecommunications executives are sharply divided on the key obstacles to solving the divide;

Funding is the biggest area of disagreement between the industry and policymakers; and

Competition is crucial but regulation is equally important.

Download the full report