article – asiatic insights

Volunteering for the Benefit of All Involved

L.Zhen

Volunteering is important not only for helping those in need but also for improving the lives of volunteers themselves. That is, the ways in which volunteering helps those in need are quite obvious, but the way volunteering enhances the lives of volunteers is not as straightforward. For example, a right match between an activity and the volunteer can help the latter find new friends and even strengthen social skills. In addition, volunteer activities can enhance the volunteer’s self-confidence and encourage healthier attitudes. I plan to pursue various activities that can expose me to new perspectives and people with common interests to broaden my world view and personal networks. By volunteering, I expect to better understand my role in society and form tangible goals for my personal and professional life in the future. Eliminating social isolation, developing a solid support network, and finding satisfaction by helping others are just a few benefits of volunteering, and therefore I plan to take full advantage of it for the benefit of all involved, including myself.

Parents’ Care : Heaven On Earth

It’s hard to think of a world without you,

Life, care and protection—that I get from you,

Open my eyes to see your face—

Very very happy with a glistening gaze !

Every day I live, every time I smile,

Your gentle manners make me civilized,

Looking at the stars and the moon, I see you there—

You are great, my dear mother, father.

Most of the times when you scold.

Often I do feel very sad, low and cold;

Much later one day, I’ll happily realize,

Dreams of yours that guide my life.

All of your lives, you’ve given to me,

Dear dad, mom and me, make a splendid family.

Students: Rahul & Akash Dasgupta

AI x Agriculture

AI x Agriculture
Agriculture is one of the most historical industries. The most traditional agriculture utilizes simple tools like sledge and livestock to increase efficiency, modern agriculture uses more advanced mechanical utilities such as electric tiller and tractor. Although the advanced tools significantly increase productivity, they still lack specification and management and thus causes pollution (ie. fertilizer, pesticide, contamination from livestock, etc.) and waste of energy. However, with AI tools, specifically prediction and agriculture robots, agriculture can achieve detailed management and thus reduce pollution.
Robotics is a broad application field including AI, mechanical engineering, electric engineering, etc. Unlike the fancy robots shown in movies, agriculture robots are more like machines that are informed AI and can finish some tasks. With the help of AI, robots can outperform human in managing and harvesting and significantly reduce human labor work. Managing plants need tremendous inspections and works such as checking pests and soil, but robots not only free human from the redundant work but also are more accurate. For example, R2Weed2 can detect weeds and remove them effectively, and it can also perform soil analysis, which is almost impossible for farmers to achieve for each small region of soil. The analysis results can be further used for other AI program to propose fertilizer or pesticide plan, which optimize environmentally harmful products efficiency and growth of plants.
Other AI tools can also help with agriculture such as machine learning (ML), computer vision (CV), etc. Roughly speaking, ML is a program that is fed with data to train and make prediction about new data, CV is to teach program to see things and do inference as human such as recognizing human faces. Scientists has been trying for decades about training ML to predict crop output in some given conditions like season, soil, etc. This helps farmers to decide what to grow on their land such that the output can be maximized. CV can be used in detection such as detecting pests, crop health, weeds (R2Weed2), etc., which helps farmers to detailly manage each plant. As the output is maximized in each land, fewer lands and resources will be used and wasted.
Despite the benefits of using AI in agriculture, there are some disadvantages such as AI may be less accurate and experienced than human when detecting weeds and pests. However, as AI is growing rapidly nowadays, more accurate algorithms will be proposed and hopefully AI can fully take charge of agriculture and reduce pollution.

CHENHAO ZHANG

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR MEN AMD WOMEN

She cooked the breakfast first of all

Washed the cups and plates

Dressed the children and made sure

Stockings all were made.

Dusted chairs and made stairs,

I roamed an hour or two

Baked a jar of cake and pie,

Then worked to cook and stew.

The telephone rang constantly

The door ball did the same

The younger bell and hurt his toe,

And then the laundry came.

And when her husband came at six

He said,’’ I envy you!

It must be nice to sit at home

without* thing to do

Student: Balachandran. R

Juvenile Mental Health

Modern people, especially teenagers, are facing unprecedented challenges in this fast paced society. In China, more and more juveniles are becoming so concerned about their future career path that an increasing percentage of these young people gradually suffer mental diseases such as anxiety and depression.

As one of the biggest countries in the world, China has a population of over 1.4 billion and this number seems to be increasing year by year according to official databases. Large numbers of young children are educated ever since they were born to catch up with or outcompete their peers, rendering many of them, mostly starting from the age of 6 or even younger, having to bear far more academic responsibilities to fulfil their so-called dreams than the majority of other counterparts in this world. Initially, things may not seem so serious to them as they were still young and not too much engaged in the society. Yet, as the intervention of social media and other technological inventions becomes available, young students are clearer than ever about their current and future conditions as they step into their teenage life. Unfortunately, many of the young teenagers arrive at the conclusion that they should stay simple and normal without the need to work hard to strive towards unrealistic goals since they realize that talents are almost everywhere and they are not so needed as expected in this society while their parents still push them on the way to become outstanding members of the society. As a consequence, many young people feel stressed and nervous on a regular basis, causing themselves to be finally harassed by anxiety, which has become one of the most common phenomenons in modern societies of China in the present day.

What is worse is that with the advent of the one of the most serious pandemics, namely the coronavirus disease which broke out in the late 2019, young teenagers are facing yet another serious challenge that they cannot avoid by their own will. The truth is with the viruses spreading and evolving over time, they have posed a threat to young students’ physical fitness significantly by increasing the possibility of getting them sick much more easily than before, which potentially weakens the immune system as a whole to this new generation. Many adults have become mildly handicapped due to this pandemic, not to mention that teenagers have to strive hard to balance between keeping fit and studying hard. This unexpected situation has led many ambitious young teenagers to gradually lose their hope to become great as they have planned before since they simply do not have the power to bear too much responsibility and be so energetic to engage in complicated work or tasks as freely as ever. In China, the rising percentage of young people getting depressed has become so prevalent that the government is still on its way to figure out how to deal with the social challenge.

Ziluo Cheng