Impact Impression Blog

Down here, very few care about the steps or strategies that you take to get something done. All they see and care about is the result (which must be physical). This world ain't your maths class where your teacher can award you points for every good step taken in your calculation. I repeat; this life is not a maths class where you can get marks even if you arrive at the wrong answer. Nope.

In her last address as the United States Of America's first lady, Michelle Obama kept reiterating the need for good education. In all her speeches to the young people, she never descended the podium without telling them the importance of good  and sound  education. I can't forget her last speech where she said that with good education, you can aspire to be anything in the world, even the President of the USA.  This touched me. In my school days, my lecturers, in their bid to encourage (and threaten) us to study beyond the school syllables, always told us that the school can only give us 30% of the education we need. The remaining 70%, we have to get ourselves through ardent reading, studying, researches, observing and of course, experience.

What motivates people to change the way they work? When organizations introduce new processes or systems, or when they want to stimulate performance for certain business practices, they often assemble dedicated task forces, assign them specific goals, and identify deadlines and financial rewards. But once the initiative is completed and the bonus cashed, a question always arises: will behaviors and business practices stick around, or will people drift back to their old ways of working? In a recent study conducted in a California hospital, I found that that the type of incentive matters. In particular, peer pressure appears to go a longer way than money does.

"Pursue your happiness, nothing matters more!" This is the most soul lifting - and selfish - sentence that has spread across the cyber space. Even motivational speakers have adopted this meme. They tell you that nothing else matters except your happiness. Well, being happy is a good thing. In fact, everyone owes themselves a duty to always live in this state. But pursuing happiness at all cost? Now, this is creepy. When you get to a stage in life where nothing matters to you; where you can do anything to satisfy yourself in order to be happy,  then I can tell you that you are a time bomb waiting to explode! And there is a name for it - SELFISHNESS!

Just last month, the insanely prolific John Grisham announced that he will publish a brand new thriller, Camino Island, this summer. Camino Island follows a young novelist in search of a story, a popular Florida bookseller who deals rare books (and occasionally dabbles in the literary black market), and a collection of rare F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts—insured for $25 million—stolen from Princeton University.

South Africa has a high burden of Tuberculosis (TB). In addition, there is a rise of Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) that has mutated to survive the drugs typically used to treat regular TB. The cases of MDR-TB rose from 2,000 in 2005 to about 8,000 in 2014. And in South Africa, people with TB hide their disease to avoid social isolation, and therefore do not get proper treatment. One of the key challenges for public health officials is tracking the spread of the disease and controlling transmission. So, IBM is working with South African scientists to develop a system that could help determine how and where TB is spreading in communities. IBM is using wearable headbands and bracelets embedded with RFID tags connected to IBM Watson IOT.

Nancy Abu-Bonsrah is making history by being placed at Johns Hopkins Hospital's neurology department. Johns Hopkins University is making history with the residency of Nancy Abu-Bonsrah, their first black female neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The news was announced on Friday, March 17, which is known nationwide as "Match Day." The day is significant in that it indicates the moment when medical students around the country find out at which hospitals they'll practice their residency.