(a) The bat-eared fox (Otocyon megalotis) is a species of fox found on the African savanna, named for its large ears, which are used for thermoregulation. Fossil records show this canid first appeared during the middle Pleistocene, about 800,000 years ago. It is considered a basal canid species, resembling ancestral forms of the family, It has also been called a Sub-Saharan African version of a Fennec Fox due to their huge ears.

The bat-eared fox (also referred to as Delalande's fox, long-eared fox, big-eared fox, and black-eared fox) has tawny fur with black ears, legs, and parts of the pointed face. It averages 55 centimetres (22 in) in length (head and body), with ears 13 centimetres (5.1 in) long. It is the only species in the genus Otocyon. The name Otocyon is derived from the Greek words otus for ear and cyon for dog, while the specific name megalotis comes from the Greek words mega for large and otus for ear.

(b) Pteropus (suborder Yinpterochiroptera) is a genus of megabats which are among the largest in the world. They are commonly known as fruit bats or flying foxes, among other colloquial names. They live in the tropics and subtropics of Asia (including the Indian subcontinent), Australia, East Africa, and some oceanic islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. There are at least 60 extant species in the genus.

Flying foxes eat fruit and other plant matter, and occasionally consume insects as well. They locate resources with their keen sense of smell. Most, but not all, are nocturnal. They navigate with keen eyesight, as they cannot echolocate. They have long life spans and low reproductive outputs, with females of most species producing only one offspring per year. Their slow life history makes their populations vulnerable to threats such as overhunting, culling, and natural disasters. Six flying fox species have been made extinct in modern times by overhunting. Flying foxes are often persecuted for their real or perceived role in damaging crops. They are ecologically beneficial by assisting in the regeneration of forests via seed dispersal. They benefit ecosystems and human interests by pollinating plants.

They are different.

Joke of the day: A cement mixer and a prison bus crashed on the highway. Police advise citizens to look out for a group of hardened criminals.

Hi,

#7377. It is reported in some ancient sources to have been a philosopher who was the earliest Greek to develop the theory of atomism—the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms. He often appears as the master to his pupil Democritus, a philosopher also touted as the originator of the atomic theory. Name the person.

#7378. What famous invention is Juan de la Cierva, 1st Count of la Cierva known for?

Hi,

#3377. What does the adjective Draconian or draconian mean?

#3378. What does the adjective drafty mean?

Hi,

#7668. The average age of all employees of M/s XYZ is 35 years. It was later found that age of one of the employees has been taken as 10 years less than his actual age, so the new average after correction increased by 0.5 years. Find the number of employees of M/s XYZ.

Hi,

A#68. A man's age after 15 years will be the square of his age age 15 years ago. Find the age.

611) Abhijit Banerjee

Abhijit Banerjee, in full Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, (born February 21, 1961, Mumbai, India), Indian-born American economist who, with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics (the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) for helping to develop an innovative experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer, often working with each other, focused on relatively small and specific problems that contributed to poverty and identified the best solutions through carefully designed field experiments, which they conducted in several low- and middle-income countries over the course of more than two decades. They also explored methods for generalizing the results of particular experiments to larger populations, different geographic regions, and different implementing authorities (e.g., nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] and local or national governments), among other variables. Their fieldwork led to successful public policy recommendations and transformed the field of development economics, where their approach and methods became standard.

Banerjee studied economics at the University of Calcutta (B.Sc. 1981), Jawaharlal Nehru University (M.A. 1983), and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1988). He taught economics at Princeton University from 1988 to 1992, at Harvard in 1991 and 1992–93, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1993. At MIT he was eventually (2003) appointed Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics. In 2003 he and Duflo, along with Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist at MIT, founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research centre supporting scientifically informed policy making to reduce global poverty. Banerjee and Duflo were married in 2015.

Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer applied their experimental approach in many areas, including education, health and medicine, access to credit, and the adoption of new technologies. Building on the results of field experiments conducted in the mid-1990s by Kremer and his colleagues, which had shown that poor learning (as measured by average test scores) among schoolchildren in western Kenya was not caused by scarcity of textbooks or even by hunger (many students went to school without breakfast), Banerjee and Duflo tested the hypothesis that learning could be improved by implementing remedial tutoring and computer-assisted learning programs to address the needs of weaker students. Working with large student populations in two Indian cities over a two-year period, they found that such programs had substantial positive effects in the short and medium term, leading them to conclude that a major cause of poor learning in low-income countries was that teaching methods were not properly adapted to students’ needs. In later experimental research in Kenya, Duflo and Kremer determined that decreasing the size of classes taught by permanently employed teachers did not significantly improve learning but that putting teachers on short-term contracts, which were renewed only if the teacher achieved good results, did have beneficial effects. They also showed that tracking (dividing students into groups based on prior achievement) and incentives to combat teacher absenteeism, a significant problem in low-income countries, also positively affected learning. The latter finding was further supported in studies by Banerjee and Duflo in India.

In the area of health and medicine, Banerjee and Duflo tested the hypothesis that introducing mobile clinics would significantly boost child-vaccination rates (the percentage of children who were fully immunized) in India—where, as in other low-income countries, high rates of health-worker absenteeism and poor service quality at stationary health centres, among other factors, had long discouraged the use of preventive medicines by poor families. They found that vaccination rates in villages that had been randomly selected to receive visits by mobile clinics were three times greater than rates in villages that had not been selected and that vaccination rates increased by more than six times if families were given a bag of lentils with each immunization.

Banerjee and Duflo also used field experiments in the Indian city of Hyderabad to test the effectiveness of microcredit loan programs in promoting economic growth and development. The somewhat unexpected results indicated that such programs did not significantly increase small-business investment or profitability and did not improve other indicators of economic growth and development such as per capita consumption, health, and children’s education. Later studies of several low- and middle-income countries by other researchers confirmed those results.

In the area of health and medicine, Banerjee and Duflo tested the hypothesis that introducing mobile clinics would significantly boost child-vaccination rates (the percentage of children who were fully immunized) in India—where, as in other low-income countries, high rates of health-worker absenteeism and poor service quality at stationary health centres, among other factors, had long discouraged the use of preventive medicines by poor families. They found that vaccination rates in villages that had been randomly selected to receive visits by mobile clinics were three times greater than rates in villages that had not been selected and that vaccination rates increased by more than six times if families were given a bag of lentils with each immunization.

Banerjee and Duflo also used field experiments in the Indian city of Hyderabad to test the effectiveness of microcredit loan programs in promoting economic growth and development. The somewhat unexpected results indicated that such programs did not significantly increase small-business investment or profitability and did not improve other indicators of economic growth and development such as per capita consumption, health, and children’s education. Later studies of several low- and middle-income countries by other researchers confirmed those results.

Work by Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer directly and indirectly influenced national and international policy making in beneficial ways. Banerjee and Duflo’s studies of remedial tutoring and computer-assisted learning in India, for example, led to large-scale programs that affected more than five million Indian schoolchildren. According to J-PAL, programs that were implemented following studies by researchers associated with the centre, including Kremer, have reached more than 400 million people. The laureates’ experimental approach also inspired both public and private organizations to systematically evaluate their anti-poverty programs, sometimes on the basis of their own fieldwork, and to drop those that proved to be ineffective.

Hi,

Neat work!

#7667. The average of the age of A, B, and C is 25 years, while the average of the age of A, B, and D is 28 years. If D is 28 years old, then what is the age of C?

In life, we are always confronted by simplistic questions answerable only by “yes” or “no.” No “ifs” and “buts.” Just like using that box Bill Gates popularized – the computer.

Hi,

#3375. What does the noun doyen mean?

#3376. What does the noun doze mean?

That's what the source of information says. The source is authentic.

More posts on this subject, viz. Bermuda Triangle is redundant.

•    In 2013 the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) conducted an exhaustive study of maritime shipping lanes and determined that the Bermuda Triangle is not one of the world’s 10 most dangerous bodies of water for shipping.

Now, is it clear?