We'd love for just a couple of you to share very, very briefly what it is you hope to get from the session. Anyone? Are you volunteering or are you volunteering the mic? Oh, excellent. Thank you. Hi, good evening. I'm an entrepreneur. I've helped early stage and mid-stage companies with translating their science into business value for prospective funding, Series A and Series B. I also helped build pipelines particularly in the area of neglect and infectious diseases. I came to your seminar because I'm particularly interested in understanding more about the challenges or perhaps identify how we could best help UCSF and other universities to move from the office of technology transfer for some of the scientists and how they can help in terms of what we can or I can do and some of my colleagues in moving that out to the business world. So how can you help facilitate improving connections between UCSF and industry opportunities? Anyone else? Well, yeah, I'll just offer since I do have the mic. I'm an alumni of UCSF. I finished my doctoral work in 1983. I was on the faculty here for several years and then I went to the dark side, became an attorney and so I'm an intellectual property counsel and I've been interested in the CBE program for many, many years. I participated in it in years past and I just always like to see how things are evolving and growing. So I'm here to learn and to meet folks. Okay, to learn in general about where academia is. Hello, I'm helping actually build a couple companies that are started from university research and the founders who maintain their academic labs are critical to those companies and yet they're in academia and they have to take their whole approach of how they did science in academia to translate it to a commercial product and there's a lot of different transitions each person has to make and I'm just, as the business side of the equation, I'm always interested to hear people like you speak on this subject of just about how do you go about this process because the world needs better research than what's coming out of pharmaceutical and device companies. So you're interested in understanding a little bit more about the world that your founders are coming from that may shed some insights into their behaviors when it's strange, for example. That's a joke. Unpredictable. Well, I think it's an apprenticeship experience to figure out how to do it, right? We don't have a path. What we've been relying on is a few opportunistic examples and in my case it's drugs coming out of Big Pharma and I think the ideas are sitting inside of academia and we just have to continue to work on creating a new model for getting that to be the pipeline of the future. Great. Great. So we're not really going to go through the entire room on this one but just wanted to get a flavor for who's here. Sorry, but I don't want to stop someone. I'll just do a little retort because I'm from Big Pharma and I work on devices and inhalable drugs and you're right. It's a very slow process and there's a lot of money wasted and I don't necessarily think the interest is in discovering cures as much as creating repeat users and I've started to get involved in the startup scene mostly in the hopes that things can move faster because academia is slow and Big Pharma is slow and wasteful and startups might have some hope. Great. Right. Unless there's something burning someone wants to contribute or actually that you think is different from what you've heard. That would be so go ahead. There's something different on that. Hi. I'm a postdoc from UC Berkeley and I'm in the process of starting a postdoc entrepreneur program on the campus there and my idea is to bring together scientists highly talented postdocs and teach them some business skills as opposed to idea to IPO. I want to teach them idea to funding level. Very few companies go to IPOs. So if you can just teach them how to do the business skills and probably from collaboration with the people in business school and the law school I think you'll form better teams and better companies and better startups. Great. Okay. Let's move on. That's great. So I think we're going to integrate these threads into the talk. So this is good. I think you're in the right place and I think we're in the right place. So that's great. So many of you have probably seen a representation like this and this is just a flag the challenge. In this particular case we're talking about the fact that the discovery and introduction of new therapeutic interventions have not kept base with a lot of the science, a lot of the funding. That's the general problem. I think you've all seen variants of this graph. But the bottom line, the reason why we are here as part of CTSI is because the NIH chose to respond to that. And so the way they chose to respond to it and this was about five years ago was with the launch of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards. There's a related consortium of what will be 60 institutions. It's currently 55 of the top biomedical institutions in the country. So the CTSAs were established in 2006. And so this meant that the NIH was giving chunks of money. It was a competitive grant process to these institutions. And it's unique because this money wasn't going to be given for research itself. This money was going to be given to help improve the culture of research specifically to help advance clinical and translational research. So they said, well, and they also didn't just give the money. They talked about this as a partnership, which is a different kind of an arrangement. And they actually worked very closely with us. So they were going to partner with the top institutions and put them into a network. And the goal was to transform these gaps that we have. The minefield that I think Cathy Giacomini called it. So we applied in the first year. UCSF applied in the first year and we actually scored really well. And for several years we were the largest awardee. We got about 117 million over five years, which is a lot of money if you think about it. As I said, none of this is actually going to fund research directly. There's a small piece that does and I'll tell you about that in a moment. But we've just finished our competitive renewal and we are funded again for another five years. And we'll remain one of the top CTSAs. The other big CTSA with us is Harvard CTSA. And then the rest are considerably smaller. So they go down to like an 80% level or 75% level of funding for us. But all the big players are in the mix. Hopkins and Stanford, everyone is in the mix at this point. And I mentioned that we are part of a national network. I won't be talking much about the network here, but if you have questions, we can discuss that. So the theory is there are things that you should be doing yourself and improving your situation in your university and your academic setting. And then there are things that are better done with others. And so that's what we're supposed to work on at the consortium level. And I would say generally speaking, I think everyone would agree that overall five years are over for the first class that we've done better at creating change at the local level and probably less well at leveraging each other through this national consortium. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about us very briefly. But the main goals are this. So why am I telling you about us? So I'm telling you about us so that you can ask questions if you're interested in how change occurs within an academic setting. That's really what we've been about. We came in, UCSF did things in one way and our job was to change that or improve that. So that's one whole area. I'm probably going to speak less about that in this talk, but that's something that if you're interested in, we can talk about. I also wanted to tell you specifically within UCSF the services and resources that are available for some of you. So for you as opposed to from Berkeley, we don't have an official relationship with Berkeley on all counts. We're actually doing some very interesting things with Berkeley right now. But the idea would be that you would have access to a whole bunch of resources and guidance that you may not otherwise have.  And then there's some other... So I want to tell you about also just lastly that one of the ways to think about CTSI is that we're a gateway to UCSF. So at the simplest level, we actually have launched an expertise mining and discovery tool that will help you find experts, but we also provide that service. So we are a good gateway if you want to meet the right people at UCSF given your need. So those are the reasons that I'm going to talk about CTSI a little bit very briefly, but first, the mission is pretty obvious. We want to accelerate research to bring, as we call it, better health to more people more quickly. The better health to more people more quickly I think was coined by our first PI, Mike McEwen. We are a multifaceted organization. We're actually a very strange beast. It's been said that we're more too complicated for our own good. And the reason is that we work with people at all ends of the translational spectrum. So most of you are interested in what we think of as the early part of the translational spectrum, identifying targets, doing first-in-human studies, some clinical trial stuff. But translation actually is all the way from the basic initial idea to actually changing health, health metrics, like where it matters. And so we actually are doing work at all those ends. And if you think about it, that's very different kinds of work. So the person that's in their lab working on an animal model, getting ready for a first-in-human, their life and what they're focused on is very different from the people that are the other end of the spectrum that are talking about how do we actually change health in the tenderloin? How do we get asthma rates down in the city of San Francisco? And we are actually working across all that. That's why we're a strange beast because the cultures and politics, indeed, of people at the ends of the spectrum are very different. That makes it fun. So we're multifaceted also for another reason. We're strange because we're funded by the NIH primarily. We also have other funding. But we are within the structure of this academic organization. So the leader, and I'll talk later, the PI for CTSI, Clay Johnston, is the Associate Vice Chancellor of Research. So he is right up there in campus leadership. We are plugged into everything just as anyone might be if they were funded directly by UCSF. But in fact, we're funded by the NIH. And so we're in this strange kind of collaborative space. So we work by doing three things. We drive changes at the university to give you a flavor of that. One of the things we're working on is looking at IRB reciprocity. So ways in which if someone wants to work with one UC, but then also include other UCs, they're not going to have to submit to several different IRBs. Simple point, huge problem gets in the way for a lot of people. It was supposedly solved a while back. It really wasn't. But we are actually working with the consortium of folks that are making it happen. And so that's the kind of culture change almost that we're setting in place, but also in process engineering change. So that's just to give you a flavor of some of these larger structural changes we work on. But in addition, we build programs and actually directly deliver services. I'll tell you a little bit about that when they're not available otherwise. And then finally, we do provide comprehensive training. So we have training programs and clinical and translational research all the way from some early translational stuff all the way to what we call implementation and dissemination sciences. So that's on the far end of translation. But it's matched to people who have MDs. You do a certain kind of training. If you have a PhD, we've got opportunities for you there. If you want a summer course because you're a resident and you don't have much time, we've got that. You want a degree course, we've got that. So we've got really a lot of things covered. And then we partner with a lot of people. For example, QB3 is a core partner for us in most of what we do. People. So I mentioned that we are led by Clay Johnston, who's a neurologist. Deborah Grady is our associate PI. And she works in women's health issues. Both of them have campus positions. And then we have a fantastic board of physician scientists. And the board includes June and myself, who you have here with you today. And June will introduce much more about herself in a bit. But when I talk about us being a gateway to UCSF, the other thing we do is we bring people like June and bring her into the mix and provide her with what we hope is going to be a dazzling opportunity to do things that we never have done when she was in Genentech. So bring some of what she's learned from Genentech and infuse that into our culture so that we change the way we do things at UCSF. I'm a PhD, gone wayward. And I actually have a long and not a torrid path, but a long windy path to where I've come. But I think June's background is going to be particularly interesting to you and she'll speak to it in a moment. So I wanted to give you a flavor of some of the things we actually do. So right from sort of early translation to later, we fund pilot projects. So this is one place where we do actually fund things. So we have a pilot funding program. It happens to be called Strategic Opportunity Support SOS, like the song. And so that's where we fund your 25K for people who have ideas. And you submit just like you would for any other pilot program. Now, along the way, I do want to tell you about how we provide services, but if you want to change academia along the way, we've not just provided the funds. We thought, huh, we're providing funds, but there are like six, 10 other organizations at UCSF that provide intramural funds, right? So then let's think about the person, you know, the investigator, the postdoc who's interested in getting intramural funds because they've got a great idea. So how do they go find out about this stuff? Well, in the old world, they found out about it by searching the internet, hoping they had a great mentor. And by the way, that's a great unleveler of the playing field. If you've got a great mentor, you're set because they know all the opportunities and they're committed to you. You don't have a good mentor. You don't have to worry about any of the opportunities. That actually may be great. So that was the old world. So there were opportunities and you didn't know where to go. What we did was not only do we provide pilot funding, we actually worked with other people that provided pilot funding. So the Center for AIDS Research provides pilot funding. The School of Medicine had a pool of money that provides pilot funding. The Academic Senate has money for, you know, for pilots. And we've gotten them all together and now we've created this umbrella organization. Again, we love acronyms called RAP, Resource Allocation Program. But the bottom line is it's one place. It's one place where investigators can go and they get to see all the opportunities across all intramural funding agencies. And so they can match themselves up. In addition, we've tried to simplify the process. And that's, again, process engineering. We have two deadlines. That's the kind of, I just wanted to give you a flavor of the kind of thing we want to do, not just provide money, but every time we're trying to think about, well, how could this be done better to improve the life of investigators so they can work on their ideas and get stuff out. So we fund pilot projects. We provide matchmaking. What I'm calling here is matchmaking. You can think of it as expert guidance, customized guidance, and dollars to advance early research. Now, this is an area that's a program we have called the T1 Catalyst Program that June's going to tell you a lot about. It's fantastic. It's about a year old, I think, and it's just improving all the time. I think that's going to give you some really good examples about how we help people with ideas. A little bit like the postdoc group that was talked about, but really match people up with venture capital that's suitable IP professionals if that's what you need, things like that. In general, we provide expert advice. It's called consultation services, which is we match people up. So you've got it. You're writing a grant and you want to get money, but you're not sure if you've written your aims in a way that's really going to sync up with the institute that's funding. Well, you can come to us and we actually match you up with faculty, successful faculty who are really good at getting grants and depending on the field, sometimes in biostatistics, a senior staff member who can really help you think through that section so you're successful. And so we provide consultation in a range of areas, some big chunk areas like biostats which you really need help with. That's just something everyone needs help with. And then we also have niche consulting. So right now we have some niche consulting in mobile health. So you have an idea in mobile health that we can connect you to people that are actually renowned international experts in doing that. And as a service to UCSF and the affiliates, the first hour is free, which is great. After that, we do ask for payment. So that's another piece, by the way, of our culture that we're changing at UCSF. We want to connect people up to the outside and get them good ideas, but we also want to change the culture internally where some things are subsidized, but a lot of it, and we have to do that for our own sustainability, are based on a recharge model. So that's just another general piece. We provide training, as I mentioned. We have a huge clinical research services program. We actually have sites where you can do research. We have trained research nursing staff. And we've launched the first UCSF participant recruitment service. So I think all of you are aware that one of the biggest barriers to doing clinical research is actually recruiting participants. And the statistics on how many trials fail because either you haven't recruited even one person, or you've recruited some, but not enough in the time frame, are pretty horrifying. There have been articles in the New York Times about this. So it's a generally accepted problem. So we're trying to solve that. We provide tools, software tools, other kinds of tools to identify the resources and people you need to meet. And then as an example, as we do demonstrate, and this is a big project we have on the table right now, how research can tie to measurable changes in health. So this is a little bit more about that far end of the translational spectrum. So we have a program called the San Francisco Bay Area Health Improvement Project. So that actually asks, are there health concerns that the community prioritizes that we can actually affect by connecting the right researchers at UCSF with the right partners out in the world? And then what are those metrics? What should our target be? And then over five years, we're going to shoot for that. And we're going to measure whether we actually can change health by making that connection from our environment to health. To do that, the partners are actually big, but they're partners like the Department of Public Health has to be on board. The school district has to be on board and we also have, I mean, through this process, we've brought together hill physicians in Brown and Tolland into one room and they apparently have not been in a room for a while, but because everybody, this is something everybody can get together on to improve health, they are coming together so that there's some things that they know they can do together to, again, impact a real health metric. So I'm just flagging that as something way out there in the spectrum, but it really, it ties in the early translational work to something real. I'm not going to go through this. I just wanted to give you a sense of both our impact and culture with two metrics and then I'm going to hand off to June to continue on specifically focusing on her area herself and early translational research. So two things. So one, so we're really interested in measuring our impact and we've got a whole emphasis right now on actually what we want to have is public dashboards that display, not just internally for us, but out to the world that really talk about how we're doing and how we're impacting productivity, research productivity at UCSF. So it's a little scary making, but I think it's really good and it could really change our culture. But this is sort of one of those shining star impact points where we invested 485,000 in these multi-disciplinary research awards that ended up securing us $10 million. We were very successful. I think it's something like six out of 14 of the people that ended up going from their pilot and actually submitting for these large grants were successful, which is a huge success rate. So that process ended up being great. It had a great return on investment. I'm not saying that every one of our pieces is going to give us numbers like that, but that's fantastic. And that's what we're looking at, is doing work where we can seed things and we get this kind of a multiplication factor in ROI. And the other piece I wanted to mention is moral cultural thing. So again, if you want to change culture, you've got to be on the edge as well. We're trying to do things where we shake things up. I talked about the public dashboards, for example. We're going to talk about our productivity as well, way out in the public for everyone to see and for us to see as well and for us to know it amongst our programs. But similarly, when we wrote the renewal proposal that we've just been funded for, we actually had an open mechanism to get input from the entire university and we used a crowdsourcing tool to get ideas for what we would then put into our renewal. And normally you would think that people were competitive about their ideas, but this ended up being a very positive experience and actually there were folks who wanted to do things that heard about each other's ideas. Now I'm not talking about research, by the way, because I'm very interested in thinking about open ways to do research, but this was actually ways in which we could change the research environment. Things we could do, for example, to improve industry-academic relationships. And these are people that maybe invested in actually working in this area and yet they were okay. Well, they had to be okay. Some of it is just to make people do things and they submitted great ideas and we went through a process where we got their input into which were the best ideas which came to the top and those were the ones that went into our renewal. So just to share with you that we're also doing things differently in front of Achieve Our Mission and I think it's necessary if you want to shake things up a little bit.


Income tax 2023-2024, HSA health savings account, moving expenses, deductible part of self-employment tax, and self-employed SEP, simple and qualified plans. Get ready and some coffee so that you don't find income tax preparation to be too taxing. Most of this information can be found in the Instructions for Schedule 1 section of the Form 1040 Instructions Tax Year 2023, which you can find on the IRS website at iris.gov, iris.gov. Looking at the income tax formula, we're focused online to adjustments to income, which you might hear called above the line deductions or Schedule 1 deductions. Remember in the first half of the income tax formula is basically a funny income statement. Most income statements having income minus expenses resulting in net income. Here we have income minus various deductions resulting in taxable income. Deductions being good for taxes, therefore we're constantly looking to increase our deductions, also keeping in mind the distinction between above the line deductions, the adjustments to income, and what I would call the below the line deductions, which are the greater of either the standard deduction or itemized deduction. If someone qualifies for the adjustments to income or the above the line deductions, they typically do not have to clear a threshold such as that standard deduction limit in order to take those deductions. Looking at the first page of the form 1040, we're on line number 10, the adjustments to income from Schedule 1. If we go to Schedule 1, part number 2, that's where we have the adjustments to income. We're looking at these line items 13, which is the health savings account deduction, which is an attached form of 8889. Move it expenses for members of the armed forces that has form 3903. First, a word from our sponsor. Yeah, actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one, because apparently the merchandisers, they don't want to be seen with us.  Like our CPA six pack shirts, a must have for any pool or beach time, mixing money with muscle, always sure to attract attention. Yeah, even if you're not a CPA, you need this shirt, so you can like pull in that iconic CPA six pack stomach muscle vibe, man.  Yeah, as a CPA, I actually and unusually don't have tremendous abs. However, I was blessed with a whole lot of belly hair. Yeah, allowing me to sculpt the hair into a nice CPA six pack like shape, which is highly attractive. Yeah, maybe the shirt will help you generate some belly hair too. And if it does, make sure to let me know. Maybe I'll try wearing it on my head. And yes, I know six pack isn't spelled right, but three letters is more efficient than four, so I trimmed it down a bit. Okay, it's an improvement. If you would like a commercial free experience, consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com. Deductible part of self-employment tax, which has a schedule SE. And then we have this self-employed SEP, simple and qualified plans that will just touch on some of these items. And then, of course, you could dig into each of them in more detail. So contributions to a health savings account and HSA offer significant tax benefits and deductions. Now we talked about in prior presentations on the income side when possibly a distribution from an HSA might be taxable. So now we're going to be touching on it from the contribution side of things. It's easiest to compare something like an HSA as a similar tool to like an IRA where the IRS is basically trying to incentivize and nudge our behavior through tax incentives. So if we put something under the umbrella of, say, an IRA, for example, that means that we're going to get a tax benefit possibly when we put the money into the IRA. And we might get a tax benefit when the money grows to not have to recognize it as revenue, and then there's a tax consequent possibly when we take the money out. Similarly here, we have the same kind of questions. If we qualify for a health savings accounts, the tax implications we would think of is one, when we put money into this instrument, do we get a tax benefit? And then two, when that money possibly grows within the account, do we get a tax benefit of not having to record it in income, excluding it from income such as dividend and interest? And then three, when we take the money out, is that a taxable event or not a taxable event? Those are the kind of questions when you see these types of tax tools. So if you meet the eligibility criteria such as being covered under a high deductible health plan and HDHP, so note that then you have to get into the questions of what is a high deductible health plan. Now note that if you're working as an employee, then you might have the capacity for healthcare that's linked basically to your employment. And again, the determination would be, is it a high deductible health plan? Typically, the high deductible health plans might be thought of as not the best health plans because you've got this high deductible that you're going to be dealing with, meaning you have to pay the deductible that is higher for the actual services, but usually the health plans are cheaper. And then you can think that the IRS wanted to kind of subsidize people that might have more of the high deductible plans and part of that happens with this health savings account. So if people have very good health plans, they might not be using a high deductible health plan and therefore may not qualify for the health savings account. Or people might couple the high deductible plan with the health savings benefits as part of their health saving strategy in terms of paying for their healthcare. So in any case, you have to have a high deductible health plan without other health coverage not being enrolled in Medicare and not being claimed as a dependent on someone else's tax return. You can take advantage of these benefits. So the maximum contribution limits for HSAs in 2023 are $3,850 for individuals with self only HDHP coverage and $7,750 for those with family HDHP coverage. So now when you think of the coverage, the question is, is it for an individual or is it for a family? So if you are 55 or older by the end of the tax year, you are eligible for an additional catch-up contribution of $1,000. Contributions to your HSA can be deducted on your tax return even if you don't itemize deductions. So that of course is a big benefit. Notice when they tried to simplify the tax code a few years ago, they removed a lot of the itemized deductions because you would think those would benefit more wealthy individuals who are more likely to be taking the itemized deductions. But that also reduced a lot of the things, a lot of the power that the government had to nudge our behavior through tax incentives. So it's likely that you're going to see other things leak out into other parts of the tax return as the IRS tries to again flex their influence over our behavior with the primary tool that they have at their disposal, the tax code. So these contributions can either be made by you directly or through employer contributions. Importantly employer contributions are excluded from your gross income, thereby reducing your taxable income. So in other words, it's similar to an IRA or a 401K situation. If you have a 401K and your employer is taking care of the contribution to the 401K, it will be reported on your W2 by not being included in box one already, and it will already be taken care of for tax data input. But if it's not handled through the employer and you have a high deductible plan, then it's similar to an IRA situation where you have this above the line deduction or adjustment to income where you have to manually reduce it because it's not going to be already taken out of income with the W2 form by the employer. So to report HSA contributions and calculate the HSA deduction form 889 is used. This form also addresses any excess contributions and distributions related to HSAs. It's critical to accurately report all contributions, including those made by employers and any after tax contributions you made to avoid any tax complications. IRS Publication 969 and the instructions for form 8889 are comprehensive resources for understanding HSAs and their tax implications, which you can find on the IRS website. Alright, let's take a look at line 13, the line by line instructions, health savings account HSA deduction. You may be able to take this deduction if contributions other than employer contributions, rollovers and qualified HSA funding distributions from an IRA are made to your HSA for 2023. So you can see form 8889 for more detailed information if you want to dive into some more research. Alright, for tax year 2023, the deduction for moving expenses is generally no longer available to most taxpayers due to changes enacted by the Tax Cuts and Job Act. So you're probably going to get questions about this because this is one of those things that people have in their mind and has more recently been changed. That being, if I'm going from one job to another job, do I get a tax benefit for the move? It used to be the case that you might get a tax benefit, but they basically almost entirely remove that having an exception possibly like for the military. So that's probably could come up if someone's changing jobs or thinking about changing jobs and they still have that in their mind. So however, if you are a member of the armed forces and active duty and you move because of a permanent change of station, you may still be eligible for deduct certain moving expenses. So remember that the military is often having exemptions. So you want to make sure that when you're dealing with people in the military, it might be a more place to specialize because there's a lot of differences in the code related to it. Eligible moving expenses for qualified armed forces members include shipping and storage costs for household goods and personal effects as well as travel, lodging, excluding meals and gas costs associated with the move. These expenses can be reported using form 3903. So it's important to note that reimbursements from your employer for any moving expenses are reported on this form as well. And if the reimbursement exceeds your out of pocket expenses, the excess must be claimed as taxable income. In other words, oftentimes I think the military is pretty good at basically reimbursing or paying in some way for some of these costs, in which case you would think you wouldn't get a deduction for it because they have been reimbursed or basically paid for. So when calculating your moving expenses, you can deduct the reasonable unreimbursed expenses of moving you and members of your household. So deductible expenses include costs related to moving household goods and personal effects as well as traveling, including lodging but not meals to your new home. Alright, line 14, looking at the line instructions, moving expenses. You can deduct moving expenses if you are a member of the armed forces on active duty and due to military order, you move because of permanent change of station. So pretty restrictive, you know, item there. So use tax topic 455 or C form 3903 for more detail. So the general idea is that most of the questions that come up, people will not qualify for things that they're thinking they might have qualified because of changes to the tax code and never remember in the old rule. Alright, line 15, deductible part of self-employment tax. So if you were self-employed and owe self-employment tax, fill in schedule SE to figure the amount of your deduction. The deductible part of your self-employment tax is on line 13 of schedule SE. Now we talked about this a little bit already. We'll go into it in a lot more detail when we get into a sole proprietor schedule C type of business. But just remember, whenever you have a schedule C business, it's going to increase the complexity of your return a lot. The question is, do you want to take on those type of businesses or do you want to specialize somewhere and not take on those types of businesses? One of the issues you have to deal with with a schedule C business is the fact that they're not paying payroll taxes and they're not being pulled out by the employer payroll taxes being or including social security and Medicare. The IRS wants the self-employed individual to pay social security and Medicare like they would if they were an employee, not only like they were if they were an employee but the employee and employer portion. That means that in essence your net income on the schedule C will be subject not only to federal income taxes but also the equivalent of payroll taxes, social security and Medicare. Now the funny thing is that if you were an employee, what happens is you pay social security and Medicare and then the employer pays social security and Medicare or matches because they tried to mirror it to make it look kind of like a 401K situation even though it's different in a lot of ways but that's how it looks. So that means that on our side with your sole proprietor they're going to try to tax you as both the employer and the employee. You are the employee of your own business. But usually if you were a company you would get to deduct half of that as payroll taxes so then you would think that you would get to deduct half of it here so it's the same. So you're not abusing the sole proprietor and having them in a worse tax situation. So you should get to deduct half of the payroll taxes but you can't deduct them on the schedule C because that would create a circle of reference because you use the net income to calculate the taxes. Therefore half of the self-employment taxes need to be deducted somewhere else and it's on line 15 the deductible part of self-employment tax on schedule one. Alright we'll take a look at an example of that in a future presentation just to get an idea of it but we'll also look at it in detail when we get to the schedule C. So for self-employed individuals including small business owners and partners there are specific retirement plans that offer tax advantages such as an SEP, simplified employer pension plans, simple savings incentive match plan for employees and IRAs and qualified plans like solo 401Ks. So this is another issue that often comes up for sole proprietors. So if you're doing taxes for a sole proprietor typically you have to deal with more complex returns but there's also tax planning issues that could come up a lot more readily especially as that sole proprietor becomes a taxpayer's major source of income because if it's just like gig work they're doing a little bit of work on the side but their primary income is W2 income then you might not have as much as this tax planning stuff. But if it's their full source of income then questions like this come up and that they're saying hey look at when I was a W2 employee I could put money into a 401K plan that was far greater than I can put into an IRA and I had matching with it and what not and as a sole proprietor if I just use a normal IRA I have much less of a tax benefit I'm restricted on how much I can put in there. Well then the typical question is could I set up a 401K plan for my sole proprietor business so I can put more money into my account and also possibly help employees but that's too complicated often times for a sole proprietor so these simple and the simple are types of plans that could increase your ability to put money into a plan more similar giving benefits more similar to a 401K but that are easier to administrate than a 401K so that's a whole other topic in and of itself that you can kind of dive into what's the difference between a SEP, a simple, a 401K or a solo for a 1K and when would those be best for like a sole proprietor type of business. So these plans but if you have those plans set up then instead of just having an IRA deduction you might be able to deduct the SEP and the simple rather than on the Schedule C you put in it on the Schedule 1 but in order to qualify for those plans you typically have something like a Schedule C type of business a sole proprietor so these plans allow you to save for retirement while potentially reducing your tax income through contributions alright a SEP plans so what are they these allow contributions of up to 25% of your net earnings from self employment with a maximum of 66,000 for 2023 that is far higher than of course the maximum you can put in if you're just going to say alright I'll just put money into an IRA because I don't have access to a 401K plan because I'm not an employee right so that's a huge benefit SEP plans are relatively easy to set up with a simple one page form or through an IRS approved quote prototype SEP plan from financial institution so they're pretty easy to do that's the point they're easier than a 401K plan you just want to make sure that you're following the rules properly so that you're in compliance then you have the simple IRA plans so for 2023 you can contribute all your net earnings from self employment up to 15,500 so you can see some differences between the limits here of the two plus an additional 3,500 if you're 50 or older and you have the option of either a 2% fixed contribution or a 3% matching contribution so you can go into the differences between a simple and a SEP one of the other benefits by the way is that you might be able to think about your SEP contributions after you actually do your taxes meaning how would I know that I'm going to put in 25% until I actually do my taxes which is going to happen after the tax year for 2023 tax year I'm going to do my taxes in 2024 it would be nice if I can do my taxes and then figure out how much or top off at least the amount that I'm going to put into the SEP because now I know how much I could put into it right that's another thing to take into consideration when you're comparing these plans are you allowed to put money into it after the tax year so that you can figure out the best amount to put into it so then we have the solo 401K plan so these plans allow annual salary deferrals up to 22,500 in 2023 plus an additional 7,500 if you're 50 or older on a pre-tax basis or as designated Roth contribution so you can also contribute up to an additional 25% of your net earnings from self-employment for total contributions of up to 66,000 for 2023 including salary deferrals so this one usually gives the highest amount of benefits of 401K plan but also is the most complex to set up and takes the most administrative work so the contributions you make to these plans can be deducted on your tax return specifically on form 1040 schedule one under the line for self-employed SEP simple and qualified plans it's important to ensure these contributions are not mistakenly deducted on schedule C this is where the schedule C once again gets a little confusing because now you're like well wouldn't that deduction be on the schedule C well no it's on the schedule one so you have to know that so as this could require an amendment if you do it wrong so to navigate the specifics now you might ask why is it on schedule one by the way because the schedule C notice if you put it on the schedule C it would reduce your bottom line on the schedule C and would have an impact on the self-employment tax right by putting it on schedule one then it's going to reduce your federal income taxes but possibly not have an impact you're still going to be paying self-employment tax on those earnings right okay so to navigate and this is similar to the difference on the W2 between like box one and box three for the federal income tax wages versus box three social security wages and box five Medicare okay so to navigate the specifics of each plan and to determine which is most suitable for your circumstances as well as understand contribution limits and tax implications you can refer to the iris publication 560 on the iris website quick look at the line instruction self line 16 self-employed simple and qualified plans if you were self-employed or a partner you may be able to take this deduction you can see publication 560 or if you were a minister publication 517


A very good evening aspirants, welcome to the hindi news analysis by Shankarase academy for the date 27th September 2020. The list of news articles along with its page number is given here for your reference. The link for the handwritten notes in the pdf format and the time stamping for the displayed articles is given in the description box and also in the comment section. Let's move on to the first discussion. Our first discussion is based on this news article which talks about human challenge trials. So far we have heard and read about human trials. In a human trial a drug is tested in humans as part of trials but what is this human challenge trial which this news article is talking about. So let us see that today and let us also understand the issues surrounding this human challenge trial. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First let us know what is this human challenge trial. See these are the trials in which participants are intentionally challenged with an infectious disease organism. Here the word challenged will have the meaning of exposed that means the participants will be intentionally exposed to a infectious disease organism and here the participants might be or might not be vaccinated before exposing them to the disease organism and in the current context this human challenge trial is going to be conducted by Queen Mary University of London to check the efficacy and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Here the participants will be vaccinated with a candidate vaccine and then they will be willfully exposed to the novel coronavirus after a month or so. See these human challenge trials are not new they have been performed safely in the last 50 years and they have helped to accelerate the development of vaccines against typhoid and cholera. So now the same method is going to be used for developing a COVID-19 vaccine or simply for checking the effectiveness of the developed COVID-19 vaccines. So what are the benefits of these human challenge trials? The first benefit is that the effectiveness of the vaccine and its side effects can be directly studied and secondly as we saw the participants will be intentionally exposed to the virus. So more details can be studied regarding the disease and the infection and thirdly we will be able to get clearer understanding of the pathogenesis of the organism which means the manner of the development of the disease could be understood and it will also help in understanding the immunity to the organism. See if the human challenge trial is successful then it can serve as a proof to go for mass production of the vaccine and since these trials include humans it also serves as a very good representative model of vaccine trials compared to the trials on animals and as you already saw these trials help to develop vaccines faster for a pandemic type diseases otherwise in a normal case it takes 10 to 15 years for a vaccine development and this time can be reduced using this human challenge trials but apart from these benefits there are also some issues associated with the human challenge trials. First issue is that as we said already human challenge trials are generally performed on young healthy adults so the effectiveness or efficacy of the vaccine is not known in old people or in infants and it is also not known especially in people with morbidities like in the case of COVID-19 because there is a popular opinion that mortality in the people with comorbidities is high in case of COVID-19. The second issue is that according to some experts the human challenge trials do not replace the phase 3 of clinical trials. See there are normally four phases in a clinical trial and in a phase 3 the studies are conducted on larger populations and in different regions and countries and these phase 3 trials are often the step right before a new treatment is approved because according to some sources in phase 3 clinical trials they compare the safety and effectiveness of the new treatment against the current standard treatment and this helps the doctors to know which treatment is better so experts are of the opinion that even though human challenge trials will be conducted they still have to go through the phase 3 of clinical trials. Then the third issue is that in human challenge trials a milder or attenuated virus strain is administered to participants so that means the outcomes of the human challenge trials may not be efficacious on wild form of the infection and further the human challenge trials may have long-term side effects on participants and even in some cases it may also lead to death of the participants and particularly in case of COVID-19 we have no highly effective therapies to cure the individuals who are infected in a challenge study so that means this might increase the mortality rate and then another limitation of human challenge trials is that the study is often designed to assess the short-term protection of vaccine candidate so the long-term immunity provided by that vaccine cannot be found with these trials and apart from all these challenges there are also ethical concerns because these human challenge trials appears to be in conflict with the guiding principle in medicine which is to do no harm this is the first principle which is followed in medicine but in these trials the participants are willfully exposed to the virus so this is against the guiding principle of medicine then the second ethical concern is that the participants must be aware of all impacts of participating in these trials because as we saw it could also lead to the death of the participants so that means before conducting human challenge trials the informed consent of the participants must be taken and it should also be ensured so these are some of the issues and ethical concerns with respect to human challenge trials so after seeing both benefits and challenges we can say that human challenge trials have potential to understand the new diseases and they will help us to develop vaccines and treatments faster but here we can only hope that these challenge trials will do less harm than the intended benefits these are some of the information that is you know with respect to human challenge trials let's move on to the next discussion this discussion is based on a beautiful phenomenon that is observed in celestial bodies this phenomenon is aurora see the news is that a comet has its own far ultraviolet aurora now this comet is the comet 67p churyumov gerasimenko and this is the first time where electromagnetic emissions in the far ultraviolet have been documented on a celestial object other than a planet or moon so let us see about this comet first it was discovered in the year 1969 at the elmata observatory in russia and here in the name 67p indicates that it was the 67th periodic comet discovered and the terms churyumov and gerasimenko are the names of the discoverers i know that it is the first comet to be orbited and landed upon by robots from earth and the famous rosetta mission of european space agency is actually associated with this comet only i know that the rosetta mission ended in a controlled landing on the comet's surface in september 2016 and now the news is that this comet has its own far ultraviolet aurora so what is aurora and far ultraviolet aurora see aurora is a phenomenon seen in the celestial bodies like planets where the celestial body has an atmosphere and magnetic field this phenomenon is also observed on earth so let's first understand about this see auroras refer to a beautiful light show in the sky which are caused by the sun in earth this phenomenon is called as aurora borealis or northern lights near the north pole and near the south pole it is called as aurora australis or the southern lights we saw that it is caused by sun now let us see how it is caused by sun so we know that sun releases constant streaming solar wind and solar storms and one kind of solar storm is called as coronal mass ejection in this coronal mass ejection sun sends out a huge bubble of electrified gas that can travel through space at high speeds now when such a solar storm comes toward the earth some of the energy and some small particles can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into the earth's atmosphere and at this time the particles from space which are electrons they interact with gases in our atmosphere and this results into beautiful displays of light in the sky in other words we can say that auroras are caused by collisions between fast moving particles which are electrons from the space and the oxygen and nitrogen gas that are present in our atmosphere and this process is depicted in this picture now the excited gas molecules they emit or give off light which is known as aurora and these auroras are of different colors and this color depends on which gas is being excited by electrons and on how much energy is being exchanged so if the excited gas is oxygen then the light emitted is green and red light and if the excited gas is nitrogen gas then blue and purple light is observed as you can see in these pictures now apart from earth this aurora phenomenon is also observed in saturn and jupiter and these two images depicts this phenomenon observed in saturn and jupiter this is what normally happens but sometimes the interacting or the colliding gases in the atmosphere they emit ultraviolet light also and such light can only be detected by special cameras and satellites and they cannot be detected by human eyes this is because human eye can detect wavelengths only from 400 nanometer to 700 nanometers see in the electromagnetic spectrum the ultraviolet region covers the wavelength range of 100 nanometers to 400 nanometer and it is divided into three bands as you can see here and sometimes the aurora is observed in shorter ultraviolet wavelengths like 120 nanometers to 180 nanometers and these are called as the far ultraviolet aurora here just know that when we say near ultraviolet spectral region it ranges from 400 nanometer down to 300 nanometers then comes the middle UV region and then comes the shorter UV wavelengths from 200 nanometers and lesser this is what is called as the far ultraviolet region and if the colliding gases in the atmosphere emit ultraviolet light in such shorter wavelength then it is called as the far ultraviolet aurora and so far this phenomenon has been observed in planets and moons only and currently it has been observed in a comet known as the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko so this is the news today with this we come to the end of this discussion let's move on to the next discussion this discussion is based on this FAQ article which talks about the industrial relations code bill of 2020 now this code bill is one of the three labor codes that was recently passed by the parliament and these codes along with the code of ages which was passed last year they simplify amalgamate and rationalize the existing central laws on labor but today we'll be only focusing on this new industrial relations code bill of 2020 the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference first know that this code bill is passed by the parliament and if it receives the assent of the president then it will come into force on the day appointed by the central government through a gazette notification so what is the basic purpose of this code or in other words what is its preamble see the purpose is to consolidate and amend the laws relating to trade unions and the laws relating to conditions of employment in industrial establishments or undertaking then also the laws relating to the investigation settlement of industrial disputes and here remember that the bill is proposed to amalgamate which means combine or merge then simplify and rationalize the provisions of three acts these three acts are trade union act of 1926 the industrial employment standing orders act of 1946 and then the industrial disputes act of 1947 now let us see the main features of this industrial relations code in this the first thing you should know is the definition of the term worker and fixed term employment the bill defines worker as a person who is employed in any industry to do any skilled or unskilled manual technical operational and clerical or supervisory work and thus according to the definition the worker includes journalists and sales promotion employees also but however it does not include the set of persons such as a person who is employed in a police service then the bill also defines fixed term employment it means the engagement of a worker on the basis of a written contract of employment for a fixed period but however the hours of work wages allowances and other benefits shall not be less than that of a permanent worker doing the same work or a work of a similar nature and further the person who is in a fixed term employment is also eligible for all statutory benefits that is available to a permanent worker and the person is also eligible for gratuity if the person renders service under the contract for a period of one year so in short we can say that the code aims to keep the fixed term employment workers or the contract workers on par with the permanent workers then the next important feature of the bill that you should notice the standing orders this bill has around 14 chapters and one of them is standing orders see a standing order means those instructions that will contain conditions of employment so it will include the conditions on classification of workforce hours of work holidays paydays and wage rates it will include shift working attendance and late coming suspension or dismissal for misconduct and like this all the conditions that is required for an employment and according to the bill the matters to be provided in the standing orders is given in the first schedule to this code so from this we can simply say that the standing orders ensure a labor friendly environment but here note that the provisions relating to standing orders are applicable to industrial establishments where 300 or more than 300 workers are employed or more than 300 workers were employed on any day of the preceding 12 months this means that establishments which have workforce below this number are not required to enforce provisions related to the standing orders under this code so if such standing order is not present then we can consider such scenario as less labor friendly environment and there is also one contentious issue with respect to the standing orders it is regarding the section 39 of the code bill this section states that the appropriate government may by notification can exempt conditionally or unconditionally any industrial establishment or even class of industrial establishments from any or even all of the provisions of the chapter on standing orders so that means this section provides wide powers to the government to give exemptions to some establishment which may result into exploitation of labor's in the name of economic activity and there is also an opinion that over a period of time many establishments could be exempted under this section 39 now the next important feature of the bill is the trade unions which is dealt by chapter 3 of the code bill according to the bill if there is only one registered trade union functioning in an industrial establishment then the employer shall recognize that trade union as a sole negotiating union of the workers but if there is more than one registered trade union of workers then the trade union which is having 51% or more workers shall be recognized by the employer as the sole negotiating union of the workers but what if no trade union has 51% workers or more workers than other trade unions then in this case the employer shall constitute a negotiating council now this council shall consist of the representatives of the registered trade unions who are having the support of at least 20% of the total workers on the muster role here muster role just means the official list of workers now let us see how this new code affects the right to strike say actually chapter 8 of the bill deals with strikes and lockouts and under section 62 the code prohibits seven conditions for workers or employees under which a strike is not allowed and the same section also prescribes seven conditions under which the employer is prohibited from locking out see here lockout refers to a temporary closing of a place of employment or the suspension of work or the refusal by an employer to continue to employ any number of persons already employed by him so under seven conditions the employer cannot opt for lockouts now we are seeing this code affects the right to strike because the current existing law which is the industrial disputes act of 1947 it plays the search restrictions on announcing strikes only in respect of public utility services but now the new code extends it to all the establishments now here just note that according to the existing 1947 act some of the public utility services are the services such as any railway service or any transport service for the carriage of passengers or goods by air then postal service or any industry which supplies power light or water to the public but now the restriction is placed on all types of establishments so this is another issue with this bill so these are some of the provisions of industrial relations code and the issues related to it let's move on to the next discussion now this news article talks about the concerns raised by the comptroller and auditor general of india while carrying out the financial audit of the union government's account in the recent days we are seeing news articles regarding the concerns raised by CAG after the audits and today's news article talks about the concerns on the transferring of funds from the central road fund i know that currently this central road fund is known as the central road and infrastructure fund so in this context let us discuss in detail about this central road fund or central road infrastructure fund and also about CAG's concerns the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference the first note that the central road fund or CRF was established under the central road fund act of 2000 now this act actually gave the statutory status to the already existing central road fund which was governed by a resolution of parliament that was passed in the year 1988 so after 12 years only this act was enacted which gave it a statutory status now according to the act the fund is under the control of central government so what are the sources of this fund see the act empowers the central government to levy and collect an additional CIS see here CIS means a duty which is in the nature of duty of excise and customs and this is a duty which is imposed and collected on motor spirit and as you know motor spirit is commonly known as a petrol and high speed diesel oil now the proceeds of the CIS is first credited to the consolidated fund of India then a parliamentary law on this behalf credits these proceeds to the fund from time to time and this is done after deducing the expenses of collection of this CIS so this is one of the source of this fund then the fund also includes the sums of money that are credited by way of grants or loans by the central government here you should note that any unspent part of the CIS which is already levied for the purposes of development and maintenance of national highways will also be credited to CRF that is the unspent part of CIS which is levied for this purpose will be credited to the central road fund apart from this any fund which is provided by the central government for the development and maintenance of state roads will also be a part of this fund only and more importantly the balance to the credit of this fund shall not lapse or expire at the end of the financial year so these are some of the sources of this fund now let us see the utilization of this fund that is the purposes for which the fund can be utilized first and foremost it will be used for the development and maintenance of national highways and for the development of rural roads it is also used for development and maintenance of other state roads including the roads of interstate and economic importance then the fund can also be used for construction of roads either under or over the railways by means of bridges then it can be used for building of safety works at unmanned railroad crossings then it can be used for building new lines etc so these are some of the infrastructure projects for which the fund can be utilized now each infrastructure project will get certain share of the fund depending on the priorities of the project now this share shall be finalized by a committee constituted by the center and it is headed by the finance minister now coming to the accounting and auditing of this fund according to the act the center shall maintain proper accounts and other relevant records of the fund now these accounts of the fund shall be audited by the comptroller and auditor general of india that is CAG at certain intervals and these intervals will be specified by the CAG and based on this only now CAG has audited these accounts now before going to the concerns raised by the CAG here know that the central road fund of 2000 was amended through finance act of 2018 and this amendment replace the name of this act from the central road fund act to central road and infrastructure fund act of 2000 and additionally it also inserted schedule to the original act and this schedule to contains several categories of projects where this fund can be used so according to this schedule now the CRIF is earmarked or it is set aside for various infrastructure sectors such as transport, energy, water and sanitation, communication, social and commercial infrastructure etc now in this just note that the projects under transport category includes roads, bridges, ports, shipyards, inland waterways, airports, railways and urban public transport so these are some of the basic information that you should know with respect to central road and infrastructure fund now what are the concerns raised by CAG after auditing this fund CAG has reported that central government's accounting officials have incorrectly recorded around 10,250 crores of CES receipts from the additional excise duties on petrol and diesel as non-tax receipts for the year 2018-19 and the purpose for which this was done according to CAG is for artificially inflating or boosting the revenue receipts of the year which means that they understated the deficits and because of this the fund was made available for expenditure for other purposes which was contrary to the will of the parliament according to CAG so here we need not go into the accounting details just know that they have artificially inflated the revenue receipts for understating the deficit and they have used funds for purposes other than the designated purposes so from this what we have to conclude is that this move of CAG is a positive sign and it indicates the independent and healthy functioning of the office of comptroller and auditor general of India now for this allegation the finance ministry has responded but CAG has objected that reply instead CAG has called for investigation on the accounting authorities so these are some of the information that you should know with respect to this news article with this we come to the end of this discussion now this next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the political developments in bolivia so in this context let us discuss in detail about the geography of bolivia see bolivia is a landlocked country of the west central south america bolivia borders brazil in the north and east and it borders paraguay in the southeast and it borders argentina to the south and then it borders chili to its southwest and west and in the northwest it shares border with peru and one of the important point to note here is that bolivia shares the lake titikaca with peru see actually bolivia previously was not a landlocked country it became a landlocked country when it lost its pacific coast territory to chili in a war this war is the war of the pacific that happened in the period 1879 to 1884 but even then now chili offers unrestricted maritime access through its territory to bolivia but it does not provide sovereign maritime access to bolivia now here note that bolivia has two capitals its constitutional capital is sucre and its administrative capital is lapas and in this administrative capital the executive and legislative branches of the government functions and here also remember that one third of this country's territory lies in the andes mountains and the amazon forest also extends to bolivia so these are some of the geography related information that you should know with respect to bolivia now let us come to the political developments see the country separated from spanish rule in the year 1825 and according to some sources bolivia is named after the independence fighter simon bolivar but the issue is that much of the history of bolivia is full of series of coups and counter coups see when we say coup it means a sudden violent and illegal seizure of power from the government so like this many times illegally the power has been seized and the last coup occurred in the year 1978 and after that in the year 1982 a democratic civilian rule was established but still the country faced many problems like deep-seated poverty social unrest and illegal drug production actually illegal drug production is a major problem in the region according to the central intelligence agency of usa that is cia bolivia is world's third largest cultivator of coca that is cocaine the first two are columbia and peru so in this way since bolivia shares border with peru bolivia also acts as a transit country through which the cocaine is transited the cocaine is transported to various parts of the world like europe and also other parts of south america like brazil argentina chili peru so what about the present political situation of bolivia see in the year 2005 bolivian citizens elected the leader of movement toward socialism as their president its leader was eva moralis in his campaign he promised to change the country's traditional political class and he promised to empower the nation's poor and the indigenous majority so based on these promises he was again reelected in the year 2009 and 2014 also but the present political issue began during the 2019 election because in this election widespread electoral fraud was reported but still eva moralis attempted to claim victory in the 2019 election also so because of this once again the country was pushed into violence and moral is fled the country due to military pressure so at present he is in exile in argentina and thus currently an interim government is present in bolivia which is preparing new elections for the current year that is 2020 here you should note that bolivia is divided mainly along ethnic regional and social economic lines and apart from this one of the groups supports the policies of moralis and the others are against his authoritarian and corrupted rule this is the reason why the issue started last year and even after he fled the country the things were worse due to the interim government also because the interim government is also undermining bolivia's democratic institutions including the judiciary so let's wait and see what happens after the 2020 elections in bolivia so these are some of the information that you should know with respect to bolivia from political and geographical perspective now let's move on to the next discussion now this next news article mentions that around 30 people have died due to the attack on the convoy of the regional governor of borno see borno is a state in the northeast in nigeria and this attack has been carried out near a town on the shores of lake chad and this attack was carried out by islamic state west african province this is an is affiliated group and according to the news article the terror group maintains most of its camps on the islands of lake chad so in this context let us know about nigeria and lake chad see nigeria is a country located on the western coast of africa and it borders four countries it borders niger to the north and it shares border with chad and cameroon in the east and in the west it shares border with benin and in the south it shares border with the gulf of guine of the atlantic ocean and the major lifeline of this country is the niger river after which this country is named the niger river enters the country in the northwest and flows southward through the tropical rainforest of the region and it enters the gulf of guine and in this know that the river benue is the largest contributory of niger river and these two rivers that is niger river and benue river are the principal rivers of nigeria and the natural capital of nigeria is abuja and know that nigeria is large in area and it is the africa's most populous country and this country has abundant natural resources also and it has notably large deposits of petroleum and natural gas so these are some of the information that you should know with respect to nigeria from geographical perspective now let us come to lake chad it is located in the far west of the country chad and to the northeast of nigeria and parts of the lake also extend to niger and cameroon so that means the basin of this lake chad covers four countries which are nigeria niger chad and cameroon and it has been a water source for 20 million to 30 million people according to UNESCO lake chad is the fourth largest water body on the african continent and it is the third largest enclosed lake on the planet and this lake chad has a particularity that is it is covered by hundreds of islands and many of these islands are permanently or seasonally inhabited and as we saw already some of these islands are cams to the terror groups now this lake chad is surrounded by arid deserts so that is why this wetland represents a center of life and thus it has made the lake one of the most important economic and cultural hubs between the sub saharan africa and north africa for thousands of years and one of the issues surrounding this lake chad is that it has shrunk by 90 percentage since 1960s and this has happened due to climate change increase in population and unplanned so currently united nations and UNESCO are carrying out many initiatives for the revival of this lake so these are the information that you should know with respect to lake chad and nigeria now we have come to the last session the practice questions discussion session the first question asks consider the following statements with respect to aurora observed as beautiful light shows in the sky first statement is it is usually observed over the equator in earth now this statement is incorrect because we see the aurora phenomenon near the north and south pole this is because of the existing protective magnetic field around the earth which shields us from most of the sun's energy and particles but however some of the energy and small particles from the sun can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into earth's atmosphere and this is where the interaction with gases in the earth's atmosphere happens and therefore we observe this phenomenon near the north pole and south pole and this is the reason why aurora over the north pole is called as northern lights or aurora borealis and aurora over the south pole region is called as southern lights or the aurora australis now the second statement mentions the phenomenon is observed only in planet earth now this statement is also incorrect because the phenomenon could be observed in celestial bodies like planets that have atmosphere and a magnetic field now this phenomenon was already observed in saturn and jupiter and today's news article is that this phenomenon was observed in a jupiter family comet called as the 67p churyumov gerasimenko so thus this statement becomes incorrect and here the question asks for the correct statements and both the statements are incorrect so the correct answer to this question is option d neither one nor two now this is a map based question the question asks consider the following countries in south america chili, peraguay, peru, bulivia, colombia which of the above countries shares border with pacific ocean now based on today's discussion you can easily say that bulivia is a landlock country if you know this you can eliminate options a and d and now you have 50 chance to answer this question correctly because we have only two options left now among the remaining two options we can say that chili shares border with pacific ocean and then peru also shares border with pacific ocean and now we have to decide whether colombia or peraguay shares border with pacific ocean or not and the correct answer is option b because peraguay is also a landlock country as you can see here whereas colombia shares border with pacific ocean now let us take two mains question this question is what do you understand by human challenge trials discuss the benefits and challenges this is a very straightforward question you have to answer this in 150 words now this next question is based on gs paper 2 examine critically the recent changes proposed under the industrial relations code bill 2020 and for this question you have to answer in 250 words now you can write the answers and post it in the comment section we'll review it and the appropriate suggestion will be provided within a reasonable time frame with this we come to the end of today's in the news analysis if you like the video don't forget to like comment and share and do subscribe to shankar eyes academy youtube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation


So it's no secret that the suit we got in the Amazing Spider-Man one was definitely one that deviated away from the traditional Spider-Man look. This Spider-Man had small and squinted eyes, a longer and lankier design, and came with just a menacing look and feel overall. This isn't your grandma's old Spider-Man. This one was weirder and much, much darker.  Every now and then I catch myself looking at Tasm 1 and 2 concept art and I wonder if the artists were ever busted by their bosses for drinking lean while working on the concept art for this movie. Let's talk about the suit and the thumbnail. So hear me out. This suit is actually really cool. The suit itself is covered from head to toe in the signature spider web pattern. But you'll actually find that the spider logo of the suit is drawn like it's standing on the web pattern itself. This kind of implies that the spider on the chest of the suit made the webbing on the suit. Of course not literally, but figuratively. And I kind of like that about it. Apparently I'm in the minority on liking the suit in general. I think the only reason I'm able to enjoy this costume is that I'm not really thinking about it the same way that everyone else might be. While some might look at this and compare it to the original Spider-Man costume, me personally, I'm only looking at it for what it is. This is a Spider-Man costume and from what it seems it doesn't really feel like this costume is supposed to be the classic suit. It's a red and blue Spider-Man costume, but a different kind of red and blue Spider-Man costume. If you look ahead, you'll even see a web shooter concept for this design too. Very cool to see. I enjoy how the web carts sort of create a staircase into the web shooter itself. It's a very fluid design, an overall an interesting take on Spider-Man's suit. I like it. Now play the clip of the house blowing- Ew, what is this thing? Evidently it's a costume that looks quite like the final product for the movie, but this one is so much worse in comparison. Instead of the web being limited to the red section, the web pattern continues over the whole costume, and it isn't as tight-knit or clean as the one that made it into the final product. Moving over to the chest, the rainy logo is here, and it's also been cut up the same way the logo in the final suit is. If I had to guess, this was because I think Sony wanted to have certain elements in all versions of the suit that they wanted to make for this movie, i.e. having segmented spider logos, golden eyes, and overall a much darker and weirder feel. Oh god, the chest portion has... Why is the chest portion like this? Like, look, I've taken my stance on split-up costume segments on Spider-Man costumes. I do not care! I do not care.  This is not how you do it. Like, why are there random cut-up red blobs on the gloves? Why is the belt not completely covered?  That's why.  Moving on, I have a set of three very different yet similar costumes. These three are an odd, but interesting pair. In these, Spider-Man looks like he's wearing some sort of super-thin exo suit type of armor.  The belt is outright removed in favor of a gray portion that's added to the suit, but in all honesty, I don't mind the gray. It's kind of cool. Not to mention the spider logo and the webbing being on point with the rest of the costume. Everything about this suit's look is kind of weird, maybe a little threatening. The messy webbing and the gnarly spider fit in this theme very well. It's not a suit I particularly enjoy because of the more drab colors, but at least it knows what it wants to be. The second one is nowhere near as mediocre as the one before, and in fact, I would even say it's much worse.  This weird format just doesn't go with the rest of the outfit. And if you look closer, you'll see the spider incorporates a spray paint splatter effect. That's a cool feature, and one you'll see expanded upon in the next design. Now this looks a lot more like Spider-Man. If you move up to his face, you'll see that his lenses are still and all black, but they wrap around to the back of his head. The spider logo is spray-painted with an off-center position, which reminds me of the Ben Riley Beyond Spider-Man suit, and the web cape on the back is dope, too. Webcapes are actually a super rare feature in Spider-Man costumes, but it's really nice to see them whenever they do show up. Sad to see that across the spider versus designed for Spider-Man 2099 didn't carry over the web cape from his old suit. But anyway, did you notice the concept art for this suit as a second spider? Yeah, check it out. He is a calf spider. I never thought I would see something like this on a Spidey suit, but I definitely have to remember what kind of concept art we're looking at today. But that's about it for those three. Now, let's move on to the next. Hmm. So, this is very obviously supposed to be Miles Morales' Spider-Man suit, but for some reason this concept art comes from Tasm 2. So it's either that they wanted to have Peter wear this costume, or they wanted to try to take a crack at how Miles Morales would look within the Tasm universe. It's not a bad rendition of Miles Morales' costume. Keep in mind that in the context of the Tasm universe, there may not be any high-quality shots of Spider-Man's costume within range of someone who might attempt to design their own Spider-Man suit, unless they're crazy-ass like Max Dillon. So it makes sense that there are some elements about this costume that are different from Peter's in terms of execution. For example, usually the webbing on Spider-Man's costume follows a neat flow throughout his costume. The web starts from in between the eyes, trails down his head, and then out onto the rest of the costume. It looks like there's two different starting places for this web pattern, on the front and back of Spider-Man's head.  Something that I've noticed about all this concept art is that they often use the Sam Raimi Spider logo, or at least create a spider symbol that looks incredibly similar to it. Anyway, I really like the back of this suit. Despite it looking different from most Miles designs, I actually enjoy the reuse of the arch from the front of the suit, but this time with a much bigger logo on the back. Overall, I think this costume looks a tiny bit odd, but other than that, it's not a bad take on Miles Morales' costume. I certainly hope if Miles came into the Tasm universe, he wouldn't look exactly like this, but if he did, it wouldn't be the end of the world.  What? Why did we go and do this shit?   There's some potential to adding holes onto the red portion of the design, but then they turn around and make the costume much worse by adding these stupid slabs onto the abs of the costume? Like this costume looks so much better without them. Why do we need to add these? Potential? No potential.  So for those of you who hate this costume and think that it's garbage compared to the other Spider-Man suits we've gotten, just remember, at least the Tasm 1 suit is almost entirely faithful to the original design format of Spider-Man. Only with some segmentation and added lines, this costume has most of the Spider-Man's iconic features. Red mask, gloves and boots, and spiders on the front and back in the correct places. This was an odd-looking Spider-Man costume for sure, but just know that everything is put in the same place as it was before and know that this will always be better than this.


In this topic, we are going to discuss about recruitment and selection in the international scenario. And we are going to talk about the differences between the domestic and international recruitment and selection and what are the key features of international recruitment in a global context. Recruitment and selection usually they are taken as one activity but they are quite distinct. So let us take a look at the definition of what is recruitment and what is the selection process. Alright, so when we define recruitment, recruitment is a process of searching for and obtaining potential job candidates in sufficient numbers and quantity so that the organization can select the most appropriate people to fill the job requirements. Now recruitment is the process of enlargening the pool of persons that could be potential selectees. It is a process of enhancing the potential people to access the information which is required to apply for the job. So recruitment is a process of actually marketing your job requirements and trying to get as many applicants as possible for that particular job which is required to be filled. So recruitment is a process of enlargening the pool of persons which are potential applicants. And selection is totally the opposite of recruitment. It is narrowing down and selecting the most appropriate ones from a large pool of potential candidates. So when we define selection, it is the process of gathering information for the purposes of evaluation and deciding who should be employed in a particular job. So recruitment is that you recruit people and ask them to come and apply to us but in selection process what you do is that you gain information about those people and what are their credentials and then using that information, you try to evaluate that out of all these recruits, what are the possible people who could fill your job most appropriately. So recruitment and selection, it is not a one process, both of these processes, these are discrete processes and both processes need to be effective if the firm is to effectively manage its staffing process. So this staffing process has to be managed first on the recruitment level and then on the selection level and both of them they have to operate independently and both of them they have to be effective. For example, if you have a very good recruitment process, you are able to call in thousands of candidates for your job but your selection process cannot distinguish and it cannot discriminate between who is an appropriate candidate and who is an inappropriate candidate, then your recruitment process is very good. You were able to invite a lot of people but your selection process if that is not good, if you are not able to test them, if you are not able to evaluate them, then your entire staffing process is going to lose its effectiveness. Similarly, if you have a very good selection process, you have got very sophisticated tests, you have got all the facilities in line for selecting the appropriate people, you have an assessment center and you have excellent interviewers who can distinguish between good and average potential candidates but your recruitment process is not good. You are not able to spread the news, you are not able to send out the invitation to people, you are not able to advertise it well, you are not able to inform people that there is a job which is available. So if your recruitment process is not good, it is not effective then even if you have a very sophisticated selection process, it is not going to be an overall effective process of staffing your organization. So both of them they are discrete processes and must be managed correctly. Now the key features of difference between domestic and international recruitment and selection, number one is that there could be a predisposition for a certain approach. We had studied in the previous topics different approaches to staffing and in that we studied there are ethnocentric and geocentric and regiocentric approaches. For example, if there is an ethnocentric approach which favors a particular ethnicity, then obviously if you are going for ethnocentric approach and you are employing only the parent company or nationals, then your recruitment process is going to be limited because you will not be inviting people from other parts of the world who could be potential candidates. So this is one limitation which creates, which makes the recruitment process less effective. Then there could be constraints from the host government. For example, if the host government requires you to hire a certain percentage of people from their country, from the host country, then again you are restricted in your recruitment and selection process. Generally what we see as a tradition in multinational organizations is that people, the multinationals, they go for internal recruitment more than external recruitment. External recruitment is that you invite people, invite applicants from outside. Internal recruitment is that you promote people from inside your organization. You ask applications from people who are working in your organization and you ask them to apply for that particular job. So that is internal recruitment and external recruitment is asking people from outside the organization to apply for that. So generally in multinational organizations, there is a tendency and a general tradition for going for an internal recruitment. As from the Global Relocation Trends Survey, it was found that only eight percent of the recruitments were done externally. Why that happens? The reasons for internal recruitments are they are number one to reduce the selection risk because you know that in international scenario, there are so many factors that could limit your understanding and limit the amount of information you have about a certain person that you do not want to take the risk of recruiting people from the entire globe and then finding out that well, we do not have the skills or we do not have the machinery to evaluate them and the selection process then may be problematic. And then also to secure present and past human capital investments because you know that in international scenario, there's a lot of additional investment in in staffing your people. So when you're when you're sending people to work in foreign countries, you train them for cultural awareness. You invest on their transportation in settling down their families. And you know, all these things. So you have invested a certain amount of time, money, efforts on people who are already there working in your organization. And therefore you do not want to, you know, lose this present and past investment in the human capital that you have already done. So that is why internal recruitments are more preferred in the international scenario, particularly because the cost of recruitment in selection is much higher in the international scenario than in the than the domestic scenario. Because in the domestic scenario, what do you do in you recruit people from a certain city or from a certain country? The cost of doing that is not that high. But when you are at a global level, the cost, obviously, they are much more higher in that particular scenario. So that is why more internal recruitments are done than external ones. So these are the basic features of international recruitment and selection and how the two processes of recruitment and selection are different from each other.