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The deaths due to heart attacks among people below age 30 have increased by 40% between 2018 and 2022, growing from 2,371 to 3,329.

In the same period, the numbers for those over 30 climbed from 23,392 to 29,081. Figures like these naturally compel us to fear heart attacks. But do we really need to live in fear? Is it possible to live without constantly worrying about one?

Yes, says Dr George Thayil, the founding head of the department of cardiology at Lourdes Hospital in Kochi. He explains how in his book 'Heart Attack: Bhayappedathe Jeevikkam', which has just been released by DC Books.

For Dr Thayil, writing about the heart never gets old. He has authored more than half a dozen well-informative books in the field of health. In ‘Heart Attack’, he offers insights into how people can protect their hearts.

He noted that these treatments are mostly so expensive that they sometimes break the financial backbone of a family.

Even as the World Heart Federation, Unesco, and the World Health Organization repeat at regular intervals that the emphasis needs to shift from cure to prevention in heart disease, few hospitals actually follow this lofty ideal.

Many patients and their families are unable to meet the exorbitant expenses of the cardiac examinations and treatments. "An angioplasty, for instance, costs between Rs 1.5 and Rs 3 lakh, and a bypass surgery between Rs 3 and Rs 5 lakh," says Dr Thayil.

This motivated him to pen a book imparting crucial knowledge on how to keep the heart healthy. The book covers most of the aspects touching on the heart and heart-related diseases in an interesting manner.

Each chapter is titled as a question, to which every one of us has had doubts about sometime or another. Questions such as: What is the heart made of and how does it work? Why do I have chest pain? Will an ECG detect heart disease? Must one begin to take care of the heart early in life?

In one chapter, Dr Thayil brings to light how deaths related to overworking, otherwise known as ‘Karoshi syndrome’, are an emerging concern.

The term 'Karoshi' is Japanese for deaths or incapacitation due to overwork. It is closely associated with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events, that is, stroke and heart attack, which get induced by extreme stress and unending hours of work.

Dr Thayil considers that the syndrome is a consequence of prolonged work hours, stress related to occupation, poor work-life balance, and societal pressures. The global concern eventually moved the governments to introduce preventive measures. Among people exhibiting Karoshi syndrome, the risk of heart attack rises by 13 per cent, while susceptibility to stroke increases by 33 per cent.

Artificial Intelligence chat ads, also referred to as AI-powered ads or chatbot advertising, will change how we get information from AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. These AI chat ads will not even feel like an ad; it’ll just slip in conversations that may feel personal and helpful but could secretly be designed to sell products, services, or ideas! It might sound thrilling to marketers and companies but what about people and students? It’s scary, and it’s happening faster than we could notice. The question now faces us: with AI chat ads forming part of our digital lives, how will people know if they're hearing/reading a true fact or just an AI ad masquerading as a friendly chat?

This dilemma isn't just theoretical, there’s more to it. Top companies like meta, X, have already started doing it, and Google is also testing and implementing ads within your AI conversations on third-party AI chatbots with  the help of its AdSense for Search program. It might look and sound trivial but it's not. These ads are unlike traditional banner ads or obvious promotional instagram content, these chatbot ads are contextually relevant to the user's conversation which makes it look like no-ad talk, similar to no-makeup look. 

The Netflix series Black Mirror has already shown the world how everything will be in the next 10-30 years. One of the episodes of this series explores a dark future where a woman's brain was fixed with AI implants. It was all good initially until  the ads started. Eventually she became a "walking ad" constantly bombarded with commercial messages. People who have watched this can exactly understand how scary it can be. In the end of the episode, when the protagonists didn’t have money for ad-free subscriptions, the husband kills his wife (the woman). While futuristic, this episode warns us about the blurring lines between our thoughts and AI ads.

Just think of it yourself, you are chatting with an AI chatbot deciding what to wear and randomly it says, “oh well what is your weight?” and you say, “It's 55kg now,” cleverly, the model can say, “you lost weight, you should definitely try XYZ drink to maintain it.” And guess what happens next? You’ll be flattered, manipulated unknowingly. The result? Sales of that product will increase while you won’t realise it was just an Ad that suggested something you didn’t actually need. 

AI-powered chat ads can analyze enormous amounts of information to personalise every message you receive in such a way that it doesn’t feel like a promotion. Just think about it, being able to converse with AI-powered advertisements that recommend specific products or ideas for you, expertly using marketing into what feels like good advice. You must have got an idea from the above example. 

An AI expert, Harshit Dave, who is currently researching to build a credible AI evaluation framework, shared his concerns about the same saying, “it’s scarier than people can imagine. This makes for serious concerns about transparency: Will AI ads disclose that it's an ad? How will we be able to distinguish fact from marketing? How do we protect ourselves from manipulation by AI chat ads disguised as unbiased helpers!?” 

Apart from the aforementioned concerns, these ads will disrupt research. Students and scholars might have to shift to physical libraries and archives for their research because as everything is now AI powered, doing actual research will become a Challenging Task. Students, professors, and policymakers must realise this before it’s too late. They must not rely on AI especially for research and education because who knows when a medical student asks a chatbot, “which drug is used to make cough syrup?” the answer given is a modern drug made by a unicorn company that has paid the bot to market its drug!? 

The potential proliferation of AI chatbot ads demands urgent digital literacy. India and the world needs it, especially students because they are the ones who use chatGPT and other models on a daily basis for every trivial matter. There is a need for people to learn to spot AI chat ads by asking critical questions: Is this an AI ad or real information? Am I getting paid marketing or independent advice? At the same time, this calls for regulators and creators to put into practice clear labeling and ethical rules that will make AI ads transparent.

AI ads, chatbot ads, or conversational advertising, all of it calls for responsible AI evaluation to test the model for trust in information. The future of AI chat advertisements will demand some sincerity about the way these intelligent ads actually converse and uphold the authority of their users. The Black Mirror warning that if we do not question AI ads today, tomorrow we might end up living in a world where everything we hear is a carefully crafted AI ad, and nothing is truly neutral or ours alone, reminds us of that fact. Our defence in this future world of AI chat advertisements will be to remain educated, be on guard, and insist on transparency.Because when AI ads talk to us daily, understanding when it's a real answer or an AI ad becomes critical, not just for smart shopping but for the freedom to think clearly.

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Although we love to appreciate and hype English literature for its deep, moving meanings and lines, Hindi literature often takes a seat back. And to give Hindi literature the love it deserves, here are 7 books with deep and profound meaning and lessons.

It is one of the greatest works of classical Sanskrit literature, and 'Abhigyanshakuntalam' has been translated into many languages. It is the story of Shakuntala and King Dushyanta, and it talks about fate, love, struggles of the common, and the issue of relationships.

‘Godan’ is a masterpiece book by Premchand, which tells the story of a poor farmer, Hori, who spends and ends his life in the dreams of owning a cow. The idea and message of poverty, societal exploitation, and to what extent man has to go; everything is included in ‘Godan’.

Another deep and emotional tale, 'Tamas' is set in the period of partition and brings out the horrors that ensued and the communal violence that affected women, children, men, and humanity.

A play set post the Kurukshetra war (Mahabharat) is 'Andha Yug'. It features the plight and discourses people had after the killings, war, and violence, and how the destruction caused by blind ambition and vengeance turned to moral corruption.

Another must-read is 'Maila Aanchal', which is a story about rural Bihar and the challenges faced by its people. It concerns struggles of a backward society, depicting how lives are formed or deformed through poverty, caste struggles, and political movements.

Although originally written in Bengali and then translated into other languages, ‘Chokher Bali’ is one of the most widely read Hindi translations by Rabindranath Tagore. This is a story about Binodini, a young widow, who struggles with loneliness and social restrictions.

Another Bengali classic, ‘Anandamath’ is famous for the ‘Vande Mataram’ in the end and is a book about the Sannyasi Rebellion, featuring Mahendra and Kalyani in the middle of the story and the raw power in the rebellion against the British.

Though it was no particularly brilliant line, when Sir Ken Robinson stepped onto the TED stage nearly two decades ago and said, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original," he sounded the alarm. His critique-that schools quietly train children out of creativity-still feels uncomfortably on target in a world where most classrooms worship marks and not imagination.

The Crisis We Pretend Doesn't Exist

Today, our world rewards creativity as it never has before. Innovation, problem-solving, design thinking, leadership, communication-none of these thrive on memorization or fear of making mistakes. And yet, schools continue to drill students to believe that the worst thing they can do is be wrong. It's in this contradiction that Robinson's argument cuts right: creativity is no longer optional; it's a survival skill. And schools, as they stand, are not built to nurture it.

Children are Creative—School Slowly Trains it Out

Think of young children: they sing without shame, paint without hesitation, dance without fear, and answer questions with raw, fearless experimentation. Robinson labeled this natural courage “taking a chance.” Kids don’t fear being wrong—until school teaches them to.

He said the classrooms stigmatize mistakes so ruthlessly over time that kids internalize a lifetime fear of being wrong. By the time they get to adulthood, most have lost the very instinct needed to come up with original ideas. The organizations - designed by grown-ups raised in the same system - reinforce the pattern.

If you have ever kept quiet in class, terrified to be laughed at, you aren't just imagining things: you're reacting to a deeply embedded culture.

The Global Hierarchy Shaping Your Timetable

One interesting thing Robinson said is that no matter what educational system you go to, the hierarchy of subjects is always the same: mathematics and languages on top of the hierarchy, humanities in the middle, and at the very bottom, the arts.

This hierarchy shapes destinies. A child who loves dance or acting learns early that his gift is "less serious." Even within the arts, dance and drama are undervalued. Robinson's question-"Why not teach dance every day the way we teach mathematics?"-isn't a joke. It's a provocation.

A System Built for Factories, Not Futures

Robinson traced that rigidity back to the Industrial Revolution. Schools were designed to produce standardized workers for standardized jobs - predictable, obedient, measurable. The world has changed completely, yet the education blueprint hasn’t.

Students are still being pushed to pursue subjects that are "useful for work" when, in fact, today creative industries, content, technology, and design drive the global economy. It's the universities that shaped this system to value only academic intelligence; thus, school became a years-long entrance exam.

Imagination, empathy, innovation-those things that cannot be measured in a test-get sidelined.

The Real Tragedy: Talented Students Who Think They Aren't

But perhaps the saddest element in Robinson's argument is this: so many brilliant young people grow up believing they are not intelligent because the system didn't value those things which they excelled in.

For example, if your strengths are in creativity, storytelling, design, leadership, movement, or intuition, the system seldom celebrates you; it quietly punishes you most of the time.

As Robinson says here, it is deeply personal: The problem isn't you; it's the system. The Quiet Erosion of Creativity This is a warning from Robinson because he points to a quiet, slow erosion wherein creativity does not disappear in that instant; it fades away over years of avoiding making mistakes, chasing perfect scores, and learning to fear risk. In a time when every new day reconstructs the world through innovation, we are still preparing children for a past that no longer exists. And that is why Sir Ken Robinson's words endure: not as criticism but as a mirror-a reminder that beneath timetables, hierarchies, and exam schedules lies a truth we can no longer afford to ignore; we are teaching children to fit into a system, rather than teaching them to reshape it.

By: Vilas Anil Chavan
Associate Dean, Department of Forensic Sciences, School of Sciences, 

Aditya University, Andhra Pradesh.

Aditya University, situated on a beautiful 180-acre eco-friendly campus in Surampalem, Andhra Pradesh, sets new benchmarks for higher education by combining traditional learning with innovation and leadership. Vilas Anil Chavan, Associate Dean of the Department of Forensic Sciences at the School of Sciences, shared insights about the university with Edinbox. This article highlights the vision, accomplishments, and distinctive offerings that set Aditya University apart.

About Aditya University  

Established under the Andhra Pradesh Private Universities Act, 2016, Aditya University stems from decades of excellence nurtured by the Aditya Group of Institutions. The university focuses on multidisciplinary education inspired by the National Education Policy (NEP 2020). Its goal is to develop career-ready graduates who are also responsible, creative, and lifelong learners.

Innovation and Campus Life  

Innovation is at the heart of campus culture, evident in the Aditya Innovation and Incubation Hub, which empowers students from various disciplines to bring their ideas to life. This could be through digital forensic tools, sustainable energy models, or AI-driven applications. The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Cell offers mentorship, funding support, and incubation opportunities to help students turn prototypes into real-world successes.

A vibrant student life flourishes through numerous clubs, councils, and student organizations, coordinated by the Directorate of Student Affairs. These activities provide a balanced, intellectually stimulating, and socially enriching experience for all learners.

Academic Excellence and Placements  

Aditya University boasts an A++ NAAC accreditation and has achieved impressive placement results, with over 3,000 students getting placed in more than 260 reputable companies in 2024. The Career Development and Placement Cell combines personalized mentorship, mock interviews, aptitude training, and direct industry interaction to get students ready for the workplace. Specialized programs like Forensic Science and Cyber Security offer practical experience, equipping students to work confidently in justice and cybersecurity roles.

Collaborations and Opportunities  

The university enhances its academic excellence through collaborations with well-known global organizations like EC-Council (USA) and SIFS INDIA, which provide students with international certifications and hands-on training with leading digital forensic tools. These partnerships help keep students informed about industry trends and innovations.

Holistic Development and Digital Advancement  

Beyond academics, Aditya University fosters holistic development through sports, cultural events, social service, and community engagement programs. Its commitment to digital transformation includes smart classrooms, virtual labs, and advanced learning management systems, enhancing the learning experience and broadening accessibility.

Academic Freedom and Mentorship  

Aditya University promotes a culture of intellectual freedom, encouraging students to question, explore, and innovate ethically. Strong mentorship relationships provide individual academic support and personal growth. Peer mentorship in departments like Forensic Sciences fosters technical collaboration and community.

Words of Vilas Anil Chavan

“As Associate Dean of the School of Sciences, I take immense pride in being part of an institution that doesn’t just educate minds but awakens potential; preparing students not only to succeed but to make a difference.”

This detailed profile of Aditya University, shared by Vilas Anil Chavan highlights a university that goes beyond education and transforms lives. With its commitment to innovation, quality, and social responsibility, Aditya University prepares students not just to succeed but to create meaningful, lasting impacts on the world.

By Yugal Sharma
DGM, Digital Marketing
Chandigarh Group of Colleges (CGC), Jhanjeri, Mohali

Education is not just limited to books, classrooms, and exams in today's world.  Education is about learning from the right people and using the right tools. Two things that play a very big role in a student’s success today are mentorship and digital learning. When a good mentor guides a student and technology supports that learning, the chances of success become very high.

The Role of a Good Mentor

A mentor acts like a guiding light in a student’s journey. Mentors help students choose the right path, make better decisions, and stay motivated even during challenging times. A good mentor can inspire growth, boost confidence, and bring out the best in a learner.

If we observe closely, behind every successful person there’s usually a mentor, someone who offered advice, shared wisdom, or provided encouragement at the right time. For most students, teachers are their first real mentors. They go beyond teaching lessons from books, they share experiences and life skills that shape character and confidence.

A mentor listens, understands, and supports. When students feel lost or uncertain about their future, a mentor shows direction. When students lose confidence, a mentor helps them rise again. In short, mentorship molds both personality and purpose.

Mentorship in Schools and Colleges

In schools and colleges, mentorship is more than just teaching. A good teacher guides a student to think better, ask questions, and explore new ideas. When students trust their mentors, they learn with more interest and focus. This bond creates a healthy learning environment.

For example, when a teacher takes time to talk to a student about their goals or helps them find their hidden talent, that’s real mentorship. It builds confidence. Students start believing in themselves. They begin to think that they can achieve something great.

Students who have strong mentors end up doing better in life, not just in studies but also in their careers and relationships. That’s because they learn discipline, hard work, and decision-making skills from their mentors.

Digitalization: Transforming Education

Technology has completely changed the landscape of education in 2025. Smart classrooms, virtual lectures, and mobile-based learning apps are now part of everyday education. Earlier, learning was restricted to physical classrooms, but now students can attend sessions from anywhere in the world.

Digital tools have made education flexible and accessible. Learners can revisit recorded lectures, join virtual study groups, and explore additional topics online. Teachers now use multimedia tools like animations and video lessons to make even complex subjects easy and engaging.

Combining Mentorship and Technology

The real transformation happens when mentorship and digital learning come together. Technology may not replace human guidance, but it can strengthen it. Today, mentors can track student progress through online platforms, conduct one-on-one virtual sessions, and offer personalized feedback.

Digital learning also bridges the gap for students in remote areas, allowing them to access expert mentors and workshops that were once out of reach. Virtual mentorship programs and webinars now bring valuable guidance to anyone with an internet connection. 

In this way, mentorship gives direction, and technology provides access. Together, they ensure holistic learning for all students.

Building Skills for the Future

In the current job market, degrees alone are not enough. Students must develop practical and digital skills relevant to their careers. Mentors play a vital role in identifying which skills matter most, while digital platforms allow learners to develop those skills through online courses and certifications.

For example, a mentor might guide a student to learn data analytics, coding, or communication skills. The student can then find online courses on these subjects, study flexibly, and gain real-world expertise. This combination of personalized guidance and digital access gives students a significant edge.

Challenges in Modern Learning

While mentorship and digital education are powerful, they also come with challenges. Not every student has access to a good mentor, and not every teacher has enough time to provide personalized attention. Similarly, digital education requires devices and reliable internet, which may not be accessible to everyone.

There is also the issue of discipline. Students need guidance on how to use technology wisely. Without proper direction, excessive screen time can lead to distraction rather than learning. Therefore, mentorship remains crucial in teaching balance, focus, and self-management.

Towards a Smarter Education System

The future of education lies in blending the human warmth of mentorship with the potential of digital learning. Schools and colleges must invest in strong mentorship programs supported by technology. Educators need to be trained not only to teach but also to inspire, mentor, and guide.

Students, on the other hand, must stay curious and open-minded. They should embrace both personal mentoring and digital resources with equal enthusiasm. With the right mindset and guidance, any student can succeed in this evolving educational environment.

Looking ahead, technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality will continue to reshape classrooms. Yet, mentorship will always remain the heart of learning. Technology can deliver information, but only mentorship can nurture wisdom, confidence, and purpose.

Mentorship and digital learning together are building the future of education, one that is inclusive, accessible, and transformative for every student.