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India's luxury airline Vistara flies into the sunset

Indian full-service carrier Vistara will operate its last flight on Monday, after nine years in existence.

A joint venture between Singapore Airlines and the Tata Sons, Vistara will merge with Tata-owned Air India to form a single entity with an expanded network and broader fleet.

This means that all Vistara operations will be transferred to and managed by Air India, including helpdesk kiosks and ticketing offices. The process of migrating passengers with existing Vistara bookings and loyalty programmes to Air India has been under way over thepast few months.

"As part of the merger process, meals, service ware and other soft elements have been upgraded and incorporates aspects of both Vistara and Air India," an Air India spokesperson said in an email response.

Amid concerns that the merger could impact service standards, the Tatas have assured that Vistara's in-flight experience will remain unchanged.

Known for its high ratings in food, service, and cabin quality, Vistara has built a loyal customer base and the decision to retire the Vistara brand has been criticised by fans, branding experts, and aviation analysts.

The consolidation was effectively done to clean up Vistara's books and wipe out its losses, said Mark Martin, an aviation analyst.

Air India has essentially been "suckered into taking a loss-making airline" in a desperate move, he added.

"Mergers are meant to make airlines powerful. Never to wipe out losses or cover them."

To be sure, both Air India and Vistara's annual losses have reduced by more than half over the past year, and other operating metrics have improved too. But the merger process so far has been turbulent.

The exercise has been riddled with problems − from pilot shortages that have led to massive flight cancellations, to Vistara crew going on mass sick leave over plans to align their salary structures with Air India.

There have also been repeated complaints about poor service standards on Air India, including viral videos of broken seats and non-functioning inflight entertainment systems.

The Tatas have announced a $400m (£308m) programme to upgrade and retrofit the interiors of its older aircraft and also a brand-new livery. They've also placed orders for hundreds of new Airbus and Boeing planes worth billions of dollars to augment their offering.

But this "turnaround" is still incomplete and riddled with problems, according to Mr Martin. A merger only complicates matters.

Experts say that the merger strikes a dissonant chord from a branding perspective too.

Harish Bijoor, a brand strategy specialist, told the BBC he was feeling "emotional" that a superior product offering like Vistara which had developed a "gold standard for Indian aviation" was ceasing operations.

"It is a big loss for the industry," said Mr Bijoor, adding it will be a monumental task for the mother brand Air India to simply "copy, paste and exceed" the high standards set by Vistara, given that it's a much smaller airline that's being gobbled up by a much larger one.

Mr Bijoor suggests a better strategy would have been to operate Air India separately for five years, focusing on improving service standards, while maintaining Vistara as a distinct brand with Air India prefixed to it.

"This would have given Air India the time and chance to rectify the mother brand and bring it up to the Vistara level, while maintaining its uniqueness," he adds.

Beyond branding, the merged entity will face a slew of operational challenges.

"Communication will be a major challenge in the early days, with customers arriving at the airport expecting Vistara flights, only to find Air India branding," says Ajay Awtaney, editor of Live From A Lounge, an aviation portal. "Air India will need to maintain clear communication for weeks."

Another key challenge, he notes, is cultural: Vistara's agile employees may struggle to adjust to Air India's complex bureaucracy and systems.

But the biggest task for the merged carrier would be offering customers a uniform flying experience.

These are "two airlines with very different service formats are being integrated into one airline. It is going to be a hotchpotch of service formats, cabin formats, branding, and customer experience. It will involve learning and unlearning, and such a process has rarely worked with airlines and is seldom effective," said Mr Martin.

Still, many believe Vistara had to go − now or some years later.

A legacy brand like Air India, with strong global recognition and 'India' imprinted in its identity, wouldn't have allowed a smaller, more premium subsidiary to overshadow its revival process.

Financially too, it makes little sense for the Tatas to have two loss-making entities compete with one another.

The combined strength of Vistara and Air India could also place the Tatas in a much better position to compete with market leader Indigo.

The unified Air India group (including Air India Express, which completed its merger with the former Air Asia India in October) "will be bigger and better with a fleet size of nearly 300 aircraft, an expanded network and a stronger workforce", an Air India spokesperson said.

"Getting done with the merger means that Air India grows overnight, and the two teams start cooperating instead of competing. There will never be one right day to merge. Somewhere, a line had to be drawn," said Mr Awtaney.

But for many Vistara loyalists, its demise leaves a void in India's skies for a premium, full-service carrier - marking the third such gap after the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways.

It's still too early to say if Air India, which often ranks at the bottom of airline surveys, can successfully fill that void.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ygp1w5eq7o

Sociologists have, until recently, tended to avoid technology. This began to change significantly in the late 1980s with the growth and development of both (physical) IT and the (social) debate surrounding it. In a broad sense, sociologists of technology are concerned with explaining how social processes, actions and structures relate to technology; and in this are concerned with developing critiques of notions of technological determinism. The theories and concepts which have been developed are increasingly recognised as of value to technologists, notably in the area of information system design.

Technological determinism is the notion that technological development is autonomous of society; it shapes society, but is not reciprocally influenced. Rather, it exists outside society, but at the same time influences social change. In more extreme varieties of technological determinism, the technology is seen as the most significant determinant of the nature of a society. What is remarkable about the notion of technological determinism is neither its theoretical sophistication nor its explanatory utility. It is important because it is “the single most influential theory of the relationship between technology and society”, according to MacKenzie and Wajcman (1985).

The reality, of course, is that technologies do not, in practice, follow some pre-determined course of development. Research and development decisions, for example, are significant determinants of the sorts of technologies which are developed. Also, although technologies clearly have impacts, the nature of these is not built into the technology, but varies from one culture to another, depending on a broad range of social, political and economic factors.

Hughie Mackay. Theorising the IT/Society Relationship. In: HEAP, N. et al. (eds) Information technology and society: a reader. London: Sage Publications, 1996 (adapted)

Read text III to answer the following question.

TEXT III

Realities of Race, by Mike Peed

What’s the difference between an African-American and an American-African? From such a distinction springs a deep-seated discussion of race in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third novel, “Americanah.” Adichie, born in Nigeria but now living both in her homeland and in the United States, is an extraordinarily self-aware thinker and writer, possessing the abil ity to lambaste society without sneering or patronizing or polemicizing. For her, it seems no great feat to balance high literary intentions with broad social critique. “Americanah” examines blackness in America, Nigeria and Britain, but it’s also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience — a platitude made fresh by the accuracy of Adichie’s obser vations. […]

“Americanah” tells the story of a smart, strong-willed Nigerian woman named Ifemelu who, after she leaves Africa for America, endures several harrowing years of near destitution before graduating from college, starting a blog entitled “Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black” and winning a fellowship at Princeton (as Adichie once did; she has acknowledged that many of Ifemelu’s experiences are her own). Ever hovering in Ifemelu’s thoughts is her high school boyfriend, Obinze, an equally intelligent if gentler, more self-effacing Nigerian, who outstays his visa and takes illegal jobs in London. (When Obinze trips and falls to the ground, a co-worker shouts, “His knee is bad because he’s a knee-grow!”)

Ifemelu and Obinze represent a new kind of immigrant, “raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction.” They aren’t fleeing war or starvation but “the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness.” Where Obinze fails — soon enough, he is deported — Ifemelu thrives, in part because she seeks authenticity. […]

Early on, a horrific event leaves Ifemelu reeling, and years later, when she returns to Nigeria, she’s still haunted by it. Meantime, back in Lagos, Obinze has found wealth as a property developer. Though the book threatens to morph into a simple story of their reunion, it stretches into a scalding assessment of Nigeria, a country too proud to have patience for “Americanahs” — big shots who return from abroad to belittle their countrymen — and yet one that, sometimes unwitting ly, endorses foreign values. (Of the winter scenery in a school’s Christmas pageant, a parent asks, “Are they teaching chil dren that a Christmas is not a real Christmas unless snow falls like it does abroad?”)

“Americanah” is witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic, both worldly and geographically precise, a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us. It never feels false.

(Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/books/review/americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.html)

Read the text to answer question.

The nature of “Language Input” for Language Acquisition

“INPUT” is a vital concept within language acquisition, especially within second language acquisition. Theoretical models in research on language acquisition typically require the explanation of how INPUT is treated by the learners and the impact on language acquisition.The presence of INPUT, however, does not guarantee acquisition. This is generally understood. Watching 20 hours of Korean drama does not necessarily lead to acquisition of Korean – if that worked, we would have loads of proficient Korean speakers around the world now. Notwithstanding that, we also understand that the absence of target language INPUT also implies no language acquisition will take place for the target language. This should also be easily understood. It cannot be the case that a person who has never listened to a word of Yiddish, to be able to speak Yiddish suddenly.

There are various theories on the psycholinguistic processes of how INPUT generates acquisition. Nevertheless, most scholars agree that INPUT needs to be converted to “INTAKE” before acquisition can take place. Using the analogy of the Korean drama earlier, we may also have heard of examples of learners who seemed to have acquire new understanding and able to use Korean at a slightly different level after watching numerous Korean dramas. Yet, the same experience does not always hold for all others. In that sense, for those who have improved or level up, INPUT has become INTAKE in their minds.

Technically speaking, INPUT is akin to data (in fact, some scholars define input as primary linguistic data) available in the environment that the learner has opportunity of access, and intake refers to the data that the learner actually takes in and process. Just as in data science where processed raw data then becomes useful information, LANGUAGE INPUT that is processed can then become information for acquisition – the psychological region where “new information is matched against prior knowledge” (Gass, 1997:5), enabling the learner to confirm/reject any previous hypothesis or form new hypothesis about the target language. Note that this can be implicit and is unknown to the learner.

The key question then is: What types of LANGUAGE INPUT can then have a higher opportunity of becoming INTAKE? This is one question of inquiry that research has yet to provide very conclusive answers, although there are many influencing factors. As such, the various types of LANGUAGE INPUT to be discussed contribute in different manners to acquisition. We should take note of these types to construct relevant languaging experiences for our learners.

(Disponible in: https://www.languageeducatorsassemble.com/types-of-language-input. Adapted.)

Researchers have unveiled long “hidden” and finely detailed tattoo designs on the skin of ancient mummies from Peru, a study reports. Tattoos were a prevalent art form in pre-Hispanic South America, as attested by the discovery of mummified human remains in the region with preserved skin decoration that date back centuries, and even millennia.

While such body art works can provide insights into ancient cultures, tattoos are known to fade and bleed over time — a process compounded in mummies by the decay of the body. This often means that the original designs are difficult to make out.

In the latest study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers used a technique known as laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF) to examine tattoos on mummified individuals belonging to the pre-Hispanic Chancay culture of what is now coastal Peru.

The mummified remains that team of researchers examined were originally discovered in 1981 at the Cerro Colorado cemetery archaeological site in the Huaura Valley of Peru. The LSF technique revealed “exceptionally fine” and previously unknown details of the ancient tattoos.

The team managed to identify intricate geometric and zoomorphic (representing animal forms) designs that were “very surprising” because they demonstrate a higher degree of artistic complexity than any other existing Chancay artwork, including on pottery and the culture's renowned textiles. The art of tattooing was clearly important to the Chancay, as evidenced by the high proportion of tattooed individuals among known mummified remains from the ancient culture.

Hidden Tattoos Revealed on 750-Year-Old Ancient Mummies: ‘Very Surprising’.

Internet: <newsweek.com> (adapted).

The Benefits of ChatGPT in Educational Settings

Dr. Steve Watson from Cambridge University’s Faculty of Education remarked that “ChatGPT brings both new opportunities and new complexity.” This insight is especially relevant to education, in which ChatGPT can assist both teachers and students, reducing workloads and creating new learning opportunities. Here are key areas where ChatGPT can play a significant role in education according to his studies.

Personalized Learning

Though a digital tool, ChatGPT offers personalized learning experiences. It adapts to students’ unique learning styles through personalized recommendations based on their history. This allows students to receive targeted answers and support in any subject they need help with. ChatGPT also helps students build on topics they’re investigating by creating useful frameworks. Similarly, teachers can use it to craft content specific to their lessons and generate information for classroom discussions.

Virtual Tutoring

ChatGPT functions as a flexible virtual tutor, offering instant support. Unlike a one-size-fits-all approach, it adjusts to the students’ needs and provides immediate answers, which helps to reduce frustration and increases confidence. Students working under tight deadlines especially benefit from this on-demand access to help, as it allows them to solve problems quickly and avoid missing important project deadlines. ChatGPT can also identify areas where students struggle, providing targeted assistance in real time.

Language Learning

ChatGPT can also aid language learners. Like grammarly helps with writing, ChatGPT offers real-time translations, grammar corrections, and pronunciation feedback. Students struggling with language can improve their writing skills and gain confidence in their communication. The platform’s language prompts also make it easier to create targeted content, which is especially useful in foreign language classes. Teachers can fine-tune ChatGPT’s outputs to better meet specific class needs, enriching the learning experience.

Exam Preparation

When it comes to preparing for exams, ChatGPT is a powerful tool. It generates practice questions and gives feedback on student responses, helping students pinpoint areas they need to focus on. This makes ChatGPT a personalized study guide. Additionally, it provides grammar and vocabulary exercises, reducing study time while adding value to each session. These exercises can help students prepare for assessments more efficiently and build confidence.

Writing Assistance

Writing essays or assignments can feel daunting, but ChatGPT simplifies the process. It helps students generate topic ideas, corrects grammar and spelling, and suggests improvements to writing style. Acting like an online editor, ChatGPT streamlines content creation. Beyond basic writing help, it also fosters critical thinking and analytical skills. ChatGPT can process data, mirror human thinking, and deliver responses that help students draw logical conclusions and present their arguments clearly.

Internet: <aprendebrasil.com.br> (com adaptações).