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Researchers at the <keyword id="55119" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="indian-institute-of-technology" source="Orion">Indian Institute of Technology</keyword> (<keyword id="6354859" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="iit" source="Orion">IIT</keyword>), <keyword id="6357685" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="jodhpur" source="Orion">Jodhpur</keyword> have designed robotic trainers which can be used in physiotherapy to treat lower limb disabilities. According to the team, most existing robotic systems treat patients by performing motions only in the sagittal plane - the imaginary plane that divides the body into the left and right parts. <br /><br />For complete limb movement, sagittal movement is not sufficient and movements in transverse (upper and lower body) and coronal (front and back) planes are also essential, they said. <br /><br /> The team has proposed a robot manipulator arrangement that is capable of providing motion to the ankle in all three planes -- sagittal, transverse and coronal plane. <br /><br />"Complete rehabilitation is possible if the correct sequence of therapies is executed. Robots will be able to do it without getting tired. The robotic trainer we have designed will help provide physiotherapy to paralytic patients, and for those who have spinal cord injuries that have disrupted their lower limb functions," said Jayanta Kumar Mohanta, Assistant Professor, IIT, Jodhpur. <br /><br />The robotic trainer is a brace or a wearable device like an exoskeleton that supports the leg. It has been provided with a <keyword id="2430604" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="cartesian" source="Orion">Cartesian</keyword> (3-directional) parallel manipulator to perform the required limb therapeutic motions. The design will ensure a large workspace to execute the required range of motion therapies. <br /><br />"The usefulness of the designed stationary trainer was confirmed using computer-based simulations along with a motion control scheme by performing various clinically suggested therapeutic passive range of motions. <br /><br />"The design could execute important essential rehabilitation therapeutic movements like abduction (the motion of a limb or appendage away from the midline of the body), adduction (the motion of a limb or appendage towards the midline of the body), flexion (bending movement), and extension of the hip and knee joints," he added. <br /><br />The trainer proposed by the <keyword id="901000" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="iit-jodhpur" source="Orion">IIT Jodhpur</keyword> team is conceptually simple and has a modular mechanical configuration that is easy to fix and use. <br /><br />Furthermore, since only linear actuators are used for the hip and knee motions, the robot itself is stable, safe and robust during use. <br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:</strong><br /><strong><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/qualcomm-announces-snapdragon-xr2-gen-1-that-will-power-the-next-gen-mr-and-vr-devices/articleshow/94810165.cms">Qualcomm announces Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1 that will power the next-gen MR and VR devices</a><br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/samsung-says-will-roll-out-5g-software-update-by-mid-november-in-india/articleshow/94807741.cms">Samsung says will roll out 5G software update by mid-November in India</a></strong>

IIT-Jodhpur researchers design robotic trainers for lower limb rehabilitation

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="http://www.markmclaughlinmd.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Mark McLaughlin</a> practices neurological surgery at Princeton Brain, Spine, and Sports Medicine; he is the author of "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Dominance-Brain-Surgeons-Out-Think/dp/193689162X?tag=bisafetynet2-20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cognitive Dominance: A Brain Surgeon's Quest to Out-Think Fear."</a></li><li>The pandemic and election have thrust the world in 2020 into a state of panic, but Dr. McLaughlin says it's important to override that uncertainty and cognitive dissonance using this simple hack.</li><li>When examining an unexpected event, he breaks it down to map out where it exists in terms of subjective and objective positive or negative outcomes.</li><li>Depending on where it lands, you can use cognitive dominance — or enhanced situational awareness — to transform cognitive dissonance into consonance, and improve your decision-making. </li></ul><p dir="ltr">With the daily challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ongoing social unrest surrounding the nation's racial inequities, many of us are living in a constant state of fear and <keyword id="15418" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="anxiety">anxiety</keyword>, whether we realize it or not. This unique intersection of high-stress circumstances has created tumult in which no one knows what to do or how to do it. </p><div type="image" title="mark mclaughlin 2015 whites" height="1125" width="1500" msid="79004812" hostid="261"></div><p dir="ltr">I can't think of another time in recent memory when I've experienced more <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cognitive-dissonance-2795012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cognitive dissonance</a> — and I don't think I'm the only one. Cognitive dissonance is that mental discomfort you get when struggling to wrap your brain around two conflicting ideas that place values and actions at odds. It's that nagging feeling that something's just wrong.</p><p dir="ltr">For example, while people may realize the scientific value of social distancing to protect collective health and safety, they also just really want to get back to their regular lives. Others might experience cognitive dissonance around race and discrimination, realizing that things need to change yet feeling ill-equipped to make a difference. These competing realities make us conflicted and uncomfortable.</p><h2 dir="ltr">Bridging the gap between dissonance and consonance</h2><p dir="ltr">As humans, we are programmed to seek consistency. Whereas our minds struggle with cognitive dissonance, we thrive when we're able to achieve cognitive consonance. It's a state of harmony between our values and actions when you feel confident that you're fulfilling your life's purpose. You're operating in a state of consonance.</p><p dir="ltr">To achieve personal excellence, everyone must travel that difficult road from dissonance to consonance. But you must create a bridge between these two opposing mental states and that requires <a href="https://trainingmag.com/what-cognitive-dominance-how-it-can-release-you-fear/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cognitive dominance</a>: Enhanced situational awareness that facilitates rapid and accurate decision-making under stress with limited time to make decisions. </p><p dir="ltr">When life throws us a curveball, it induces a natural fear response that can cause us to freeze or freak. But the more constructive way to deal with it is to override these primitive reactions by systematically analyzing unexpected events and taking action based on a more measured perspective. That's cognitive dominance, and it enables us to outthink fear and plot a successful course despite uncertainty. This journey from dissonance to consonance makes our lives more vivid and meaningful.</p><h2 dir="ltr">A simple system for outthinking fear</h2><p dir="ltr">To combat the tendency to freak or freeze when calamity strikes, I developed a simple hack that trains your brain to engage in cognitive dominance under pressure. It's based on a four-quadrant <a href="https://mathinsight.org/cartesian_coordinates" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cartesian coordinate system</a> that will help you navigate the unexpected, think through fear and anxiety, and plan next steps when you don't know what to do.</p><p dir="ltr">I created and refined this system over decades of practicing neurosurgery in order to engage effectively with fear and enhance my professional performance. I also use this approach in my personal life — as a husband, coach, and father — and you can too. </p><p dir="ltr">When you experience an unexpected, stressful event, first break it down to its essential components. Ask yourself:</p><ul><li>Objectively, what are the unmistakable facts about what is occurring?</li><li>Subjectively, what does this mean to me? How do I feel?</li><li>Is this event consistent with my life goals and my purpose, or is it not? </li></ul><p>Then, based on your assessment, determine where the event lands on this four-quadrant system, where the X (horizontal) axis is the objective axis and the Y (vertical) axis is the subjective axis. </p><div type="image" title="image1" height="519" width="579" msid="78108690" hostid="261"></div><p dir="ltr">An event that falls on the negative portion of the subjective axis creates cognitive dissonance. Events that are positive on the subjective axis support cognitive consonance. It's important to understand the qualities of each quadrant so you can quickly recognize which one you're experiencing. </p><h2 dir="ltr">The four quadrants of fear</h2><p dir="ltr">These are the defining characteristics of each quadrant and where they're located on the map.</p><h2 dir="ltr">A subjectively negative + objectively positive event = calm before the storm</h2><p dir="ltr">The bottom-right quadrant is an objectively positive situation that, for whatever reason, has you on edge. It's that feeling you get when you have a great job but fear the axe is going to fall any moment. Or perhaps your new job isn't the perfect fit you expected. In the calm before the storm, you experience a sense of anxiety about the future.</p><h2 dir="ltr">A subjectively negative + objectively negative event = all is lost</h2><p dir="ltr">The bottom-left is the all is lost quadrant, when nothing makes sense and you experience hopelessness, sadness and depression. It's a terminal cancer diagnosis, death of a loved one, loss of your business. When all is lost you might struggle to find your bearings, turning to poor coping mechanisms like drugs and alcohol. </p><h2 dir="ltr">A subjectively positive + objectively negative event = birth of a new skill</h2><p dir="ltr">The upper-left quadrant is the resilience quadrant. You experience an event that's negative on its face but offers positive outcomes. Perhaps you recently lost your job due to the pandemic, but pivoted to an even more rewarding career path. In the birth of a new skill quadrant, you are able to analyze an unexpected event and solve it. And because you've added a skill to your cognitive arsenal in the process, you can contend more swiftly with similar situations in the future. </p><h2 dir="ltr">A subjectively positive + objectively positive event = flow</h2><p dir="ltr">We all want to be in the flow. In this quadrant, the event offers nothing but positive tools to get you closer to achieving your goals. It's the basketball player who can't miss a shot or the musician who nails every note without conscious thought. It's a place of high competence, performance, and craft. In these rare moments, it's best not to overthink things. Go with your gut to operate in the flow.</p><p dir="ltr">Use cognitive dominance to navigate these quadrants, so that you can travel from a state of cognitive dissonance to consonance. The next time you experience a stressful life event, map it in one of these four categories to assess your situation and improve your decision making. It's the next best step on your journey to excellence. </p><p dir="ltr"><em>This article was originally published on Business Insider September 14, 2020.</em></p>

I'm a neurosurgeon. I use a simple mapping hack to keep my anxiety in check — here's how it works.

<br /> At <keyword id="6361456" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Bata">Bata</keyword>’s annual general meeting in Kolkata this month, a shareholder accused manufacturers of being insensitive while sharing the ordeal he has to undergo whenever it’s time to get a new pair of shoes. The shareholder’s feet size is 11. And, shoes that fit him are hard to find.<br />
<br />
He is certainly not alone. There is a major chunk of people whose feet sizes have rendered access to their preferred footwear quite tricky.<br />
<br />
But things could be changing.<br />
<br />
According to Rajeev Gopalakrishnan, group managing director, Bata is running a pilot project to ensure people with large and hard-to-fit feet will have a greater option in shoe styles.<br />
<br /> Apart from Bata, brands such as Puma, Metro, <keyword id="6377547" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Adidas">Adidas</keyword> and Arvind are slowly realizing that their sizes have fallen behind in keeping up with the rise in big-foot demand and amid the sluggish sales and a crowd of brand options, companies aren’t willing to lose even a single customer.<br />
<br /> That's "precisely the reason why we have started tracking lost sales data. To understand why a store lost a customer and for which large size, and ensure those are available," tells Abhishek Ganguly, managing director at <keyword id="567332" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Puma-India">Puma India</keyword> to <em>Economic Times</em>.<br />
<br /> The other reason Puma and other sports shoe makers need to be on their toes is due to the entry of <keyword id="1107287" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Asics">Asics</keyword> of Japan in the Indian market. Through its first store in Delhi, Puma is offering running shoes with extra width variants (2E and 4E), even for the top of the line Nimbus 17.<br />
<br />
Another threat is the online shoe makers, which allows customers to shop around widely.<br />
<br />
The question thus is why have companies not bothered previously? According to experts, incorporating these changes means having to reworking a model, which a lot of time shoe makers are hesitant to.<br />
<br />
"It is a brave step if a retailer increases shoe styles to accommodate larger or odd sizes," shares Sandeep Mittal, Managing Director at Cartesian Consulting with <em>Economic Times</em>. "For higher margins, a retailer needs to optimise styles and not increase SKUs (stock keeping units). Only a company with the wherewithal to manage a large inventory can do it profitably,” he concludes.<br />
<br />
Image credit: Indiatimes

Shoe companies finally turn attention to Indians with big feet

<p><div class="image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source">derekskey via <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/derekskey/9159256442/in/photostream/">www.flickr.com</a> creative commons</p></div></div></p>
<p>ONE of the most perplexing questions of the early 21st century is this: how can the French, who invented joie de vivre, the three-tier cheese trolley and Dior's jaunty New Look, be so resolutely miserable? To outsiders, the world's favourite tourist destination embodies the triumph of pleasure over desk-slavery, slow food over fast, the life of the flâneur over that of the frenetic. Yet polls suggest that the French are more depressed than Ugandans or Uzbekistanis, and more pessimistic about their country's future than Albanians or Iraqis. A global barometer of hope and <keyword id="6358439" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="happiness">happiness</keyword> puts the French second to bottom of a 54-country world ranking, behind austerity-battered Italians, Greeks and Spaniards, and ahead only of Portugal.</p>
<p>Happiness is of course a slippery concept. Asked if they are happy, people everywhere are more than likely to say yes; far fewer say that they laugh much. Gallup, a pollster, has devised a global "positive experience index", based on whether respondents report that they laughed and smiled a lot or did something enjoyable the previous day. By such measures, <keyword id="6354785" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="France">France</keyword> does better than the world average. But take out war-torn or poor countries, and measure the French against fellow rich nations, and they still turn out to be unhappier than their peers. The French report fewer "happy experiences" than those in America, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium. The land of the bon vivant is an unhappy outlier.</p>
<p>Claudia Senik, a French economist at the Paris School of Economics, calls this the "French unhappiness puzzle". In a 2013 study, she found that the French were not only unhappier than their level of wealth and unemployment would suggest, but also more discontented than French-speaking people in Belgium and Canada (so language is not the reason), and more miserable when they emigrated compared with non-French expatriates in the same place (so they take their gloom with them). "Unhappiness seems to be more than about life in France," Ms Senik concluded. "It is something about being French."</p>
<p>Naturally, Ms Senik's findings caused a stir in France, prompting Maureen Dowd, a New York Times writer who was visiting Paris at the time, to report that "joie de vivre has given way to gaze de navel". Le Monde ran three pages under the title "Liberté, Égalité, Morosité", in a bid to decode its fellow countrymen's "persistent melancholy". France, it turns out, has the highest suicide rate in western Europe after Belgium and Switzerland. An American psychiatric study showed that, among ten rich countries, the French were the most likely to have a "major depressive episode" at some point in their life. Even the French language seems to be particularly well stocked--morosité, tristesse, malheur, chagrin, malaise, ennui, mélancolie, anomie, désespoir--with negativity. Can there really be something about being French that makes for so much gloom?</p>
<h3>Fifty shades of noir</h3>
<p>Two periods in France's recent history have contributed most to the rich seam of misery in its culture--one after the revolution, the other after the second world war. In the quarter-century from the fall of the ancien régime in 1789 to 1814, France overthrew a monarchy, endured the Terror, and lost an empire. After this period the Romantic movement, from Baudelaire to Chopin, expressed a melancholy infused with nostalgia and ambivalence towards a society dominated by rationalist thought and bourgeois values.</p>
<p>In "René", a novel published in 1802, Chateaubriand introduced to the world the tortured French youth, whose "wretched, barren, and disenchanted" existence embodied what the writer called the mal du siècle. In his memoirs, Chateaubriand recognised that he had set more of a trend than he had bargained for:</p>
<h3>If René did not exist, I would not write it again...all we hear nowadays are pitiful and disjointed phrases; the only subject is gales and storms, and unknown ills moaned out to the clouds and to the night. There's not a fop who has just left college who hasn't dreamt he was the most unfortunate of men; there's not a milksop who hasn't exhausted all life has to offer by the age of sixteen; who hasn't believed himself tormented by his own genius; who, in the abyss of his thoughts, hasn't given himself over to the "wave of passions"; who hasn't struck his pale and dishevelled brow and astonished mankind with a sorrow whose name neither he, nor it, knows.</h3>
<p>Romantic miserabilism was experienced as a form of pleasure. "Melancholy", wrote Victor Hugo, "is the happiness of being sad." It was treated as a noble state, a higher aesthetic condition. "I do not pretend that joy cannot be allied with beauty," wrote Baudelaire in his diary. "But I do say that joy is one of its most vulgar ornaments; whereas melancholy is, as it were, its illustrious companion." Much of this tradition is firmly fixed in today's French mind. Hugo's poem "Melancholia" is required reading for French lycée students, as is Alfred de Musset's "La Nuit de Mai", whose narrator laments that "Nothing makes us so great as great sorrow."</p>
<p>The strange beauty of melancholy finds some echo in mid-20th-century France, which produced a second wave of miserabilism. Françoise Sagan's "Bonjour Tristesse", published in 1954, for instance, opens with the 17-year-old Cécile's lament:</p>
<h3>A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.</h3>
<p>Yet the ennui that marked this second period had less to do with nostalgia than nausea. In "L'Etranger", Albert Camus's protagonist, Mersault, is perhaps the world's best-known embodiment of anguish in the face of the unknowable meaning of existence, or the absurd. Post-war French theatre developed the absurd, through the plays of Camus, Jean Anouilh and the Franco-Romanian Eugène Ionescu. Samuel Beckett, an Irishman, wrote "Waiting for Godot" in French. On a chilly winter's evening in 1953 on Paris's left bank, two years before the play went on to unsettle English-speaking audiences, it was first staged at the 75-seat Théâtre de Babylone, and struck a chord with post-war Paris.</p>
<p>Neither Camus nor his contemporary, Jean-Paul Sartre, was ultimately a pessimist. But it is the torment of existentialism, rather than its conclusions, that captured the imagination. Indeed, the left-bank literary clique led by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, which gravitated to the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Près, adopted ennui as a way of life as well as a philosophy. When Sartre handed the original manuscript of "Nausea" to Gallimard, his publisher, he entitled his novel "Melancholia".</p>
<p>Perhaps the best exemplar of miserabilism among contemporary French fiction writers is Michel Houellebecq, the controversial Goncourt-prize-winning novelist, in such nihilist works as "Whatever" or "Atomised". His characters invariably lead empty, often sordid, always disillusioned lives. "In the end," writes Mr Houellebecq in "The Elementary Particles", "there's just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there's only death."</p>
<p>There have, of course, been periods during which the gloom lifted. It was after the double shock of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and the bloody Paris Commune, after all, that the Impressionists took their tubes of paint and brushes outdoors, delighting in light and colour. Despite a measure of fin-de-siècle anxiety, the belle époque was a moment of breezy certainty. Gustave Eiffel unveiled his wrought-iron tower in 1889. By 1900 the City of Lights drew 51m visitors to its universal exhibition, under the theme of "Paris, capital of the civilised world", and Matisse, Derain and other fauves had started to capture exuberant colour and warmth on canvas. Yet miserabilism seems to have a greater hold on the French mind today.</p>
<h3>I doubt, therefore I am</h3>
<p>One reason could be the French appetite for brutal self-criticism. From Descartes onwards, doubt is the first philosophical reflex. "The rationalist tradition makes us sceptical; we exist through criticism," argues Monique Canto-Sperber, a philosopher and director of Paris Sciences et Lettres, an elite university. "We treat those too full of hope as naive." In "Candide, or The Optimist", published in 1759, Voltaire mocks the folly of looking on the bright side in the face of unimaginable horrors. "Optimism", says a disabused Candide in the novel, "is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable." When a French magazine recently tried to decode today's national pessimism, it concluded: "It's Voltaire's fault". "We find it more chic and more spiritual to doubt everything."</p>
<p>Up to a point, this is an affectation of the elite. "It is in a certain Parisian milieu that there are intellectuals who are grumpy by trade," argues Jack Lang, the Socialist former culture minister: "There is a gap with the rest of French society." Yet France cherishes public intellectuals, so their influence spreads wide. It is a talking, thinking culture. Its films value dialogue over plot; its talk-shows are interminable. The French, wrote a helpful official guide for British servicemen heading to France for the 1944 liberation offensive, "enjoy an intellectual argument more than we do. You will often think that two Frenchmen are having a violent quarrel when they are simply arguing some abstract point."</p>
<p>The country treats its philosophers like national treasures, even celebrities, splashing photographs of them across the pages of glossy magazines. And it ensures that the canon of French thought is fed to the whole country. All pupils taking the school-leaving baccalauréat exam must study philosophy, and teenagers are examined on such cheery essay questions as "Is man condemned to self-delusion?" or "Do we have an obligation to seek truth?". So if French intellectuals are predominantly critical pessimists, miserabilism may in part be the consequence of holding them in such esteem. Were Americans to pay more attention to the writings of Noam Chomsky and Jared Diamond, perhaps they would be gloomy too.</p>
<p>This critical reflex reaches right into the classroom, generating a further source of negativity. In French schools, for example, the tradition is for teachers to grade harshly, and praise with excessive moderation. Under a nationwide system that awards marks out of 20, a pupil doing a dictée has points (or even half-points) deducted for every error; so a child swiftly ends up with zero. The idea is that all children can always do better. The result is a lack of what the French, borrowing English syntax, call "la positive attitude".</p>
<p>Fully 75% of French pupils worry that they will get bad grades in maths tests, according to an OECD study, nudging stressed-out South Korean levels (78%). A recent government-commissioned report on a small pilot experiment in some French secondary schools, where Cartesian grading had been shelved in favour of a more encouraging system, noted with some surprise that weaker pupils were absent from school less often, more confident in the classroom, and "less stressed when faced with failure".</p>
<p>If the French are life's critics, they are at the same time idealists, and these two make unhappy bedfellows. Thanks to the philosophers of the Enlightenment and the 1789 revolution, the concept of progress towards an ideal society has, despite periodic turmoil and bloodshed, been a powerful narrative in the French mind. The best embodiment of this is the French declaration of human rights. Unlike the American declaration of independence in 1776, which guaranteed the rights of all Americans, the French version 13 years later guaranteed the rights of all mankind.</p>
<p>To this day, the ambition to inspire the world with a secular republican ideal, backed by the spread of French culture and language, stirs political leaders. "France is only itself when in pursuit of an ideal," wrote Dominique de Villepin, a former prime minister, in a deliberate echo of Charles de Gaulle's reference to the country's "exceptional destiny". It is great stuff for myth-making, as De Gaulle demonstrated so masterfully after liberation from Nazi occupation. But when reality does not quite match up to ideals, self-criticism kicks in and misery results.</p>
<p>Left-wing French intellectuals never quite got over the failed revolutionary promise of the May '68 student uprising, nor their disillusion at the declining influence of French thought from the 1980s onwards. Others struggled to reconcile French values with the country's darker moments, notably under occupation. Today, "belief in a better tomorrow has come to an end," says Christophe Prochasson, a French historian. "There is a crisis of progress."</p>
<p>Put simply, the French know that they have enjoyed a fabulous way of life, and are depressed by the thought that neither the French model, nor Europe, seems able to provide the prosperity or the national grandeur it once did. The upshot is that "we are collectively animated by a sense of doom and decline," says Dominique Moïsi, of the French Institute of International Relations. "We have in mind this great nation of ours: the major power in Europe under Louis XIV and Napoleon I, the biggest allied standing army in the first world war. Now there's a sense of 'What happened to us?'."</p>
<h3>The pleasure of pouting</h3>
<p>France is not alone in contemplating its diminished status. Britain had a grand past too. But the post-colonial, post-industrial British do not share the French sense of national depression, partly because they never considered their empire to be part of an effort to export a culture or a model society. And, having accidentally given the world the English language, Britain feels relaxed about its global cultural influence. The contrasting decline of French, once the language of European diplomacy, high culture and polite conversation, is felt as a national wound.</p>
<p>Idealistic France's painful reckoning with decline is therefore quite different to the British approach of resigned muddling-through, argues Jean-Philippe Mathy, of the University of Illinois, in "Melancholy Politics". It is almost, says Mr Prochasson, the historian, a form of bereavement. "There is a very profound pessimism today due to the realisation that France is becoming a country like any other, and this is difficult."</p>
<p>Does it matter? Certainly, France's high suicide rate is a serious cause for concern. Dissatisfaction also makes the French a particularly fractious people to govern, ready as they are to contest, and protest, at the slightest excuse. Confidence too is elusive in a country given to pessimism, making it harder still for politicians to persuade the French to try new ways of doing things.</p>
<p>Yet pessimism has not stopped France from enjoying itself. French hedonism has survived miserabilism--or perhaps provided a refuge from it. Even in the immediate aftermath of the 1789 revolution, the country exhibited a "thirst for pleasure", as one contemporary newspaper report put it: "The stream of fashion, a succession of dinners, the luxury of their splendid furniture and their mistresses, are the objects that chiefly employ the thoughts of the young men of Paris." With firework displays, extravagant fashion, circuses and carousels, Paris at the time, for the rich at least, was all about enjoyment. During les années folles, upper-class American tourists took the steamer to Normandy and then the railway to Paris, drawn to France, writes Harvey Levenstein, a historian, as "a land that was free from American puritanism, where the pursuit of pleasure reigned supreme".</p>
<p>Nor has miserabilism discouraged the French preoccupation with beauty and taste. France does not wear its gloom like a dreary accessory. On the contrary, its culture delights in elegance, sensuality, quality and form: the exquisite hand-stitching on the haute-couture dress; the immaculately glazed tartes aux framboises lined up in the pâtisserie window. The aesthetics of daily life, the art de vivre, remains a source of both grand gestures and small stolen pleasures. It is no coincidence that the two biggest luxury-goods groups in the world are French.</p>
<p>Modern French culture may not have supplied great writers to rival Hugo or Molière, and Paris may lack the buzz of New York or London. But it is hard to argue that negativity has stifled French creativity. Would France have brought the world existentialism had Sartre been a cheerful fellow?</p>
<p>The critical impulse has promoted cultural innovation. Both cinema's New Wave and French literary theory were born of critical reconstruction of what came before. Some of France's most creative periods have followed bleak times: the flowering of painting, literature and science after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, or of the avant-garde in art and fashion after the horrors of the first world war. Christian Lacroix, a French designer, points out that war and revolution in France have been times of "creative reinventions, the moment new forms of luxury come into play".</p>
<p>Perhaps the French need dissatisfaction and thrive on doubt. "There is a certain pleasure taken in being unhappy: it's part of an intellectualism of French culture," says Ms Senik. "Malaise and ennui are to France what can-do is to America: a badge of honour," wrote Roger Cohen in the New York Times recently. Pessimism does not preclude pleasure. All that sitting around at pavement cafés, looking fashionably discontented, can be fun. Optimism is for fools; sophisticates know better. Bleak is chic--especially when opening another bottle of Saint-Emilion and reaching for the three-tier cheese trolley.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Click </span><a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> to subscribe to <keyword id="425741" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="The-Economist">The Economist</keyword></span></p>
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IIT-Jodhpur researchers design robotic trainers for lower limb rehabilitation

PTI

I'm a neurosurgeon. I use a simple mapping hack to keep my anxiety in check — here's how it works.

Dr. Mark McLaughlin

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