S&T Watch-24: "Secrets of Immortality"

Scientists working on mechanisms that determine lifespan increasingly believe that the secrets of immortality could be tantalisingly close, a survey has suggested. The survey of anti-ageing research has concluded that a longevity pill to "cure" ageing remains a possibility.

Scientists argue there is no known scientific reason why ageing cannot be prevented. The goal is seen as being similar to preventing age-related diseases - PTI.

Courtesy: PTI and The Hindu, Chennai, August 29, 2008.

Wikipedia article on "IMMORTALITY":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality

Grateful thanks to PTI, The Hindu and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Eyecatchers-101: "Ankle Alerts"

Convicted South Korean sexual offenders are required to wear electronic tracking devices around their ankles from September 1, 2008.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Chennai, August 29, 2008.

Wikipedia article on "SEXUAL ABUSE":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuser

Grateful thanks to The Hindu and Wikipedia.

Facts & Figures-44: "Breastfeeding Champ!"

Four-month-old Raul Montoya won the King of Breastfeeding contest held in Lima, Peru, to mar the Breastfeeding Wekk that ended on August 29.

Excerpt from The Hindu, Chennai, August 29, 2008.

Wikipedia article on "BREASTFEEDING":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding

Grateful thanks to The Hindu and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

S&T Watch 23: "Cell Phones Powered by Fuel Cells"

In the near future, you might own a cell phone equipped with a hydrogen-powered fuel cell. The cell phone would come with an insert-ready hydrogen pack and a small solar array for charging.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, August 28, 2008 (From "Snapshots")

Wikipedia articles on "FUEL CELLS" and "PHOTOVOLTAIC ARRAY":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_cells

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_array

Grateful thanks to The Hindu and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Letters-38: "Burning Persons Alive"

1. Burning persons alive is an act of cruelty that only dehumanised people are capable of. The country's competitive strength lies not in unethical leaders but in those who know the difference between right and wrong. - K.G.Koru Kuttan Nair, Palakkad.

2. The barbarous and gruesome killing of two innocent persons during the bandh organised by VHP and Bajrang Dal activists is shocking. This lunatic fringe which is trying to push India into the dark ages should be stopped and the perpetrators of the horrendous acts punished immediately. - Jabez Pradeep Roy Chennai.

3. The Orissa government was sufficiently warned of an outbreak of communal violence in September 2006, with the publication of Communalism in Orissa - the Report of the Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights, headed by Justice K.K.Usha, former Chief Justice of the Kerala High court, Democracy is at stake in a country where citizens live in the shadow of terror. Any form of religious communalism mars democracy and should be resisted tooth and nail, regardless of our political inclinations and affinites. - Fr.Adolf Washington, Bangalore.

4. The violence in Orissa exposes the destructive character of communalism. The attacks on the minorities and their institutions are unacceptable. Violence should be contained at the earliest. Religious leaders should rise above parochial considerations and come forward with a positive solution. - R.S.Sreeram, Thiruvananthapuram.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, August 27, 2008 (Selected Letters From "Letters to the Editor" column).

Grateful thanks to M/s.K.G.Koru Kuttan Nair, Jabez Pradeep Roy, Fr.Adolf Washington, R.S.Sreeram and The Hindu.

A Thought for Today-128:

Grateful thanks to Jon Sullivan and www.public-domain-photos.com for the above photo.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be ignited - Plutarch.

S&T Watch-22: "A new magnetic Carbon"

The newest form of carbon is almost nothing at all - but it will stick to a refrigerator for a few hours. Carbon was known to come in four configurations: diamond crystals, flat sheets of graphite, soccer-ball-shaped cages known as bucky balls and rolled-up cylinders called nanotubes. The new form also consists of narrow tubes, but the tubes are connected in a willowy lattice. The surprise discovery is that nanofoam, unlike the other four forms of carbon, is magnetic. In the first few hours after it forms, nanofoam is attractive enough to stick to a refrigerator. The magnetism then wanes and disappears. It is one of the airiest materials known; a gallon of nanofoam weighs about a quarter of an ounce. - New York Times News Service.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, details not available.

Wikipedia articles on "Nanofoam" and "CARBON":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanofoam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(element)

Grateful thanks to New York Times News Service, The Hindu and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Facts & Figures-43: "Rarest Disease in the World"

The rarest disease in the world, called Kuru or Laughing Sickness, affects only the cannibals of New Guinea and is believed to be caused by eating human brains.

Courtesy: '501 Fascinating Facts'

Pushtak Mahal, Delhi

Grateful thanks to Pushtak Mahal.

A Thought for Today-127:

(Grateful thanks to Jon Sullivan and PublicDomainPhotos.com for the above photo- http://www.public-domain-photos.com/)

Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us self-control is disastrous - Goethe.

India Watch-11: "Rs 900 crore Bribe for Civic Amenities!"

Poor paid Rs 900-crore Bribe in 2007 for Civic Amenities

Police Force Most Corrupt Service: Study

Agencies

The Times of India, Chennai, June 30, 2008

One third of the people living below the poverty line(BPL) in India paid bribes to access healthcare, education and water among otehr basic facilities, says a new study which also dubs the police force the most corrupt among the services surveyed.

The joint study by Transparency International India and the Centre for Media Studies(CMS) in 2007 found that one-third of BPL households paid Rs.900 crore as bribes in the year to avail of one or more of the 11 public services covered in the survey. The services include the public distribution system, hospital service, senior secondary school education, electricity and water supply. Need-based services including national rural employment guarantee scheme, land records and registation, forest, housing, banking and police service.

The "TII-CMS India Corruption Study 2007" revealed that the police top the chart as far as corruption in 11 selected public services is concerned.

Of the 5.6 million BPL households that interacted with the police last year, a whopping 2.5 million paid Rs.2,150 million as bribes for some work or the other and most of them went to the police station for simple registration of a complaint, it said.

Land records and registration services comes secon d in terms of monetary contribution as nearly 3.5 million BPL households paid Rs.1,224 million as bribes. A total of 22,728 BPL households were surveyed across the states throughout the country.

Courtesy: The Times of India, Chennai, June 30, 2008.

Wikipedia article on "CORRUPTION IN INDIA":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India

Grateful thanks to The Times of India and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Environment-11: "Exchange Ten Plastic Bags for a Cloth Bag!"

Exchange Ten Plastic Bags for a Cloth Bag!

Times News Network

In a novel initiative to rid Coimbatore of plastic mounds clogging the city, corporate companies and students have come together to pick up at least 50 lakh plastic bags and instead, hand over 5 lakh cloth bags to the residents - one cloth bag in exchange for 10 used plastic carry bags.

Students from 98 schools and 29 colleges have already collected 35 lakh plastic carry bags from residents.

Students of Sri Krishna College came up with the idea "to give 10 plastic bags and take one cloth bag". They have installed four anti-plastic monsters at public places to warn residents of the dangers of plastics.

"We decided to make this anti-plastic drive a people's movement. We roped in city residents, school children and college students to be our green volunteers," says T.Soundararajan, the Managing Director of CRI Pumps Ltd and the vice-president of Residents' Awareness Association of Coimbatore (RAAC). Leading corporates, including Pricol, Lakshmi Machine Works and Annapoorna Group of Hotels, who came together to launch the RAAC, sponsored the cloth bags for the anti-plastic program.

Excerpt from "Exchange 10 Plastic bags for a Cloth bag", Times News Network, The Times of India, Chennai, June 30, 2008.

Wikipedia article on "Plastics":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastics

Wikipedia article on "Plastics Materials in India":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastics_materials_in_India

Grateful thanks to The Times of India and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

S&T Watch-21: "Diode that detects Bioterrorism Agents!"

Researchers in Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer "Engineering have shown that a new class of ultraviolent photodiode could help in the development of compact, reliable and cost-effective sensors to detect anthrax and other bioterrorism agents in the air. New research shows that ultraviolent avalanche photodiodes offer the high gain and reliability needed to detect these agents and help authorities rapidly contain an incident like the 2001 anthrax attacks. ECE professors Douglas Yoder, Shyh-Chiang Shen and Jae-Hyun Ryou collaborated on this research.

Courtesy: Times of India, Chennai, June 30, 2008.

Wikipedia article on "Bioterrorism":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioterrorism

Grateful thanks to The Times of India and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Eyecatchers-100: "800 Terrorist Outfits functioning in India!"

"800 Terrorist Outfits are functioning in India with the support of other countries" - Mr.Narayanan, National Security Adviser, Govt of India.

Courtesy: 'Ananda Vikatan', Tamil weekly, August 27, 2008.

Wikipedia article on "Terrorism in India":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_India

Grateful thanks to Ananda Vikatan and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Have a Hearty Laugh-5:

"If he (Shah Rukh Khan) is my fan, I am his air-conditioner" - Union Railway Minister, Shri Lalu Prasad Yadav. (Report from a Tamil daily).

Open Access-3:

Open Access-3: Another interesting and informative mail from Mr.Subbiah Arunachalam

Research in Indian academic institutions - universities, IITs, IISc and other deemed universities and national laboratories - is by and large supported by taxpayers' money. But when the researchers finish some work and want to publish it, they give away the ENTIRE RIGHTS to journal publishers. Often these are commercial firms like GReed Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer and John Wiley. As most of these journals are very expensive - some of them charging annual subscription of over $10,000 - most Indian libraries would not be receiving them. As a result work published by an Indian researcher often goes unnoticed by researchers in the same field working in other Indian institutions. Besides the government which supported the research has no claim on its results. I suggest that we work towards mandating open access for all publicly funded research and Indian authors NOT surrendering all rights to publishers when they sign the publishers' copyright agreement.

Incidentally, no research performed in US Government laboratories (such as Brookhaven National Laboratory or Oak Ridge National Laboratory) is copyrightable! We should enact legislation in India to the effect that copyright to all research performed in government laboratories (CSIR, ICMR, ICAR, DAE, ISRO, etc.) will vest with Indian entities (say the laboratories or the council or department) and that all research supported fully or partially with public funds will be made freely available through open access. Faculties in both Harvard and Stanford Universities (some and not all) have voted unanimously to mandate open access to their research publications. The National Institutes of Health in the USA and six of the seven research councils in the UK have long ago mandated open access to all research they support. The Wellcome Trust, a major funder of biomedical research, has also mandated open access for all the research it supports. We need to adopt a similar nationwide open access mandate in India.

I tried to convince the Bioinformatics centres supported by the Department of Biotechnology. We first talked about it seven years ago at the annual meeting held at Pune. The idea was approved, but till this day the DBT has not implemented it, although this topic comes up virtually in every annual meeting of the coordinators of the Bioinformatics centres. I have also written to many other science managers of the country with limited success. Three CSIR laboratories have set up institutional open access archives and it is likely many more will do so in the near future. May be we should alert the CGA!

I request this group to take this up as its agenda.

Best wishes.

Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]

Grateful thanks to Mr.Subbiah Arunachalam.

Letters-37: “Muslims in India-3”

1. Does Shabana know that all Indians are discriminated against for one reason or the other at least once in their lifetime by a fellow Indian? It could be because of anything – language, community, food preference, the State or region to which one belongs, and so on. Talk to someone who has been looking for a house in any of our metros and you will come across stories after stories. A person of Shabana’s stature should have refrained from making statements that can deepen the communal divide. – Murali Saranadhi, Chennai.

2. That Shabana Azmi finds it difficult to buy a flat in Mumbai does not mean that Muslims across India face the same problem. As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, one can say with certainty that Muslims do buy houses or lands in predominantly Hindu areas. The two communities coexist peacefully. – E.Sathyamurthy, Chennai.

3. Ms Azmi would do well to introspect. There could be a host of reasons other than her being a Muslim for her inability to buy a flat in Mumbai. Many of us belonging to the majority community encounter similar difficulties. But unlike Ms Azmi, we do not have the luxury of wallowing in self-pi8ty or blowing them out of proportion. – Premilla V.Nair, Thiruvananthapuram.

4. Muslims perhaps find it difficult to buy or rent houses in Hindu-dominated areas and housing complexes because they are non-vegetarians. But is equally true that bachelors and single women, and people working in BPOs are not preferred as tenants in many cities, including Chennai. The issue, therefore, has nothing to do with religious discrimination. – Surendra Kumar Srivastava, Chennai.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, August 22, 2008 (Selected letters from “Letters to the Editor” column).

Wikipedia article on “Religious Discrimination” and “Religious Intolerance”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_discrimination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_intolerance

Grateful thanks to The Hindu and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Letters-36: “Muslims in India-2”

1. Ms Azmi’s claim that she could not buy an apartment in Mumbai just because she is a Muslim is unacceptable. Is it her case that there is no Muslim in Mumbai who owns a house? She must apologise to the nation for tarnishing its secular image by making such an irresponsible statement. – V.Govindarajan, Singapore.

2. It is difficult to believe that a prominent film personality who has won several national awards is unable to buy a house in Mumbai because she is a Muslim. What about Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and others who are among the most highly paid actors in Bollywood? Are they also having problems purchasing houses in Mumbai? – S.Gurumurthy, Chennai.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, August 20, 2008 (“Letters to the Editor”)
Grateful thanks to Mr.V.Govindarajan, Mr.S.Gurumurthy and The Hindu.

Facts & Figures-42: "Inflation surges to 12.63%"

Rising prices of food items such as fruits, vegetables and milk pushed up inflation to 12.63% for the week ended August 9 from 12.44% a week ago. Inflation was 4.24% during the corresponding week last year.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, August 22, 2008 ("Briefly")

Grateful thanks to The Hindu.

Letters-35: “Muslims in India-1”

1. Ms Azmi’s remark that the Indian polity has been unfair to Muslims is uncharitable. Ms Azmi is the recipient of many government honours. India has had four Muslim Presidents. Many Muslims serve as Ministers and occupy high offices. Bollywood is dominated by the three Khans. Remarks like the ones made by Ms Azmi only serve to widen the social divide. – K.P.R.Iyer, Bangalore.

2. Ms Azmi made no mention of Muslim women who have been discriminated against in the name of religion in Independent India. How come she did not point a finger at the clergy who issued a fatwa against a rape victim? She should set her house in order before accusing fellow Indians. – V.S.Ramachandra, Visakapatnam.

3. The actor’s comments were uncalled for. Many Indian Muslims, including her, have risen to great heights because of the secular and liberal policies followed by the country. Her comments are ill-timed and come at a time when the country is passing through a turbulent period and the Amarnath Shrine Board row is threatening to divide the people on communal and sectarian lines. – V.Padmanabhan, Bangalore.

4. Ms Azmi, who claims she has been up in a liberal family, has shocked us by saying Muslims are discriminated against in India. If the Indian polity is unfair, how is it that the film industry is dominated by Muslims? – G.Swaminathan, Chennai.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai (Letters to the Editor).

Wikipedia article on “Islam in India”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslims_in_India

Grateful thanks to The Hindu and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Random Thoughts-13: Indian Independence Day

India celebrates its 61st Independence day today.

We have been through many, many difficult and some turbulent times. With corrupt, self-serving and bungling politicians on the one side; arrogant, callous and indifferent government officials on the other side; and submissive, easily-intimidated, easily-forgetting and cynical public on yet another side, makes one despair of the future and one is inclined to be hopeless and pessimistic. But still, there are silver linings. There has been tremendous progress on some areas like IT. There has been progress at snail's pace in some other areas. There has been backslidings.

My personal feeling is that the fundamental problem, from which arise all other problems, is nobody really cares about "WAYS AND MEANS" . Whatever you want, you want to get it "SOMEHOW". If only all of us realize that ways and means are equally, if not more important than the goals themselves, our country will be a great country. Come to think of it, it is not just in India but everywhere else one encounters the same problem.

In spite of all these, we have remained a democracy. That itself is a great achievement, though we are far from perfect and a long way to go before we can be really proud of ourselves.

On this happy occasion, my hearty greetings to fellow-Indians. Let us be optimistic and strive for the best.