Leaf and flower shaped organic solar cells ~~~>> WoW !!!

Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed leaf and flower shaped organic solar cells. An AIST employee displays a prototype model at a solar power exhibition.

Effect of human yawning on pets nearby

According to research published recently, a yawn is likely to set off pets as well. Psychologists found that dogs were far more likely to break into a yawn if they witnessed humans simulating the action.

Dicynodonts, predator dinosaur bones found !!!

Bones of dicynodonts and predator dinosaurs were discovered by palaeontologists in the village Lisowice, Poland. One of the predator dinosaurs is a previously unknown ancestor of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Primate extinction threat worsening

A gorilla sits in its enclosure at London Zoo. Almost half the world’s primates are facing a worsening threat of extinction because of anthropogenic activities, says an international report

Turning waste heat from vehicles exhaust into electricity ~~~>> a wonderful article !!!

Heat harvested: Nearly 60 per cent of the energy produced by a gasoline engine is lost as waste heat.

Researchers have invented a new material that will make cars even more efficient, by converting heat wasted through engine exhaust into electricity.

The same technology could work in power generators and heat pumps, said project leader Joseph Heremans, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology at Ohio State University.

Scientists call such materials as thermoelectric, and they rate the materials’ efficiency based on how much heat they can convert into electricity at a given temperature. The paper was published in Science.

Previously, the most efficient material used commercially in thermoelectric power generators was an alloy called sodium-doped lead telluride, which had a rating of 0.71. The new material, thallium-doped lead telluride, has a rating of 1.5.

What’s more important, according to a Press release by the Ohio State University, is that the new material is most effective between 450 and 950 degrees Fahrenheit — a typical temperature range for power systems such as automobile engines.

Some experts argue that only about 25 percent of the energy produced by a typical gasoline engine is used to move a car or power its accessories, and nearly 60 percent is lost through waste heat — much of which escapes in engine exhaust.

A thermoelectric (TE) device can capture some of that waste heat, Heremans said. “The material does all the work.

“It produces electrical power just like conventional heat engines — steam engines, gas or diesel engines — that are coupled to electrical generators.

But it uses electrons as the working fluids instead of water or gases, and makes electricity directly.”

Pest and disease management in coconut ~~>> read this !!

Coconut is the major crop cultivated by small and marginal farmers of south India, particularly Kerala. This perennial crop is affected by many pests.

The major pests attacking coconut are rhinoceros beetle, red palm weevil coconut eriophyid mite and coreid bug and termites in nursery and diseases are root (wilt), leaf rot, bud rot, stem bleeding etc.

For every farmer, the practical difficulty in carrying out plant protection in coconut is the cost and unavailability of labourers.

However a comprehensive approach in management and plant protection work considering the cost of operation can collectively save the coconut farmers of South India.

Management practices

Open the basins during April-May with the receipt of initial rains and apply1 kg lime and after one week, apply Farm Yard Manure 25kg per palm.

Sow 30 grams per palm green manure seeds of sun hemp or cowpea in the basins and incorporate into the soil during August- September or apply 50-100 kg green leaf manure during June-July or October -November.

To minimise heat load during summer, apply lime solution on the trunk up to a height of 2-3 mts at the start of the season.

Dosage application

Apply one-third of the recommended dose of fertilizer viz. urea - 250 gm, rajphos - 280 gm and potash - 360 gm during April-June and the rest two third, urea - 500 gm, rajphos - 570 gm and potash - 720 gm during September -October

Yellowing symptoms

Apply Borax at 150 gm per palm to those with boron deficiency symptoms like choking and unfurling of leaves during April- May and 500 gm of Magnesium sulphate to the palms which show yellowing symptoms

Clean the crown of palms during April-May. Hook out Rhinoceros beetle adults from the attacked palms using beetle hook.

Fill the inner most three-leaf axils with a mixture of 250 gm neem cake +250 gm sand against rhinoceros beetle and red palm weevil during April- May and September - October

What happens when a SMS is sent to a receiver whose mobile phone is switched off? Where does sms go?

Where does the SMS go?

What happens when a SMS is sent to a receiver whose mobile phone is switched off? Where does it go?

The SMS sent from the mobile takes a route through the callers Service Provider network to his SMSC (SMS Centre) which is nothing but a server and then to the called mobiles’ Service Provider Network and to the called mobile number if it is in a switched on condition that is, in the normal course.

But before sending the message the status of the called number is first found out from the HLR (home location register) of the terminating network. A flag will be set in the HLR if the called mobile is switched off.

Hence the SMSC will not send the message but leave an indication to HLR to call back to receive the message as soon as the mobile is switched on. Till then the SMS is stored in the originating network’s SMSC.

Duration for storing depends on the design, may be for 4 hours or 6 hours or 2 days. HLR in the terminating network is monitoring the status of all mobiles continuously and immediately after sensing a ‘switched on’ condition of the called number.

HLR informs SMSC accordingly and the SMS is sent to called mobile number now.

Why are we not able to see very fast moving objects like a bullet fired from a gun?

While there is some disturbance in electronic items such as radio and land line while receiving SMS or a call on mobile phones, why is there no such disturbance in the radio provided with the mobile itself while receiving SMS or calls?

How to manufacture ginger garlic extract?~~>> lets see here !!

About 1 gm of ginger and garlic each, 2gm of green chilli and 5 litres of cow’s urine and water are taken. The garlic, ginger and green chilli are ground into a paste and mixed with cow’s urine and water. After 10 days the mixture is filtered and used. The prescribed quantity is about 500 ml of this solution diluted in 10 litres of water which can be sprayed over the plants. The ideal time for spraying this solution is during 6 am to 8.30 am and between 4 pm and 6.30 pm. Depending upon the soil, crop and other climatic factors the concentration can be raised or lowered.

Salt in Martian soil less friendly to life? ~~>> lets see ~~>>

NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft has detected the presence of a chemically reactive salt in the Martian soil. Scientific opinion is divided on whether the salt makes the soil less friendly to potential life than once believed.

Sheep death: no test for Bt toxin done ~~>> a dangerous thing for life !!!

Limited studies: The IVRI had conducted limited studies on goats and rats that were fed on Bt cotton leftovers.

“The facility for detection and estimation of Bt toxin is presently not available with us,” notes the diagnostic report dated March 3, 2008 of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), Izatnagar, U.P.

And by stating its inability to test for Bt toxin, the institute has confirmed the worst fears about how genetically modified crops are tested for biosafety in the country.

IVRI is one of the main institutes for testing samples to know the possible cause of death in sheep. It is also required to test tissue samples of dead sheep sent by NGOs.

The story of the institute coming out in the open about its inability to test Bt toxin started last year. It started when hundreds of sheep started dying in 2007 in two districts of Andhra Pradesh after grazing in Bt cotton fields.

Results awaited

The IAVI had conducted limited studies on goats and rats that were fed on Bt cotton leftovers. Though no untoward clinical effects were seen, the “histopathological studies in laboratory rats are under process,” it noted in its letter to the GEAC in June last year. The minutes of the 78th meeting of GEAC (held in June 2007) also make a mention of this.

The minutes of the 82nd GEAC meeting held on January 11 this year noted: “analytical reports received from the IVRI Izatnagar and Department of Animal Husbandry, Hyderabad, have confirmed that sheep death in AP cannot be attributed to Bt cotton.”

Death confirmation

While the minutes of the Januray, 2008 meeting note that a representative of the State Department of Agriculture, Andhra Pradesh, had confirmed the cause of death in the sub-committee meeting held the same day, it is silent on how the IVRI confirmed the findings.

In February, Dr. Sagari R. Ramdas, Director of Anthra, Secunderabad, under the Right To Information (RTI) Act required IVRI to share any reports and analytical studies on domestic animals grazing/feeding on Bt cotton plants. It also wanted the institute to share the reports sent to the GEAC.

No information

The IVRI’s reply of February 25 did not help the GEAC cause. It noted that “Animal Nutrition Division has conducted no experiment on grazing or feeding of Bt plants.” It also noted that “no information on these aspects has been provided to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee by the Animal Nutrition Division.”

And to make sure that no other Department of IVRI had sent any reports, Dr. Ramdas of Anthra under the RTI Act required the GEAC to provide copies of reports submitted to it by the AP Animal Husbandry Department and the IVRI.

The reports provided by the GEAC make a mockery of biosafety testing. It has provided Dr. Ramdas in March this year nothing but the June 2007 letter from IVRI to the GEAC wherein IVRI had stated that the “histopathological studies in laboratory rats are under process.”

No mention is made of any histopathological studies being conducted on goats fed with cotton leftovers! And the letter from the AP Animal Husbandry Department clearly stated that “the results of gossypol and Bt protein analysis are awaited.”

And there is no document to prove, as the minutes of 82nd meeting of GEAC in January claim, that the Animal Husbandry Department had indeed confirmed in the sub-committee meeting that the cause of death cannot be attributed to Bt cotton!

It may be recalled that it was based on these same documents, which were provided to Dr. P.M. Bhargava, the Supreme Court nominee to the GEAC, that the minutes of the 83rd meeting of GEAC in April this year noted “… sheep death might be due to high content of nitrares/nitrites… and not that of Bt toxin.”

In March this year, three sheep were ill and one died in Medak district, AP. “I sent the plant samples and sheep samples after a post mortem as per the IVRI requirements,” said Dr. Ramdas. “And I specifically requested them to test for presence or absence of Bt protein in the samples.”

The plant samples were tested for nitrites/nitrates and alkaloids and the sheep samples were tested for heavy metals, nitrite/nitrate, alkaloids etc. The samples have been tested for everything but Bt protein.

The post mortem results obtained by Dr. Ramdas through another RTI finally helped reveal the institute’s inability to detect and estimate Bt toxin in the samples.

Is there at least a slim chance that the facility at IVRI to detect and estimate Bt toxin which is “presently” not available, was indeed in place earlier?

“We have the facility to test for Bt toxin. The samples sent [by Anthra] were not proper,” Prof. R.S. Chauhan, Joint Director of IVRI told to this Correspondent.

This contradicts the institute’s response to Anthra. Dr. Chauhan could not provide a convincing answer. And if the samples were not proper, it is not known how IVRI tested for other parameters.

Prevalence of dementia in India underestimated ~~>> read this~~>>

Prevalence is 7.5 per cent in Chennai and 10.6 per cent in Vellore, TN

10/66 algorithm used can pick up milder dementia

Memory loss is considered normal sign of aging

Previous studies appear to have underestimated the prevalence of dementia in developing countries, India included. According to a paper published in the latest issue of Lancet, dementia can no longer be considered a problem predominantly seen in developed countries.

The prevalence in India, which was one of the seven low- and middle-income countries studied, has been found to be 7.5 per cent in the urban and 10.6 per cent in the rural population respectively.

The prevalence is arrived at by using a new 10/66 dementia algorithm that is meant for use in developing countries. It is sensitive enough to pick even the mild cases of dementia.

Earlier studies had found the prevalence to be in the range of 1.6 to 3.6 per cent. These studies had used the DSM IV dementia criteria (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental disorders).

The study by the 10/66 Dementia Research Group, an international collaboration with Alzheimer’s Disease International and the Wellcome Trust, U.K., was undertaken in 1,000 individuals (men and women) aged 65 years and older in Chennai (urban setting), and a similar number in Vellore in Tamil Nadu representing the rural population.

The latest study now questions the accuracy of the results of a number of earlier studies.

“Our evidence suggests quite strongly that there is a problem with DSM IV criteria,” said Prof. Martin Prince to this Correspondent over phone from London. “There is a strong evidence of some degree of underestimation by previous studies.”

Prof. Prince is from the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London and is the Director of the 10/66 dementia research group.

With recent estimates suggesting that over 24 million people live with dementia worldwide, and 4.6 million new cases are added every year, the contribution by India can no longer be considered insignificant.

With longevity increasing in India, the number of people older than 65 is increasing. With it come the problems of old-age diseases. The huge population in India does not make things better either.

DSM IV is American-based criteria developed for clinical diagnosis of dementia. “DSM IV has very strict conditions; there should be impairments in memory and other aspects. And these impairments should be serious enough to affects day-to-day activities,” Prof. Prince explained.

Why underestimated

Using DSM IV criteria in the developing countries can lead to underestimation of prevalence due to several reasons.

“So what is relevant in one setting may not be applicable in another society. It is a disability weighted for dementia diagnosis,” said Dr. E.S. Krishnamoorthy, referring to DSM IV criteria. He is the Director of the Institute of Neurological Sciences at the Chennai based VHS. He is one of the authors of the Lancet paper. “The 10/66 algorithm does not place strong emphasis on disability.

Cognition tests

“So when we use this, we see a higher prevalence,” said Dr. Krishnamoorthy. “It is based on a set of cognitiontests .They are reasonably culturally and socially sensitive.”

The 10/66 algorithm, unlike its counterpart, can pick up milder forms of dementia.

In India, memory loss, which is one of the first signs of dementia, is often considered part of the normal aging process. This leads to relatives not considering it as very significant and failing to confirm the problem.

“In many parts of India, the awareness is low. And because of good family support, the mild symptoms are not noticed,” said Prof. Prince.

Mr. A.T. Jotheeswaran, Psychotherapist and Psychiatric Epidemiologist at the King’s College London is now conducting a follow up study of 1,000 people in Chennai to understand the progression of the disease and its incidence.

Construction material using chicken feathers ~~>> chek it out !!

Experimental boards made of a mixture of waste chicken feathers and cement are displayed at the University of the Philippines. The material, resistant to the region’s termites, is a way to dispose of millions of kg of waste feathers.

Innovative aquaculture practices pay dividends ~~> by using sluice structure.!!

The new sluice structure designed doesn’t require much maintenance

Perseverance: Mr. Sudhakaran, shrimp farmer with the sluice structure.

The South-western part of Thrissur district in Kerala accounts for a major share of brackish water fish production. Vellangallur, Azhikode, Kodungallur regions in particular are famous for their traditional prawn filtration units called ‘Chemmeen Kettu’ in Malayalam.

Mr. C.K. Sudhakaran, is a progressive fish farmer in Narayanamangalam village, Thrissur. His shrimp farm has been selected as the innovative farm under the ‘Yet To Harvest’ National Innovative Program of the Department of Biotechnology, Kochi University of Science and Technology.

He adopts semi-intensive culture of tiger shrimps in a pond area of 16 acres and harvests two crops a year.

Harvesting yield

“Initially I was able to harvest only 400 kg of shrimp from an acre. But I was determined to increase the yield and make a mark in this field. By 2006 I have been able to harvest about 2,500 kg of shrimp from a hectare,” he says.

A private shrimp feed manufacturing firm adopted his farm as their demonstration unit and incorporated all new scientific techniques and methods available in shrimp farming such as draining of the pond before the culture period, pre-treatment of water, bleaching, introduction of mechanical aerators (paddle wheel and spiral aerators). But they could not make much headway.

Thereafter Mr. Sudhakaran decided to personally take care of his farm. After considerable thought and labour he designed and developed a permanent sluice structure (a device which controls the water inflow and outflow) which is cost effective and much more beneficial. The sluice structure designed by him consists of a 3-4 m length hollow concrete pipe placed horizontally and earthed.

Easy maintenance

It doesn’t require much maintenance, making it cheaper for the local farmers compared to wooden sluices more commonly used (but require periodic maintenance). Concrete sluices are also used in some farms but the initial investment is high for the common man to bear. According to Joemol .C. Baby, Programme Assistant (Fisheries), Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Kerala Agricultural University (KAU), Thrissur, though there are several fish farmers in the region who practise shrimp farming, very few have been able to harvest as rich a yield as Mr. Sudhakaran.

fish toxicant

Giving details about his farm, Mr. Sudhakaran explains that before each crop, the ponds are drained, bleached for disinfecting and tea seed oilcake (fish toxicant) is applied for eradication of unwanted predatory and weed fishes (small fishes which compete with cultured species for food and space).

Water is pre-treated and the sediment is allowed to settle down in a small pit before the water’s entry into culture ponds. These pits are later used as harvest pits where shrimps get collected while ponds are drained for harvesting, thus reducing labour as well as time, and the quality of the captured product is also better.

Indigenous technique

Manuring is done using cow dung and an indigenous technique common among fish farmers in the region, that is rice bran, jaggery, yeast and micronutrients sometimes along with cooked sardines are allowed to ferment for 24 hours and are sprinkled all over the pond surface.

The culture period (growing time) for the shrimps is about 90-120 days until they attain marketable size. The shrimp seeds (small ones) are artificially fed with supplementary feeds for better production.

Check trays are used to avoid wastage of feed and periodic sampling is done to monitor feeding levels and disease occurrence. Proper aeration is provided using a paddle wheel and spiral aerators.

Water quality

Mr. Sudhakaran takes special care and effort to maintain the water quality. Water quality parameters are tested every week and control measures are taken. Mr. Sudhakaran markets his product at Rs. 300-350 per kg.

For more information contact Joemol .C. Baby, Programme Assistant (Fisheries), Krishi Vigyan Kendra, KAU, Thrissur, Phone: 0487:2375855. email: jojo_joby@yahoo.co.in, mobile: 9388268632.

Umari keerai and global warming ~~> reducing global warming !!

Green plants and algae absorb carbon dioxide

Green remedy: Salicornia, also known as umari keerai, grows on coastal areas and mudflats near the sea. It is a better photosynthesiser than wheat and some other grains.

Some novel solutions are suggested to cope with the twin problem of global warming and increasing energy needs. Global warming has arisen due to climate change, which, in turn, has come about due to the increase in greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide. These gases trap incoming solar radiation and heat up the earth and its atmosphere.

One direct result of this is the melting of polar ice and glaciers, leading to a slow and steady rise in sea level. At this rate of rise, it is apprehended that low-lying coastal areas and islands might be flooded and swamped off.

How has this happened? Not because of natural causes (as some would fondly assert), but due to our burning more and more organic fuel — coal, wood, oil and petroleum.

The way humanity has been guzzling energy during the last century has led to significant rise in the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The gas would not go away from the earth, since (unlike hydrogen or helium) it is too heavy to be pulled out of the earth’s gravity. Hence the greenhouse effect, global warming and sea level rise.

Some look to ways of ‘fixing’ or using up the carbon dioxide. One great way is provided by Mother Nature herself — photosynthesis. Green plants and algae absorb carbon dioxide and water, and convert them, using sunlight, into carbohydrates.

Hence the suggestion: plant more trees, create more efficient algae and spread them all over. They should sponge off the man-manufactured carbon dioxide and reduce global warming.

Scale humongous

Not a bad idea, but the scale involved is humongous. The amount of land that can be used for this is not much, since we cannot usurp areas growing food grains, or where people live in dense groups.

Deserts and arid zones are one possibility. Hence the attraction to certain desert plants such as jatropha and jojoba. They not only help siphon off carbon dioxide but also produce oil that can be used as what has come to be called as ‘biodiesel.’

Indeed, many governments and companies promote such biofarming a bit too eagerly; we need to stop and think of what areas are being taken up (or over), addition to the greenhouse gas burden through biodiesel burning, viability of the oil as an all-purpose fuel and so forth.

There is a spirited and informed debate on this issue, on the Internet.

Focus has also turned to coastal areas and mudflats near the sea, where the salinity does not allow farming of the usual food crops.

Salicornia magic

But there are plants that grow and flourish here. One such plant is salicornia, also called sea asparagus, or umari keerai.

In the U.S., one Dr. Carl Hughes of the Environmental Research Lab of the University of Arizona (and head of the non-profit Seawater Foundation) has keenly advocated propagating it. He has suggested diverting seawater inland into coastal lakes where salicornia can be farmed.

Why salicornia? First of all, its tips are edible, not just by animals but also by us. The plant yields oil that is edible (rich in polyunsaturates), and usable as biodiesel. The September 5, 2003 issue of The Hindu carries an informed report, by its Agriculture Correspondent, on salicornia.

Better photosynthesizer

And salicornia is a better photosynthesizer than wheat and some other grains. It uses what botanists call the C-4 pathway, converting the captured carbon dioxide first into compound containing four carbons (oxaloacetate), using the enzyme PEPCase.

Wheat can only convert the same gas into a one carbon less, C-3 molecule (phosphoglycerate), using the enzyme RUBISCase.

Salicornia (like sugarcane) laps up carbon dioxide better, does so in saline water, and gives oil (or biodiesel, if you wish).

The Central salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI) at Bhavnagar, Gujarat, has been working on salicornia (and jatropha too) for some time now. Its Director, Dr. Pushpito Ghosh, points out that apart from the oil, the plant produces several other valuable products.

Indeed, he suggests using salicornia oil, not neat, but as a blend with others, since this way it keeps better and also it suits our tastes better.

Byproduct salt

One other interesting product that comes out of the plant is its salt, which contains a small but nutritionally adequate amount of potassium.

CSMCRI has also found a nitrogen- fixing microbe that is symbiotic with salicornia, which is salt-tolerant; a double whammy of carbon and nitrogen fixing set up in one. And they have taken a patent on a molecule that the plant produces which is antibacterial.

This is all well, but would it not be very useful if we could grow food grains that are salt-tolerant? That would be a boon to tsunami-hit and brackish areas. Professor HY Mohan Ram of Delhi reminds us of such a rice variety that used to be grown in Kerala.

The Manila-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has a stock of 40 strains of rice, which can tolerate salty growing conditions. Some of these varieties are currently being evaluated at Karnal in Haryana.

A new Theory of chicken migration is here ~~>> have a look !!!

A new study of DNA from ancient and modern chickens has shed light on the controversy about the extent of pre-historic Polynesian contact with the Americas.

The study questions recent claims that chickens were first introduced into South America by Polynesians, before the arrival of Spanish chickens in the 15th century following Christopher Columbus.

It is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S. by an international research group, including scientists from the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD).

ACAD Director Professor Alan Cooper says there has been considerable debate about the existence and degree of contact between Polynesians and South Americans, with the presence of the sweet potato throughout the Pacific often used as evidence of early trading contacts. “Similarly, Polynesians are known to have spread chickens across the Pacific at least as far as Easter Island, but were not thought to have introduced them to South America,” he says

A recent study claimed to have found the first direct evidence of a genetic link between ancient Polynesian and apparently pre-Columbian chickens from archaeological sites in Chile, supporting the idea that there was extensive contact between Polynesia and South America and that chicken and ‘chips’ had been traded in opposite directions.

The current work, according to a University of Adelaide press release, challenges this conclusion however, by generating DNA data from 41 native Chilean chicken specimens, and comparing these with over 1,000 modern domestic chickens from around the world, and the previously published DNA from Polynesian and Chilean chicken bones.

No evidence

“The results showed that the ancient Polynesian and Chilean chickens possessed a genetic sequence that is the most common in the world today, the so-called ‘KFC’ gene” Professor Cooper says. “This sequence would undoubtedly have been common in the early Spanish chickens, and therefore provides no evidence of Polynesian contact.

So while we can say the KFC chicken was popular amongst early Polynesian voyagers, we certainly can’t use it as evidence for trade with South America”.

High pressure water technology kills bugs ~~>> have a look !!!

Dr. George Flick Jr, a Virginia Tech researcher, inspects fruit and vegetables processed with special high pressure water equipment. The technology promises to kill food-poisoning bugswithout sacrificing quality.

The energy emitted during lightning can be Tapped~~~>> read this and believe it!!

What is the quantum of energy liberated during lightning? Can it be tapped and stored?

Lightning is an atmospheric electrical phenomenon in which a huge amount of charge is transferred from one location to another as guided by the electrostatic potential difference between different points in the clouds and the earth, in a short time. The cloud-to-ground strikes make a very large electrical current (tens of kilo amperes) flow along an extremely large potential difference.

An enormous amount of energy is involved in the process. The amount of energy, of course, varies from one to another lightning, but a typical value has been estimated to be in the range of about one billion Joules. This enormity of the natural energy has made physicists wonder on how to harness and utilize this.

The possible way is perhaps to collect and store the charge of the lightning, by using a conducting device fixed at a suitable height and running to the earth.

But one of the main problems is that lightning occurs randomly. Also, it has been observed that there are a few places (like Florida and some places in the polar Scandinavia), where lightning events are more frequent than in other places.

Good amount of understanding of the different characteristics of lightning have been achieved through systematic studies. One important finding is that the frequency of lighting increases with the height and sharpness of the conducting point on earth.

Using this information, ‘lightning capturers’ have now been designed. These are essentially towers of about 30 metres height and support a thick conducting strip meant to carry the charge to a huge capacitor bank. In order to make this method effective, an array of a larger number of such towers must be erected in the susceptible locations.

Further, scientists have designed methods of ‘calling’ a lightning from potential cloud masses. This is accomplished by shooting a cloud by a powerful laser beam, which ionizes a straight conducting track in the atmosphere connecting the cloud and the station.

Though these efforts have yielded success both in the experimental and prototype designs; apprehension on feasibility of using lightning power is often expressed due to its natural inconsistency of predictability. However, a few commercial ventures for harnessing this energy have been initiated. Further progress in this direction is expected in the future.

Remote sensing the lunar surface features have been added in chandrayaan 1

ISRO’s Chandraayan-1 satellite, India’s first mission to the Moon, is to be launched in September. It will study lunar surface features in 3D, visible, near-infrared, X-ray and low energy gamma rays.

Remote sensing the lunar surface features have been added in chandraayan 1

ISRO’s Chandraayan-1 satellite, India’s first mission to the Moon, is to be launched in September. It will study lunar surface features in 3D, visible, near-infrared, X-ray and low energy gamma rays.

Radio-controlled toy robot to hit the market ~~~>> a gr8 news!!

A boy uses a radio controller to instruct a robot called ‘G-Dog’ to stand on its back legs. Radio-controlled model car maker HIP Japan will market the toy robot, jointly developed with Futaba Corporation, this summer.

Sunscreen protection for walnuts!!~~>> go natural

Sunscreen protected walnuts are seen in Exeter, California. Climate change, ozone depletion and droughts in California & Australia force farmers to use sunscreen to alleviate sun damage.

CT scans can cause medical device malfunction~~>>watch out !!

The FDA has received a few reports of adverse events in which CT scans interfered with electronic implants or externally worn drug infusion pumps

Now more patients have implanted or externally worn electronic medical devices

Higher dose rates from the new generation of CT scanners may be a reason

Operator’s responsibility: The CT operator must initially use CT scout views, which use only minimum dose, to see for any implanted medical devices in the patient.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) alerted health professionals in U.S. to the possibility that x-rays used during CT examinations may cause implanted and external electronic medical devices to malfunction (FDA, July 14, 2008)

FDA assured that most patients with electronic medical devices undergo CT scans without any adverse consequences. It has received a few reports of adverse events in which CT scans may have interfered with electronic devices such as pacemakers, defibrillators, neurostimulators and implanted or externally worn drug infusion pumps.

More extensive usage

Institutions use CT scans more extensively now; healthcare professionals have started noticing the few incidents. Higher dose rates from the new generation of CT scanners may be another reason. Now more patients have implanted or externally worn electronic medical devices. FDA continues to investigate this issue with the cooperation of manufacturers. Reports to the FDA indicated unintended “shocks” (stimuli) from neurostimulators, malfunctions of insulin infusion pumps, transient changes in pacemaker output pulse rates caused by x-rays from CT scans.

No deaths reported

Till now, FDA has not received any reports of deaths from CT scanning of medical devices. In one study, researchers found transient malfunctioning of pacemakers due to CT examinations in six out of 11 patients as indicated by their ECGs during the CT examinations. They examined the effect of CT on a pacemaker in a human body model with and without shielding by rubber or lead. X-rays from CT equipment caused the malfunctioning as they could show that lead shielding prevented it (Circulation Journal, 2006). In another study, researchers exposed 21 devices to X rays from CT scanners.

They found malfunctioning in 20 out of 21 devices at maximum dose levels and in 17 out of 21 at typical dose levels. Two devices inhibited for more than 4 seconds in spiral mode at clinical dose levels (Radiology, 2007). Effects occurred only if the x-ray beam passed directly over the device.

In another investigation, an implanted neurostimulator unit give the patient a shock when he was scanned (CT) in that area (Health Services, 2007).

Millions of Americans are now fitted with devices which use electrical currents to help various organs overcome functional deficits (chicagotribune.com. July 14, 2008). We do not have any data on the availability of such devices in India. But it is better to be cautious about them. If patients are fitted with any device, they must bring it to the notice of the CT operator.

FDA recommended that the CT operator must initially use CT scout views to see for any implanted or externally worn medical devices, if any, in the patient. CT scout views use minimum dose.

Precautionary steps

If it is present, they must identify its location relative to the area to be scanned. They must determine the type of the device; if possible, they may remove the external device out of the scan range. They may ask patients with neurostimulators to switch them off temporarily while the scan is done.

The x-ray operator must minimize x-ray exposure to the device by using the minimum tube current consistent with image quality.

They must make sure that the x-ray beam must not dwell over the device for more than a few seconds (FD, 2008).

“For CT procedures that require scanning over the medical device continuously for more than a few seconds, as with CT perfusion studies or interventional exams, attending staff should be ready to take emergency measures to treat adverse reactions if they occur”, FDA cautioned

What is issued now is a Preliminary Public Health Notification when the available information and the agency’s understanding of the issue are still evolving. FDA will revise the Notification, as new information emerges (FDA, July14, 2008).

Astronaut selection process gets under way at ISS

Space sojourns: Future astronauts will have to undergo extended stays on the International Space Station.

NASA’s astronaut selection officials are busy screening applications for astronaut positions with the training for newly inducted astronaut-trainees slated to begin in early 2009. What is new about this year’s selection procedure?

As the space shuttle program is to be discontinued in 2010, the focus is now on those who meet the requirements for extended stays onboard the International Space Station. It is also about training them for manned missions to the moon (including long stays on the moon) which are part of NASA’s 21st century Vision for Space exploration, said NASA spokesperson Kylie Clem in an email communication to this Correspondent.

Space exploration, which has come a long way since the first manned spaceflights began in 1959, has needed astronauts with changing qualities as man’s stays in outer space became longer and longer (starting with the Apollo Lunar missions and later with the space shuttle program and the development of the International Space Station) and spacecraft and missions became more and more complex.

NASA, which at first looked at candidates with military jet aircraft flying experience only, had to tap from a varied pool of specialists that included engineers, doctors and scientists as well. Applicants without piloting backgrounds were selected as astronauts as early as 1965.

“By 1964, requirements had changed, and emphasis was placed on academic qualifications; in 1965, six scientist astronauts were selected from a group of 400 applicants who had a Doctorate or equivalent experience in the natural sciences, medicine, or engineering,” she noted.

In 2004 NASA also included people with educator backgrounds for selection as potential astronauts and this trend continues. The reason, according to her, is, besides becoming full-fledged astronauts, they can also lead NASA in the development of new ways to connect space exploration with the classroom and inspire students to consider careers in math, science, engineering and technology and maybe, some day join the US space program. “They are still required to have the appropriate academic qualifications,” Ms. Clem clarified.

One of criteria

Another important change in the selection criteria for the latest class of astronauts is that refractive surgical procedures of the eye — PRK, epi-LASIK, LASEK and LASIK — are now allowed, providing at least one year has passed since the date of the procedure with no permanent adverse after effects.

This has evolved over the last decade from the scientific operation experiences of the US Armed Services, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration and Civilian Aerospace Medicine communities, noted Ms. Clem.

Improving soil fertility ~~!! read this !!~~

Is there any simple method to make a four-acre land more fertile?

You can grow multiple short term crops and plough them back into the soil. Repeat this method and after 200-300 days you will find your soil slowly improving. For more details you can contact Mr. M. Sethuraman, Kidathalaimedu, Kali post, Mayiladuthurai 609 811, Tamil Nadu, Phone: 04364-236467, mobile: 9442529384.

Farmers must market their produce to become competitive ~~>>see this!!

The villagers do not have a proper marketing channel to help them

Welcome trend: Farmers of Kothia village in Samastipur district, Bihar seen in front of the village entrance. —

At a time when a debate is raging on whether organic farming can produce enough food to feed the world, compared to chemical farming, experts point to the fact that organic practices definitely bring down the input costs required for cultivation (though some say they are labour intensive).

Fertilizer shortage

Especially now, when there is a shortage of fertilizers and farmers find it difficult to get it from even government shops, organic manures and inputs seem to have gained an upper hand.

Kothia village of Samastipur district, located on Tajpur-Patna state highway at a distance of about 22 kms from Rajendra Agricultural University, Pusa, passes of just any other village.

But, on interacting with the villagers, one can understand that the village is totally chemical free and the farmers there have been practising organic agriculture forseveral years now.

Majority small scale

More than 90 per cent of the farmers have land holding less than one hectare and manufacture vermi-compost, and grow crops such as brinjal, guava, banana, cucumber and tubers throughout the year (4 crops in a year).

According to Mr. Ramadhar, Chairman, State Farmers Commission, Bihar, the farmers of Kothia village are being regularly trained by scientists of the Rajendra Agricultural University, Pusa, on the benefits of integrated farming system for management of sustainable soil health.

“The most common cropping sequence that is followed by most of us is potato, maize, elephant foot yam and pointed gourd. Besides these brinjal, guava, banana and cucumber are also grown,” said Mr. P.M. Singh, an organic farmer,

“I spend about Rs 60,000 for growing the crops on an acre of land and am able to earn a net income of about Rs 1.22 lakhs from them.

No marketing

I would have earned more if there had been a proper marketing channel for organic products in our state,” he said. All the farmers voice the same view.

“There is no use asking farmers to adopt organic practices for growing crops and not help them in marketing. We are also not able to sell the items at a good price because people prefer to buy the same products grown chemically at a cheaper price. So we are forced to sell our produce at the same rate as that of others,” said Mr. K.P. Sharma, the village headman.

No choice

At present, the farmers sell their produce along with those grown using chemical fertilizers in the market. The Farmer’s Commission has been trying its best to encourage and motivate many villages in the State to adopt organic practices.

“We are trying to locate institutions which are engaged in issuing organic certification and marketing of organically produced agricultural commodities.”

“We have also, through several meetings, urged the farmers to take up marketing on their own,” said Mr. R.K.P. Singh, member of the Commission.

Come forward

“Farmers should evolve from being only growers of crops to marketers of their produce. They can form cooperatives, self help groups and start marketing. There is no use blaming the government or lamenting about the absence of a proper market. Only when they come forward to market their produce, can this problem of marketing be solved,” said Mr. Ramadhar.

Mr. Ramadhar can be reached at Pant Bhawan, 1st Floor, Bailey Road, Patna- 800001, e-mail: ramadhar@vsnl.com and kisanayog@gmail.com, phone:0612-2206169 and 2232847.

new hard disc technologies to get more big~~>>seagate,ibm

A case of complementing or competing technologies?

Real or virtual?: IBM’s 1 TB tape drive (top) and Seagate’s 1.5 TB hard disk.

Agigabyte is so `yesterday.' With personal computer storage, even for lay customers, crossing the lakshman rekha of one terabyte or a thousand gigabytes; with enterprise users being offered petabytes or 1000 terabytes at a time of hard disk space, physical storage seems to be hurtling along an unstoppable growth path. But a quiet undercurrent in what is now called `Cloud computing', looks like slowing this headlong rush.

Increasingly, users are being offered vast storage facilities on the Web - virtual storage which they can call their own, but which can be accessed only when one is `online'.

Many Web players offer anything from 2 to 4 gigabytes of free storage on the Web and if it is a specialist site like photo sharing, the storage is `unlimited'. You get to decide which portions of your virtual disk are private, and which you would like to share with select friends, or just anybody.

The new generation

The new generation of ultra small form factor PCs which are variously called NetBooks or Mobile Internet Devices, come with semiconductor Flash storage - which is currently limited to some thing like 4-8 GB.

So it makes sense for such users to store the bulk of their files in one of these virtual spaces as well as using Webbased rather than PC-based office tools.

The major players in the traditional disk and tape based storage industry, clearly believe in the adage "if you can't fight them, join them."

In recent months, EMC, one of the biggest players at the enterprise end of physical storage, acquired Iomega, a company whose products address the consumer hard drive market; as well as Mozy, an online back up service( www.mozy.com ).

Now Iomega hard disk buyers are being offered complementary space at Mozy's web address to keep back-up copies of their hard drive content. On Monday, Mozy announced that it had doubled its customer base just in the first half of 2008, to some 750,000 users who have entrusted 7.6 billion files to its 10-petabyte online storage vaults.

However tape players are not about to roll over and die: Just this month, both IBM and Sun laid claim to having developed the world's first 1- TB tape drive: IBM's TS1130 improved on its previous 700 GB tape offering; while Sun's StorageTek T10000B Fibre Channel Tape drive, doubled its capacity from a previous 500 GB.

They claimed data delivery rates in the region 120-160 MBPS, which would cut by half, the time taken for typical data backup on tape. At these capacities and speeds, tapes don't come cheap, they were priced around $38,000.

Meanwhile Seagate, a player in the middle of the disk spectrum, announced last month, that it had shipped its billionth hard drive and would ship its next billion within five years. extremely rapid escalation.

1.5 terabyte PC

On July 15, Seagate shipped the world's first 1.5 terabyte desktop PC drive, the Barracuda 7200.11 and also delivered the highest capacity drives for notebooks, the miniature 2.5 inch diameter Momentus 5400.6 and 5400.4 with half a terabyte each.

Today's terabyte drives have brought down the unit cost of disk storage to onefive- thousandth of a cent per MB ($0.00022 / MB).

Clearly both disk and tape technologies are doing well and there are strong protagonists for both options.

The hottest discussions meanwhile, have shifted to second guessing future storage trends: The virtues of virtualization: many physical storage units acting as a single virtual entity; Fibre channel versus gigabit Ethernet as the dominant storage standard; De-duplication: cutting out redundant data in multiple storage locations.And increasingly, the slow inroads made by Flash as a third technology option for storage.

Storage leader

That Flash has a future beyond the ubiquitous `thumb' or USB drive was evident when a storage leader like Sun announced that it would use Flash in its server storage; even as EMC has begun shipping solid state (that is, Flashbased) disk arrays for its corporate customers.

Other innovations include Western Digital's MyBook Mirror dual storage system, where the data is continuously saved twice, on each of two internal disk drives, of 1TB or 2TB capacity, thus making backup an automatic process.

Western Digital has evangelized the need for not just bigger and faster drives but `greener' drives, consuming less power. This is a pan-industry concern and one fall out is that data centres may soon retrofit more energy-efficient drives that run a bit slower.

Harvesting Saharan solar power for Europe~~>>read this !!

Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region’s renewable energy.

Harnessing the power of the desert sun is at the centre of an ambitious scheme. The plan is to build a Euro 450 billion European supergrid that would allow countries across the continent to share electricity from abundant green sources such as wind en ergy in the UK and Denmark, and geothermal energy from Iceland and Italy.

The idea is gaining growing political support in Europe with Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy recently backing the north African solar plan.

Speaking recently at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission’s Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3 per cent of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to provide all of Europe’s energy needs.

Three times more

Because the sunlight is more intense, solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in northern Africa could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe.

The idea of developing solar farms in the Mediterranean region and north Africa was given a boost by President Sarkozy of France earlier this month when he highlighted solar farms in north Africa as a key part of the work of his newly formed Mediterranean Union.

Scientists working on the project admit that it would take many years and huge investment to generate enough solar energy from north Africa to power Europe.

But they envisage that by 2050 it could produce 100 GW, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK.

dinosaur soft tissues are biofilms, shows study~~~>>>

Structures too common to be preserved tissue Gas bubbles indicated methane producing bacteria

Paleontologists in 2005 hailed research that apparently showed that soft, pliable tissues had been recovered from dissolved dinosaur bones, a major finding that would substantially widen the known range of preserved biomolecules.

But new research challenges that finding and suggests that the supposed recovered dinosaur tissue is in reality biofilm — or slime.

Opinion changed

“I believed that preserved soft tissues had been found, but I had to change my opinion,” said Thomas Kaye, an associate researcher at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington. “You have to go where the science leads, and the science leads me to believe that this is bacterial biofilm.”

The original research, published in Science magazine, claimed the discovery of blood vessels and what appeared to be entire cells inside fossil bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

The scientists had dissolved the bone in acid, leaving behind the blood vessel- and cell-like structures, according to a University of Washington press release.

But in a paper published in PloS One, a journal of the open-access Public Library of Science, Kaye and his co-authors contend that what was really inside the T. rex bone was slimy biofilm created by bacteria that coated the voids once occupied by blood vessels and cells.

He likens it to what would happen if you left a pail of rainwater sitting in your backyard. After a couple of weeks you would be able to feel the slime on the inner walls of the bucket.

“If you could dissolve the bucket away, you’d find soft, squishy material in the shape of the bucket, and that’s the slime,” Kaye said. “The same is true for dinosaur bones. If you dissolve away the bone, what’s left is biofilm in the shape of vascular canals.”

In addition to the acid bath procedure used in the previous work, Kaye added examination by electron microscope before the bones were dissolved.

The researchers found that what previously had been identified as remnants of blood cells, because of the presence of iron, were actually structures called framboids, microscopic mineral spheres bearing iron.

“We determined that these structures were too common to be exceptionally preserved tissue. We realized it couldn’t be a one-time exceptional preservation,” Kaye said.

Gas bubbles

Using an electron microscope, the researchers saw coatings on the vascular canal walls that contained gas bubbles, which they associated with the presence of methane-producing bacteria. In addition, they found small troughs, or channels.

Study at high magnification revealed the channels had rounded bottoms and bridged each other, indicating they were organically created, likely by bacteria moving in a very thick solution.

Latecomers to the universe~~~~>> read this~~~>>

A frequent sign of the maturity of a spiral galaxy is the formation of a ribbon of stars and gas that slices across the nucleus, like the slash across a ‘no smoking’ sign.

In a landmark study of more than 2,000 spiral galaxies from the largest galaxy census conducted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers found that so-called barred spiral galaxies were far less plentiful 7 billion years ago than they are t oday, in the local universe.

The study’s results confirm the idea that bars are a sign of galaxies reaching full maturity as the ‘formative years’ end.

The observations are part of the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS).

This new detailed look at the history of bar formation, made with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, provides clues to understanding when and how spiral galaxies formed and evolved over time.

A team found that only 20 percent of the spiral galaxies in the distant past possessed bars, compared with nearly 70 per cent of their modern counterparts.

Hybrid pigeon pea developed for rain fed areas ~~~>gr8 news !!

Red gram or pigeon pea is an important pulse crop of India where it is grown on about 3.5 million hectares.

It is a favourite dhal (tuar or arhar) of Indian cuisine and is suitable for rain fed agriculture because it is drought tolerant, needs minimum inputs and produces reasonable yields .

Breakthrough

Over the past 50 years, pigeon pea productivity has not increased in spite of several new varieties being released. To achieve a breakthrough in yield, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) developed an innovative breeding technology to develop commercial hybrids in this crop, the first such attempt in any food legume.

After 25 years of intense research, hybrid ICPH 2671 was developed by ICRISAT, and has been named as ‘Pushkal’. This hybrid is suitable for cultivation in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra.

Energy prices

Launching the hybrid for cultivation, Dr William Dar said that the world is witnessing marked volatility in food and energy prices. Reduced global stocks, climate change, rising human population, natural calamities such as droughts, coupled with speculative response to the market signals are a few reasons for spiralling prices of food and other essential commodities.

Developing world

The Green Revolution of the 1970s ignored legumes that are a major source of protein in the developing world. At present the protein availability in India is less than one-third of the recommended dietary allowance.

Since the food production balance in India will always remain in favour of cereals, the issue of protein availability assumes greater significance.

Dr. C.L.L. Gowda, Global Theme Leader, Crop Improvement, said that the hybrid seed technology is ready for take off . The major responsibility now is to take this to farmers of rain fed agriculture.

Lower cost

Since small scale and resource poor farmers predominantly cultivate pigeon pea, it will be important to keep the seed cost within the reach of the farmers, he said.

Dr. K.B. Saxena, the scientist behind this breakthrough, said that the new technology promises to break the yield barrier, which has been plaguing Indian agriculture for the past five decades.

For further information, contact Dr. K.B. Saxena, through email: k.saxena@cgiar.org

importance of nutrition for AIDS patients has been confirmed !!!

An 18-month study on more than 10,500 people with HIV/AIDS in Tamil Nadu found nutritional supplements improved their health

In what may be the biggest study ever conducted in India, the Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society (TANSACS) has found conclusive evidence that providing micro and macronutrients to people living with HIV/AIDS greatly improves their health and quality of life.

The 18-month study undertaken in association with Duke University was started in September 2005 in the State. It was undertaken in three centres, covering 10 districts, that provide anti-retroviral therapy (ART).

It involved the supply of both micro and macronutrients to people, both adults and children, who were on ART as well as those who did not require it. The objective was to study how nutritional supplementation helped in improving the subjects’ health, which in turn improved the socio-economic parameters.

Macronutrient supplements (calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat and fibre) were provided to 10,780 people and micronutrient supplements (Vitamin A, B, C and folic acid, to name a few) in the form of tablets to 11,109.

The results are quite startling.

CD4 count

The most significant improvement was seen in the CD4 count in those on treatment. A person infected with HIV is provided ART only when his/her CD4 count comes below 200.

In the case of those on ART, the CD4 count that was 113 at the time of starting the study, shot up to 309 six months after the supplementation programme, and finally reached 402 at the end of the 18-month study period. In the case of those who do not require ART, the improvement was marginal — 494 at the start to 515 at the end of the study duration.

It must be remembered that CD4 count indicates how good the immune system of a person is. It is particularly important in the case of HIV/AIDS as the virus destroys the very immune system that is supposed to fight it. So a higher CD4 count reflects a strong immune system and hence its ability to fight the virus.

Delay progression

The study has thus confirmed what is well known. Good nutrition plays a vital role in keeping the CD4 count higher. “This will help in delaying the progression of the disease,” said Ms. Supriya Sahu, Project Director, TANSACS.

This means that it will take a longer time for a person to reach a stage where he would require medication. And for those already on ART, an improvement in CD4 count delays the onset of AIDS related health problems.

Apart from improving the CD4 count, good nutrition also helped people gain weight. Weight gain was 5 kg in the case of men and 4 kg in the case of women on ART; it was 4 kg in men and 2 kg in the case women who were not did not need treatment.

“We did not see a direct relationship between micronutrients and weight gain,” said Ms. Sahu.

“The 6- and 12-month results were so very encouraging that we introduced the supplementation programme in all the 26 ART centres in the State,” she said. The programme introduced in March-April 2007 covers 21,000 people who are on ART.

Tamil Nadu has initiated the supplementation programme although it is not a part of the national agenda.

TB co-infection

Good health is not just about keeping the CD4 count higher. A healthy person with a robust immune system is less likely to become actively infected with TB. Though many Indians are infected with TB bacteria at any given point of time, a person becomes diseased only when the immune system is weak or compromised. That is precisely the reason why co-infection with TB is seen more commonly in people with HIV/AIDS.

The study found that as the health of people improved, the rate of TB dropped. Again the most significant drop was seen in those on ART — from 25 per cent co-infected with TB at the start of the study to 5 per cent at the end of the study period. This is only to be expected as those on ART had a weaker immune system. In the case of those who did not need treatment, TB rate dropped from 10 to 3 per cent after 18 months.

Other than TB, the major opportunistic infections affecting people with AIDS showed a drastic drop from 46 per cent to 10 per cent at the end of the study period. The drop was 20 to 10 per cent in the case of those who did not require ART.

Percentage employed

Employment is one of the biggest casualties as health deteriorates. It has been well documented that the ability to remain employed drops significantly as the disease progresses and the person’s health deteriorates.

But with the nutritional supplementation improving health, the percentage of people being employed showed a very significant jump. It had the greatest impact on those who were on ART — the percentage more than doubled from 30 at the start of the study to 62 after 18 months.

In the case of those who not on ART, the percentage increase was 48 to 64 at the end of 18 months.

Analysis of the data showed that improved health was not just about being employed. The number of hours worked in a week shot up from 11 to 31 at the end of one year and then dropped to 27 at the end of 18 months in those on ART. The second group showed a steady increase from 19 hours to 27 hours for the same period.

The increase in the number of hours worked thus resulted in more income generation in both groups — those on ART and those who were not.

In the case of children, the school going status and attendance improved significantly.

In the end, nutritional supplementation is not all about health benefits. It also leads to better psychosocial and socioeconomic outcomes.

“The take home message is simple,” Ms. Sahu said, “one needs to take care of one’s health the moment one gets infected with HIV. Else the CD4 count starts to drop, body weight starts to reduce and there will be increase in opportunistic infections.”

And the cost is just Rs.900 per person per year. “It is very reasonable,” she noted. Of course it is, if one considers the savings that would result from the government not spending money on medicines for TB and other opportunistic infections that would afflict persons with AIDS.

Eye movement controls digital music player~~>> THE FUTURE IS HERE !!!

A researcher for Japanese mobile communication giant NTT docomo, wears electro-oculogram (EOG) sensors during a demonstration of the advanced technology in Tokyo. By moving his eyes, he is able to control a digital music player .

Dye coating harvests more sunlight ~~>watch out ~~>>

Magic dyes: The dyes can double the efficiency of solar cells used today.

A simple sheet of glass coated with dye could be enough to cut the costs of solar power. That’s the claim from researchers who have created a ‘solar concentrator’ that harvests photons and funnels them into photovoltaic devices.

The device allows relatively small solar cells to harness rays from a much larger area.

Mirrors that track the Sun are already used to deliver extra light onto solar panels and maximize their electricity output.

But these mirrors can be costly to deploy and maintain, and the solar cell is prone to overheating. In the 1970s, scientists tried to develop alternatives that used light-absorbing dyes.

The alternative

But the research stalled because many of the dyes were unstable in sunlight, or because the photons didn’t get very far through the plastic before being reabsorbed.

Researchers led by Marc Baldo at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge have now come up with an alternative that uses a mixture of dye molecules in a thin film coated onto glass.

Each dye absorbs light of a different wavelength to make the most of sunlight’s spectrum.

By fine-tuning the dye mixture and adding an extra compound controls the re-emission process, ensures that most of the photons get trapped inside the glass.

The team thinks they can boost the power efficiency of a cadmium telluride cell from 9.6 per cent to 11.9 per cent, and a CIGS cell (copper-indium-gallium-selenide) from 13.1 per cent to 14.5 percent. The research is published in the journal Science.

Baldo thinks that the efficiency can still be vastly improved. “We could ultimately double the efficiency of 90 percent of solar cells used today,” he predicts.

Solar cells are very sensitive to defects in the material, but that doesn’t apply for these thin films, says Baldo. That means it could help solar cells to produce electricity at a mere $1 per watt, which is essential if the solar industry is to be economically sustainable.

Lawrence Gasman, principal analyst at NanoMarkets of Glen Allen in Virginia, is impressed that Baldo’s system seems to be so easy to manufacture, and says that commercial interest in innovations such as these is blooming.

But dye-based systems still face stiff competition from conventional concentrators.

In May, IBM claimed to have used mirrors to concentrate 230 watts of the Sun’s power onto 1 square centimetre of solar cell. This is a much higher concentration than would be possible with Baldo’s dyes.

Educating more students, the modern way~~>>the right way to go further !!!

Videoconferencing increases the number of students who can be educated

Wide reach: Videoconferencing technology is available and can be cost-shared among multiple institutions.

A week ago, many of us at the L V Prasad Eye Institute took part in an exciting event — a live lecture by the world-renowned glaucoma expert from Johns Hopkins University, Professor Harry Quigley. A clinician-scientist with over three decades of experience, he is also an outstanding speaker.

This was a special event since it was live and interactive. He was at Baltimore in the U.S., talking to us at 8 AM his time and we were all listening to him here in India at our local time of 1830 hours. Plus, it was not just 170 of us at Hyderabad, but also colleagues at our GMRV campus at Vizag and the BEI campus at Bhubaneswar.

Altogether, Quigley lectured to over 250 people across the globe, spread in three cities quite apart from each other. He was occasionally interrupted by the audience for clarifications and questions. And at the end of the fifty-minute lecture, we had a twenty-minute question-answer session.

It was a specialized topic, namely, clinical aspects of the eye disease glaucoma in which he is an acknowledged authority.

Four major points

He distilled his talk around four major points.

One: chase the family. Glaucoma runs in families. Thus if an elderly member is brought to the clinic, check the accompanying family member too — even if he/she has no complaints. Precautionary steps could be started so as to prevent or take early steps. Glaucoma, the second major cause of blindness, is a ‘silent’, progressive killer of eyesight.

Second: Just do not assume that the eye pressure has to rise to 21 units. This is a myth. Intra-ocular pressure is a person-specific number, depending on several factors. It is thus important to check more details — the size of the ‘disc’, the ‘cup to disc’ ratio, corneal thickness so forth.

Third: Make sure that the patient complies with your advice and uses the drug regularly. Given that the glaucoma patient has to use drops and/or pills regularly, daily, chances of his/her getting ‘fatigued’ over this regimen are high. The doctor has to be after the patient to ensure compliance.

Fourth: Do not depend overly on the new, fancy equipment and technologies. They focus on one or two particular features or parameters. Depend more on your ‘gut feeling’. The latter comes out of the experience of having treated many patients, each an individual in his/her own right.

Cost involved

When I checked the cost involved in putting up this video-conferencing facility, with access to the four sites mentioned above, I was given the number of about two crore rupees at today’s price. Each one of us remembers a teacher or two from our school and college days, who were so good that they even changed the career we chose later.

It was my chemistry teacher at Pilani, Mr Raja Rao, who made the subject come so alive and exciting that I chose chemistry as my career.

How exciting it would be to recall many of these great teachers, request them to teach through this video-access mode on a live, interactive basis, to a large number of students!

The Quigley example

It is not just these. As the Quigley example shows, the best teachers from anywhere can be requested to teach in this mode. And if there is one thing that a good teacher loves, it is to teach and teach more — and just for the asking.

A good teacher gets as much “high” when he teaches, just as some of his more receptive students do. And they love to teach under graduates and high school students.

Long years of teaching and research make them better and better with time. Nobel Prize winners Linus Pauling of Chemistry, Richard Feynman of Physics and Salvador Luria of Biology, always wanted to teach undergraduates and did so until they reached heaven at ripe ages.

Our own Professor C.N.R. Rao loves to teach college and high school students, and they love it too.

India is set to open 8 more IITs and 16 more national universities. These are in addition to the expansion of existing ones, and about an equal number in the private sector. One major problem they face is the lack of teachers, and a dearth of good and inspiring ones at that.

The solution

What is the solution? Use technology: identify outstanding, experienced teachers who have retired from service because they turned 58/60/62 or 65, but are available and willing, and request them to teach in the video-conferencing mode.

Cost-shared

The technology is available, can be cost-shared among multiple institutions, each of which will have access to the facility. Each lecture can thus be heard by several hundred or even thousand students, who can interact with the teacher in real time, ask questions, clear doubts and benefit. As my primary school English teacher told us: Where there is a will, there is a way. And to the cell phone company’s question: “how many students can a teacher educate?” The answer is: Technology expands the limit.

China quake: topography can reveal tectonic activity~~>lets see ~~>>

Changes in river channel steepness were seen in the area where the quake had struck

Terrain Tales: The May 12 quake provides compelling evidence that landscapes can encode information about the rates and patterns of tectonic activity.

The May 12 earthquake that struck the Sichuan Province in China appears to indicate that topography, or more specifically, changes in landscape gradients can be used to reveal seismic hazards of a region. Geophysical methods have traditionally been used to study tectonic activity and earthquakes.

When two continental plates push against each other, as in the case of the Indian and Eurasian plates, the crust crumples, resulting in the formation of mountain ranges.

Sudden steepness

But even in such rugged mountainous regions, there can be places where the ranges suddenly become hundreds of metres steep. Tectonic geomorphology, as it is called, is based on the premise that such sudden change in gradients reflects the underlying tectonic activity.

This is particularly derived by studying the relief and elevation of bedrock-based river channel network.

Dr. Eric Kirby, in a paper published online in the Nature Geosciences journal, reported systematic changes in river channel steepness and topographic relief in the area where the quake had struck.

The anomalous steepness of the river-channel profile “coincides almost exactly with the surface trace of the Yingxiu-Beichuan fault” that ruptured on May 12, reports the paper.

Dr. Kirby is from the Department of Geosciences, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, U.S., and is the first author of the paper.

The May 12 quake provides the “most compelling evidence to date that the landscape itself encodes information about the rates and patterns of tectonic activity,” the paper states.

First observed in 2003

The sudden change in topography in the Sichuan Basin was seen by Dr. Kirby and others way back in 2003. Their findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, in 2003 noted that the Yingziu-Beichuan fault was more active than the surrounding faults.

Despite reservations by those relying on traditional methods in interpreting topography to understand tectonics, the researchers insist that the May 12 event “makes clear that landscape analysis can help with initial identification of active structure.”

Global positioning system (GPS) is one of the tools used for understanding the rate at which two plates move towards each other.

But the precision of GPS is highly dependent on the nature of the measurement and the length of time that an instrument occupies a position.

Campaign mode

Though the Sichuan Province has more than 20 GPS stations that were installed in the early 1990s, the measurements were not taken continuously.

“Measurements were all conducted on a campaign mode,” Dr. Kirby noted in his email communication to this Correspondent. In a campaign mode, a marker is installed in the ground, and is measured by GPS for 24-72 hours to obtain a precise position. It is then remeasured several years later, to see how that position has changed.

Dr. Kirby notes that measurements were taken 3-4 times after they were installed in the 1990s. “As far as I am aware, there are no continuous stations in this region,” he pointed out.

The GPS had recorded that the plate convergence was occurring at a slow rate of 2 mm per year. When the lateral movement of the plates is small, the vertical motion of the crust is even smaller.

Though GPS can detect both lateral and vertical movement, it becomes challenging to detect very small movements, particularly the vertical component.

Uncertainties magnified

“It is simply difficult [for the GPS] to detect rates of vertical motion of the crust that are less than 1 mm/year,” noted Dr Kirby. And when done on a campaign mode the uncertainties become larger, and the vertical uncertainties are in the order of many centimetres.

And because GPS is not able to resolve differential vertical motions of the crust (because of large uncertainties), the geomorphic analysis provides a clue to where this is happening.

Unlike GPS that provides very precise estimates of the position at a single point where the GPS station is located, digital elevation models provide an estimate of the topography across an entire region. And this helps in identifying the seismic hazard areas.