chakravarthy

With youth overwhelmingly voting in favour of Narendra Modi in the 2014 elections, Congress and Left parties are still smarting under the humiliating defeat handed down to them and seem determined to use every dirty trick to distort truth, mislead the nation and woo the younger generation by unleashing the NDA government. No doubt, facts are sacred and comments are free. But it is not only preposterous but unimaginable for responsible political parties to indulge in a slanderous campaign based on untruths by using two recent happenings: the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad Central University (HCU) and the blatanatly anti-national event organised in the garb of a cultural evening at JNU. The apparent motive of Congress and Left parties is to hijack public discourse and create social unrest and dimension at a time when the government is straining every sinew to make the economy vibrant and bring it out of the deep morass created by the decade-long scam-tainted UPA rule. W...

For the first time, biologists have succeeded in growing human stem cells in pig embryos, shifting from science fiction to the realm of the possible the idea of developing human organs in animals for later transplant. The approach involves generating stem cells from a patient's skin, growing the desired new organ in a large animal like a pig, and then harvesting it for transplant into the patient's body. Since the organ would be made of a patient's own cells, there would be little risk of immune rejection. The human-organ growing pigs would be examples of chimeras, animals composed of two different genomes. They would be generated by implanting human stem cells into an early pig embryo, resulting in an animal composed of mixed pig and human cells. A team of biologists, led by Jun Wu and Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute, US, has shown that human stem cells can contribute to forming the tissues of a pig, despite the ninety million years of evolution betwee...

Can women be brilliant? Little girls are not so sure. A study published in the Journal of 'Science'suggest that girls as young as six can be led to believe men are inherently smarter and more talented than women, making girls less motivated to pursue novel activities or ambitious careers. That such stereotypes exist is hardly a surprise, but the findings show these biases can affect children at a very young age. "As a society, we associate a high level of intellectual ability with males more than females, and our research suggests that this association is picked up by children as young as 6 and 7", said Andrei Cimpian, Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at New York University. Cimpian co-authored the study, which looked at 400 children aged between 5 to 7 years. In the first part of the study, girls and boys were told a story about a person who is "really, really smart", a child's idea of brilliance, and then asked to identify that person...

NASA's Curiosity rover has detected boron for the first time on the surface of Mars, which indicates that the ground water may have possibly been suitable for hosting microbial life in the past. "If the boron that we found in calcium sulphate mineral veins on Mars is similar to what we see on Earth, it would indicate that the ground water of ancient Mars that formed these veins would have been 0-60 degrees celsius and neutral-to-alkaline pH", said Patrick Gasda, a post-doctoral researcher  at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The temperature, pH, and dissolved mineral content of the ground water could make it habitable. The Boron, mainly associated with arid sites where much water has evaporated away, was identified by the rover's Chemcam instrument. Scientists are considering at least two possibilities for the source of Boron: It could be that the drying out of part of Gale lake resulted in a boron-containing deposit in an overlying layer. Some of the material from t...

Scientists have discovered why humans do not have a penis bone, unlike chimpanzees, bears and most other mammals. The penis bone, or baculum, first evolved in mammals around 145 and 95 million years ago, according to new research from University College, London. The study's lead author Matilda Brindle told The Independent one of the reasons humans had lost their penis bone was because we do not have sex for long enough to need one. "The common ancestors of both primates and carnivores had a baculum", she said. "Humans are quiet weird as we are one of the few primates that doesn't have one". Primates who mate for three minutes or more tend to have far longer penis bones than those whose intromission, or vaginal penetration, is below three minutes, she said. "The human intromission duration tends to be below two minutes, which most people wouldn't expect". In contrast, the aye-aye, a nocturnal lemur, copulates for around an hour at a time and h...

September 28 marks the anniversary of the discovery of penicillin by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. According to the story, on that morning in 1928, Fleming discovered that a petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria that had been inadvertently left out on the windowsill of his London laboratory had become contaminated by a greenish-coloured mold - and encircling the mold was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth. After taking a sample and developing a culture, Fleming discovered that the mold was a member of the Penicillium genus, and the rest, as they say, is history. Penicillin wasn't the only unintentional discovery in history, of course. From kids' toys to artificial sweeteners, all eight of these everyday items were invented entirely by accident. Corn Flakes : The two Kellog brothers - Dr. John Harvey Kellog and his younger brother (and former broom salesman) Will Keith Kellog - worked at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, where John was the physician-in-chief. Bo...

It is known as one of the 'happy hormones' and its discovery led to the development of what were hailed as depression 'wonder drugs' like Prozac. But despite being prescribed as a treatment for anxiety, these 'SSRI' drugs designed to boost levels of serotonin (a happy hormone) in the brain had a strange and mysterious side-effect. In some cases, they initially made people feel more anxious or even suicidal. Now, a new study, published in the Journal Nature, has found that contrary to the popular view serotonin only promotes good feelings, it also has a darker side. US researchers delivered a mild shock to the paws of mice and found this activated neurons that produce serotonin in an area of the brain known to be involved in mood and depression. Increasing these neurons' activity appeared to make the mice anxious. Using sophisticated equipment to monitor the mice's brain, the scientists from North Carolina University's medical school then mapped w...

Knowing a lot about something doubles the risk of false memories, scientists in Ireland said, giving insight into why experts sometimes make errors on their own specialised subjects. People more knowledgeable about a subject were twice as likely to remember incidents relating to that topic that never happened. University College Dublin researchers asked 489 people to rank seven topics, including football, politics and science from most to least interesting. They then asked if they remembered events described in four news items about the topic they selected as least interesting. The results showed that if someone was interested in a topic they selected as least interesting. The results showed that if someone was interested in a topic, it increased frequency of accurate memories relating to that topic. But it also increased the number of false memories too. 25 percent of people experienced a false memory related to an interesting topic, compared with 10 percent related to less interest...

A huge crack in mountains in America has appeared. The formation occurred in the foothills of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains in October, 2016. Images of the crack were first posted online by the SNS Outfitters and Guide Service, which called it "a really incredible sight". It estimated that it was 750 yards long and 50 yards wide, The Guardian said. Although experts have said the occurrence is not an ominous or mysterious sign, some on social media have suggested otherwise. SNS said an engineer had inspected the giant crack. "Apparently, a wet spring lubricated across a cap rock. Then, a small spring on either side caused the bottom to slide out", it said on its facebook page. "He estimated 15 to 20 million yards of movement". Wyoming Geological Survey's manage of groundwater and geological hazards said the formation is most likely the result of a slow-moving landslide. "Landslides can move at catastrophic speeds...while others can be much s...

A NASA spacecraft that dived through a geyser plume on one of Saturn's moons, closer to the surface than ever before, has delivered the first images and data from its 'taste' of an underground ocean. The Cassini spacecraft made its lowest pass over Enceladus in October, 2016, flying only thirty miles above the moon's south pole and through jets of freezing water vapour and other molecules erupting from below ground. In 2015, researchers discovered a deep salt-water ocean inside Encleadus, after seeing hints of it in the jets of vapour first photographed in 2005. Cassini's lowest flyby should help them solve some of the moon's mysteries, including whether undersea vents heat the ocean. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

British Raj has no doubt bequeathed a few assets - both tangible and intangible - not least notably the language in which I pen my thoughts here. Nevertheless, one must also acknowledge that it had many tragically deleterious consequences. Estimates vary, but between 40 to 60 million Indians died in famines callously engineered by British Raj administrators; history records that famines were relatively rare prior to British rule. Famines may well be behind us, but other insidious effects of colonialism continue to bedevil us. George Orwell had said, "The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history". Sadly, colonial historical perspectives prevail due to ideological leanings of many post-Independence Indian historians.  Take the image constructed by the British of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. Sadly, many of us (except the Lucknowis) have either forgotten this Muslim ruler of Awadh or harbour the British impression of h...

Reduction in bone mass is one of the prime reasons for osteoporosis and experts state that not only women but also a lot of men above 45 years of age are complaining of this problem. Loss of bone mass and loss of calcium is one of the prime reasons for hip, knee and shoulder fractures. An estimated 36 million people are suffering from the disease and experts state that lack of physical exercise is one of the prime reasons. Exercises like jumping, running and walking help retain the bone mass. Adequate bone mass is important : Both men and women attain peak bone mass between 25 and 30 years of age. After that there is a steady loss of 0.3 percent per year. Attaining adequate peak bone mass is critical, especially in women. This is dependent on nutrition during growing years, physical activity and heredity. Maintaining adequate calcium intake, physical activity, hormone replacement therapy in select cases with premature menopause are a few means to avoid bone loss. In women, the bone...

Women who are obese even before pregnancy may give birth to babies larger in size, a study says. The findings show that infants born to women with a pre-pregnancy Body Mass Index (BMI) in the obese range - more than forty, are eight percent larger during the first two years, than those born to women with a healthy range of BMI - 18.5-24.9. The study also reported differences in the pace of infant growth and the time to reach peak growth rate depending on the mothers' pre-pregnancy BMI. The researchers also reveled a link between greater maternal weight gain during pregnancy and larger infant size. "The study demonstrates that both maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and gestational weight gain were associated with infant weight trajectories in the first 24 months of life", said Tom Baranowski, Researcher, Baylor College of Medicine, in Texas, US. However, the research also mention that gestational weight management programmes had no effect on the weight of the child. ---...

Have you checked your cell phone to see if it's ringing or not, at least thrice in the last one hour? This obsession is not odd; in fact, a new study terms it as 'Phantom Vibration'. What It's About ? - Over ninety percent mobile phone users are said to suffer from this 'illusion movement', which is a series of muscle spasms. It is based on the premise that we are so used to being connected to gadgets that the mind does not accept even a brief period of disconnection. As part of this, a person constantly checks the phone for a text or notification tremble that doesn't exist. In addition to this, the constant feeling of your phone ringing is also called ring-xiety. It is a part of hallucination and causes anxiety and jumpiness. Dr. Robert Rosen berger, Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, has a theory regarding this. A report quotes him as saying, "Through bodily habit, your phone actually becomes a part of you and you become train...

Scientists located two new objects beyond Neptune in the deepest survey ever  conducted in search of a distant solar system. Until this most recent remarkable discovery, only one object was known to have a low-to-moderate semi-major axis and a perihelion beyond this edge. This latest discovery is based on observations made with the Subaru Telescope in Hawai'i and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) telescope in Chile. In addition, the orbital motions of these objects are in resonance with Neptune's orbit, which was somewhat unexpected. Their orbital paths imply that these worlds either have interacted with Neptune in the past or are continuing to do so - despite their great distances from the ice giant planet. The new objects are located beyond the Kuiper Belt, which is a region of small icy objects just beyond Neptune, of which Pluto is a member. They have the third and fourth most-distant perihelia, which is when an object has its closest approach distance to the...

A novel antibiotic - lugdunin - produced by a bacterium found inside the human nose has been found to kill the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus , including drug-resistant forms such as the methicillin-resistant S. aureus ( MRSA). The study found S. aureus does not develop resistance against the novel antibiotic. The findings could aid the development of new therapies for hard-to-treat bacterial infections. The results were published on 28th July 2016 in the journal Nature. The human body is home to an immense variety of micro-organisms known collectively as the microbiota. Several bacteria species including Staphylococcus are found inside the human nose and these bacterial species are fewer in number when the pathogenic S. aurelius bacterium is present.  However, in about seventy percent of human population, colonisation by S. aureus inside human nose is absent. The reasons for this were not clear. When screening a collection of nasal Staphylococcus species for anti-microbial...

Doctors too don't seem to be immune to the disease called 'occupational hazard'. Hyderabad-based psychiatrists are reporting increased incidence of old mates from medical college approaching them for help in dealing with work-life crises. And these happen to practicing doctor couples in particular. While mostly such 'patients' turn up pretending to seek treatment for their chidlren's behavioural problems, but a little probing by psychiatrists often brings to surface the marital disocrd in their own lives which is the cause of what was touted as a 'problem' in the kids. Though the number of cases involving doctors seeking psychiatrist help may not be high - at three or four couples a month - a survey by a Hyderabad-based psychiatrist found that three in ten doctor couples lived with marital discord that in turn affected their children. "It is important that couples who are both doctors realise that they are as vulnerable as other working couples ...