chakravarthy

Poetry has been defined by poets, critics and lovers of literature according to their understanding of the term. It is the language of the inspired ones. Poetry embodies sound, images, imagination, emotional experiences and a deep feeling on the part of the poet. Unlike prose poetry hints at harmony and tends to be musical. It is musical in the sense that its cadences are soothing to the ear. Poetry has an elegant quality about it. It is said that poetry is the language of the soul. By soul is meant the heart. Great works in all languages have been written in poetry making every line possess an intrinsic value, connecting poetry to life. Modern poetry has not much to do with things like rhythm, meter, etc. This new genre called free verse has been overshadowing the classical mode these days in all languages. A knowledge of the classical mode, a ear for beat and rhythm and an imaginative impulse helps one to explore both the genres successfully and the poet in question belongs to this...

[ Based on an article written by Alaka M. Basu, a Professor in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University. She is currently Senior Fellow, United Nations Foundation. The article was published in 'The Hindu' dated 11, July, 2017 (Tuesday) OPED, p. 11 ]. Eleventh July has been designated by the United Nations (UN) as World Population Day. The UN chooses one aspect of population to draw attention to each year. The theme of the years 2017 was 'access to family planning'. There are three related but distinct reasons why we should, or should not, as seekers of a healthy, wealthy and wise world for all its inhabitants, keep population dynamics in mind. Let's set aside for the moment the UN's projection of India's population size overtaking China's by 2024. First, any development planning with a time horizon of more than a few years has to factor in the changing size of the resources needed to meet the requirements even if the per capita r...

Producer V.L. Narasu was waiting at his Narasu Studios in Guindy, Madras, for music maestro Saluru Rajeswara Rao. He was remaking Gyan Mukherjee's Hindi super hit, Kismet (1943), in Telugu (Bhale Ramudu) and Tamil (Premapaasam). He had signed Vedantam Raghavaiah to direct both the versions and Saluru Rajeswara Rao to compose the music. ANR on board : Akkineni Nageswara Rao, when he heard that kismet was being made in Telugu, desired to be the lead actor in it, because ever since he saw Kismet years earlier, he wished to reprise his idol Ashok Kumar's role if the movie were to be produced in Telugu. His wish came true when the role was eventually offered to him. Brushing aside friends' reservations that the role of a thief might not suit his image, ANR went ahead and signed the film. Gemini Ganeshan was chosen for the Tamil version and Savitri played the female lead in both the movies. 'Satahavadini' Vempati Sadasivabrahmam was entrusted with the job of writing ...

In 2006, astronomer Alice Quillen predicted a planet of a specific size and orbit must lie within the dust of a nearby star. That planet has now been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, making it only the second planet ever imaged after an accurate prediction. The only other planet seen after an accurate prediction was Neptune more than 160 years ago.  "It's remarkable", said Eugene Chiang, Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of California Berkeley. "Alice saw the way the inner edge of the dust ring cut off sharply and recognised that a planet likely orbited just inside. The orbit we found was amazingly close to Alice's prediction". "This is a terrific achievement that showcases Alice's many talents", said Nick Bigelow, who chairs the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester. "Just think, it has been over 160 years since the presence of a planet has been inferred and so quickly imaged,...

Hyderabad based epigraphists have found that the Bathukamma festival is 800 years old. An inscription discovered in Bathukeswaraasthanam, a trikuta (triple-peak) temple, in Vadapalli in Nalgonda district, reveals that Bathukamma Ghat was constructed eight centuries ago. According to archaeologist and epigraphist Dr. Dhyavanapalli Satyanarayana, the inscription was found in the temple where the River Krishna meets the River Musi, which indicates that people at the time of the Kakatiya King Ganapati Deva, used to immerse local flowers for a period of nine days, a practice that is now part of Telangana State culture and identity. The inscription of 1211 AD was found in the temple constructed by a family of the name of Meluguntu, in memory of their parents Kode and Mylasani who lived during Ganapati Deva's time. The inscription speaks about donation of the land for the temple.  Vadapalli served as a port for the Kakatiyas as it is where the Krishna  River leads to the sea via ...

Sons of older fathers are more intelligent, more focused on their interests and less concerned about fitting in, characteristics typically seen in 'geeks', says a new study. While previous research has shown that children of older fathers are at a higher risk of some adverse outcomes, including autism and schizophrenia, the study published in Translational Psychiatry suggests that children of older fathers may also have certain advantages over their peers in educational and career settings. The researchers from King's College, London and The Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinal in the United States collected behavioural and cognitive data from 15,000 UK-based twin pairs. The twins were measured on 'geek-like' traits, including non-verbal IQ, strong focus on the subject of interest and levels of social aloofness. Overall, higher geek index scores were reported in the sons of older fathers. In addition, ...

(1). Silver is prone to turn black in monsoon. To prevent it from corrosion, clean silver jewellery with toothpaste and soft cotton cloth. (2). Another way to retain the shine of the silver jewellery is to take it to a jeweller for a 'silver dip' to help restore its shine. (3). Always remove your silver jewellery before a shower or even before washing hands with soap and water. (4). Avoid wearing jewellery before heading outdoors while it's raining. (5). Never use liquid cleaners on your silver jewellery as they get stuck in the engravings and cause dullness. (6). An easy way to restore the shine of your silver jewellery is by using a mixture of olive oil and lemon juice, mixing half a cup of lemon juice with one teaspoon olive oil in a bowl. Take a small microfibre cloth. Dip the cloth in the solution and squeeze out the solution well. Then polish, rinse and dry your silver.  ---Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy--- Cell: 9985732397.         72...

Scientists who discovered that old men really do have big ears, that playing the didgeridoo helps relieve sleep apnoea, and that handling crocodiles can influence gambling decisions are among this year's recipients of the Ig Nobel, the prize for absurd scientific achievement. The 27th annual awards were announced on 14th September, 2017 (Thursday) at Harvard University. The ceremony featured a traditional barrage of paper airplanes, a world premiere opera, and real Nobel laureates handing out the ten prizes. "It's a strange honour to have, but I am thrilled", Dr. James Heathcote said. A British physician, Heathcote won the Ig Nobel for anatomy for his big-ear research. The awards are sponsored by the science humour magazine 'Annals of Improbable Research', the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.  This year's winners - who each received $10 trillion cash prizes in virtually worthless Zim...

What turns you off? For some, it might be arrogance or swearing, and for others it could be tattoos and unconventional piercings. For women, it's time, apparently, as a study has found that women lose interest in having sex with their partner after twelve months of being together. Published in the 'British Medical Journal Open', the survey collected data from 4,839 men and 6,669 women aged 16-74 and revealed that while both genders tire of sex with age, women claim to get bored of sex in relationships far quicker than men. More turn-offs for women were having children aged below five, and having given birth in the last year, the study found. "This may be due to fatigue associated with a primary caring role, the fact that daily stress appears to affect sexual functioning in women more than men or possibly a shift in focus of attention attendant on bringing up small children", explained the team, comprising researchers from Southampton University. Factors such a...

Scientists have designed new smart solar glasses incorporated with coloured, semi-transparent organic solar cells that can generate electric power enough to operate devices such as hearing aids or step counters. Organic solar cells are flexible, transparent and light-weight - and can be manufactured in arbitrary shapes or colours, said researchers from Karlsruher Institute for Technology (KIT) in Genmany. They are suitable for a variety of applications that cannot be realised with conventional silicon solar cells. Researchers designed sunglasses with coloured, semi-transparent solar cells applied onto lenses that supply a microprocessor and two displays with electric power. This paves the way for other future applications such as the integration of organic solar cells into windows or overhead glazing, researchers said. "We bring solar power to places where other solar technologies fail", said Alexander Colsmann, from KIT's Light Technology Institute (LTI). The 'sm...

Like many of its magnificent monuments and historical sites that have disappeared into history thanks to negligence, Hyderabad has also lost a precious stone, the Bala Kohinoor (Little Kohinoor), whose story is closely intertwined with that of the famed Golconda Diamond of yore. Not many have heard or read about this diamond that was accidentally found about 200 years ago by a goldsmith in Mahbubnagar district during the early period of the Asaf Jahi regime. The Bala Kohinoor was reportedly last seen around 70 years ago; since then there has been no official word about it. English orientalist Sir Richard Francis Burton, who considered the name Bala Kohinoor 'inauspicious', preferred to name the diamond after the ruler of Hyderabad - The Nizam - which is how the gem came to be known as the Nizam Diamond.  It was the second biggest to be mined in the Krishna Valley, the heaviest being the Great Moghul Diamond. It originally weighed 340 carats, but was tipping the scales at 27...

How much is a child's future success determined by innate intelligence? Economist James Heckman says it's not what people think. He likes to ask educated non-scientists - especially politicians and policy makers - how much of the difference between people's incomes can be tied to IQ. Most guess around 25%, even 50%, he says. But the data suggest a much smaller influence: about 1 or 2%. So if IQ is only a minor factor in success, what is it that separates the low-earners from the high ones? Science doesn't have a clear answer, although luck certainly plays a role. But another key factor is personality, according to a paper Heckman co-authored in the 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' in July 2017. He found financial success was correlated with conscientiousness, a personality trait marked by diligence, perseverance and self-discipline. To reach that conclusion, he and colleagues examined four different data sets, which, between them, included IQ...

Being around science enthusiasts in school can stoke an uninterested person's liking for the subject too, according to a study. Researchers at Florida International University , United States, concluded that when students see their science-enthusiast classmates as being deeply interested in class, they are more likely to develop an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers. How a student perceives the level of their peers' interests has a significant effect on their career choices even after accounting for differences in prior interest in STEM classes, their level of family support for science, academic achievement, gender and quality of teaching. "People have been found to readily catch the emotions of others and we see this happening in science classroom environments", said Zahra Hazari, a Professor at the University. "This really emphasises the importance of having engaging environments to hook students to science and moti...

P.T. Usha (1984 Los Angeles Olympics) : P.T. Usha was at the peak of her powers and was a real hope in the 400 m hurdles. Usha clocked 56.81 seconds in the heats and 55.54 seconds, finishing fourth, trailing the eventual bronze medalist by an agonising 1/100th of a second. Milkha Singh (1960 Rome Olympics) : Milkha Singh had been clocking impressive timings in the run up to the games and had beaten most of the top contenders at various meets. Expectations were sky high, but the Flying Sikh miscalculated his run when it mattered most and finished fourth. That's a memory that still rankles the great sprinter. Limba Ram (1992 Barcelona Olympics) : The archer came closest to Olympic podium at the 1992 Games in Barcelona. Just ahead of Barcelona, Ram had equalled Takayoshi Matsushita's world record in the Beijing Asian Archery Championships in the 30 m event with a score of 357/360 for gold. Fans were counting on him for a repeat performance in the Olympics. However, he fell sh...

Two planets that orbit around a star like our own Sun could support life, according to new research. The two worlds at the edges of star Tau Ceti's 'habitable zone' are part of a system of planets similar in size to our own. Tau Ceti is located 12 light years from Earth. That is a breakthroughbecause it suggests that we might soon be able to find other planets that are habitable like our own Earth, researchers said. The proximity of the planets and their similarity to Earth mean that they could eventually be a home for humans, according to the astronomers behind the research. But doing so might be a risky expedition. The star appears to be circled by a huge disc of debris, which could suggest the worlds are being regularly hit by asteroids and comets. -- C.S. Chakravarthy. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Egypt's antiquities ministry said on 14th August, 2017 (Tuesday) that archaeologists have discovered three tombs dating more than 2,000 years, from the Ptolemaic Period. The discovery was made in the Nile valley province of Minya south of Cairo, in an area known as al-kamin al-Sahrawi. The unearthed sarcophagi and clay fragments suggest that the area was a large necropolis from sometime between the 27th Dynasty and the Greco-Roman period. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 

Plastic starts to smell like food for fish after it has been in the sea, according to latest research. Over 50 species of fish are known to eat plastic and 700 marine species are exposed to it. Scientists tested the responses of anchovies to odour solutions made from plastic that had been left for three weeks in the sea compared to 'clean plastic'. The biofouled, but not the clean, plastic was found to 'stimulate a behavioural response consistent with foraging'. "This is the first behavioural evidence that plastci may be chemically attractive to marine consumers", they wrote in the journal Proceedings in the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. They recommended research into the negative effects of plastic in the marine food chain. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Researchers said on 16th August, 2017 (Wednesday) an oddball, vegetarian dinosaur with silhouette of a flesh-ripping velocireptor, whose fossilised remains were unearthed in Chile 13 years ago, was a missing link in dino evolution. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom used a dataset to analyse over 450 anatomical characteristics of early dinosaurs and correctly placed the creature, known as Chilesaurus, in the dinosaur family tree. The results, published in the journal Biology Letters, suggest that Chilesaurus effectively fills a large gap between two major dinosaur groups, and shows how the divide between them may have happened. Chilesaurus, which lived about 150 million years ago, has an odd collection of physical characteristics. Its head resembles that of a carnivore, but it has flat teeth for grinding plant matter.  "Chilesaurus almost looks like it was stitched together  from different animals, which is why ...

Scientists have developed a new polio vaccine using plants, a breakthrough which can pave the way for global eradication of the age-old viral disease. Researchers from John Innes Centre in Norwich, United Kingdom, produced the novel vaccine with a method that uses virus-like particles (VLPs) - non-pathogenic mimics of polio virus which are grown in plants. Genes that carry information to produce VLPs are infiltrated into the plant tissues. The host plant then reproduces large quantities of them using its own protein mechanisms, researchers said. VLPs have been biologically engineered so they mimic the behaviour of the virus, stimulating the immune system to respond without causing an infection.  "The beauty of this system is that it boosts our ability to scale-up the production of vaccine candidates to combat emerging threats to human health", said George Lomonossoff, Professor at JohnInnes Centre, Norwich. ---------------------------------------------------------------...

Car tyres that automatically repair after being punctured may soon become a reality, thanks to a tough, self-healing hybrid rubber developed by scientists. Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) in the United States created self-healing hydrogels, which rely on water to incorporate reversible bonds that can promote healing. Engineering self-healing properties in dry materials - such as rubber - has proven more challenging because rubber is made of polymers often connected by permanent, covalent bonds, researchers said. While these bonds are incredibly strong, they will never reconnect once broken. In order to make a rubber self-healable, the team needed to make the bonds connecting the polymers reversible, so that the bonds could break and reform. "Previous research used reversible hydrogen bonds to connect polymers to form a rubber but reversible bonds are intrinsically weaker than covalent bonds", said Li-Heng Cai, a...

On 28th August, 2017, the Ministry of External Affairs put a statement: "In recent weeks, India and China have maintained diplomatic communication in respect of the incident at Doklam. During these communications, we were able to express our views and convey our concerns and interests. On this basis, expeditious disengagement of border personnel at the face-off site at Doklam has been agreed to and is on-going". The first part of the statement articulated that through diplomatic channels India had conveyed its concerns and interests about the face-off in Doklam between China and India. It further stated that on the basis of this diplomatic exchange expeditious disengagement of border personnel had been agreed to and was underway. What the statement did not mention was whether the withdrawal was mutual or unilateral by India? What it also did not disclose was whether China had given any explicit or even implicit assurances that they would not construct a road in Doklam - t...

The earth's natural resources include water and land, plant and animal life, coal, oil and various minerals. Air, sunshine, and climate are also natural resources. All natural resources are not evenly distributed over the earth, and they vary in quality from place to place. For example, only about a third of the earth's land can be used for farming and raising livestock. Much of the rest is either too dry, too cold, or too mountainous. Deposits of coal and oil, two of the earth's most important energy resources, occur on every continent. But the United States alone has about a third of the world's coal deposits, and more than half the world's oil lies in the Middle East. The earth has more than 2,000 different kinds of minerals. However, only about 100 are common. Graphite, gypsum, salt, and talc are some of the earth's most common minerals. Scarce minerals include diamonds, gold and platinum. Other important minerals include aluminium, copper, iron, lead, mag...

The biggest plants of all are giant sequoia trees, found only in California. Sequoias are the largest living things on earth. Some sequoias stand more than 290 feet (88 meters) tall and measure more than 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter. The smallest plants include diatoms , one-celled structures that can only be seen with a microscope. A single drop of water may contain as many as 500 diatoms . The oldest plants on earth are bristlestone pine tress. One bristlestone pine in California is the oldest living thing. It began growing 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. The smallest flower is the blossom of the duckweed plant. It can barely be seen with the naked eye. The largest flower is the giant rafflesia, which grows in Indonesia. It measures up to 3 feet (91 centimeters) in diameter and can weigh 15 pounds (7 kilograms). The largest leaves grow on raffia palm trees. They reach up to fifty feet (15 meters) long and 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide. Seed sizes vary greatly. A tobacco plant pro...

Different sports, but feeling is same : "I could relate to her disappointment. These things stay with you for all time", P.T. Usha , who sat glued to the TV on 27th August, 2017 (Sunday) as P.V. Sindhu gave it her all in the world badminton final, could feel what the Indian shuttler was going through. Usha had experienced a similar heart-break during the 400m hurdles final in the 1984 Olympics, missing bronze by a whisker in Los Angeles. Sindhu, Usha felt, fought gallantly till the very end. "It was a golden effort though she settled for a silver", she said. "It was an absorbing final and I was glued to the TV throughout. When she won the second game I thought she is going to be lucky this time but sadly, it didn't end the way we wanted it". A medal hope in 1984, Usha had to settle for fourth place, 1/100th of a second behind Christeana Cojocaru of Romania. "Badminton and athletics are not the same but yes, in the end she would have felt the sam...