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Science & Technology
Transgenic Brinjal: Good or Bad
Feb 10th
The introduction of Bacillus Thuringiensis Brinjal, popularly known as Bt brinjal in India, is still in the middle of debate. This is a genetically modified strain of the non-transgenic Brinjal promoted by India’s top seeds company Mahyco (Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company) in collaboration with an US based transnational Monsanto and their aim is to improve the yields by a significant extent and also help the agricultural sector.
French scientist Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini of the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), carried out the first ever independent assessment of Monsanto-Mahyco’s report on toxicity tests submitted to the Indian regulatory authorities.
Seralini found many heath impact on not only the human and animal life but also on environment.He found :
It involves the insertion of a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis into the DNA or genetic code of the Brinjal to produce pesticidal entotoxins in every cell. This toxin can induce antibiotic resistance in the vegetable cells.
this is a major health problem and is inappropriate for commercial use. Bt brinjal have 15 percent less calories and consists of different kinds of alkaloids compared to non-GM brinjal. It contains 16-17 mg/kg Bt insecticide toxin. When fed to animals, effects were observed on blood with significant differences according to the sex of the animal or period of measurement. Other effects were also found on blood clotting time (prothrombin), total bilirubin (liver health), and alkaline phosphate in goats and rabbits.
Changes in lactating cows were observed in increased weight gain, intake of more dry roughage matter and milk production up by 10-14 percent as if they were treated by a hormone.
Rats fed Bt brinjal had diarrhoea, increased water consumption, decrease in liver weight, and liver to body weight. Feed intake was modified in broiler chickens. But in anyhow, there are arguments in favour of its introduction, and there are strong reasons for refusing the approval of Bt brinjal. If it get approved then the Bt Brinjal would be the first genetically modified food in India.
Super Cool Atom Thermometer
Dec 9th
A team at the MIT-Harvard Centre for Ultra-Cold Atoms has devised a thermometer that can potentially measure temperatures as low as tens of trillionths of a degree above absolute zero. The trick is to place the system in a magnetic field, and then measure the atoms’ average magnetization. By determining a handful of easily-measured properties, the physicists extracted the temperature of the system from the magnetization.
While they demonstrated the method on atoms cooled to one billionth of a degree, they also showed that it should work for atoms hundreds of times cooler, meaning the thermometer will be an invaluable tool for physicists pushing the cold frontier.
Scientist’s designed a plasma-based prototype device to kill germs
Nov 27th
In London, Scientists have developed a prototype device that kills the bacteria, viruses, and fungi from hands, feet and even underarms in just seconds without harming the skin.
The prototype device kills the germs by creating Plasma, the fourth state of matter besides solid, liquid and gas.
An exposure to the plasma of only about 12 seconds reduces the incidence of germs on hands by a factor of a million, lead researcher Gregor Morfill.
World’s First Vegetarian Spider Discovered
Nov 7th
Scientists discovered a spider known as Bagheera kiplingi that does not eat meat like all the other spiders; instead it is the first vegetarian spider out of 40,000 known spider species. The tropical spider mostly consumes plant buds.
Scientists noticed that the spider consumed nutrient-rich buds growing on acacia plants. It is worth mentioning that the acacias represent the home to a species of ants inhabiting the plants’ hollow thorns. These ants aggressively protect the plant to maintain their shelter and preserve food. But the Bagheera, is a stealthy and fast spider that figured out a way to leap from one thorn to another and gather its meal, thus being able to avoid the ants. Meehan said. “It is utterly surreal to see a spider use such effective hunting strategies to hunt a plant.”
The name of the spider comes from a panther in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.” It was given in the late 19th century. According to Christopher Meehan, biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, back then biologists did not know what the spider ate because they found a tattered dead specimen. However, if they named the spider Bagheera kiplingi, it is possible that they knew they found a species of a jumping spider that had cat-like movements.
The National Geographic website informs that in the period between 2001 and 2008, a team of biologists led by Meehan, examined the spider in its tropical habitat, found in southeastern part of Mexico and northwestern part of Costa Rica.
Now no lack of blood supplies!
Nov 4th
A new discovery was made to convert one blood group into another.The study conducted by some experts from University of Copenhagen. O bllod group can be a source for all the other blood types (A, B and AB).
Transfusion of a wrong blood type can causes severe clumping of transfused cells and possible arterial or venous blockage in severe cases result in death. Now all blood groups can be converted into one O group and used furthermore.
The classical ABO blood groups were discovered by Karl Landsteiner in 1900 and have been utilized in clinical medicine quite frequently over the past century, first in rudimentary paternity tests, and later to ensure the safety of patients undergoing blood transfusions.
Fossilised ever giant sea monster pliosaurs found on Jurassic Coast of London
Oct 30th
A British fossil hunter has found the remains of what is thought to be the world’s giant sea monster on the south coast of England.
The ferocious prehistoric creature, which was 52 feet long could belong to creature measuring up to 16 metres in length and lived 150 million years ago.
Pliosaurs were a form of plesiosaur, a group of giant aquatic reptiles that terrorised the ocean 150m years ago, around the same time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
It was so powerful it could have bitten a car in half and had a tyrannosaurus rex for breakfast, scientists said. The 8 feet long skull of the pliosaur was found on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast after storms brought down limestone cliffs.
Weighing up to 12 tonnes, the pliosaurs were a short-necked form of plesiosaur, a group of giant aquatic reptiles that dominated the oceans during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. They had immensely powerful jaws and a set of razor-sharp teeth.
Richard Forrest, a plesiosaur expert, said the discovery was fortunate because pliosaur skulls were generally found crushed flat “They had massive big muscles on their necks, and you would have imagined that they would bite into the animal and get a good grip, and then with these massive neck muscles they probably would have thrashed the animals around and torn chunks off. Measurements of its jaw and analysis of its teeth suggested that its bite was up to 11 times as strong as that of a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Palaeontologist Richard Forrest said the tyrannosaurus rex was a ”kitten” compared with the pliosaur.
”One of the things that is very clear from looking at this specimen is just how powerful this animal was,” he said. ”If we look at the lower jaw, this is the point at which the muscles attach and then you’ve got the great beam coming forward; that bone is roughly the strength of steel.So it was an enormously powerful biting machine. These things were big enough and powerful enough to bite a small car in half … It would take T. rex in one gulp.”
Previously the largest marine carnivore ever found was another pliosaur, dubbed Predator X, which was dug up last year on Svalbard, a Norwegian Arctic island close to the North Pole.
Dr Martill said “We only have the head, so you cannot be absolutely precise. But it may be vying with the ones found in Svalbard and Mexico for the title of the worlds largest.”
Richard Edmonds, Dorset County Council’s earth science manager for the Jurassic Coast, said: “This part of the coastline is eroding really rapidly and that means the fossils that are trapped and buried are constantly tumbling out on to the beach.
The fossil, a lower jaw and upper skull, was found by Kevan Sheehan, a local collector and has been purchased by Dorset County Council for £20,000 using money from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
He started looking for fossils along a stretch of beach near Weymouth seven years ago following a landslide. He used his hands to pick through mud and rock to find the first pieces of fossilised bone. He then went back to the site almost every day for the next five years until he had assembled some 25 pieces.
It will be scientifically analysed before being put on public display at Dorset County Museum.
‘NanoTechnology’ in Agriculture
Oct 23rd
‘NanoTechnology’ Advancing in Agriculture: Nano particles have Huge Beneficial Effect on Plant Growth
The goals of “nano-agriculture” include improving the productivity of plants for food, fuel, and other uses.
Scientists in Arkansas reported that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have a huge beneficial effect in agriculture. Their study, scheduled for the October issue of ACS Nano, found that tomato seeds exposed to CNTs germinated faster and grew into larger, heavier seedlings than other seeds. That growth-enhancing effect could be a boon for biomass production for plant-based bio fuels and other agricultural products.
The scientists report the first evidence that CNTs penetrate the hard outer coating of seeds, and have beneficial effects. Nanotube-exposed seeds sprouted up to two times faster than control seeds and the seedlings weighed more than twice as much as the untreated plants. Those effects may occur because nanotubes penetrate the seed coat and boost water uptake, the researcher’s state. “This observed positive effect of CNTs on the seed germination could have significant economic importance for agriculture, horticulture, and the energy sector, such as for production of bio fuels.”
Cell Death occurs in the same way in plants, animals and in humans
Oct 22nd
For the first time a few research teams from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and the Karolinska Institute, the universities of Durham (UK), Tampere (Finland), and Malaga (Spain) under the direction of Peter Bozhkov, at SLU in Uppsala, have performed a comparative study on evolutionarily conserved protein called TUDOR-SN in cell lines from mice and humans and in the plants norway spruce and mouse-ear cress. They found that the programmed cell death (a process where cells die under controlled condition) occur in the same way in plants, animals as well as in humans.
In both plant and animal cells that undergo programmed cell death, TUDOR-SN is degraded by specific proteins, called proteases.
The proteases in animal cells belong to a family of proteins called caspases, which are enzymes. Plants do not have caspases – instead TUDOR-SN is broken down by so-called meta-caspases, which are assumed to be ancestral to the caspases found in animal cells. For the first time, these scientists have been able to demonstrate that a protein, TUDOR-SN, is degraded by similar proteases in both plant and animal cells and that the cleavage of TUDOR-SN abrogate its pro-survival function.
Cells that lack TUDOR-SN often experience premature programmed cell death. Furthermore, functional studies at the organism level in the model plant mouse-ear cress show that TUDOR-SN is necessary for the development of embryos and pollen. And thereby TUDOR-SN is important in preventing programmed cell death from being activated in cells that are to remain alive.
‘Cancer no more same as death’
Feb 5th
New Delhi: Through new technologies and targeted drugs, cancer if treated in the early on stages is no longer synonymous with death, say doctors. At any given time, there are about 2.5 million patients living with cancer in India.
In India, one million fresh cases of cancer are reported every year. In spite of these figures, doctors are hopeful about the cure and treatment prospects of cancer patients.
Ashok Vaid, a most important oncologist in the capital, who was recently conferred the Padma Shri, said: “With new drugs and technology coming in to treat, and cure, cancer, at least in the early stages - is no longer synonymous with death.”
“New drugs, and targeted treatment in radiotherapy and chemotherapy have evolved and now the scope is multi-pronged and multidimensional,” he said.
According to the Cancer Atlas for India (2004), Delhi has the uppermost occurrence of new cancer between males at 126/100,000, while Bangalore has the lowest at 92/100,000 new cases per year. Among women, the rate is 142/100,000 in Delhi, and the lowest is 107 in Bhopal.
For men, cancer of the lung is very common in places like Bhopal, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. In Bangalore and Chennai, cancer of the stomach is tremendously widespread. Prostate cancer is a new leading cause of cancer among men in India. Among women, the most common types of cancer are of the breast and cervix.
“Forty percent of cancers in our country are tobacco related,” Vaid added.
Mass screening and knowledge of general cancers like of the head, neck and lung, and cervix and breast in women, and tobacco related cancers, play a vital role in the treatment, Vaid explained.
“There is tremendous scope for cure now, unlike early days. In the US, Stage I and II cancers once detected have a 65 percent cure rate, even Stage III and IV cancers can be dealt with.” Vaid said that in India people weren’t conscious of symptoms to identify cancer.
“The motto should be - catch it early, treat it early. Now we focus on two things, mainly to prolong the life, that is add years, and secondly to add quality to life,” Vaid said.
People suffering from cancer in the earlier days would have to be given radiation and chemotherapy, which would often origin side-effects and permanent damage to healthy cells, but the technology has evolved and it now seeks to give soothe to the patient along side treatment.
According to Tejinder Kataria, head radiation-oncology at Artemis Health Institute, “During a radiation treatment session and also from one treatment session to another, tumours can move due to normal internal organ action (digestion, elimination, and breathing). This unplanned position or movement of tumour results in it not receiving the full amount of radiation, and normal tissues may receive more radiation than they can tolerate.”
To conquer this challenge, a number of technological developments have taken place.
In 2007, Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) was introduced at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Artemis Health Institute here, and Indo American Hospital in Hyderabad and later at other cancer-specialty hospitals across the country.
During this treatment, the tumour bearing area is mapped out by the machine.
“IGRT is best suited for sites where internal organ motion is expected, for example, cancer of lung, breast and liver, stomach and prostate, brain. The use of image guidance not only improves the focus and precise delivery of radiation, it improves upon the cure rates for cancers where the dose delivery is limited with conventional methods of radiotherapy due to proximity of the affected tissues to critical organs like eyes, brain, heart, lungs and spinal cord,” Kataria said.
As compared to straight radiotherapy, the treatment through image supervision also reduces the overall treatment time.
“There are other forms of treatment like targeted drug therapy, treatments wherein the patient needs no injections, just a tablet. For radical treatment, limb-sparing surgeries and keyhole surgeries are options as well. Then there is Brachytherapy, a form of radiotherapy used to treat localized prostate cancer, cervical cancer and cancers of the head and neck - technology has come a long way and will continue to go far,” she added.
Even with newer technology and medicines, experts still feel that prevention is better than cure.
“People should shun tobacco in all forms, they should lead a healthy life, must report symptoms to their doctors and go in for periodic checks,” Vaid said.
Discovered: 12,900-year-old nanodiamond-rich soil discovered
Jan 7th
Scientists have exposed 12,900-year-old nanodiamond-rich soil at six North American sites, a discovery which they say adds proof for Earth’s collision with a uncommon group of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites.
A squad at Oregon University has created the rich minute particles of diamond dust in sediments at Murray Springs in Arizona, Bull Creek in Oklahoma, Gainey in Michigan and Topper in California as well as Lake Hind in Manitoba and Chobot in Alberta, Canada.
According to the scientists, the nanodiamonds are formed under high-temperature, high-pressure circumstances produced by cosmic impacts and have been found in meteorites, the ‘Science’ journal reported.
Douglas J. Kennett, who led the team, said: ‘The nanodiamonds that we found at all six locations exist only in sediments associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary layers, not above it or below it.’
‘These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America.’
The Clovis culture of hunters and gatherers was named after hunting gear referred to as Clovis points, first discovered in a mammoth’s skeleton in 1926 near Clovis. The sites then were recognized across the US, Mexico and Central America.
Clovis people maybe entered North America across a land bridge from Siberia. The peak of Clovis era is usually considered to have run from 13,200 to 12,900 years ago. One of the diamond-rich residue layers reported sits openly on top of Clovis materials at the Murray Springs site.