Simhagiri stories!

Any thing to improve Mr VD?

2011-11-05T23:29:00.000-07:00

51yom Mr VD a carpenter from Jaggarajupeta sustained injury at his neck due to falling from a 3 feet height in a drunken state on 17^th April now admitted for further management.

MRI Scan of Cervical Spine dated 19^th April revealing mild disc bulge indenting the thecal sac at C3-4 and C4-5 level,intramedullary altered signal intensity extending from C3to C6 levels suggestive of Cord oedema andsome early cervical spondylosis.

Mr VD admitted as he has weakness of both upper and lower limbs, incontinence of bladder and he is not able to perform daily activities of life.He is thin built and seen in supine lying position having trunk in midline with shoulders raised and elbows slightly flexed, hips flexed , knees extended and ankle plantar flexed.

Motor Examination: Modified Asworth scale UpperLimb: Biceps on Rt side is1 and on Lt 1+, Wrist 1+on both sides. Lower Limb:Qudriceps on Rt side 1+ and on Lt 2 Dorsiflexors 3 on both sides

Sensory Examination:Superficial Sensation in Abdominals(T8-T12) is absent on bothsides and Plantars on both sides Extensor. All Deep Sensations are normal. Cranial Nerves are normal.

Deep Tendon Reflexes like Biceps Jerks,Triceps Jerks and Knee Jerks on both sides elicited 3+ and. Ankle Jerks 2+.

The person is completely dependent with Berg Balance Scale of 0/56.

So how will you manage?

Electical stimulation of all 4 limbs.Group stimulation with Faradic and Galvanic
Acive ROM exercises
Passive ROM exercises
Finger grip exercises
Positioning of limbs in antispastic positions
Wheel chair exercises like pull ups,push ups,weight shifting exercises
Breathing exercises
Ankle toe movements and Tendoachilles stretching
Inhibitory techniques to spastic muscles
Weight bearing exercises and irradiation tecniques
Chest physiotherapy(Rib springing)
Swallowing exercises(Chin Trunk position)
Rolling over bed, turning prone on hands and elbows
Training in parralel bars with biofeedback
Orthotic support andbracrs

A 45 year old woman with a long history of rheumatoid arthritis complains of severe and recurrent respiratory tract infections.-Medical MCQs (PLAB, MRCP, USMLE, FRCR, MRCS, GRE , all with answers ) Medical Cases

2011-06-29T04:04:00.000-07:00

A 45 year old woman with a long history of rheumatoid arthritis complains of severe and recurrent respiratory tract infections.-Medical MCQs (PLAB, MRCP, USMLE, FRCR, MRCS, GRE , all with answers ) Medical Cases
Correct Answer:A
Explanation:Felty's syndrome is a triad of rheumatoid arthritis, splenomegaly, and neutropenia. This is secondary to immunoglobulin directed toward neutrophils. Patients with Felty's syndrome respond to splenectomy with an increase in their neutrophil count. Splenomegaly with peripheral trapping and destruction of neutrophils is also seen in lysosomal storage diseases and in portal hypertension.

A post-partum woman presents with swelling her right lower limb-Medical MCQs (PLAB, MRCP, USMLE, FRCR, MRCS, GRE , all with answers ) Medical Cases

2011-06-29T03:38:00.000-07:00

A post-partum woman presents with swelling her right lower limb-Medical MCQs (PLAB, MRCP, USMLE, FRCR, MRCS, GRE , all with answers ) Medical Cases
E) LMWH
scintigraphy is for confirmation of pulmonary embolism & LMWH is given for its treatment

A 12 year old girl has fever, rash and joint pain. On investigation she is found to have hematuria-Medical MCQs (PLAB, MRCP, USMLE, FRCR, MRCS, GRE , all with answers ) Medical Cases

2011-06-29T02:25:00.000-07:00

A 12 year old girl has fever, rash and joint pain. On investigation she is found to have hematuria-Medical MCQs (PLAB, MRCP, USMLE, FRCR, MRCS, GRE , all with answers ) Medical Cases
SLE, which can be associated with hypocomplementaemic urticarial vasculitis (HUV), seems to be the likely diagnosis in this case. HUV causes urticaria-like rashes & glomerulonephritis amongst other things, so would account for this girl's symptoms...

What is the diagnosis?-Medical OSCES

2011-06-29T02:16:00.000-07:00


Dirofilaria Repens

What is the diagnosis?-Medical OSCES

Dirofilaria repens is a zoonotic filarial nematode transmitted by mosquitoes.

Commonly affected organs in the human include the skin, lung, eyes, female breast, and male genitals.

Unlike cases of ocular loiasis, in which the Loa loa worm is the infective parasite, there is typically no need for systemic antifilarial medication.

SJS

2011-05-22T12:51:00.000-07:00

SJS

25YOM SJS is always laughing with full of optimism with scintillating eyes not believing what had happened to him on 11th March of this year all of a sudden when an auto fell on his back severely injuring his dorsal spine. He developed paraplegia with loss of all sensations below umbilicus. X-Ray of Dorsolumbar spine revealing wedge compression fracture ofD12 vertebral body.MRI Scan of Dorsolumbar spine revealing complete cord injury.On physical examinaion his vitals normal.Motor power in both lower limbs and all sensatins below the level of umbilicus are absent.Now I wonder if there is any thing we can do to alleviate his condition apart from wheel chair life.I request if any body can help by suggesting specific physical exercises and any other management to help this person to stand and to do daily activities of life.

So what else to be expected for further evaluation and management?

2011-05-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

KSN,50 YOM has been evaluated for bleeding from anal region.C/O breathlessness distention of abdomen,loss of weight,extreme weakness since one month.O/E yellow conjunctiva,ascites. HB 7.6gm%,ESR 56,Platelet count 1.62lakhs,Serum Creatinine1.2,Total Bilirubin 0.63,Direct Bilirubin0.1, SGPT16,SGOT 24,S.Alkaline posphatase 185.UGI Endoscopy revealing Grade1 esophageal varices.Ultra Sound Abdomen revealing Hepatosplenomegaly with prominent splenoportal venous with ascites.Multiple lymphnodal masses at portohepatis and paraaortic suggesting further evaluation.CTscan of Abdomen suggesting Hepatosplenomegaly with features of portal hypertension.Extensive retroperitoneal,mesentric.pelvic,bilateral inguinal and right cardiophrenic lymphadenopathy.FNAC of left cervical lymhnode revealing proliferative lymphadenopathy and preesnce of discrete large hystioid cells.

KSN


KSN with ascites

The person is currently managed with compatible blood transfusion of O+ve blood to improve his general condition., As the facilities are limited here,we are thinking of referring to a higher center.So what else to be expected for further evaluation and management?

Story of Sreeramulu.

2011-05-05T01:17:00.000-07:00


ulcer on his left leg

65 YOM recently developed an ulcer on his left leg causing him severe pain.H/O nagging pain at the same level in both lower limbs since one year.No H/O DM but getting treatment for mild HTN.He is a smoker and not a big boozer.O/E diminished Dorsalis Pedis and Posterior Tibial.The doppler study of his lrft lower limb arterial system repoting diffuse changes of atherosclerosis,focal narrowing of junction between common femoral and superficial femoral arteries, long segment occlusion of superficial femoral artery in upper and mid thigh with reformation of distal superficial femoral artery in adductor canal leading to vascular compromise of limb,atherosclorotic changes in distal reformed circulation from distal superficial femoral artery to ankle level vessels.Doppler study of right lowerlimb arterial system reporting diffuse changes of arteriopathy of right lowerlimb arterial system,occlusion of anterior tibial artery in leg with trickle of color flow in dorsalis pedis artery from collateral circulation.CT Scan report of peripheral angiogram severe degree of atheroslerotic changes involving abdominal aorta andbilateral lowerlimb arterial systems, steno-occlusion of right anterior tibial artery in the proximal portion with lack of opacification rest of vessel,long segment occlusion of left superficial femoral artery in the upper and mid one thirds of the thigh with severe attenuation of left anterior tibial artery with areas of calcification and plaque formation and also calcifications at the walls of left posterir tibial artery which appears slightly attenuated but appears patent. So what is your management in his case?


Sreeramulu

2011-04-01T00:42:00.001-07:00

CEREBRAL PALSY

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2011-03-14T00:37:00.001-07:00

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ABG Interpretation

2011-02-08T21:39:00.001-08:00

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PNF Extremety Patterns

2011-01-09T02:20:00.000-08:00

What is your treatment for MR.APR?

2010-12-10T02:53:00.000-08:00

RT ADRENAL MASS IN CT SCAN

M.APPA RAO

69 YEAR OLD Mr APR WRITES ALL HIS COMPLAINTS ON PAPER TO SHOW TO DOCTORS.IT SEEMS HE HAS BECOME HABITUATED TO PAPER WORK AS RETIRED FROM MUNICIPAL OFFICE.HE APPEARS NORMAL AS HIS VITALS RECORDED NORMAL DURING HIS STAY IN OUR HOSPITAL IN NOVEMBER.HIS MAIN COMPLAINT IS THAT GAS IN HIS STOMACH IS NOT GETTING RELEASED CAUSING PAIN IN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ABDOMEN.HIS COMPLAINT STARTED IN THE BEGINNING OF FEBRUARY AS CONSTIPATION AND PAIN FOR WHICH GOT ADMITTED IN INDUS HOSPITALon 6th february 2010.H/O OF NIDDM AND HTN SINCE 15 YEARS.HE WAS A SMOKER ALSO.HE HAD FEVER,COUGH AND LEFT SIDED CHEST PAIN AT THE TIME OF ADMISSION. following are some of the investigations done during hospitalisation.BLOOD UREA 45MG/DL,CREATINE 1.8MG/DL,ESR 125MM/HR,TOTAL BILIRUBIN 1.8MG/DL,DIRECT BILIRUBIN 0.5 MG/DL,ALKALINE PHOSPHATASE 151 U/L, SGPT 18IU/L,SGOT 22U/L, TOTAL PROTIEN 6.5GM/DL,ALBUMIN 4.0 GM/DL, GLOBULIN 2.5 GM/DL, A/GRATIO 1.6, PLATELET COUNT 2.4LAKHS/CMM,D-DIMER >4.0 microgram/ml. ULTRASOUND ABDOMEN REPORT OF RIGHT SUPRARENAL NODULARLESION ?ADENOMA?METASTASIS, THROMBUS IN INFERIOR VENA CAVA, HEPATOMEGALY WITH ALTERED ECHOTEXTURE, TRACE OF LEFT PLEURAL EFFUSION.CTSCAN WITH CONTRAST SUGGESTING IVC THROMBUS,RIGHT ADRENAL MASS WITH VENOUS? METASTASIS,BULKY LEFT ADRENAL, LEFT LOWER LOBE COSOLIDATION WITH MILD PLEURAL EFFUSION. Mr APR was managed conservatively with IVantibiotics,antipyretics,PPIS,Nebulised bronchodilators,inj Arixtra 2.5mg and tab Acitrom and was disharged in stable condition.On 20th march Mr APR was submitted for Trucut Biopsy of right adrenal mass for HPE suggesting a diagnosis of undifferentiated carcinoma .Later the slides were reviewed on 3rd April describing linear fragments of tumour tissue with atypical cells arranged in solid nests and columns with moderate to marked nuclear atypia. Occasional acinar pattern is seen. Small lymphatic embolisation are present. some of the cells are of spindle cell variant with larg bizarre nuclei.Pathological Diagnosis:POORLY DIFFERENTIATED ADENOCARCINOMA WITH DESMOPLASTC REACTION.SO WHAT IS LINE OF TREATMENT FOR MR APRTO ALLEVIATE HIS SYMPTOMS OF PAIN AND DISTENTION OF ABDOMEN. IS THERE ANY OPERATION APART FROM CONSERVATIVE TREATMENT? ANY RADIO CHEMOTHERAPY?

Autonomic Nervous System & Brain Functions / Flashcards - Create Free Flashcards

2010-10-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

Autonomic Nervous System & Brain Functions / Flashcards - Create Free Flashcards

R.K.PANIGRAHI

2010-10-07T01:35:00.000-07:00

Though it is an old story which had its beginning in the month of July at the very flag end of the day at 12 PM. This person namely Rama Krishna Panigrahi was presented with chest pain.He was accompanied by Somesh who seems to be one of his best friends.He was not sick and his vitals were normal.As a routine practice ECG was done.As there is ST elevation in V1-V5 I had to refer to a higher center.But Paninigrahi was not interested to move. On explaining the situation he went to Cardiology Dept in KGH where he was promptly attended and managed.So grateful was he ,Panigrahi had been cosulting me till Stent to LAD was done in KGH!

ANANTA RAO

2010-10-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

This is another story of a bold person namely G. Ananta Rao who was admitted on one night on 22nd of last month.He was completely yellow but was not that much sick. X ray Lakshmi was behind his admission as he is a close relative.H/O FEVER of one week treated at his native place by some RMP later landing in Srikakulam.Conscious and coherent. Abdomen soft with little tenderness below right hypochondrium. CVS normal and CNS also normal.By all means he is not that much sick as his reports.Platelets very low around 32000 and serum bilirubin very high around 22.3 mg/dl. As these people are very faithful, he was put on conservative treatment with some supportive measures ultimately resulting in very happy Ananta Rao discharged after after one week. Lakshmi distributed sweets to all of us.

Intubating Laryngeal Mask Airway

2010-10-04T23:33:00.000-07:00

Intubating Laryngeal Mask Airway

RAMULAMMA

2010-09-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

On one night people brought Ramulamma F62 years to ED.Their main complaint was stiffness of fingers of right upper limb.On interrogation it was found that she was already treated in Care for cerebrovascular accidant.The records were stamped Arogyasri. She was admitted on 24 th july and discharged on 4th august of this year . She was admitted with a complaint of difficulty in speech and weakness of right side of the body.The vitals were normal.There had been a history of MS with PAH recently operated for MVR on 29th june of this year. It seems that there is also a previous history of CVA of Hemiplegia (lt) due to Rt MCA Infarct before surgery.The surgeon is a great Cardio Thoracic Surgeon Dr P.V.Satyanarayana with whom I was associated in 2001.No H/O HTN.No H/O DM.Following are the investigations done before surgery.ECHO dated 24th May: AF during study, CRHD, severe MS,severe MR, Moderate PAH with TR, Good LV/RV function,No clot/vegetation, EF 65%.On 27th june following tests were done. Hb 12g/dl;RBS 99Mg/dl;urea 33mg/dl;creatinine 1.1mg/dl; PT test 12.3 sec;Mean Control Value 12.1 sec; INR 1.02;APTT 18.3sec; Total bilirubin 1.5mg/dl; Direct bilirubin 0.7mg/dl; Alk Posphatase 55u/l; SGOT 27IU/L; SGPT 16 IU/L;s. Protiens 7.5gms/dl; S.Albumin 3.8 gms/dl; A/G ratio 1.0; Blood grouping O+VE. Details of Procedure are as follows: Midsternotomy done,Pricardium opened, Aorta and bicaval canulation done, Went on CPB, Aorta cross clamped warm antegrade intermittent blood cardioplegia given, LA opened through waterstone's groove; Mitral valve excise and replaced with #31mm TTK chitra valve using 2-0 Ticron pledgeted interrupted sutures, LA closed, Cross clamp released, Came off CPB. And finally decannulation done.

Musalayya

2010-09-27T04:33:00.000-07:00

Musalayya is not at all old as his name suggests. He is 33 years old black guy hailing from Gangavaram. He was treated for his vague complaints like fever and especially for distention of abdomen and loss of appetite as an out patient for several days.As there is no relief he was referred to a famous Gastroenterologist in the city as ultrasound abdomen on august 20th revealed moderate to massive clear fluid in peritoneal cavity! Dr E. Pedda Veerrraju had done U/S guided paracentesis and sent ascitic fluid for analysis. On analysis of ascitic fluid it was found:cellcount :1060 cells/cmm;Polymorphs:30%,Mononuclears:70%,Malignantcells:nill;Sugar:57;Protien:6gms/dl;Albumin:2.8gm/dl;Adenosine Deaminase:30U/L. Dr E. Pedda Veerrraju put provisional diagnosis as ?Peritonel Kochs. The Mountoux(10 TU) was negative. Xray chest PA view Normal. UpperGastroIntestinalEndoscopicDiagnosis: Erosive Antral Gastritis. Meanwhile Musalayya was put on ATT Drugs like R-cinex and Pyzina for few days. But he developed SOB on one day So another Xray chest was ordered.This second X ray showed fluid on Rt side of the Chest. Now he is referred to a noted chest physician who had aspirated the pleural fluid sent for analysis.

DOCTORS GATE.: Subclavian Steal Syndrome

2010-09-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

DOCTORS GATE.: Subclavian Steal Syndrome

Medical Powerpoint Presentations: Airway obstruction

2010-09-02T04:24:00.000-07:00

Medical Powerpoint Presentations: Airway obstruction: "Partial or complete blockage of the breathing tubes to the lungs. Obstruction of the airway can be due to different causes including forei..."

Is it necessary evil?

2010-08-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

There is intolerable spasmodic pain around right knee joint which is not controlled with single 100 mg aceclofenac tablet. I don't know how will I manage tomorrow's function when I have to sit hours together and receive guests extending to next day even.Only Baba should come to my rescue! And any of my doctor friends can suggest any better drug to be used in osteoarthritis? There was heavy downpour in the morning. Felt happy in the morning rounds when I had seen Gangachary whispering some sounds.It seems that LMWX and inj Nutropil helped the person besides Grace from Baba !

A1 and festival of Rakhee !

2010-08-24T02:47:00.000-07:00

A1 is the name of a person from Chatteeshgadh suffering from fever identified in the group having the same illness in outpatient in the morning.Now a days fevers are numerous ranging from one day to several days in duration and they are very nagging.The painful question is how to immediately differentiate a viral one from bacterial in our set up rather Vizag where the diagnostics are still not cost effective. Gangachary is a carpenter presented with a complaint of aphasia and weakness of right side of the body admitted in the early hours of the day.The diagnosis seems to be an infarct and CT Brain scan was suggested. Today people celebrate Rakhhee especially the youth who are buoyant and colorful even before some days of the festival sending SMS and tying Raksha Bandhan to their beloved. It is said that Alexaneder was saved in the battlefield when King Puru was about to kill him and witneessed the Rakhee on his wrist sent to him by Rokshana to save the life of her husband.It is not that sisters only need the protection and tie the much respected Rakhees to their brothers, but the wives also do the same as in the case of Indra whose wife tied a powerful token of mantra to save his life from a Rakshasa king namely Vrittasura!What a wonderful token of Love and affection is this Rakhee which is worth living!

Atchiamma , a ray of hope !

2010-08-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

An unconscious 70 year old Atchiamma was seen lying on the bed of so called ICCU with her mouth wide open gasping obviously with respiratory failure and attendants talking loudly.Comatose with GCS 0,pulse around 70,BP 170/100 left side of the body flaccid and bladder catheterised,she looked like a corpse with a flicker of life.So after eliciting Babinski's reflex which was extensor,explained grave prognosis to the attending folk who said that Dr Raman did not tell any thing about the risk of the disease but rather assured better recovery.Of course refuting immediately agreeing that Dr Raman did not agree with the recovery of the person!Ct Brain was taken next day with a result of 31 into 35 mm acute hypodense haematoma in right parietal lobe with intra ventricular extension causing mass effect.But the miracle is that she regained some consciousness responding to questions moving her unparalysed limbs.Now she is breathing normally giving some hope to the doctors that she would come to the hospital walking oneday if at all her attentands have some hope! A conservative treatment of oral glycerine and mannitol iv was started and continued till discharched two days back and I want to know how far mannitol is justified in this case.

Gurumurthy,aphasia being prominant.....

2010-08-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

Another person occupying room no5 admitted before Apparao in our Hospital is B.Gurumurthy of Bhuswanipalem near Duvvada.He is 60 year old completely bed ridden with weakness of Rt side of the body and not able to speak.There is a focal hypodensity suggestive of infarct in left parietooccipital lobe in the border zone territory of left MCA and PCA along with a chronic infarct in left side of cerebellum.Cerebral atrophy is also noted in his C.T Brain Scan.

Appa rao

2010-08-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

Appa Rao who is a college watchman admitted recently and was lying on the bed when I entered the O.P most probably in the night of 10th. He is presenting with a complaint of weakness of left upper limb and swaying away to right side when he is getting up.Of course there were usual introducers recommending and chatting lengthy with our doctor !He was left alone in the middle of the night when all the people cleared leaving his wife at his bedside watching the I.V fluids which is a usual scene in Simhagiri Hospital. A C.T. Brain Scan was suggested in my morning rounds.On 11th received the result with the following impression: A 43 into 19 mm hypodense lesion in Rt capsulogenic region with minimal perilesional odema suggestive of acute intraparenchymal hematoma causing mass effect .

Every Pt is a new Book !

2010-08-09T23:16:00.000-07:00

Before opening series of stories from Simhagiri Hospital I must remember two great people who taught me two lessons.One is a great orthopaedician,Dr Rangachari who was HOD when I was a medical student.He was so tall and impressive and used say,"Every Patient is a new Book !"whenever a case was presented. The saying impressed me so much that I still remember whenever I examine a patient.I don't see the great teacher now a days but his words show me the way ! Dr P.V.Satyanarayana is a famous Cardiothoracic surgeon in Care Hospital with whom I was associated when I revisited visakhapatnam in 2001.He is also a great teacher who says," never call a patient a patient, after all he is also a person like us.His system is disturbed. That's all .One day our system may also get disturbed! So call him as a person or by his name."

Alexander Fleming(6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955)

2010-08-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

On this very day was born Alexander Fleming who is the first bacteriologist whose discovery of penicillin in 1928 paved the way for antibiotic therapy for infectious diseases. Fleming was born on 6 August 1881 at Lochfield, a farm near Darvel in East Ayrshire, Scotland. He was the third of the four children of Hugh Fleming (1816–1888) from his second marriage to Grace Stirling Morton (1848–1928), the daughter of a neighbouring farmer. Hugh Fleming had four surviving children from his first marriage. He was 59 at the time of his second marriage, and died when Alexander (known as Alec) was seven. After working in a shipping office for four years, the twenty-year-old Fleming inherited some money from an uncle, John Fleming. His older brother, Tom, was already a physician and suggested to his younger sibling that he follow the same career, and so in 1903, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. He qualified for the school with distinction in 1906 and had the option of becoming a surgeon.By chance, however, he had been a member of the rifle club (he had been an active member of the Volunteer Force since 1900). The captain of the club, wishing to retain Fleming in the team suggested that he join the research department at St Mary's, where he became assistant bacteriologist to Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine therapy and immunology. He gained M.B. and then B.Sc. with Gold Medal in 1908, and became a lecturer at St. Mary's until 1914. On 23 December 1915, Fleming married a trained nurse, Sarah Marion McElroy of Killala, Ireland.Fleming served throughout World War I as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, and was mentioned in dispatches. He and many of his colleagues worked in battlefield hospitals at the Western Front in France. In 1918 he returned to St. Mary's Hospital, which was a teaching hospital. He was elected Professor of Bacteriology in 1928. After the war Fleming actively searched for anti-bacterial agents, having witnessed the death of many soldiers from septicemia resulting from infected wounds. Antiseptics killed the patients' immunological defences more effectively than they killed the invading bacteria. In an article he submitted for the medical journal The Lancet during World War I, Fleming described an ingenious experiment, which he was able to conduct as a result of his own glass blowing skills, in which he explained why antiseptics were killing more soldiers than infection itself during World War I. Antiseptics worked well on the surface, but deep wounds tended to shelter anaerobic bacteria from the antiseptic agent, and antiseptics seemed to remove beneficial agents produced that protected the patients in these cases at least as well as they removed bacteria, and did nothing to remove the bacteria that were out of reach. Sir Almroth Wright strongly supported Fleming's findings, but despite this, most army physicians over the course of WWI continued to use antiseptics even in cases where this worsened the condition of the patients. By 1928, Fleming was investigating the properties of staphylococci. He was already well-known from his earlier work, and had developed a reputation as a brilliant researcher, but his laboratory was often untidy. On 3 September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory having spent August on holiday with his family. Before leaving he had stacked all his cultures of staphylococci on a bench in a corner of his laboratory. On returning, Fleming noticed that one culture was contaminated with a fungus, and that the colonies of staphylococci that had immediately surrounded it had been destroyed, whereas other colonies further away were normal. Fleming showed the contaminated culture to his former assistant Merlin Price who said "that's how you discovered lysozyme." Fleming identified the mould that had contaminated his culture plates as being from the Penicillium genus, and—after some months' of calling it "mould juice"— named the substance it released penicillin on 7 March 1929. He investigated its positive anti-bacterial effect on many organisms, and noticed that it affected bacteria such as staphylococci, and many other Gram-positive pathogens that cause scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis and diphtheria, but not typhoid fever or paratyphoid fever—which are caused by Gram-negative bacteria—for which he was seeking a cure at the time. It also affected Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which causes gonorrhoea although this bacterium is Gram-negative.

George Stephenson(9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) Father of Railways !

2010-06-08T23:27:00.001-07:00

George Stephenson was born on June 9, 1781, in the coal mining village of Wylam, England. His father, Robert Stephenson, was a poor, hard working man, that supported his family entirely from wages of twelve shillings a week.George Stephenson was the second child of Robert and Mabel, neither of whom could read or write.Wagons loaded with coal passed through Wylam several times a day. These wagons were drawn by horses ! Locomotives had not yet been invented. George Stephenson's first job was to watch over a few cows owned by a neighbor which were allowed to feed along the road; George was paid two cents a day to keep the cows out of the way of the coal-wagons; and also, to close the gates after the day's work of the wagons was over. George Stephenson's next job was at the mines as a picker. His duty was to clean the coal of stone, slate, and other impurities. Eventually, George Stephenson worked at several coal mines as a fireman, plugman, brakeman, and engineer.However, in his spare time George loved to tinker with any engine or piece of mining equipment that fell into his hands. He became skilled at adjusting and even repairing the engines found in the mining pumps, even though at that time he could not read or write. As a young adult, George paid for and attended night school where he learned to read, write, and do arithmetic. In 1804, George Stephenson walked on foot to Scotland to take a job working in a coal mine that used one of James Watt's steam engines, the best steam engines of the day.In 1807, George Stephenson considered emigrating to America; but he was too poor to pay for the passage. He began work nights repairing shoes, clocks, and watches, making extra money that he would spend on his inventing projects.In 1813, George Stephenson became aware that William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth were designing a locomotive for the Wylam coal mine. So at the age of twenty, George Stephenson began the construction of his first locomotive. It should be noted that at this time in history, every part of the engine had to be made by hand, and hammered into shape just like a horseshoe. John Thorswall, a coal mine blacksmith, was George Stephenson's main assistant. After ten months' labor, George Stephenson's locomotive "Blucher" was completed and tested on the Cillingwood Railway on July 25, 1814. The track was an uphill trek of four hundred and fifty feet. George Stephenson's engine hauled eight loaded coal wagons weighing thirty tons, at about four miles an hour. This was the first steam engined powered locomotive to run on a railroad and it was the most successful working steam engine that had ever been constructed up to this period, this encouraged the inventor make further experiments. In all, Stephenson built sixteen different engines.George Stephenson build the world's first public railways: the Stockton and Darlington railway in 1825 and the Liverpool-Manchester railway in 1830. Stephenson was the chief engineer for several of the railways. George Stephenson - Other Inventions:In 1815, George Stephenson invented a new safety lamp that would not explode when used around the flammable gasses found in the coal mines.Also in 1815, George Stephenson and Ralph Dodds patented an improved method of driving (turning) locomotive wheels using pins attached to the spokes to act as cranks. The driving rod was connected to the pin using a ball and socket joint, previously gear wheels had been used.Stephenson and William Losh, who owned an ironworks in Newcastle patented a method of making cast iron rails.In 1829, George Stephenson and his son Robert invented a multi-tubular boiler for the now-famous locomotive "Rocket".

Ronald Ross(13 May 1857 – 16 September 1932)

2010-05-12T23:57:00.000-07:00

Ross was born in Almora, India. He was the eldest son of General Sir Campbell Claye Grant Ross of the Indian Army and Matilda Charlotte Elderton , daughter of Edward Merrick Elderton, a London solicitor. His grandfather was Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Ross. At the age of eight, Ross was sent to England for his education. After completing his early education in two small schools at Ryde, he was sent to a boarding school at Springhill, near Southampton in 1869. Ross commenced his study of medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London on 29 October 1875. He passed his final examination in 1880 and qualified as MRCS and LSA. He joined the Indian Medical Service in 1881. His first posting was in Madras. Ross studied malaria between 1881 and 1899. He worked on malaria in Calcutta at the Presidency General Hospital where he was ably assisted by Kishori Mohan Bandyopadhyay, a Bengali Indian scientist. Ross built a bungalow with a laboratory at Mahanad village (about 4 km from Pandua Railway Station on the Bandel-Burdwan line). He used to stay in the village from time to time, collecting mosquitoes in Mahanad and adjoining villages and conducting research. In 1883, Ross was posted as the Acting Garrison Surgeon at Bangalore during which time he noticed the possibility of controlling mosquitoes by controlling their access to water. In 1897, Ross was posted in Ooty and fell ill with malaria. After this he was transferred to Secunderabad, where Osmania University and its medical school is located. He discovered the presence of the malarial parasite within a specific species of mosquito, the Anopheles. He initially called them dapple-wings and following the hypothesis of Sir Patrick Manson that the agent that causes malaria was spread by the mosquito, he was able to find the malaria parasite in a mosquito that he artificially fed on a malaria patient named Hussain Khan. Later using birds that were sick with malaria, he was soon able to ascertain the entire life cycle of the malarial parasite, including its presence in the mosquito's salivary glands. He demonstrated that malaria is transmitted from infected birds to healthy ones by the bite of a mosquito, a finding that suggested the disease's mode of transmission to humans. Subsequently Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Tropical Medicine was established as a division of the faculty of medicine at Osmanaia Medical College, Hyderabad. In 1902, Ross was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his remarkable work on malaria. His Indian assistant Kishori Mohan Bandyopadhyay was awarded a gold medal by the King of the United Kingdom.

Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) born today!

2010-05-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

Freud was born on 6 May 1856, to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Příbor, Austrian Empire, which is now part of the Czech Republic. Freud was born with a caul, which the family accepted as a positive omen.His father, Jakob, was 41, a wool merchant, and had two children by a previous marriage. His mother, Amalié (née Nathansohn), the second wife of Jakob, was 21. He was the first of their eight children and, owing to his precocious intellect, his parents favored him over his siblings, from the early stages of his childhood. Despite their poverty, they sacrificed everything to give him a proper education. Due to the economic crisis of 1857, Freud's father lost his business, and the family moved to Leipzig before settling in Vienna.After planning to study law, Freud joined the medical faculty at University of Vienna to study under Darwinist Prof. Karl Claus. At that time, the eel life cycle was unknown and Freud spent four weeks at the Austrian zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels to search unsuccessfully for their male reproductive organs. While Freud was a first-year medical student at the University of Vienna, he was supervised by German physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. Freud adopted Brücke's new "dynamic" physiology. In 1874, the concept of "psychodynamics", a theory that psychological processes are the result of a flow of energy, was proposed by Brücke, with the publication of Lectures on Physiology. Brücke, in coordination with physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, one of the formulators of the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy), supposed that all living organisms are energy-systems also governed by this principle.In his Lectures on Physiology, Brücke set forth the radical view that the living organism is a dynamic system to which the laws of chemistry and physics apply.This was the starting point for Freud's dynamic psychology of the mind and its relation to the unconscious. The origins of Freud’s basic model, based on the fundamentals of chemistry and physics, according to John Bowlby, stems from Brücke, Meynert, Breuer, Helmholtz, and Herbart. In 1876, he published his first paper about "the testicles of eels" in the Mitteilungen der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, conceding that he could not solve the matter.In 1877, Freud abbreviated his first name from "Sigismund" to "Sigmund." In 1879, Freud interrupted his studies to complete his one year of obligatory military service, and in 1881 he received his Dr. med. (M.D.) with the thesis Über das Rückenmark niederer Fischarten ("On the Spinal Cord of Lower Fish Species"). In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a traveling fellowship to study with Europe's most renowned neurologist and researcher of hypnosis, Jean Martin Charcot. He was later to remember the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research. Charcot specialised in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience. Freud later turned away from hypnosis as a potential cure for mental illness, instead favouring free association and dream analysis. Charcot himself questioned his own work on hysteria towards the end of his life.After opening his own medical practice, specializing in neurology, Freud married Martha Bernays in 1886. Her father Berman was the son of Isaac Bernays, chief rabbi in HamburgAfter experimenting with hypnosis on his neurotic patients, Freud abandoned this form of treatment as it proved ineffective for many, he favored treatment where the patient talked through his or her problems. This came to be known as the "talking cure" and the ultimate goal of this talking was to locate and release powerful emotional energy that had initially been rejected or imprisoned in the unconscious mind. Freud called this denial of emotions "repression", and he believed that it was an impediment to the normal functioning of the psyche, even capable of causing physical retardation which he described as "psychosomatic". The term "talking cure" was initially coined by a patient, Anna O., who was treated by Freud's colleague Josef Breuer. The "talking cure" is widely seen as the basis of psychoanalysiCarl Jung initiated the rumor that a romantic relationship may have developed between Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who had moved into Freud's apartment at 19 Berggasse in 1896. Psychologist Hans Eysenck has suggested that the affair was true, resulting in an aborted pregnancy for Miss Bernays.The publication in 2006 of a Swiss hotel log, dated 13 August 1898, has been regarded by some Freudian scholars (including Peter Gay) that there was a factual basis to these rumors.In his 40s, Freud "had numerous psychosomatic disorders as well as exaggerated fears of dying and other phobias" . In that time, Freud was exploring his own dreams, memories, and the dynamics of his personality development. During this self-analysis, he came to realize an hostility he felt towards his father, Jacob Freud, who had died in 1896. He also recalled "his childhood sexual feelings for his mother, Amalia Freud, who was attractive, warm, and protective" . He considered this time of emotional difficulty to be the most creative time in Freud's life.After the publication of Freud's books in 1900 and 1902, interest in his theories began to grow, and a circle of supporters developed in the following period. However, Freud often clashed with those supporters who critiqued his theories, the most famous being Carl Jung, who had originally supported Freud's ideas. Part of the disagreement between the two was in Jung's interest and commitment to religion, which Freud saw as unscientific. In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This led to violent outbursts of anti-Semitism in Vienna, and Freud and his family received visits from the Gestapo. Freud decided to go into exile "to die in freedom". In this goal, he was fortuitously assisted by Anton Sauerwald, a Nazi official given control over all Freud's assets in Austria. Sauerwald, however, was not an ordinary Nazi; while "he had made bombs for the Nazi movement, he had also studied medicine, chemistry and law."At the University of Vienna, Sauerwald had been a student of Professor Josef Herzig, who often visited Freud to play cards. Sauerwald did not disclose to his Nazi superiors that Freud had many secret bank accounts and disobeyed a Nazi directive to have Freud's books on psychoanalysis destroyed. Instead, Sauerwald and an accomplice smuggled them to the Austrian national library, where they were hidden. Finally, dismayed by a Nazi order to transform Freud's home into an institute for the study of Aryan superiority, Sauerwald signed Sigmund Freud's exit visa. In June 1938, Freud left Vienna aboard the Orient Express train and settled in London. While Freud told a local newspaper that "all my money and property in Vienna is gone", he did not mention his secret bank accounts. When Anton Sauerwald went to trial on charges of absconding with Freud’s secret wealth after the war, Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter, intervened to protect Sauerwald. A heavy cigar smoker, Freud endured more than 30 operations during his life due to oral cancer. In September 1939, he prevailed on his doctor and friend Max Schur to assist him in suicide.After reading Balzac's La Peau de chagrin in a single sitting, he said, "My dear Schur, you certainly remember our first talk. You promised me then not to forsake me when my time comes. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense anymore." Schur administered three doses of morphine over many hours that resulted in Freud's death on 23 September 1939.

Guglielmo Marconi( 25 April 1874– 20 July 1937)

2010-04-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

As a child Marconi did not do well in school.But during his early years, Marconi had an interest in science and electricity. One of the scientific developments during this era came from Heinrich Hertz, who, beginning in 1888, demonstrated that one could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation—now generally known as "radio waves", at the time more commonly called "Hertzian waves" or "aetheric waves". Hertz's death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries, and a renewed interest on the part of Marconi. He was permitted to briefly study the subject under Augusto Righi, a University of Bologna physicist and neighbor of Marconi who had done research on Hertz's work. Righi had a subscription to The Electrician where Oliver Lodge published detailed accounts of the apparatus used in his (Lodge's) public demonstrations of wireless telegraphy in 1894.Marconi began to conduct experiments, building much of his own equipment in the attic of his home at the Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, Italy. His goal was to use radio waves to create a practical system of "wireless telegraphy"—i.e. the transmission of telegraph messages without connecting wires as used by the electric telegraph. This was not a new idea—numerous investigators had been exploring wireless telegraph technologies for over 50 years, but none had proven commercially successful. Marconi did not discover any new and revolutionary principle in his wireless-telegraph system, but rather he assembled and improved an array of facts, unified and adapted them to his system.Finding limited interest in his work in Italy, in early 1896 at the age of 21, Marconi traveled to London, accompanied by his mother, to seek support for his work; Marconi spoke fluent English in addition to Italian. While there, he gained the interest and support of William Preece, the Chief Electrical Engineer of the British Post Office. The apparatus that Marconi possessed at that time was strikingly similar to that of one in 1882 by A. E. Dolbear, of Tufts College, which used a spark coil generator and a carbon granular rectifier for reception] A series of demonstrations for the British government followed—by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) across the Salisbury Plain. On 13 May 1897, Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication over open sea. It transversed the Bristol Channel from Lavernock Point (South Wales) to Flat Holm Island, a distance of 6 kilometres (3.7 mi). The message read "Are you ready". The receiving equipment was almost immediately relocated to Brean Down Fort on the Somerset coast, stretching the range to 16 kilometres (9.9 mi).Impressed by these and other demonstrations, Preece introduced Marconi's ongoing work to the general public at two important London lectures: "Telegraphy without Wires", at the Toynbee Hall on 11 December 1896; and "Signaling through Space without Wires", given to the Royal Institution on 4 June 1897. Numerous additional demonstrations followed, and Marconi began to receive international attention. In July 1897, he carried out a series of tests at La Spezia in his home country, for the Italian government. A test for Lloyds between Ballycastle and Rathlin Island, Ireland, was conducted on 6 July 1898. The English channel was crossed on 27 March 1899, from Wimereux, France to South Foreland Lighthouse, England, and in the fall of 1899, the first demonstrations in the United States took place, with the reporting of the America's Cup international yacht races at New York.Marconi sailed to the United States at the invitation of the New York Herald newspaper to cover the America's Cup races off Sandy Hook, NJ. The transmission was done aboard the SS Ponce, a passenger ship of the Porto Rico Line. Marconi left for England on 8 November 1899 on the American Line's SS St. Paul, and he and his assistants installed wireless equipment aboard during the voyage. On 15 November the St. Paul became the first ocean liner to report her imminent arrival by wireless when Marconi's Needles station contacted her sixty-six nautical miles off the English coast. According to the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute by the United States Naval Institute, the Marconi instruments were tested around 1899 and the tests concerning his wireless system found that the "[...] coherer, principle of which was discovered some twenty years ago, [was] the only electrical instrument or device contained in the apparatus that is at all new". Around the turn of the century, Marconi began investigating the means to signal completely across the Atlantic, in order to compete with the transatlantic telegraph cables. Marconi established a wireless transmitting station at Marconi House, Rosslare Strand, Co. Wexford in 1901 to act as a link between Poldhu in Cornwall and Clifden in Co. Galway. He soon made the announcement that on 12 December 1901, using a 152.4-metre (500 ft) kite-supported antenna for reception, the message was received at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland (now part of Canada) signals transmitted by the company's new high-power station at Poldhu, Cornwall. The distance between the two points was about 3,500 kilometres (2,200 mi). Heralded as a great scientific advance, there was—and continues to be—some skepticism about this claim, partly because the signals had been heard faintly and sporadically. There was no independent confirmation of the reported reception, and the transmissions, consisting of the Morse code letter S sent repeatedly, were difficult to distinguish from atmospheric noise. (A detailed technical review of Marconi's early transatlantic work appears in John S. Belrose's work of 1995.) The Poldhu transmitter was a two-stage circuit. The first stage operated at lower voltage and provided the energy for the second stage to spark at a higher voltage. Nikola Tesla, a rival in transatlantic transmission, stated after being told of Marconi's reported transmission that "Marconi [... was] using seventeen of my patents." Feeling challenged by skeptics, Marconi prepared a better organized and documented test. In February 1902, the SS Philadelphia sailed west from Great Britain with Marconi aboard, carefully recording signals sent daily from the Poldhu station. The test results produced coherer-tape reception up to 2,496 kilometres (1,551 mi), and audio reception up to 3,378 kilometres (2,099 mi). The maximum distances were achieved at night, and these tests were the first to show that for mediumwave and longwave transmissions, radio signals travel much farther at night than in the day. During the daytime, signals had only been received up to about 1,125 kilometres (699 mi), less than half of the distance claimed earlier at Newfoundland, where the transmissions had also taken place during the day. Because of this, Marconi had not fully confirmed the Newfoundland claims, although he did prove that radio signals could be sent for hundreds of kilometres, despite some scientists' belief they were essentially limited to line-of-sight distances. On 17 December 1902, a transmission from the Marconi station in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, became the first radio message to cross the Atlantic from North America. On 18 January 1903, a Marconi station built near South Wellfleet, Massachusetts in 1901 sent a message of greetings from Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States, to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, marking the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States. This station also was one of the first to receive the distress signals coming from the RMS Titanic. However, consistent transatlantic signalling was difficult to establish. Marconi began to build high-powered stations on both sides of the Atlantic to communicate with ships at sea, in competition with other inventors. In 1904 a commercial service was established to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907 between Clifden Ireland and Glace Bay, but even after this the company struggled for many years to provide reliable communication

Max Planck(April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947)

2010-04-23T00:28:00.000-07:00

Max Planck is considered to be the founder of the quantum theory, and thus one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family. His paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Göttingen; his father was a law professor in Kiel and Munich; and his paternal uncle was a judge.Planck was born in Kiel, Holstein, to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig.He was the sixth child in the family, though two of his siblings were from his father's first marriage. Among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Danish-Prussian war of 1864. In 1867 the family moved to Munich, and Planck enrolled in the Maximilians gymnasium school, where he came under the tutelage of Hermann Müller, a mathematician who took an interest in the youth, and taught him astronomy and mechanics as well as mathematics. It was from Müller that Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy. Planck graduated early, at age 17. This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics.Planck was gifted when it came to music. He took singing lessons and played piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics.The Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised Planck against going into physics, saying, "in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes." Planck replied that he did not wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals of the field, and began his studies in 1874 at the University of Munich. Under Jolly's supervision, Planck performed the only experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum, but transferred to theoretical physics.In 1877 he went to Berlin for a year of study with physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff and the mathematician Karl Weierstrass. He wrote that Helmholtz was never quite prepared, spoke slowly, miscalculated endlessly, and bored his listeners, while Kirchhoff spoke in carefully prepared lectures which were dry and monotonous. He soon became close friends with Helmholtz. While there he undertook a program of mostly self-study of Clausius's writings, which led him to choose heat theory as his field.With the completion of his habilitation thesis, Planck became an unpaid private lecturer in Munich, waiting until he was offered an academic position. Although he was initially ignored by the academic community, he furthered his work on the field of heat theory and discovered one after another the same thermodynamical formalism as Gibbs without realizing it. Clausius's ideas on entropy occupied a central role in his work. In April 1885 the University of Kiel appointed Planck as associate professor of theoretical physics. Further work on entropy and its treatment, especially as applied in physical chemistry, followed. He proposed a thermodynamic basis for Svante Arrhenius's theory of electrolytic dissociation.Within four years he was named the successor to Kirchhoff's position at the University of Berlin — presumably thanks to Helmholtz's intercession — and by 1892 became a full professor. In 1907 Planck was offered Boltzmann's position in Vienna, but turned it down to stay in Berlin. During 1909, as University of Berlin professor, eight of his lectures were used by the Ernest Kempton Adams Fund for Physical Research in Theoretical Physics at Columbia University in New York City for a series of lectures translated by Columbia University professor A. P. Wills. He retired from Berlin on January 10, 1926, and was succeeded by Erwin Schrödinger. Planck endured many personal tragedies after the age of 50. In 1909, his first wife died after 22 years of marriage, leaving him with two sons and twin daughters. Planck's oldest son, Karl, was killed in action in 1916. His daughter Margarete died in childbirth in 1917, and another daughter, Emma, married her late sister's husband and then also died in childbirth, in 1919. During World War II, Planck's house in Berlin was completely destroyed by bombs in 1944 and his youngest son, Erwin, was implicated in the attempt made on Hitler's life in the July 20 plot. Consequently, Erwin died at the hands of the Gestapo in 1945. Although it is said that Erwin could have been spared had Planck joined the Nazi Party, Planck took a stand and refused to join, and as a consequence Erwin was executed. Erwin's death destroyed Planck's will to live. By the end of the war, Planck, his second wife and his son by her, moved to Göttingen where he died on October 4, 1947.

The Father of the Atomic Bomb who recalled Bhagavad Gita was born today!

2010-04-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

Oppenheimer( "The Father of the Atomic Bomb") famously recalled the Bhagavad Gita when his Los Alamos team first tested the bomb :"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one." and "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."!J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in 1904 to Julius S. Oppenheimer, a wealthy Jewish textile importer who had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1888, and Ella Friedman, a painter. He had a younger brother, Frank Oppenheimer, who also became a physicist.Oppenheimer obtained his Ph.D. in 1927 at the age of 22 at the University of Göttingen, supervised by Born. After the oral exam for his degree, the professor administering reportedly said, "I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me.In September 1927, Oppenheimer returned to Harvard as a young maven of mathematical physics and a National Research Council Fellow, and in early 1928 he studied at the California Institute of Technology. While at Caltech he received numerous invitations for teaching positions, and accepted an assistant professorship in physics at the University of California, Berkeley. In his words, "it was a desert", yet paradoxically a fertile place of opportunity. He maintained a joint appointment with Caltech, where he spent every spring term to avoid isolation from mainstream research. At Caltech, Oppenheimer struck a close friendship with Linus Pauling and they planned to mount a joint attack on the nature of the chemical bond, a field in which Pauling was a pioneer—apparently Oppenheimer would supply the mathematics and Pauling would interpret the results. However, this collaboration, and their friendship, was nipped in the bud when Pauling began to suspect that the theorist was becoming too close to his wife, Ava !Before his Berkeley professorship began, Oppenheimer was diagnosed with a mild case of tuberculosis and, with his brother Frank, spent some weeks at a ranch in New Mexico, which he leased and eventually purchased.A tall, thin chain smoker who often neglected to eat during periods of intellectual discomfort and concentration, Oppenheimer was marked by many of his friends as having a self-destructive tendency and, during numerous periods of his life, worried his colleagues and associates with his melancholy and insecurity. When he was studying in Cambridge and had taken a vacation to meet up with his friend Francis Ferguson in Paris, a disturbing event had taken place. During a conversation in which Oppenheimer was narrating his frustration with experimental physics to Ferguson, he had suddenly leapt up and tried to strangle him. Although Ferguson easily fended off the attack, the episode had convinced Ferguson of his friend's deep psychological troubles. Oppenheimer developed numerous affectations, seemingly in an attempt to convince those around him—or possibly himself—of his self-worth. He was said to be mesmerizing, hypnotic in private interaction but often frigid in more public settings. His associates fell into two camps: one that saw him as an aloof and impressive genius and an aesthete; another that saw him as a pretentious and insecure poseur. His students almost always fell into the former category, adopting "Oppie's" affectations, from his way of walking to talking and beyond—even trying to replicate his inclination for reading entire texts in their original languages. Oppenheimer became credited with being a founding father of the American school of theoretical physics. He did important research in astrophysics, nuclear physics, spectroscopy and quantum field theory. He made important contributions to the theory of cosmic ray showers, and did work that eventually led toward descriptions of quantum tunneling. In the 1930s, he was the first to write papers suggesting the existence of what we today call black holes.In November 1940, Oppenheimer married Katherine Peuning Harrison, a radical Berkeley student, and by May 1941 they had their first child, Peter. When World War II began, Oppenheimer eagerly became involved in the efforts to develop an atomic bomb, which were already taking up much of the time and facilities of Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. He was invited to take over work on neutron calculations, and in June 1942 General Leslie Groves appointed Oppenheimer as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project.Under Oppenheimer's guidance, the laboratories at Los Alamos were constructed. There, he brought the best minds in physics to work on the problem of creating an atomic bomb. In the end, he was managing more than 3,000 people, as well as tackling theoretical and mechanical problems that arose. He is often referred to as the "father" of the atomic bomb. (In 1944, the Oppenheimers' second child, Katherine (called Toni), was born at Los Alamos.) The joint work of the scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the first nuclear explosion at Alamagordo on July 16, 1945, which Oppenheimer named "Trinity."After the war, Oppenheimer was appointed Chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), serving from 1947 to 1952. It was in this role that he voiced strong opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1953, at the height of U.S. anticommunist feeling, Oppenheimer was accused of having communist sympathies, and his security clearance was taken away. The scientific community, with few exceptions, was deeply shocked by the decision of the AEC. In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to redress these injustices by honoring Oppenheimer with the Atomic Energy Commission's prestigious Enrico Fermi Award. From 1947 to 1966, Oppenheimer also served as the Director of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. There, he stimulated discussion and research on quantum and relativistic physics. Oppenheimer retired from Princeton in 1966 and died of throat cancer on February 18, 1967.

Leonardo da Vinci((April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519)

2010-04-15T02:57:00.000-07:00

Born today Leonardo da Vinci is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.He was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer.Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious paintings of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on everything from the Euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo. Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics. Little is known about Leonardo's early life. He spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother, then from 1457 lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but died young. Leonardo received an informal education in Latin, geometry and mathematics but did not show any particular signs of aptitude.When Leonardo was sixteen his father married again, twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini. It was not until his third and fourth marriages that Ser Piero produced legitimate heirs. Leonardo's formal training in the anatomy of the human body began with his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, his teacher insisting that all his pupils learn anatomy. As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.As a successful artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre and together they prepared a theoretical work on anatomy for which Leonardo made more than 200 drawings. It was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading Treatise on painting.Leonardo drew many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, as well as muscles and sinews, the heart and vascular system, the sex organs, and other internal organs. He made one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero. As an artist, Leonardo closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He also drew many figures who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness.

In 2005 a UK heart surgeon, Francis Wells, from Papworth Hospital Cambridge pioneered repair to damaged hearts from viewing Leonardo's medical drawings, made from the latter's body dissections. Mr Wells reported that he used the drawings to work out how to restore normal opening and closing function of the mitral valve, so that instead of repairing a floppy valve by narrowing its diameter, thereby restricting blood flow under exercise, he devised what he called: "..a complete rethink of the way we do the mitral valve operation". Leonardo's dissections also disproved the popular belief that the heart was not a muscle and demonstrated that it consists of four rather than two chambers. He 'drew' these findings, but he also described them and it was this combination that assisted Mr Wells. Leonardo also described how arteries develop 'furring' over time, creating blockages. Mr Wells used Leonardo's depiction of the opening phase of the mitral valve to operate without changing its diameter allowing an individual to recover more quickly from the intervention. According to the surgeon: "Leonardo had a depth of appreciation of the anatomy and physiology of the body - its structure and function - that perhaps has been overlooked by some."Leonardo also studied and drew the anatomy of many other animals as well, dissecting cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, and comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses. During his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer.In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (220 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On May 17, 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn. For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c. 1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter and a light hang glider. Most were impractical, like his aerial screw helicopter design that could not provide lift. However, the hang glider has been successfully constructed and demonstrated. Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died.The interest in Leonardo has never slackened. The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks, T-shirts bear his most famous drawing and writers, like Vasari, continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in.In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.—Giorgio Vasari

Christiaan Huygens(14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695)The World is my Fatherland, Science is my Religion.....

2010-04-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

Born on this day was Christiaan Huygens, a great mathematician, astronomer, physicist, horologist, and writer of early science fiction.At April the 14th 1629 Christiaan Huygens was born in Den Haag. His Father was Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), a Dutch statesman, diplomat, and artist. At his home famous poets, painter, and philosopher of his time were guests, besides others Rubens, Rembrandt, and Descartes. Raised in this worldly-open family with many childrens Christiaan Huygens studied like Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) jurisprudence first, then mathematics and natural sciences.He was in relationship with Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), who was known as the best microscope builder of his time and who not only grinded his lenses out of glass, but also out of rock crystal and diamond. Huygens was involved at the examination of small life forms and microscopic objects like sperms and blood cells. He grinded his own lenses for astronomical telescopes. His biggest refractor had a length of five meter. With his theory of the wave form of light he was able to calculate the refraction within the lenses and was able to make refractors with lesser chromatic and spherical aberration. He also invented a type of ocular/eyepiece named according to him, where the image pojected by the objective is placed between two different ocular lenses on a visual plate, consisting of two planoconvex lenses.With his advanced telescopes Huygens discovered 1655 the Saturnian moon Titan, which was thought to be the biggest moon within the solar system for a long time. Today its known that the real diameter of Titan with ca. 5200 kilometer is somewhat smaller than the diameter of the Jovian moon Ganymede with ca. 5400 kilometer. After the discovery of the Galileian moons around Jupiter Titan was the second discovery of satellites around a planet. It has a dense atmosphere of methane and ammonia, which is responsible for an apparently larger size and for the reddish color.At that same time Huygens was examining the Saturnian rings, which were an open phenomenon out of the time of the discovery by Galilei. Huygens presented the correct explanation for the rings in 1656. They are angled by 27 degrees to the Saturnian orbit, and therefore from Earth they are seen half a Saturnian year with their North side and half a Saturnian year with their South side, while the additional angle of the Saturnian orbit to the ecliptic makes some complex transitions possible. At the time around a transition the rings seem to dissapear, because in correlation to their huge diameter of ca. 280,000 kilometer (without G- and E-ring) they are extremely thin: the thickness of the rings varies from ten to fourhundred meter.The rings are no solid objects. This fact is a deduction of the Keplerian laws. To be stable for decades and centuries the rings had to rotate and therefore stationary gas or liquids are not the material of them. At the outer edge the rotation speed of the rings are 16 and at the inner edge 21 kilometer per second(!). A solid object would chatter because of the speed differences, calculatable with the Keplerian laws. Huygens also discovered that the rings have no connections to the Saturnian body. He recorded his observations about Saturn in 1659 in his work "Systema Saturnium".Like Galilei before, Huygens was pointing his telescopes to nearly anything the sky presented him. He discovered the difference of polar and equatorial diameter of Jupiter, made a first map of Mars, calculated the Martian day to ca. 24 hours because of the movement of surface marks on the red planet, he proposed that Venus is covered by clouds, and he resolved the inner region of the Orion nebula and mapped the stars within. This brightest part of the nebula therefor is called Huygens region after him. He also discovered several other interstellar nebular and many double stars.While his mathematical studies Huygens created a complete theory about the game of dice, which was published by his mathematics teacher Frans van Schooten (1615-1660) in 1657 as "De ludo aleae". With this Huygens is known as the founder of the theory of probabilistics. Although principially the pendulum clock was invented by Galilei and da Vinci already, Huygens was the first who worked out the practical problems of such a chronometer and let build many (different) clocks of that type. He also invented the clock with spiral spring or cycloid pendulum, which enables a more precise time measurement and helped to determine the longitude on sea. His inventions on chronometer he wrote down until 1673 in his book "Horologium oscillatorium".1660 Huygens travelled to England. 1663 he was admitted as a member of honor at the British Royal Society. 1666 he travelled to Paris, where he was teaching at the university since 1681. Here he also made observations together with Giovanni Domenico Cassini at the 1672 finished observatory of Paris. After a serious illness he returned to Den Haag to the families house of Hofwijck. Briefly before his dead he wrote the book "The Discovery of Celestial Worlds: Theories about Inhabitants, Plants, and Products of Planetary Worlds" where he speculated about life not only on planets of the Sun, but also about life on worlds of other stars. Huygens died at June the 8th 1695 at the age of 66 years in Den Haag.

Samuel Hahnemann(10 April 1755– 2 July 1843)

2010-04-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was born in Meissen, Saxony. His father, along with many other family members, was a painter and designer of porcelain, for which the town of Meissen is famous.As a young man, Hahnemann became proficient in a number of languages, including English, French, Italian, Greek and Latin. He eventually made a living as a translator and teacher of languages, gaining further proficiency in "Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic and Hebrew".Hahnemann studied medicine for two years at Leipzig. Citing Leipzig's lack of clinical facilities, he moved to Vienna, where he studied for ten months. After one term of further study, he graduated MD at the University of Erlangen on 10 August 1779, qualifying with honors.In 1781, Hahnemann took a village doctor’s position in the copper-mining area of Mansfeld, Saxony. He soon married Johanna Henriette Kuchler and would eventually have eleven children. He abandoned medical practice and worked as a translator of scientific and medical textbooks as the clinical practice of medicine at that time was rife with superstition and lack of scientific rigor. The treatments of the day, such as purgatives, bleeding, blistering plasters, herbal preparations and emetics lacked a rational basis and were more harmful than effective. Hahnemann recognized this and wrote critically of current practices in several papers on topics such as Arsenic poisoning, hygiene, dietetics and psychiatric treatment.While translating William Cullen's A treatise of the materia medica into German, Hahnemann was struck by a passage that deal with cinchona bark, which was used to treat malaria. Cullen described its mechanism of action as a function of its stomach-strengthening properties. Hahnemann did not accept this explanation and took "four good drams of Peruvian bark, twice a day for several days" to attempt to characterize the action of the quinine-containing bark. Hahnemann reported that he began to develop symptoms identical to those of malaria. He concluded from this experience that effective drugs must produce symptoms in healthy people that are similar to the diseases they will be expected to treat. Today this principal is known as the "Law of Similars" and is the basis for the use of the term homeopathy ("similar suffering").Hahnemann and colleagues began to test various substances to determine the types of symptoms they produced. These results suggested to Hahnemann what the drugs would be useful to treat. Hahnemann reasoned that doses of these substances that produced overt symptoms would be inappropriate for treatment of diseases with the same symptoms. Thus he advocated reduction of the dose to infinitesimal levels by multiple serial dilutions of ten or hundred fold . Soluble compounds or liquids were diluted in alcohol; insoluble materials were serially diluted by grinding with lactose. (more specific descriptions of his reasoning can be found in the "philosophical basis" section. He compiled his results into a treatise called the "Organon of rational therapeutics" which he first published in 1810. The sixth edition, published in 1921, is still used today as homeopathy's basic text. Hahnemann practiced Homeopathic medicine for almost 50 years until his death in 1843. Homeopathy had a large impact on the practice of medicine. The first homeopathic hospital opened in 1832 and homeopathic medical schools opened all over Europe. Homeopathic hospitals and practitioners often had better outcomes compared to their allopathic counterparts. These improved outcomes were undoubtedly due to the harmful nature of allopathic remedies of the time compared to the non-toxic nature of homeopathic remedies. Thus the general public began to tout the benefits of homeopathy and demand better treatment from all physicians.Allopathic medicine began to develop rational approaches to the study of disease, partially due to the competition offered by homeopathy and began to make significant gains by the end of the 19th century. By the early part of the twentieth century, homeopathy was in serious decline. The last pure homeopathic medical school in the U.S. closed in 1920, although Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia continued to offer homeopathic electives until the 1940's. Homeopathy began to enjoy a resurgence in the US in the 1970's as the public took a greater interest in holistic and natural approaches to medicine.

World Health Day: 1000 cities-1000 lives

2010-04-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

People immigrating to cities are not something new. This has been the scenario for decades.It has been estimated that 6 out of 10 people will be living in cities in the coming years. But the most important thing is the health of these people.In this regard World Health Organization has selected ‘1000 cities - 1000 lives’ as the theme of 2010’s World Health Day.Events will be arranged worldwide advising cities in opening up healthcare clinics to improve the health of the urban people.Urbanization includes health challenges with respect to environment, water, violence non-communicable diseases, injury and risks related to disease outbreaks.

James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928)

2010-04-06T02:55:00.000-07:00

Born today James Dewey Watson is the youngest person to receive Noble Prize at the age of 25 years! Fascinated by bird watching hobby, young Watson spent most of his time in his childhood days in sharing with this hobby with his father.But the turning point in his life when he participated in Quiz Kids, a popular radio show that challenged precocious youngsters to answer questions which gave him an opportunity to get enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of 15.After reading Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life? in 1946, Watson changed his professional ambitions from the study of ornithology to genetics. James Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1928. He received a B.S. in 1947 from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in 1950 from Indiana University, both in zoology. Following a National Research Fellowship in Copenhagen, he underwent research on a National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, England, where he discovered the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) with Francis Crick. Watson and Crick proposed that the DNA molecule takes the shape of a double helix, an elegantly simple structure that resembles a gently twisted ladder. This research emphasized a concept central to the emerging field of molecular biology: understanding the structure of a molecule can give clues about how it functions. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins at King's College in London, who confirmed the DNA structure using X-ray crystallography, shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their discovery.Watson is unmarried. His recreations are bird-watching and walking.

Cervical Cancer Vaccine and some Facts !

2010-04-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

On 21st january this year a 13 year old tribal girl namely Sarita was found unconscious suddenly in Khammam district in Andhra Pradesh. Sarita was rushed to the nearest healthcare centre where a small team of paramedics and a doctor confirmed that it wasn’t a case of poisoning and referred Sarita to the Bhadrachalam area hospital, 25 km from their house in Anjupaka village. En route, Sarita had a severe epileptic fit. Doctors at the hospital declared that she was “brought dead” and conducted a postmortem. The report was not handed to the parents. At the Nallipaka Public Health Centre (PHC) ,Sarita’s death was recorded as suicide. Nageshwara and Venkatamma refused to accept this and cremated their daughter under protest.“My daughter did not commit suicide. She did not consume poison,” Nageshwara says firmly. “She had started having fits after the vaccine. She told us, so did the hostel supervisor. The hospital officers are lying.” Dr R Balasudha, a paramedic at the PHC in the Narshapuram block under which Anjupaka village falls, adds: “Sarita was not dead when she was brought to the PHC. She did not consume any poison. She was having severe bouts of epileptic attacks and was very, very sick.”Sarita’s hapless parents learned of a similar death on August 30 last year in Yerragattu village, 60 km from Bhadrachalam. Another 13-year-old, Sodi Sayamma, had died there, with doctors calling it a suicide. But Sayamma’s parents, also farm labourers, said their daughter had not consumed poison or hanged herself. In both cases, the PHCS confirmed the girls had not consumed poison and referred the cases to the Bhadrachalam area hospital. Interestingly, the PHCs (one in Gowrideviteta block covering Yerragattu village and another in Narshapuram block) were responsible for administering the vaccine for the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in these villages.The Indian unit of the Seattle-based PATH, one of the world’s largest healthcare NGOs, began the HPV vaccination drive on July 9 last year as a demonstration project in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Part of the goal was to vaccinate 14,000 girls in Khammam district — a large percentage of them from poor, tribal families — with three doses of Gardasil. The three zones selected in the district were Thirumalayapalem (urban), Kothagudem (rural) and Bhadrachalam (tribal).BUT THE drive raises serious ethical questions. Did the producers of this drug and their field partners declare the full range of possible side-effects? Did the parents of these minors give “informed” consent? What is the criterion on which the target population for the vaccine was selected? And are there sufficient screening mechanisms in place to report and check on any “adverse events” or side-effects?Merck’s Gardasil and GSK’s Cervarix cervical cancer vaccines are poised for a tough battle in India.Cervical cancer vaccine makers are betting big on India as the deadly cancer takes the lives of 8 women in India every hour.WHO estimates that each year over 1.30 lakh Indian women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and over 74,000 die of cervical cancerCervical cancer is a serious disease that can be life-threatening. This disease is caused by certain high-risk HPV types that can cause the cells in the lining of the cervix to change from normal to precancerous lesions. If these precancerous lesions are not diagnosed early and treated, they may turn cancerous after a few years.Reportedly, there are more than 100 types of HPV. Of these, about 15 high-risk types were known to cause virtually all cases of cervical cancer. “Two of these types (16 and 18) are believed to cause 70 per cent of these cases (76.7 per cent in Indian women).Though there is no known cure for cervical cancer, the recent advances in vaccine technology have made it more or less certain that cervical cancer can be prevented in majority of cases using vaccine. The global market for cervical vaccine is estimated at more than $10 billion last year. The follwing are some of the facts about the cervical cancer vaccine one should bear in mind:1 The cervical cancer vaccines WILL NOT cure or treat cervical cancer. 2 Severe adverse reactions HAVE OCCURRED including ER visits, permanent damage and death.3 You can STILL GET cervical cancer AFTER having the vaccine.4 The cervical cancer vaccines WILL NOT prevent cervical cancer.5 Vaccine failure and serious adverse vaccine events have been documented in decades of studies published in the world's leading medical journals.6 Parents are frequently bullied, threatened or intimidated to vaccinate their children! 7 The dangers of childhood diseases are grossly exaggerated in order to ensure mass compliance. 8 We first need to identify the target group for this vaccination as this should only be given to those who have had no sexual exposure.9 Doubts were voiced in a more mainstream medical forum, with the publication of a US government report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama). It cited 32 deaths linked to the cervical cancer vaccine, none of which has been confirmed. It also said the vaccine has been associated with higher incidents of fainting and blood clots than other vaccines.

World Autism Awareness Day !

2010-04-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

Autism is a developmental disability that remains with a person for his or her whole life. This condition affects the brain's functions. The first signs usually appear before a child is three years old. People with autism often: 1 Find social interaction difficult.
2 Have problems with verbal and non-verbal communication.
3 Demonstrate restrictive and repetitive behavior.
4 Have a limited set of interests and activities.Autism affects girls and boys of all races and in all geographic regions and has a large impact on children, their families, communities and societies. The prevalence is currently rising in many countries around the world. Caring for and educating children and young people with this condition places challenges on health care, education and training programs.

WILLIAM HARVEY (1578 - 1657)

2010-04-01T03:11:00.000-07:00

Today is the birthday of William Harvey who discovered the blood circulation and the role of heart in pumping blood.William Harvey was born on 1 April 1578 in Folkestone, Kent, England the eldest of several children.Harvey's father, Thomas Harvey, was a jurat of Folkestone where he served the office of mayor in 1600.So Harvey was born in a rich family but sacrificed his rich comforts for the sake of research in anatomy and physiology.Harvey's initial education was carried out in Folkestone, where he learned Latin. He then entered the King's School (Canterbury). Harvey remained at the King's School for five years, after which he joined Caius College in Cambridge.Harvey graduated as a Bachelor of Arts from Caius College in 1597. He then traveled through France and Germany to Italy, where he entered the University of Padua, apparently in 1598.During Harvey's years of study there, he developed a relationship with Fabricius and read Fabricius' De Venarum Ostiolis.Harvey graduated as Doctor of Medicine from the University of Padua on April 25, 1602.Working with Fabricius helped to stimulate Harvey's interest both in anatomy and the work of Andreas Vesalius.In 1615 Harvey began to work on his theory that blood circulated around the body. In 1616 he discussed in his lectures the role the heart played in propelling the blood in a circular course. In order to prove his theory, Harvey carefully studied the motion of the heart and blood in live animals. He also carried out dissections on the bodies of executed criminals.Through this careful and detailed research, Harvey was able to disprove Galen's theory that the body made new blood as it used up the old. He proved that the heart was a pump which forced the blood around the body through arteries and that the blood was returned to the heart through the veins.In 1628 Harvey formally presented his findings in his publication - Anatomical Essay on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, in which he explained his methods and gave an accurate account of how the circulatory system functioned.Harvey's work received a great deal of criticism from his contemporaries who distrusted any ideas which contradicted the established theories of Galen, especially as Harvey's findings brought into question the widespread practice of blood letting. This was carried out because it was believed illness was sometimes caused by there being too much blood in the system. At first Harvey's ideas were so controversial some of his patients left his practice. However, despite many still not believing his findings his fame spread throughout Europe and his contribution became widely recognised. Harvey not only participated in the Lumleain lectures but also took care of his patients at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; so soon attained an important and fairly lucrative practice, which climaxed with his appointment as 'Physician Extraordinary' to King James I on 3 February 1618. He seems to have similarly served various aristocrats, including Lord Chancellor Bacon).At the age of fifty-two, Harvey received commands by King James I to accompany the Duke of Lennox during his trip abroad. This voyage - the first after his return from Padua - lasted three years, taking Harvey through the countries of France and Spain during the Mantuan War and Plague.Having returned to England in 1632, Harvey was named 'Physician in Ordinary' to the newly-appointed King, Charles I and accompanied him wherever he went. In particular, Charles' hunting expeditions gave Harvey access to many deer carcasses; it was upon them that Harvey made many observations and consequent theories.During English Civil War a "...mob of citizen-soldiers against the King entered Harvey's lodgings, stole his goods, and scattered his papers. The papers consisted of the records of a large number of dissections...of diseased bodies, with this observations on the development on insects, and a series of notes on comparative anatomy." During this period, Harvey maintained his position, helped the wounded on several occasions and protected the King's children.The conflicts of the Civil War soon led King Charles to Oxford, with Harvey attending, where the physician was made 'Doctor of Physic' in 1642 and later Warden of Merton College in 1645. "In Oxford he (Harvey) very soon settled down to his accustomed pursuits, unmindful of the clatter of arms and of the constant marching and countermarching around him, for the city remained the base of operations until its surrender..."After the surrender of Oxford in 1645 marks the beginning of Harvey's gradual retirement from public life and duties. Now sixty-eight years old and childless, Harvey had lost three brothers and wife at this time. He thus decided to return to London and live with his brothers Eliab and Daniel separately and in different periods of time.Harvey died at Roehampton in the house of this brother Eliab on 3 June, 1657. Descriptions of the event seem to show that he died of a cerebral hemorrhage from vessels long injured by gout: it is highly probable that the left Sylvian artery malfunctioned, leading to a gradual accumulation of blood to the brain which eventually overwhelmed it.

Big Bang Success and The God(damn) Particle too !

2010-03-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, March 30 at precisely 1:06 PM in Geneva, Switzerland,the apara brahma scientists revisited our distant past. The experiment that recreated the conditions similar to conditions right after the Big Bang will help scientists evaluate the state of matter in that exact moment, took place in the LHC's 27 km tunnel about a hundred metres below the ground.Analysis of data could lead to the discovery of the Higgs Boson, also called the 'God particle,' which is believed to have existed when the universe was born.The LHC slammed beams of particles together at a record collision energy of 7 tera-electron volts (TeV) or seven billion billion electron volts which is three and a half times faster than previously achieved in a particle accelerator according to news agencies.The collisions, the high point so far of the 10 billion Swiss franc (9.4 billion USD) experiment, which will continue for years, marked a significant step forward for physics and could be seen as a giant leap for mankind, CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer said, speaking in a video relay from Tokyo.After a trouble-free overnight test run, first a small power supply glitch and then an over-sensitive magnet safety system led the physicists to suspend at least for a few hours the mega-power particle collisions.Applause and cheers broke out across CERN at 4:36 pm IST, the moment when subatomic particles travelling at 99.999999% of the speed of light were slammed together in the machine, creating the highest energy particle collisions a laboratory has ever achieved."In the course of 2010 and 2011 we will be compiling the data and we expect to make real discoveries," said Oliver Buchmueller, one of the key figures in the experiment.
It only took 16 short years and a paltry $10 billion dollars to recreate the conditions similar to the original Big Bang that occurred some 13.7 billion years ago and is one of the major scientific theories behind the creation of life as we know it.The European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN utilized the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest energy particle accelerator to smash two proton beams moving at 99 percent of the speed of light.According to cosmologists, the term Big Bang generally refers to the idea that the Universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past. That instant occurred one trillionth of a second — one second divided by 10 followed by 11 zeroes, or what is best described as a picosecond.The result was a soundless proton explosion that heralded a new period of scientific discovery as physicists from around the world try to recreate and study the conditions immediately after the Big Bang, understand the nature of dark energy and dark matter and determine whether the hypothetical Higgs Boson really does exist.The collisions - with proton beams being smashed into each other at 3.5 times the previous record speeds - are expected to help scientists understand the nature of the universe. The success came after the experiment was delayed for a few hours by technical glitches with power supply.But the third attempt triggered collisions among the 20 billion protons in the LHC, which runs about 100 metres below the Swiss-French border."We're within a billionth of a second of the Big Bang," James Gillies, a Cern spokesman, told the AFP news agency.Cern now plans to run the machine continuously for a period of 18 to 24 months, with a brief interruption for technical purposes at the end of 2010.The aim is to see if certain particles can be recreated, in an effort to understand the moment after the Big Bang - believed to be the explosive event some 14 billion years ago which created the Universe - in part by explaining how elementary particles acquire mass.As the tests continue scientists around the world will sift through and process the data, searching for evidence of a theorised missing link called the Higgs Boson, also known as the "God Particle".The experiment would "give us a clue of how we were created in the beginning"and shed light on "dark matter" and subsequently "dark energy", invisible matter or forces that are thought to account together for some 96 per cent of the cosmos.

Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009)

2010-03-25T03:16:00.000-07:00

One more story of an agricultural scientist whose birth day falls on this day and photo is worshiped in the houses of Haryana and Punjab published in Hi Bujji page of the district edition of Eenadu from the pen of Prof E.V.Subba Rao.In 1970 Norman E. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for a lifetime of work to feed a hungry world. Although a scientist with outstanding contributions, perhaps Dr. Borlaug's greatest achievement has been his unending struggle to integrate the various streams of agricultural research into viable technologies and to convince political leaders to bring these advances to fruition.Born of Norwegian descent, Dr. Borlaug was raised in Cresco, a small farming community in northeast Iowa. He learned his work ethic on a small mixed crop and livestock family farm and obtained initial education in a one-room rural school house.Dr. Borlaug's skills as an athlete (mainly in wrestling) opened the door for him to attend the University of Minnesota, where he studied to be a forester, wrestled, and worked various odd jobs. After graduating in 1937 with a BS in Forestry, he went to work for the United States Forest Service, initially in Idaho and later in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He returned to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and took up the study of plant pathology, receiving his Ph.D. in 1942. Years later, the University of Minnesota would house its plant pathology and agronomy programs in Borlaug Hall.After graduation, Dr. Borlaug worked as a Microbiologist for E.I. Dupont de Nemours, until being released from his wartime service.In 1944, Dr. Borlaug participated in the Rockefeller Foundation's pioneering technical assistance program in Mexico, where he was a research scientist in charge of wheat improvement. For the next sixteen years, he worked to solve a series of wheat production problems that were limiting wheat cultivation in Mexico and to help train a whole generation of young Mexican scientists.The work in Mexico not only had a profound impact on Dr. Borlaug's life and philosophy of agriculture research and development, but also on agricultural production, first in Mexico and later in many parts of the world.It was on the research stations and farmers' fields of Mexico that Dr. Borlaug developed successive generations of wheat varieties with broad and stable disease resistance, broad adaptation to growing conditions across many degrees of latitude, and with exceedingly high yield potential. These new wheat varieties and improved crop management practices transformed agricultural production in Mexico during the 1940's and 1950's and later in Asia and Latin America, sparking what today is known as the "Green Revolution." Because of his achievements to prevent hunger, famine and misery around the world, it is said that Dr. Borlaug has "saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived." As a researcher with the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico (1944 – 60), he developed strains of grain that tripled Mexican wheat production. Later his dwarf wheats raised harvests in Pakistan and India by 60%, ending the food shortages that had plagued the subcontinent in the 1960s. For helping lay the groundwork of the Green Revolution, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1970. Afterward he worked on improving crop yields in Africa and taught at Texas A&M University (1984 – 2009). In 1986 Borlaug created the World Food Prize as a way to honour individuals who have contributed to improving the availability and quality of food worldwide. His numerous honours include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2007).He was also a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honour.Professor M. S. Swaminathan, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (India) says,""Norman Borlaug is the living embodiment of the human quest for a hunger free world. His life is his message."!

World Tuberculosis Day!

2010-03-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

Any physician is sad on this day to know that this disease is still as rampant as it was when he was a medical student 25 years back!Around the world each year more than nine million people become ill with tuberculosis (TB) and nearly two million people die.The basic diagnosis of TB has not changed for more than a century and it can be cured with medication. The World Health Organization says some 36 million people have been cured of TB over the past 15 years through a programme called Dots.The Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course (Dots) strategy was introduced by the WHO in 1994 and involves a standardised multi-drug treatment therapy. Patients must take the medicine daily and each box contains the treatment regimen for one patient.If patients break their treatment the TB bacilli become resistant. Multi-drug resistant TB can develop, which takes longer to treat and can be cured only with second-line drugs, which are more expensive and have more side effects. March 24th commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB bacillus. At the time of Koch's announcement in Berlin, TB was raging through Europe and the Americas, causing the death of one out of every seven people. Koch's discovery opened the way toward diagnosing and curing tuberculosis.The year 2010 marks the halfway point for the Global Plan to Stop TB (2006-2015). The 2010 World TB Day campaign is focused on individuals around the world who have found new ways to stop TB and can serve as an inspiration in research aimed at developing new diagnostics, drugs or vaccines;operational research, aimed at making TB care more effective and efficient and new approaches to helping people gain access to TB diagnosis and treatment.

Edison of India! Today Birthday of G.D.Naidu.....

2010-03-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

I owe my grateful thanks to Prof E.V.Subba Rao for whatever i post here on the lives of great leaders in Science because of his inspiring writings in the local edition of Eenadu.It has become a habit to me to peep through the edition first and then start the day.And now the story of G.D.Naidu who had really achieved great things in those days of poverty and lack of facilities. Born on March 23, 1893, in Kalangal, a village near Sulur near Coimbatore, Naidu worked in a ginning mill for a few years.He had only primary education studied only upto third standard,but excelled as a versatile genius. Among his hobbies was train travel to near by cities.Capitalising the experience in ginning mill, he set up an industry and earned substantially. But the cotton business in Bombay made him virtually a bankrupt.On return to Coimbatore, he expressed his inclination to work in the unit run by Robert Stanes.On the advice of Stanes, he bought a bus with funds from his friends and also Stanes himself.This proved the turning point from which he never looked back.Historian C.R.Elangovan says that it was Naidu who introduced a “system” in the transport industry in the State.Punctuality was his forte. And he had introduced even timing machine and ticketing machine.Apart from running festival specials, all his buses and also the bus stands set up by him used to be spic and span.From the owner of one bus in 1920, he acquired 22 more by 1924 and in 1933 he owned as many as 280 buses.He began his transport business in 1920, with the purchase of an automobile coach. He drove it between Pollachi and Palani. In a few years, his United Motor Service (UMS) owned the most efficient fleet of public transport vehicles in the country. In 1937, the first motor to be produced in India, was brought out from G D Naidu's UMS factory.Naidu, inspired by various scientific inventions of England and also the US , invented almost 100 gadgets !As an inventor, G D Naidu was one-of-a-kind in the country. He invented an Electric Razor Rasant, that gave users far more shaves than other existing options in the international market. Among his other inventions were the super-thin shaving blades, a distance adjuster for film cameras, a special fruit juice extractor, a tamper-proof vote-recording machine and a kerosene-run fan. In 1941, he announced that he had the ability to manufacture five-valve Radio sets in India at a mere Rs 70/- a set.One among the “unbelievables” of this “miracle man” was the cheap houses constructed within a span of about eight hours—from laying the foundation till the completion.The dignitary who laid the stone was present for inaugurating the building also.Such houses constructed during 1967-68 are in good condition even now.In 1941, he started a 40-acre farm at Podhanur. Several scientists and technical experts, including Sir C.V.Raman and Visweswarayya, had visited this farm.Among the crops he researched and succeeded in identifying new varieties include cotton, maize and papaya.But as all these were produced within certain specific scientific parameters, they could not draw much response either from the Government or the public.As he was interested in Siddha system of medicine, he had been conducting a number of experiments in that also.
In 1952, his brainchild the indigenously built Petrol engine two-seater Car (costing a mere Rs 2,000/-) rolled out. But production was stopped subsequently, because of the Governments refusal to grant the necessary license. His inventiveness was not confined to machinery alone. He is said to have grown ten feet high Cotton plants, millet plants with high yields and several injections for plants that made possible what Sir C V Raman called Botanic marvels. On his trips abroad, Naidu always seemed to draw appreciation for his innovations and his personal drive. In 1935, he personally filmed the funeral of King George V at London. In 1936, he met Adolf Hitler in Germany (even taking Still Photographs of the Fuhrer)[citation needed]. Among the Indian stalwarts that GD Naidus camera captured were Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru and Subash Chandra Bose. GD Naidu remained an outsider to Politics, despite having contested and lost in the 1936 Provincial General Elections.

Robert A. Millikan (22 March 1868 – 19 December 1953)

2010-03-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

Robert Andrews Millikan was born on the 22nd of March, 1868, in Morrison, Ill. (U.S.A.), as the second son of the Reverend Silas Franklin Millikan and Mary Jane Andrews. His grandparents were of the Old New England stock which had come to America before 1750, and were pioneer settlers in the Middle West. He led a rural existence in childhood, attending the Maquoketa High School (Iowa). After working for a short time as a court reporter, he entered Oberlin College (Ohio) in 1886. During his undergraduate course his favourite subjects were Greek and mathematics; but after his graduation in 1891 he took, for two years, a teaching post in elementary physics. It so happened that his Greek professor once asked Millikan to teach physics.But Millikan replied that he did not know the physics at all.The Greek professor said that any one who knew Greek could teach Physics!That was the turning point in the life of Millikan.He at once purchased an Avery’s Elements of Physics, and spent the greater part of his summer vacation of 1889 at home trying to master the subject.He was so intensely interested in keeping his knowledge ahead of that of the class that they must have caught some of his own interest and enthusiasm.Millikan's enthusiasm for education continued throughout his career, and he was the coauthor of a popular and influential series of introductory textbooks, which were ahead of their time in many ways.In 1893, after obtaining his mastership in physics, he was appointed Fellow in Physics at Columbia University. He afterwards received his Ph.D. (1895) for research on the polarization of light emitted by incandescent surfaces using for this purpose molten gold and silver at the U.S. Mint.In 1902 he married Greta Ervin Blanchard. They had three sons - Clark Blanchard, Glenn Allen, and Max Franklin. As a scientist, Millikan made numerous momentous discoveries, chiefly in the fields of electricity, optics, and molecular physics. His earliest major success was the accurate determination of the charge carried by an electron, using the elegant "falling-drop method"; he also proved that this quantity was a constant for all electrons (1910), thus demonstrating the atomic structure of electricity. Next, he verified experimentally Einstein's all-important photoelectric equation, and made the first direct photoelectric determination of Planck's constant h (1912-1915). In addition his studies of the Brownian movements in gases put an end to all opposition to the atomic and kinetic theories of matter. During 1920-1923, Millikan occupied himself with work concerning the hot-spark spectroscopy of the elements (which explored the region of the spectrum between the ultraviolet and X-radiation), thereby extending the ultraviolet spectrum downwards far beyond the then known limit. The discovery of his law of motion of a particle falling towards the earth after entering the earth's atmosphere, together with his other investigations on electrical phenomena, ultimately led him to his significant studies of cosmic radiation (particularly with ionization chambers).Throughout his life Millikan remained a prolific author, making numerous contributions to scientific journals. He was not only a foremost scientist, but his religious and philosophic nature was evident from his lectures on the reconciliation of science and religion, and from his books: Science and Life(1924); Evolution in Science and Religion (1927); Science and the New Civilization (1930); Time, Matter, and Values (1932). Shortly before his death he published Electrons (+ and –), Protons, Photons, Neutrons, Mesotrons, and Cosmic Rays (1947; another rev. ed. of The Electron, previously mentioned,) and his Autobiography(1950).During World War I, Millikan was Vice-Chairman of the National Research Council, playing a major part in developing anti-submarine and meteorological devices. In 1921, he was appointed Director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; he was also made Chairman of the Executive Council of that institute. In 1946 he retired from this post. Professor Millikan has been President of the American Physical Society, Vice-President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was the American member of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, and the American representative at the International Congress of Physics, known as the Solvay Congress, at Brussels in 1921. He held honorary doctor's degrees of some twenty-five universities, and was a member or honorary member of many learned institutions in his country and abroad. He has been the recipient of the Comstock Prize of the National Academy of Sciences, of the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, of the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of Great Britain, and of the Nobel Prize for Physics 1923. He was also made Commander of the Legion of Honour, and received the Chinese Order of Jade.Millikan was an enthusiastic tennis player, and golf was also one of his recreations.Millikan died of a heart attack at his home in San Marino, California in 1953 at age 85, and was interred in the "Court of Honor" at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

The Basics of Weight Loss

2010-03-15T02:33:00.000-07:00

Rules of Weight Loss :Calculate your BMR (basal metabolic rate). Your BMR is what your body needs to maintain normal functions like breathing and digestion. This is the minimum number of calories you need to eat each day. Keep in mind that no calculator will be 100% accurate, so you may need to adjust these numbers as you go along. Calculate your activity level. Use a calorie calculator to figure out how many calories you burn while sitting, standing, exercising, lifting weights, etc. throughout the day. It helps to keep a daily activity journal or you could even wear a heart rate monitor that calculates calories burned.Keep track of how many calories you eat. You can use a site like Calorie Count or use a food journal to write down what you eat and drink each day. Be as accurate as possible, measuring when you need to or looking up nutritional information for restaurants, if you eat out.Add it up. Take your BMR number, add your activity calories and then subtract your food calories from that total. If you're eating more than you're burning, (your BMR + activity is 2000 and you're eating 2400 calories) you'll gain weight. If you're burning more than you eat, you'll lose weight.Example:

Mary's BMR is 1400 calories and she burns 900 calories in daily activity with regular exercise, walking around and doing household chores. To maintain her weight, she should be eating 2300 calories but, after keeping a food journal, Mary finds that she's eating 2550 calories every day. By eating 250 more calories than her body needs, Mary will gain one pound every 2 weeks.
This example shows how easy it is to gain weight without even knowing it. However, it's also easy to lose weight, even if the process itself can be slow. You can start by making small changes in your diet and activity levels and immediately start burning more calories than you're eating. If you can find a way to burn an extra 200 to 500 calories each day with both exercise and diet, you're on the right track. Try these ideas: Instead of... Do this...
An afternoon Coke Drink a glass of water. (calories saved: 97)
An Egg McMuffin Eat a small whole wheat bagel +1 Tbsp of peanut butter (calories saved: 185)
Using your break eat sweets Walk up and down a flight of stairs for 10 minutes (calories burned: 100)
Hitting the snooze button Get up 10 minutes early and go for a brisk walk (calories burned: 100)
Watching TV after work Do 10 minutes of yoga (calories burned: 50) Metric BMR Formula Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) - ( 6.8 x age in years) Harris Benedict Formula To determine your total daily calorie needs, multiply your BMR by the appropriate activity factor, as follows:
If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

Rhonda Fahmy donated her kidney through 1'' !

2010-03-15T00:45:00.000-07:00

It is really an encouraging news to Kidney donors that British Surgeons have set a record by removing a kidney from a live donor through a one-inch cut.Rhonda Fahmy, 25, donated her kidney to her father Ahmed, 57, at Hammersmith Hospital in London last Wednesday on 10th of this month. Rhonda, of Watford, Hertfordshire, said: “The surgeon told me he got my kidney out through an inch-wide incision. It was only when I looked at the scar I realised it wasn’t a joke.”Ahmed, from Kensington, west London, added: “I was amazed. The surgeon must be a magician.”The pioneering operation could help to increase the number of living donor transplants.The usual length of the incision is up to six inches and involves cutting through a rib. The new technique takes 45 minutes and patients who would previously have been in hospital for up to two weeks often go home within 48 hours.

We are proud of you Sridhar !

2010-02-24T01:15:00.000-08:00

Many companies are coming to terms with the flood of new technology. Even when it's right in front of your face, disruption can be hard to see.Bloom Energy wants to short-circuit electric utilities by building a power plant in every home. Making electricity in central power plants is so 20th century. K.R. Sridhar has a better idea: Create energy on the spot, right where it's consumed. His startup, Bloom Energy (formerly known as Ion America), is developing a fuel cell that could kick-start the distributed-energy industry.The problem with today's centralized approach is its vast inefficiency. In coal-and gas-fired power plants, almost two-thirds of the energy produced by converting fuel into kilowatts escapes as heat. Another 8 percent, on average, dissipates as the electricity travels over transmission lines to get to your home.Sridhar, a former aerospace engineering professor who developed a device for NASA to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen on Mars, is undaunted by big challenges. His plan for generating energy locally is to use solid-oxide fuel cells - a concept that has been kicking around since the 19th century but is now becoming practical with advances in the ceramics needed to build the things.Bloom's cells, still in development, are constructed around a ceramic core that acts as an electrode. At high temperatures, fuel on one side attracts oxygen ions on the other. As these ions are pulled through the solid core, the resulting electrochemical reaction creates electricity.Such a fuel cell can run happily on almost any hydrocarbon fuel - ethanol, biodiesel, methane, natural gas. Though it consumes hydrocarbons, Bloom Energy's fuel cell does not require combustion and therefore produces half the greenhouse gas emissions of more conventional energy sources. One of its by-products, in fact, is hydrogen that could be used in a different type of fuel cell, the hydrogen-powered version imagined for propelling cars.Sridhar says Bloom's technology is cheaper and more efficient than others because of proprietary technology that enables it to use low-cost materials — sand and ink — in 4-inch-by-4-inch fuel cells as thick as business cards. One cell powers a light bulb. Bloom stacks them together to produce more power.Bloom's big breakthrough was reducing breakage by figuring out how to get the cells and the metal plates that go between them in the stacks to expand and shrink at the same rate at temperatures up to 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 degrees Fahrenheit). The high heat makes the fuel more reactive and the cell more efficient, Sridhar says. The heat also enables use of different fuels, making the tech easier and cheaper to deploy, he says.Bloom Energy's biggest hurdle is cost. The company needs to get the price of the machines below $10,000 apiece.Ultimately, Sridhar sees his fuel cells as a leapfrog technology that could find a market in developing countries that haven't yet built an electrical grid. He imagines local entrepreneurs, armed with one or two of his machines, renting out electricity to a whole village. Lighting up the world one village at a time - there's nothing niche about that ambition.

Happy Brinjal!

2010-02-10T06:55:00.001-08:00

It is a happy news that Bt brinjal will not make it to your dinner table for now. The Environment Ministry announced its decision to impose a moratorium on the release of the transgenic brinjal hybrid developed by Mahyco, a subsidiary of global seed giant Monsanto.The moratorium will last till such time independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment, including the rich genetic wealth existing in brinjal in our country.There is no overriding urgency or food security argument for [release of] Bt brinjal! We cannot depend on private sector to drive the biotechnology research in our agriculture sector. The research in seeds is as strategic as space or nuclear research. The approval of Bt Brinjal by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has exposed the unscientific basis on which genetically-engineered crops are being commercialised, and it raises questions about the entire bio-safety process.The admission by the chair of the Expert Committee-II (EC-II), Dr Arjula Reddy, that Union agriculture minister pressurised the panel to approve Bt Brinjal is a symptom of the corruption that needs investigation. Dr Reddy admitted this in a television interview. The Bt Brinjal debate is not just about a vegetable. It is a test for our food sovereignty and our democracy. This is why it was so important to take it to the public through a series of public hearings that had been organised by the ministry of forest and environment. The results of these public hearings will be out today and should be treated like a referendum on genetically-modified organisms (GMO). This is vital for democracy in the most vital aspect of life — the food we eat.Genetic engineering needs careful assessment because it allows the transfer of genes from one organism to a totally unrelated organism, crossing species barriers. The impacts are totally unpredictable. It were these unpredictable consequences that led the founding fathers of genetic engineering, or recombinant DNA research, to call for a moratorium on genetic engineering at Asilomer, California, in 1972. However, Wall Street and the biotechnology industry hijacked genetic engineering and started to rush genetically-modified (GM) crops with false promises to the market.Not only are the consequences of genetic engineering unpredictable, the technology itself is unpredictable. It has been falsely projected by the biotechnology industry that because the manipulation of plants is at the genetic level, genetic engineering is more accurate and precise than conventional breeding. This is not true. There are only two tools used for current genetic engineering — one is the gene gun, the other is a plant cancer, Agrobacterium tumefacieus. The uncertainty of the technology is the reason that antibiotic resistance marker genes are used to separate the cells whose genome absorbed the foreign gene from those that do not. The Bt Brinjal uses a gene, Cry 1 Ac, to produce a toxin from a soil organism — Bacillus Thurengensis (Bt) — as well as two antibiotic resistance marker genes. The NPT11 gene confers resistance to the antibiotics Kanamycin and Neomycin; The AAD gene confers resistance to antibiotic resistance marker genes to separate the cells that absorbed the Bt gene from those that did not. But to assess bio-safety, safety tests also need to assess the transgene, i.e the Bt Gene Cry 1Ac plus antibiotic resistance marker genes (NPT11 plus AAD) plus the viral promoter (Ca MV3 35S) plus the vector (Agrobacterium, which is used to carry the Bt gene into the brinjal). However, the tests on bio-safety of Bt Brinjal done by Monsanto/Mahyco and approved by GEAC have not tested Bt Brinjal at all. They have only tested the naturally-occurring and safe microbial Bt. This is a “don’t look, don’t see” policy.The safety of microbial Bt sprays cannot be used as proof of safety of transgenic Bt. Bt sprays are composed primarily of endotoxins in an inactive crystalline form. Bt crops on the other hand are genetically-engineered to produce the Bt toxin, which is active without processing. The “rationale for the development of Bt Brinjal” presented by EC-II is based on the false assumption that genetically-engineered Bt crops like Bt Brinjal are an alternative to the use of chemical pesticides for pest control. The panel does not address the real alternative to chemical agriculture, which is organic farming based on the principles of agro-ecology. Bt Cotton, like Bt Brinjal, was supposed to control the lepidopteron insects. In case of cotton, the pest was the bollworm. In case of Bt Brinjal, it is the fruit and shoot borer.In Bt Cotton we have witnessed the emergence of new non-target pests and diseases such as aphids, jassids, army bug, mealy bug and “laliya”. This has led to an increase, not a decrease, in pesticide use. Navdanya, a movement that has created 55 community seed banks and works with 500,000 farmers, has carried out studies that show a 13-fold increase in pesticide use in Vidharba after the introduction of Bt Cotton. (I am the executive director of the Navdanya Trust.) Genetically-engineered Bt Brinjal can lead to genetic pollution and contamination. Here too the panel, to deny the ecological risks of genetic pollution, has used totally unscientific arguments. The panel cannot even make up its mind whether brinjal is self-pollinated or cross-pollinated.Indian researchers have reported two to 48 per cent out crossing in brinjal varieties in India. The Mahyco results on cross-pollination vary from 1.4 per cent to 2.7 per cent in 2002, and drop to 0.14 per cent to 85 per cent in the 2007 studies.These unscientific claims go counter to the established science of plant breeding which has established 200 metres as the isolation distance for breeding foundation seeds and 100 metres for breeding certified seeds for brinjal. Bees pollinate over larger distances. Britain’s former minister for environment, Michael Meacher, had to admit that bees, which may fly up to nine km (six miles) in search of nectar, cannot be expected to observe a “no-fly zone”. A study by the UK-based National Pollen Research Unit in 1999 showed that wind can carry viable maize pollen hundreds of kilometres in 24 hours. Transgenic pollen was found 4.5 km (nearly three miles) from a field of GM oilseed rape in Oxfordshire — at least 20 times over the limit set by the regulatory agencies.This level of genetic pollution will destroy our organic farmers who with love and care produce pesticide-free, GMO-free vegetables for citizens. Instead of recognising that approval for commercial cultivation of Bt Brinjal is a threat to organic growers, the panel carelessly and callously states that the responsibility of avoiding pollution lies with organic producers.

Why should our small organic growers have to bear the burden of avoiding contamination of their crops? Liability systems need to be evolved which make pollinators pay and make the company liable for economic damages. Until then, there should be a moratorium on Bt Brinjal. During the moratorium, the government needs to set up interdisciplinary bio-safety assessment systems and inter-ministerial bio-safety regulatory processes which should be independent of the biotechnology industry. It also needs to have a system of labelling GMOs to respect the right of citizens to know what they are eating and make informed choices. This is imperative to protect our food sovereignty and our food democracy.

Nano sensors to detect heart attack!

2010-02-06T06:44:00.000-08:00

A team of Indian scientists and engineers has developed affordable sensors using nano materials to detect a heart attack quickly.The device with nano sensors can not only detect a heart attack, but also transmit its signal through a wireless interface to doctors located remotely for quick diagnosis and treatment.The prototype would soon be introduced as a portable device in the market to help thousands of people prone to sudden cardiac disease wear it and carry on with their lives.The three-dimension sensors use nano electrical mechanical system (NEMS) of its polymer material to convert any abnormal movement in the heart muscles into an electrical signal for detecting a cardiac symptom.The team has built a cantilever in the sensor using tiny or nano-particles of the polymer to measure the stress symptom (myocardial infarction) in the heart and convert it into an electrical signal.Nano-particles, measured as one billionth of a metre (39 inches), in a polymer generate electrical current through biochemical process of the enzymes produced in the heart.When the heart goes through severe stress or strain, it suddenly releases enzymes (protein molecules) in excess, causing pressure on its blood vessels and exertion, which manifest as chest pain, perspiration or even a cardiac arrest. Heart attacks, a cardiac disease, are on the rise in India owing to improper food habits and sedentary lifestyle of the people, especially in urban areas and hazardous occupations causing stress and strain. According to a recent study by Medwin Heart Foundation, a health organisation based in Hyderabad, about 60 percent of heart diseases worldwide are likely to occur in India by this year-end. With so many Indians prone to heart diseases irrespective of age and gender, the portable device will enable cardiac diagnosis affordable and quick as against multiple and expensive tests carried out presently using conventional methods

Littmann 3200 Bluetooth Stethoscope“The Best Ever Invention”!

2010-02-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

3M has partnered with Zargis Medical to develop a Bluetooth-enabled stethoscope with recording capabilities that can help physicians get more out of an exam. By being able to transfer recordings to a computer, one can assemble a historical set for analysis at a later time or share selective sounds with colleagues for a second opinion. Additionally, the package comes with two pieces of software, one that helps visualize and fine tune the audio for better fidelity, and the other helps clinicians identify suspected murmurs. It is difficult even for a famous cardiologist to find the exact count of the heart beat of a person & it’s not even an ordinary issue to find out the tiny differences that occur in blood circulation. It is very difficult to find out the symptoms like the heart problems that arise by birth, blocks in the heart valves, etc; As it was a life and death issue even a small doubt is to be clarified by taking various tests like ECG etc; as suggested by the physician. Keeping in view all those problems, 3M company introduced a new stethoscope, “Litman 3200”.By this stethoscope, the count of the heart beat is been sent to the computer with the help of a Bluetooth where the information is been converted into Cardio scan with the help of a software that is been installed by Jargis Company. If necessary, the doctors can hear the heart beat & pulse directly which helps to reduce the heart risks. American doctors says that, nearly 9400 millions of dollars are been spent on cardio scans in America every year. But, by using Litman 3200 Stethoscope, which is the result of an advanced technology, saves a lot of money. This Litman Stethoscope which costs nearly 400 dollars (Rs.17, 000 in Indian Rupees) is been recognized as “The Best Ever Invention” by The Popular Science Magazine.

OBESITY AND OVERWEIGHT

2010-02-05T06:28:00.000-08:00

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than 1 billion adults overweight - at least 300 million of them clinically obese - and is a major contributor to the global burden of chronic disease and disability. Often coexisting in developing countries with under-nutrition,obesity is a complex condition, with serious social and psychological dimensions, affecting virtually all ages and socioeconomic groups. Increased consumption of more energy-dense, nutrientpoor foods with high levels of sugar and saturated fats, combined with reduced physical activity, have led to obesity rates that have risen three-fold or more since 1980 in some areas of North America, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, Australasia and China.The obesity epidemic is not restricted to industrialized societies; this increase is often faster in developing countries than in the developed world. Obesity and overweight pose a major risk for serious diet-related chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer. The health consequences range from increased risk of premature death, to serious chronic conditions that reduce the overall quality of life. Of especial concern is the increasing incidence of child obesity. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?The rising epidemic reflects the profound changes in society and in behavioural patterns of communities over recent decades.While genes are important in determining a person's susceptibility to weight gain, energy balance is determined by calorie intake and physical activity. Thus societal changes and worldwide nutrition transition are driving the obesity epidemic. Economic growth,modernization, urbanization and globalization of food markets are just some of the forces thought to underlie the epidemic.As incomes rise and populations become more urban,diets high in complex carbohydrates give way to more varied diets with a higher proportion of fats, saturated fats and sugars.At the same time, large shifts towards less physically demanding work have been observed worldwide. Moves towards less physical activity are also found in the increasing use of automated transport, technology in the home, and more passive leisure pursuits. HOW DO WE DEFINE OBESITY AND OVERWEIGHT? The prevalence of overweight and obesity is commonly assessed by using body mass index (BMI), defined as the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in metres (kg/m2). A BMI over 25 kg/m2 is defined as overweight, and aBMI of over 30 kg/m2 as obese.These markers provide common benchmarks for assessment, but the risks of disease in all populations can increase progressively from lower BMI levels. Adult mean BMI levels of 22-23 kg/m2 are found in Africa and Asia, while levels of 25-27 kg/m2 are prevalent across North America, Europe, and in some Latin American, North African and Pacific Island countries. BMI increases amongst middle-aged elderly people, who are at the greatest risk of health complications. In countries undergoing nutrition transition, overnutrition often co-exists with undernutrition. People with a BMI below 18.5 kg/m2 tend to be underweight.The distribution of BMI is shifting upwards in manyopulations. And recent studies have shown that people who were undernourished in early life and then become obese in adulthood, tend to develop conditions such ashigh blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes at an earlier age and in more severe form thanthose who were never undernourished. HOW DOES EXCESS BODY FAT IMPACT HEALTH?Overweight and obesity lead to adverse metabolic effectson blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. Some confusion of the consequences of obesity arise because researchers have used different BMI cut-offs, and because the presence of many medical conditions involved in the development of obesity may confuse the effects of obesity itself.The non-fatal, but debilitating health problems associated with obesity include respiratory difficulties, chronic musculoskeletal problems, skin problems and infertility. The more life-threatening problems fall into four main areas: CVD problems; conditions associated with insulin resistance such as type 2 diabetes; certain types of cancers, especially the hormonally related and large-bowel cancers; and gallbladder disease. The likelihood of developing Type 2 diabetes and hypertension rises steeply with increasing body fatness.Confined to older adults for most of the 20th century, this disease now affects obese children even before puberty. Approximately 85% of people with diabetes are type 2, and of these, 90% are obese or overweight. And this isincreasingly becoming a developing world problem. In 1995, the Emerging Market Economies had the highest number of diabetics. If current trends continue, India and the Middle Eastern crescent will have taken over by 2025.Large increases would also be observed in China, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the rest of Asia. Raised BMI also increases the risks of cancer of the breast, colon, prostrate, endometroium, kidney and gallbladder. Chronic overweight and obesity contribute significantly to osteoarthritis, a major cause of disability in adults.Although obesity should be considered a disease in its own right, it is also one of the key risk factors for other chronic diseases together with smoking, high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol. In the analyses carried out for World Health Report 2002, approximately 58% of diabetes and 21% of ischaemic heart disease and 8-42% of certain cancers globally were attributable to a BMI above 21 kg/m2.

Basu serves Humanity even after his death.....

2010-01-20T06:13:00.000-08:00

It is really a great trend setting in this mundane world to donate one's body for medical research thereby continuing service to humanity even after death.Basu’s mortal remains were handed over to the SSKM Hospital authorities yesterday evening through city-based NGO Ganadarpan for medical research in keeping with his wish.On April 4, 2003, India’s longest serving chief minister Jyoti Basu pledged his body for organ donation while inaugurating a workshop organized by Gana Darpan, an NGO promoting organ donations. While pledging his body, Basu had said, “I don’t know whether the organs of this old body of mine are still suitable for transplant. But I believe it may help medical students and researchers.”What a wonderful idea to be useful at least for the study of Anatomy! But,Impressed by his mental agility even at an advanced age, the premier National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences wants to study late CPI(M) patriarch Jyoti Basu’s brain to find out whether there was any special reason for his alertness. Director of Bangalore-based NIMHANS D. Nagaraja said that his institute was planning to write to the SSKM Medical College in Kolkata, seeking to know whether Basu’s brain can be handed over for research purposes.“Basu had donated his body for medical research. Based on that, we want the SSKM Medical College to hand over the brain to us,” he said.The neuro-pathology department of NIMHANS will write a letter to SSKM in this regard, he said. Basu’s body was handed over to SSKM authorities on Tuesday.According to Mr. Nagaraja, there are numerous age-related changes in a human brain, and some brains are more alert than others. “There are some factors which prevent the fast ageing of a brain. We want to look into that.” NIMHANS has a brain bank with around 300 human specimens. Nagaraj said that mental health doctors were “curious” over the fact that Basu, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 95, was mentally so agile even at that age. The NIMHANS director said that the institute’s brain bank had carried out numerous studies in the past and some of the findings include less prevalence of dementia among the elderly population of India, as compared to the West, and certain genes which prevent the onset of Parkinson’s disease. After veteran leader Jyoti Basu’s pledge to donate his body, the medical fraternity is hoping people in general would follow the gesture and donate their bodies for research. In a country where medical students have learnt their skill traditionally by working on unclaimed bodies, promoting the concept of whole body donation is a welcome relief, members of the Organ Retrieval Banking Organisation (ORBO) said.For decades, the ORBO at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has been encouraging people to donate organs for transplant and bodies for medical research. “At times, we are short of whole bodies for medical students. In such cases, students use unclaimed bodies. But we need people to voluntarily donate bodies because they are in a better form. Unclaimed bodies, mostly victims of accidents, come to hospitals in a damaged condition,” said Dr Aarti Vij, associate professor, ORBO. Since Basu had also pledged to donate his eyes, his eyes were removed by doctors of Sushrut Eye Foundation at Salt Lake, after his death on Sunday, Jan 17th morning. Basu’s corneas have been kept for the Muktakeshi eye foundation. Ideal of body-donation after death by the veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Jyoti Basu can and should be popularised and adopted in practice by giving state-honours only to those departed leaders who may have donated their dead bodies for medical education.Common people usually follow the trend set by political leaders. Once the phenomenon of donating body after death is made compulsory for leaders, people will follow thus making human-bodies available in plenty for medical research and education.

Twinkle Dwivedi is a challenge to Doctors!

2010-01-17T03:23:00.000-08:00

I must congratulate the electronic media for bringing up the story of some young people bleeding spontaneously without an injury on their body. Now the media part is over,it is the duty of doctors and scientists to find a definite cure to wipe out the bloody tears on the face of the innocent children!                           A lot of teens who cry blood have been popping up lately and the latest is known as "the girl who cries blood." The girl who cries blood is actually two different girls both from India. Rashida Khatoon and Twinkle Dwivedi are both young girls from India who suffer from an unusual affliction that makes them appear to cry blood. In fact, one of the two girls who cries blood, Twinkle Dwivedi, also bleeds from other parts of her body for no visible reason in the fashion of the Christian stigmata.The disease had a sudden onset in July 2007, when Dwivedi began bleeding through her mouth, and symptoms have continued to increase since that time. She has had several blood transfusions to replace the pints of blood she continues to lose. A blood specialist in Great Britain, Drew Provan of Barts Hospital, believes Dwivedi may have Type II Von Willebrand Disease.The teenager, from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, has even undergone blood transfusions after bleeding from her eyes, nose, hairline, neck and soles of her feet about 50 times each day.                                              Twinkle Dwivedi said: 'I bleed from my eyes, my hands, my head, from everywhere. From my ears, nose and eyes as well.It doesn't hurt when the bleeding starts. But it makes me tired and sometimes I have headaches.'
               Dr George Buchanan, a leading American paediatric blood specialist who has worked in Britain, travelled to India to look into Twinkle's case. He visited her family at the Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai where he observed her bleeding.He said: 'I've never seen a case of someone who bleeds spontaneously from their scalp or their palms, or read about it in medical history.
'I was interested to see if I could help Twinkle.'The doctor was called to the family's hotel room to witness bleeding which began from her hair parting. He was shocked to find no signs of cuts, bruising or redness.Dr Buchanan said: 'It doesn't seem physically possible for blood to seep through intact skin.But I saw no signs of cuts or bruising anywhere on her body.'
         Twinkle's mother Nandani Diwedi, 43, who runs a beauty salon as well as caring for her four daughters, said: 'We have tried praying and seeking medical help to cure Twinkle. Sometimes you need to do both. 'It hurts me to see her like this. I share her pain.'Dr Buchanan and his team carried out a series of tests including cutting Twinkle's skin to time how quickly the bleeding stops.
               Tests show she may have a mild form of a clotting disorder, which means her platelets do not stick together properly. But this is not enough to explain the spontaneous bleeding.
Dr Buchanan is also investigating whether Twinkle or her mum cause the bleeding themselves.
               Twinkle, a Hindu, said: 'I am not causing this. Why would I want to make myself bleed?I don't want to be like this. I want to go to school and have a normal life.' She has missed at least two years of education after two schools banned her from classes because of the bleeding.
            Her father Aditya Kumar Diewdi, 48, a railway worker, said: 'This is very frightening for my family. We just want to help Twinkle get better.'
             Specialists are now planning 24hour monitoring of Twinkle so close-up surveillance cameras can record exactly how the bleeding begins.Dr Buchanan said: 'There is a healthy relationship between Twinkle and her mother.My heart tells me this may be is a condition we have never seen before.'
              The mysterious case of Twinkle's bleeding is fully examined in a new BodyShock documentary, The Girl Who Cries Blood, due to air on Channel 4 at 10pm tomorrow.It also shows Twinkle's family visiting a local mystic, being examined by a Christian bishop for stigmata, and bathing in the River Ganges.
In late August 2009 another blood crying teen made headlines in the USA, Calvino Inman, 15 of Rockwood, TN.Calvino Inman, 15, is a boy who suddenly began crying tears of blood. Calvino Inman has been examined by doctors but they are baffled by his condition. Inman lives in Tennessee and said he has been called many names by people who saw his eyes bleeding. Inman’s tear ducts well up and he cried tears uncontrollably. Sometimes, Inman’s tears don’t hurt but other times, his tears feel like they are burning him. Inman’s eyes bleed blood involuntarily at least 3 times daily. Inman said each session of eye bleeding lasts from a few minutes to an hour.Tammy Mynatt is Calvino Inman’s mother. Ms Mynatt said she is desperate to find a cure for her son.
Combine the story Calvino Inman with the stories of Rashida Khatoon and Twinkle Dwivedi and it could seem like there a global epidemic of teens crying blood. Some may even think the teens who cry blood are holy. But crying blood really isn't new, and it isn't as mystical as faith may have some believe.A rare condition not unknown to modern medicine is most likely the cause of the blood red tears. Known as Haemolacria the condition has a variety of causes from tumors to injury to hormonal changes in fertile women. Haemolacria manifests as bloody tears but the red tears are actually only partially composed of blood. The most extreme cases have a high concentration of blood in the tears but in milder manifestations it can go unnoticed by all but doctors.

Solar Eclipse should not eclipse your Self !

2010-01-14T23:06:00.000-08:00

Wonderful event of Nature is happening now itself that the most wonderful is that the most wonderful creature of Nature ie Man is watching and making some comments as though he is unravelling the mystery. He is sending some rockets and discovering some mystery! It is welcome that we should fight against some people's unscientific thinking but we should know we are part of the Nature and realise the Truth which is allowing us to do more research further ! Of course if you realise your Self through thorough research you will become the so called GOD ie Generater,Operater and Destroyer !If you think that you are reaching this stage it so goooood! A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partially obscuring the Earth's view of the Sun, while an annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is farther from the Earth than normal, and hence its apparent size is not quite sufficient to cover the Sun completely This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth. At least two and up to five solar eclipses can occur each year on Earth, with between zero and two of them being total eclipses. Total solar eclipses are nevertheless rare at any location because during each eclipse totality exists only along a narrow corridor in the relatively tiny area of the Moon's umbra. The recent solar eclipse of January 26, 2009, was an annular eclipse while the solar eclipse of July 22, 2009 was a total solar eclipse. The next annular event is the Solar eclipse of January 15, 2010 and the next total event is the solar eclipse of July 11, 2010.The solar eclipse of January 15, 2010 is an annular eclipse of the Sun with a magnitude of 0.9190. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun, causing the sun to look like an annulus (ring), blocking most of the Sun's light. An annular eclipse will appear as partial eclipse over a region thousands of kilometres wide.This eclipse is called annular which means enthusiasts still could see Sun outside. Its vouched as second- best eclipse of its kind out of so far experienced solar eclipses. As the duration is also said to be the longest and which won’t be exceeded for 1000 years. This is the longest until December 23, 3043, with a maximum length of 11 mins and 7.8 seconds. (The solar eclipse of January 4, 1992 was longer, at 11 minutes, 41 seconds, occuring in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.) In annular solar eclipse, the Sun appears as a very bright annulus, which in Latin means 'ring', surrounding the outline of the Moon, giving the appearance of a 'Ring of Fire'. The photosphere of the sun shall be covered by the moon thereby forming a ring of fire in the sky for more than 10 minutes in some parts of India.

Obesity and general anaesthesia

2010-01-01T02:04:00.000-08:00

Ideally two anaesthetists should be present.The potenial management problems during GA include (1)adequate airway maintenance,gas tight airway mask fit and other manual tasks are impossible(2)high risk of regurgitation and aspiration ofgastric contents(3)spontaneous respiration under GA leads to both hypercarbia and hypoxia(4)limited range of head,neck and jaw movements(5) short fatty neck(6)pendulous breasts

If difficult tracheal intubation is anticipated, an awake intubation using topical anaesthesia and sedation with or without fibreoptic bronchoscope is preferred.supplemental oxygen must be given and sedation should be kept to minimum.
All patients must be preoxygenated/denitrogenated by conventional means or four breath technique as morbidly obese patients desaturate quickly.Preoxygenation in the 25 degree head up position achieves 23%higher oxygen tensions, allowing a clinically significant increase in the desaturation safety period(DSP) giving greater time for intubation and airway control. Induction in the 25 degree head up position may provide a greater saftey margin for airway control.
Rapid intravenous induction with thiopentone and succinylcholine combined with cricoid pressure to prevent passive gastric regurgitation is the safest method for establishing airway. Obese patients should not be allowed to breathe spontaneously under anaesthesia as hypoventilation is likely to occur with consquent hypoxia and hypercapnia. Patients should be ventilated with100% oxygen intially and tidal volume of 12-15ml/kg. Use of alveolar recruitment is an effective mode of improving intraoperative oxygenation by sustained lung insufflations,using large tidal volumes(vt) shifting lung volume above closing volume,PEEP,sustained inspiratory pressure of at least 40cm H2O is required to fully reverse anaesthesia induced atelectasis.
The Intubating Laryngeal Mask Airway(ILMA):Both the ProSeal LMA and standard LMA can be used.The patency of the PLMA drainage tube needs to be checked constantly even when an optimal airtight seal is present. In obese patients the LMA requires a greater cuff pressure than the PLMA.
Fluid management:TBW is reduced from 65%to 40% in obese patients.Increased sweating,enhanced bleeding and prolonged surgery results in increased fluid loss.However, since 10% of obese patients have CHF,too rapid infusion may lead to decompensation.Therefore central vein catheter or PA catheter is useful and important guide to fluid and blood replacements.
Trachea should ony be extubated when patients are fully awake with adequate cough reflex and have complete reversal of NMblockade.
Combined regional and general balanced anesthesia is preferable to GA alone.

Scrap this office of Governor,No more Tiwaris !

2009-12-27T06:27:00.000-08:00

Though it is well known that it is very difficult to control senses, people should know that we are given the power of thinking and a gift of wisdom to behave!Our life gives the experience to cultivate this property of discriminating right from wrong. At the age of 86 Mr Tiwari who wears a Nehru cap enjoying the facilities of Raj Bhavan in Andhra Pradesh is seen in a sex scandal involving illegal sexual activities recently telecast in a Telugu channel is really a great blow to Government in general and people in particular because he misused the highest office insulting the Woman.I think this person was appointed as Governor as a part of political rehabilitation which is inexcusable.The incident should open our eyes as to the lapses of the office supposed to have the highest security.The women of Andhra Pradesh took this insult to heart and are fighting to prosecute the persons involved in the scandal because they think that this is more powerful and dangerous than a "terrorist activity"! Even if we impart his unbecoming behaviour to senile dementia a condtion due to cortical atrophy in old age it is said that many women like Duggal or Mohini or Mishra were a force to recken in the state administration during Tiwari's stints as chief minister.In the present case, Radhika of Uttarakhand has alleged that she sent young women to Raj Bhavan on Tiwari's request through his aide.She has reportedly said that she was exposing him as he had failed to provide her an iron ore mining licence in Andhra Pradesh.It is in this context one should remember the words of a great national leader , Mr J.B .Kripalani who wanted to scrap the office of Rastrapati Bhavan and give it's property to support an hospital for blind.Now it is high time to at least scrap the office of Governor which proved to be a waste and place of obscene scandals !Let us unfollw an useless tradition of British Raj to regain our dignity!

Samir Mitragotri will get Noble Prize !

2009-12-20T05:18:00.000-08:00

Hi! Samir!my heartfelt congratulations for your fake red blood cells and painless injections which are going to be a great breakthrough in the field of medicine to help mankind.But here is a small but humble request from my side that you should continue your research in India!I request you to remember the great Dr C.V.Raman who did lot of work in our country when there were no facilities.Of course the Government of India should provide you with more facilities than America in stead of wasting of time, money and energy on regional politics like Telangana! As the following achievement of your research indicates the sign of your getting a Nobel Prize i wish earnestly that you should strive more hard to get it! Fake blood cells so agile they can carry drugs :You can't get blood from a stone, but it seems you can make imitation red blood cells from polymers.Just like real blood cells the pretenders can squeeze through spaces much smaller than their own diameter and absorb and release substances to order, including oxygen.They could be used to disperse drugs, or the contrast agents used in medical imaging, throughout the body with fewer side effects than direct injection.The fake cells could also be given to people who have lost blood instead of a blood transfusion. Biodegradable tyre: Real red blood cells owe their astonishing agility to their "biconcave" or tyre-like shape. To create synthetic particles with the same agility, Samir Mitragotri of the University of California and his team got their inspiration from the way real red blood cells acquire their final shape in the body.They start out as spherical cells which then collapse into mature red blood cells following exposure to various substances. Similarly, Mitragotri's team found that if they added small balls made of a polymer called PLGA to a particular solvent, the spheres would collapse into a biconcave shape.The researchers coated these 7-micrometre across, tyre-shaped particles, in a layer of protein. When they dissolved away the polymer core, a soft biodegradable protein shell was left behind with the same mechanical properties as red blood cells. Oxygen carriers: "The soft protein shell makes them squishy and elastic," says Mitragotri. "They can squeeze through capillaries smaller than their own diameter, just like real blood cells."The fake cells also seem to share red blood cells' ability to transport substances. One of the proteins Mitragotri added to the surface of the imitation blood cells was haemoglobin, the molecule that binds to oxygen in the lungs, later releasing it elsewhere in the body.In test tube experiments, the researchers found that their haemoglobin-coated particles picked up oxygen when there was a lot around and released it later when the concentration was lower. If the squishy particles do the same thing when injected in animals, they could be given to people instead of a blood transfusion.To see if the protein shells could also carry drugs, Mitragotri's team exposed them to the anti-clotting drug heparin. Sure enough, the particles soaked up the heparin and then released it later on when they were moved to an area of lower concentration. Drug delivary: Drug delivery is the science and engineering of converting potent biomolecules into practical medical therapies. Delivering medicines to patients in a safe, effective and compliant way is a major challenge in today’s health care. Simple pills and injections comprise the most commonly used modalities for administering drugs. Pills are generally accepted as a convenient mode of drug delivery; however, their use is limited to small molecules. Macromolecular drugs such as peptides and proteins cannot be taken orally and have to be administered via injections. Furthermore, many drugs, regardless of their mode of administration, need to localize in specific diseased tissues and systemic administration of these drugs to healthy tissues can be toxic. The ability of drugs to reach from the point of administration, via pills or injections, to target tissue is limited by multiple barriers in the body. These include enzymatic degradation in the stomach, absorption across intestinal epithelium, hepatic clearance and accumulation in non-targeted tissues. These barriers exist at multiple length and time scales ranging from those at the tissue-level to organelle-level. These barriers protect various tissues, cells, and organelles from their environment. While the existence of these barriers is essential to life, they limit our ability to deliver drugs for therapeutic applications. Accordingly, the primary challenge in the field of drug delivery lies in understanding these barriers and developing novel strategies to overcome them in order to cargo drugs and their carriers to their destination without compromising safety.Mitragotri reckons that the particles could provide a way to get drugs into the body at a more constant concentration, or substances such as iron oxide nanoparticles, which increase contrast in magnetic resonance imaging.When agents are injected directly, the concentration tends to be highest at the site of injection – dropping in concentration the further away they get. This scenario isn't ideal as it can cause an adverse reaction at the injection site, and lead to a shortage of the drug elsewhere.The team also created mimics of the misshapen, crescent-like blood cells that people with sickle cell disease produce. "We could study them to understand how diseased cells flow in the bloodstream, which is currently quite difficult to do," says Mitragotri. Elastic shape: It's not the first attempt at artificial red blood cells, but these are the only ones so far to have the shape and elasticity of real cells, says Mitragotri.Joseph DeSimone, who developed fake blood cells last year, calls the new research "exciting". "All in all, this is great progress in tackling an important problem," he says.Next the team want to look at exactly how the particles behave in an animal, particularly whether they circulate in the same way as their natural counterparts.

Obesity-regional anaesthesia

2009-12-07T00:25:00.000-08:00

•Regional anaesthesia is a preferred techniq but
one must be ready to convert it to GA.
•Excess adipose tissue conceals bony land
marks.
•The advantages of RA (1)airway intubation
difficulties are avoided (2)risk of gastric
aspiration reduced (3)CVS stability (4)need for
NMB and potential problems with their reversal
are avoided.(5) awake pt who can
communicate(6)lesser POP respiratory
complications (7)early ambulation and lesser
thromboembolic complications.

Obesity-anaesthesia(premedication)

2009-12-03T02:55:00.000-08:00

Avoid all sedatives before surgery because of their potential for causing ventilatory depression.
Medications for diabetes and hypertension should be continued before surgery.
When awake or fiberoptic intubation is planned, an antichollinergic like atropine or glycopyrrolate is necessary.
H2 receptor antagonist Ranitidine given at night and 2hours before surgery to increase gastric ph and decrease gastric fluid volume.
Metoclopramide 10mg orally 12hrs and2hrs before surgery
Oral antacid 30ml of 0.3M sodium citrate can also be given.
Low dose subcutaneous heparin as prophylaxis against deep vein thrombosis is essential.
Prophylactic antibiotics may also be required.
OSA patients on CPAP should have their equipment in OT for use postoperatively.

Frederick Banting: Hero, Healer, Artist and Scientist!

2009-11-22T18:03:00.000-08:00

"When he was a boy on the farm near Alliston, he used to stare at the tiny glass door on the kitchen clock with the painted palm tress and faded moon. The shy boy who couldn't spell would never have imagined, though, that one day an idea he scribbled down in the middle of the night would bring children back from the brink of death. Sitting there, staring at the clock, he could not have imagined that schools would be named after him, or impossibly, that one of the craters on the moon, named after the great scientists of history, would one day be named after him, in honour of what he had done."Banting was born in 1891, and so was old enough to serve in France during the Great War; and young enough to volunteer for service in the second war, during which he was killed in a plane crash in an effort to fly to Britain as a volunteer officer in the medical corps. From a very young age Canadian born Fred Banting knew that he wanted to be a doctor. He was amazed by the "new" techniques and discoveries of the twentieth century and wanted to be an active participant in medical research. His father, however, strongly believed that nothing was more important than being a minister. This, coupled with Fred's average grades in school, made it difficult for Fred to pursue his dream. Still he persisted and in 1912 he was accepted at the University of Toronto's School of Medicine. Adversity, however, continued to dog Fred. World War I, severe financial difficulties, and lack of support from his colleagues, are just some of the personal struggles that Fred overcame. His perseverance ultimately led to the discovery of insulin. Fred lived an exciting life. He served in the First World War, was wounded and received the Military Cross for Bravery. His medical research was not limited to the discovery of Insulin. It also led to the creation of the first flight suit to prevent pilots from blacking out when pulling many "G's" in a dive. This was the precursor of our current astronauts' space suits. Fred also conducted research on cancer and germ warfare. Fred was an accomplished wood carver and artist. He went on sketching trips with A.Y. Jackson, one of the famous "Group of Seven" Canadian artists. Banting's chief interest following the war was Pediatric Orthopedics. He trained with the late Dr. Clarence Starr at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and then moved to London in the summer of 1920 and setup practice with the late Dr. W. P. Tew. His medical practice was, indeed, very poor and Banting took on a position as demonstrator in Physiology at the University of Western Ontario. In October 1920, Banting was to give a lecture on the pancreas and from his reading and preparation for this paper came up with the idea of ligating the pancreatic duct and allowing the gland to degenerate. The idea came to him at 2:00 AM on October 31. Another researcher in 1889 (Minkowski) had suggested that if the pancreatic gland were minced up, extracted and injected into diabetic dogs it might control to disease. He, apparently, failed to recognize that acinar tissue of the pancreas destroyed at the internal secretion of the islet cells. The ligation of the pancreatic duct, allowing the pancreas some 6 weeks to degenerate, was the concept that Banting conceived and that led to the discovery of insulin. Banting was most excited and enthused over this and approached Dr. Miller, Professor of Physiology at the University of Western Ontario, who felt the facilities, space etc. were not available at Western and he advised him to approach professor J.J.R. MacLeod at the University of Toronto.MacLeod was not impressed with Banting’s idea. He was convinced that it would not work as this had been tried many times before. He did, however, reluctantly give Banting space and facilities for an eight week summer period to carry out his proposed experiments. He also provided an undergraduate summer student Mr. Charles Best to assist Fred.Sir Frederick Banting was a humble and a truly great man. He was a soldier, scientists, a gentleman (with a temper), and faithfully dedicated to research right up to the time of his death is death on Feb 21, 1941. Regarding his early life, of which I no little except from what I have been told by his friends and colleagues, I will not attempt to review. Sir Frederick Banting was a kind man and most helpful to all who worked with him. He preferred to be called Dr. Banting not Sir Frederick for he was not a man of pomp and splendor. He spent his life in the laboratory and with the completion of the insulin program to final clinical success, turned his interests to work on malignancy. Banting was not a joiner, played no golf, few clubs nor was he interested in pursuing further degrees beyond the M.D. He has, of course, received numerous honorary degrees and other honors including the Nobel Prize. He, however, did have the hobby of painting, and was a great friend of A. Y. Jackson and made trips with Jackson to Northern Ontario. He completed over 240 paintings, some 38 sketches and wood carvings. These were similar to Jackson's work and the Group of Seven. Jackson has published a short book on "Banting" as a "Painter" with many black and white illustrations of Banting's work. Banting had the initial ideas and thoughts of the possibility of insulin while working in London, Ontario. From there, as is well-known, he proceeded to Toronto where with the permission and encouragement of MacLeod and carried out the early experiments with the assistance of Charles Best, then a medical student, and later with the excellent work of Biochemist Collip, finally developed the miracle of insulin which has prolonged and saved allies of literally millions of diabetics throughout the world.Although the insulin story is well covered by Stevenson, Bender, Feasby, Shaw and others it would seem fitting that a short review of events leading to the discovery of insulin should be included in this short history of Banting's research and his contributions in the general field of medical research. Having been provided with a small laboratory at the University of Toronto, and some eight weeks' time to carry out the experiments proposed by Banting to isolate a substance from the pancreas for the treatment of diabetes, he and Best began their first task, a study of the literature concerning the pancreas in early May of 1921. They found that diabetes was well known to even the ancient Egyptians, Hindus, Chinese and the Greeks. They also discovered that Minkowski and Von Mering in 1899 had produced diabetes in dogs by removing the pancreas. Another researcher had concluded that it was not absence of the total gland but only that portion known as the Islets of Langerhans that led to the disease. The literature, apparently, had recorded some half century of failures to find an anti-diabetic substance. Banting and Best, however, refused to be discouraged by these findings from the literature and were soon hard at work seeking to prove Banting's theory. The lab in which they were to work was a small room on the second floor of the old medical building in Toronto which had not been in use for some time and required cleaning and refurbishing with the simple glassware and equipment available at that time. This they did themselves without assistance. The room was equipped with only the basic apparatus found in the students lab such as a centrifuge, a simple balance, bunsen burners, test tubes, syringes, some medical instruments, a sterilizer and a refrigerator. The principle that Banting had conceived in London, Ontario was to ligate the pancreatic duct, allow for some weeks for the acinar or pancreatic tissue to degenerate and then remove the gland and make an extract of the remaining islet tissue and inject this into dogs who previously had had their pancreas removed, thus producing diabetes. Soon after the literature review in May of 1921 Banting and Best commenced their work with enthusiasm to prove Banting's theory on the presence of an anti-diabetic substance within the pancreas. It was planned that Banting would perform the surgery and that Best would do the biochemical tests for sugar in the blood and urine. Of course, they would assist each other in every possible way and share the work of caring for the experimental animals. Best assisted Banting in this surgical removal of the pancreas and other surgical procedures required in the experiments. Banting operated on several dogs, tying the pancreatic ducts and from other dogs he removed the pancreas and the effects on blood and urine in addition to the welfare of the depancreatized dogs were studied. After some 6-7 weeks, two of the dogs, which had their ducts tied, were anaesthetized, and to their great disappointment it was found that the pancreas had not degenerated. Careful examination had shown that the ligature was still present in any sort of bulbous sac and that the pancreatic duct had not been sufficiently occluded and the pancreas had not degenerated. This was a great disappointment and a considerable loss of time to them. They, therefore, operated on all the duct tied dogs as second time to exert particular care has to the tensions on the ligature. For the ligature that was too tight produced gangrene and the one that was to lose failed to block the duct. This was a great disappointment for some 7 weeks of allotted time had passed. It was obvious that they could not possibly obtain a positive result in the the one more week allotted to them, but they were determined and asked for more time, which was granted. MacLeod had not yet returned from Europe. Neither Banting or Best received any salary for the summers work and Banting had been forced to sell his Ford car to pay expenses. Thus, they had to begin practically all over again and both spent practically all their time in the laboratory looking after the animals and intending to their care, feeding, etc., for they had no other assistant to help them with this work. During this period, the dogs were more than experimental animals. They became friends, the dogs seemed to understand the importance of the experiment and were certainly, according to the history, most co-operative with the experiments. At the end of July, Banting operated on one of the duct tied dogs and found that the ligature had held and that the pancreas had shrunk to about one-third of of its normal size. The gland was removed, chopped up and ground in a mortar with saline, strained and a small amount injected into a vein of a depancreatized or diabetic dog. This animal was observed very carefully and with anxiety, for there was great concern that it may have toxic effects as earlier experimenters had discovered. For a while there seemed to be no change, then later to dog showed improvement. The animal became a much more active and more important the blood sugar levels were significantly reduced demonstrating the soundness of Banting's theory. Although they were jubilant over the result of this experiment, there was some fear that it may have been as spurious result of no real significance. Consequently they injected the substance into other diabetic dogs with the same dramatic result and now felt confident that they had isolated the anti-diabetic factor from the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. Banting's theory had been proven, but still diabetes had not been conquered even though the groundwork had been laid and there were still problems to overcome. On Dr. MacLeod’s return from Europe he was impressed, but insisted that the whole procedure be repeated to confirm this truly admirable result. The results, of course, with further experiments were confirmed. MacLeod was convinced and the announcement of discovery was presented in papers through the Physiological Journal Club in Toronto on November 14th , and the American Physiological Society shortly before the end of year in 1921. Many publications followed. There were, of course, many problems to be faced including purification of the extract and its use in human patients suffering from diabetes. Although Banting's theory had been proved it was obvious that experimental techniques would have to be improved to produce the anti-diabetic substance, called Isletin by Banting and Best, the name later being changed to Insulin. First of all, the period required to produce the extract, some 6-8 weeks, was too long before practical purposes and other methods were sought. First of all Banting tried to the injection of Secretin which stimulated the acinar glands of the pancreas and she felt that by doing so it might stimulate them to exhaustion leaving valid islet cells intact for extraction. This proved somewhat successful but again was not ideal. The next step, also introduced by Banting was the use of fetal calf pancreas, for remembered from his farm days that the fetus in cattle were fed by them mother and required no digestive glands until birth. Consequently, Banting and Best collected an number of fetal calf pancreases and an extract from the whole pancreatic gland from the fetal calf was prepared and when injected into diabetic dogs resulted in a dramatic fall in the blood sugar. The experiments were repeated, the same result indicated that they now had a more reliable source for the production of the active extract. At this time the substance was still known as Isletin and I believe that it was MacLeod who changed the name to Insulin. Nevertheless, even with these experiments in the method for producing the active extract they were suitable only for experimental work and possible limited clinical testing. Certainly would not provide enough insulin for general use. Furthermore, when first injected into humans, although it lowered the blood sugar, it caused an abscess to form at the site of the injection. (The first person to receive insulin was Leonard Thompson, who was nearly in a diabetic coma.) It was, therefore, apparent that the impurities causing the abscesses would have to be removed before it can be considered for clinical use. Professor MacLeod had become completely convinced of the value of this discovery and was most enthused above further improvements and turned his attention and those of his colleagues toward the improvement of the purification and production of insulin. Somewhere about this time, December 1921, MacLeod asked J. B. Collip, biochemist, who although working with MacLeod at the time, had met Banting in the early spring of 1921 and was associated with him throughout the insulin work, was not directly concerned with the early phase of their studies until it was obvious that the extract needed further purification before it could be used in humans. Collip also was a very humble man, but they very capable and experienced biochemist and was delighted at MacLeod's invitation to be a co-worker with Banting. Dr. Collip states the part which he played and was able to contribute subsequently to the work called the team was only that which any well-trained biochemist could be expected to contribute and he stated, himself, that this was trivial by comparison to Banting's contribution. Nevertheless, we must not overlook the real contribution that Collip did make, for his work resulted in the purification of the extract such study could be injected into humans without undesirable side effects and without abscess formation, as had occurred when initially tried. Although Dr. Collip stated that any biochemist could have done what he did, this certainly is not generally accepted, for Collip was a brilliant biochemist and it is quite possible that without his contribution insulin would never have come into clinical use. After some time on this work concerned with the purification of insulin, Collip left, in 1922, for other work at the University of Alberta in Edmonton where he was appointed professor and head of the department of biochemistry, and later to McGill in Montreal in 1928 as professor biochemistry. He excelled in the field of biochemistry and the discovery of new endocrines and hormones. After at considerable time at McGill University (1928 - 1946) he came to Western and in his final years was Dean of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario from (1947 - 1961).Although a paper on the results of the insulin research was presented at a meeting of the Toronto academy of medicine in the fall of 1921, no public announcement was made. MacLeod was not involved in the original experiments, but he did provide the opportunity for the research and later was most enthused and contributed a great deal to its final success. There is, perhaps, some misunderstanding and perhaps also confusion to the granting of the Nobel Prize to Banting and MacLeod, for in December of 1921 Banting and Best presented in the results of their work at meeting the American Physiological Society. MacLeod was President of the Association at that time and also Chairman of the meeting ,in his summary of their presentation he implied that Banting and Best were his assistants. In view of this, the reporters mistakenly assigned credit for the discovery to him. Another factor that may have had some bearing on this is that a little later MacLeod presented a paper at the meeting of the American Association of Physicians in Chicago. Neither Banting or Best belonged to the American Association of Physicians at the time and only members could present papers. Consequently, MacLeod gave the paper. This, of course, gave some further strength to MacLeod's position in the insulin story. MacLeod had no intention of taking credit for the discovery, but as has been noted he did play an extremely important role in the latter stages of the study and further development of insulin, and furthermore was an outstanding authority in the field of physiology at that time, well-known as well recognized and director of the department. I feel that this may have had some effect on Banting's later attitude towards research, for, as you know, he always gave full credit to others for their part in the insulin work and later full credit to the members of his department carrying out research studies. He emphasized that one did not work for him, but with him. The custom, however, in those early years was that the Chairman and Director of such departments as Physiology was, indeed, the leader and all who worked with him were considered as his assistants. Banting certainly changed this attitude in all of his endeavors and research were after his completion of the insulin work. MacLeod was, indeed a fair man for all the early announcements and papers and finally the public announcement seemed to give him credit for the work. MacLeod, however, in September of 1922, gave a statement to a Toronto newspaper stating that published reports crediting him were false and that the idea was entirely Banting's. He went on to say in this press release that Banting's successful humble experiments had proven his theory correct. Insulin had been isolated and the physiological action of insulin was intensively studied by members of his department who worked along with Banting and Best. In the fall of 1922 the extract was still impure and they were experiencing considerable difficulty with deterioration, sensitization, reaction, etc., although Collip had prepared an extract which could be injected into humans and was a great improvement in the purification of the product. Collip also working with rabbits discovered the dangerous effects of too much insulin producing hypoglycemia and the basis for him believe biological assay of insulin. There were still, however, problems to be overcome come the main one of which production of the product in large enough quantities to be useful clinically. Consequently, the third stage of the development of insulin was being approached and methods were found to extract insulin from the adult beef pancreas, for the supply from the tilt calves was certainly much too small and with further work, without going into details which are contained in Stevenson's book on Sir Frederick Banting, it was possible to produce insulin from the adult beef pancreas.The final results of the whole research initiated by Banting was the production of the safe and potent extract in commercial quantity which was achieved by many individuals and groups of individuals in the year 1922. Banting has recorded that during the spring of 1922 Best had succeeded in producing fairly large quantities of insulin and sufficiently purified to prove thoroughly the value of insulin to diabetic patients Dr. Banting further reports that Dr. Clowes of the Eli Lilly Company had offered soon after the initial announcement of the discovery in December of 1922 offered the resources and assistants of the Eli Lilly Company whenever they felt that the practical application and large-scale production of the extract might be indicated. In about April of 1922, Banting and Best accepted this kind offer and collaborated with Eli Lilly in the further purification to hand production of the extract with a result that by the middle of November of 1922 The Eli Lilly Company were a first able to achieve a substantial further purification, concentration and improvement in the stability of the extract. Since the yields were small, but by January of 1923, as a result of the work carried out by Connaught Laboratories and Eli Lilly Company they were able to provide fairly considerable quantities of insulin for clinical use, and has soon as the supply became more abundant how limited supply of insulin was sent to diabetic specialists in United States and Canada Connaught Laboratories in Canada and Eli Lilly Company of United States. Insulin was first reserved for more severe diabetics, but with time and improvements it became more and more available for the treatment of diabetes in general. In the beginning patents for in some was given by Banting to the Connaught Laboratories, who had complete control of all insulin produce for a period of some 20 years or more and every batch of insulin manufactured by pharmaceutical houses had to go to the Connaught Laboratories for assessment as to potency, stability, etc.. The proceeds from this Banting decided should all go to the Connaught Laboratories for support of further research and development and he, personally, received nothing in a monetary way from the discovery and later development of insulin. Best continued for some time to work on the problem with regard to improving its potency improvements with regard to impurities, purification, etc.. However, Banting left this with Best and turned his interests to other fields of research. At the beginning of the Second World War, Fred re-enlisted and was on a secret mission to England in 1941 when his aircraft crashed in Newfoundland. The plane had been sabotaged by the enemy. The man whose discovery continues to save so many lives was dead in his fiftieth year. Fred didn't earn any money from his discovery. He didn't even get pay for his research. In fact, if his family had not provided the money for Fred to conduct research, he would not have discovered insulin.
For his discovery of insulin, Fred won the Nobel Prize, and was knighted by the King of England. He could have been a rich man, but instead he donated the patent for insulin so that it could be made affordable to diabetics who need the life-saving medicine. We owe a lot to Sir Frederick Grant Banting.

FREDERICK BANTING

2009-11-22T15:48:00.000-08:00

The purpose of life is purpose of life. So the saints and scientists are born for a cause.The incident of his childhood friend dying with a disease which was then not fully known for the etiology and treatment,remained with him through out his life driving him through many hardships and relentless efforts until he discovered insulin. Frederick Grant Banting was born in Alliston, Ontario, Canada, on November 14, 1891, to William Thompson Banting, a well-established farmer, and Margaret Grant Banting, who had moved to Canada from Ireland. The youngest of five children, Banting attended the local elementary schools before enrolling at the University of Toronto in 1911 in an arts course leading to theology (the study of religion).He decided, however, that he wanted to be a doctor, and in 1912 he registered as a medical student. With World War I (1914–18, a war in which German-led forces fought for European control) under way, Banting left college in 1915 to join the medical corps as a private (the lowest military rank). Doctors were urgently needed, however, and he was sent back to finish his studies, graduating in 1916. Banting was commissioned (made an officer) in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps and left for England, where he received exceptional surgical experience in several army hospitals.When the war ended in 1919, Banting returned to Canada and was for a short time a medical practitioner at London, Ontario. He studied orthopaedic medicine and was, during the year 1919-1920, Resident Surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. From 1920 until 1921 he did part-time teaching in orthopaedics at the University of Western Ontario at London, Canada, besides his general practice, and from 1921 until 1922 he was Lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Toronto. In 1922 he was awarded his M.D. degree, together with a gold medal. As he was much interested in the research of diabetes he continued his efforts in the direction.In 1920 Banting went to Toronto for an interview with the professor of physiology (the study of life systems) Dr. J. J. R. Macleod (1876–1902). Banting described his ideas and his desire to investigate the fluids released by the pancreas, a gland located near the stomach. He begged for an opportunity to try out his theories in the laboratory, but Macleod refused, for he knew that Banting had no training in research. Banting returned to Toronto several times to try to persuade Macleod. Finally, impressed by his enthusiasm and determination, Macleod promised Banting the use of the laboratory for eight weeks during the summer. Macleod knew that if Banting was to have any success, someone who knew the latest chemical techniques would have to work with him. Charles Best (1899–1978), completing courses in physiology and biochemistry (the study of biological processes), had been working on a problem related to diabetes in Macleod's department. Banting and Best met and decided that work would begin on May 17, 1921, the day following Best's final examination.In 1920 Banting went to Toronto for an interview with the professor of physiology (the study of life systems) Dr. J. J. R. Macleod (1876–1902). Banting described his ideas and his desire to investigate the fluids released by the pancreas, a gland located near the stomach. He begged for an opportunity to try out his theories in the laboratory, but Macleod refused, for he knew that Banting had no training in research. Banting returned to Toronto several times to try to persuade Macleod. Finally, impressed by his enthusiasm and determination, Macleod promised Banting the use of the laboratory for eight weeks during the summer. Macleod knew that if Banting was to have any success, someone who knew the latest chemical techniques would have to work with him. Charles Best (1899–1978), completing courses in physiology and biochemistry (the study of biological processes), had been working on a problem related to diabetes in Macleod's department. Banting and Best met and decided that work would begin on May 17, 1921, the day following Best's final examination.The first attempts to produce a diabetic condition upon which to study the effect of pancreatic secretions were not successful. The observations were repeated time and again until, finally, there was convincing evidence that the fluids taken from the pancreas secretions did produce the dramatic effect that was being sought in animals lacking a pancreas. As the material was extracted from the microscopic islands of Langerhans (cells of the pancreas, different from the majority, which are grouped together in tissue named after Paul Langerhans [1847–1888], the German physician who discovered them), it was called "isletin." Later the name was changed to "insulin," meaning island. Again and again the same successful results were obtained, and when Macleod returned to Toronto at the end of the summer, he was finally convinced that Banting and Best had captured the correct hormone (a substance produced by an organ) to prove Banting's theory. On November 14, 1921, Banting and Best presented their findings before the Physiological Journal Club of the University of Toronto, and later that month a paper entitled "The Internal Secretion of the Pancreas" was submitted for publication in the Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine. News of the discovery brought scientists from many parts of the world, as well as diabetics and their families, to Toronto. In 1923 Banting received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Macleod. With characteristic generosity he divided his share with Best. That year the university established the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research with a special grant from the Ontario Legislature. In 1934 Banting was made a knight commander of the British Empire and the following year was elected a fellow (associate) of the Royal Society of London.
Banting was killed in a plane crash on the coast of Newfoundland on February 21, 1941, while on a war mission to England. Because of his research and advancements, Banting has improved the lives of diabetics around the world.

WORLD DIABETIC DAY!

2009-11-14T02:26:00.000-08:00

FREDERICK BANTING
Born: November 14, 1891
Alliston, Ontario, Canada
Died: February 21, 1941
Newfoundland, Canada
"Let us all become diabetalogists !" says my friend Dr Raman whenever he beckones one of the nursing staff to check up his glucose on glucometer . He is really great in recognising the importance of Diabetes with whom he has been associated since so many years he himself being an Anaesthetist !According to the IDF, India currently has the highest number of 50.8 million people suffering from diabetes, followed by China with 43.2 million and the US with 26.8 million. It projects 58.7 million diabetes cases in India by 2010 — almost 7 per cent of our adult population. So there is no doubt in saying that India is the capital of Diabetes !First of all I must thank Dr Raman for recognising the magnitude of the disease and creating so much interest in this deadly disease before remembering Mr Frederick Banting who was born on this day of World Diabetic Day which we celebrate to remember Banting for his great service to humanity.

OBESITY in other systems…..

2009-11-11T16:50:00.000-08:00

Genitourinary system: menstrual abnormalities ,female urinary incontinence and renal calculi.
Musculoskeletal :osteoarthritis and backpain.
Venous thrombosis due to reduced mobility ,diminished antithrombin3,decreasd fibrinolytic activity increasing wound infections.
Incidence of neoplasm of rectum and prostate is more in males whereas endometrial carcinoma,carcinoma of breast and gallbladder is more in females!

OBESITY- endocrinological changes

2009-11-11T15:56:00.000-08:00

Insulin resistance is increased!
Hyperinsulinemia.
Glucose intolerance.
High blood pressure is common.
Decreased HDL-C level.
Increased triglyceride levels.
Increased cortisol.
NIDDM.
Infertility.
Hypothyroidism.

OBESITY HYPOVENTILATION SYNDROME

2009-11-11T15:32:00.000-08:00

The acid-base disturbance of OSA (respiratory acidosis) is initially limited to sleep, with a return to homeostasis during the day.
There is an alteration in the control of breathing causing central apnoeic events (episodes of apnoea without respiratory effort) due to progressive desensitisation of respiratory centres to nocturnal hypercapnea initially limited to sleep but eventually leading to Type2 respiratory failure with an increasing reliance on hypoxic drive for ventilation.
Pickwickian Syndrome : Obesity ,Hypersomnolence, Hypoxia ,Hypercapnea ,Right Ventricular Failure and Polycythemia.

OBESITY-obstructive sleep apnea syndrome!

2009-11-11T15:17:00.000-08:00

OSA is characterized by frequent episodes of apnea or hypopnea during sleep. Obstructive apnea is total cessation of airflow for 10 seconds .Hypopnea is 50% reduction in airflow .Five or more episodes per hour or 30 per night are counted as clinically significant.
Snoring!
Day time somnolence associated with memory problems, impaired concentration and accidents.
Recurrent apnea leads to hypoxemia, hypercarbia,pulmonary and systemic vasoconstriction.
Recurrent hypoxemia leads to secondary polycythemia and risk of IHD and incidence of cerebrovascular accidents increases.
Hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction leads to right ventricular failure.
Diagnosis of OSA is by Polysomnography.

OBESITY-respiratory system

2009-11-11T14:21:00.000-08:00

Cardiac output and alveolar ventilation is increased due to raised BMR and increased O2 consumption and CO2 production.
Hypoxemia is common due ventilation-perfusion mismatch, large intrapulmonary shunt and coexisting pulmonary disease. Normocapnia is maintained by increased minute ventilation.
Pulmonary compliance in morbidly obese may be decreased to 35% of predicted value leading to rapid and shallow breathing whereas chest wall compliance is minimally affected.
Respiratory muscle workload is increased and the efficiency of breathing is decreased.
FRC is decreased significantly50%reduction in obese as compared to 20% decrease in non obese due to decreased respiratory compliance and decreased ERV. During anaesthesia, FRC of obese may decline to less than closing capacity leading to airway closure during normal ventilation ,v/q mismatch and hypoxemia.
ERV,IRV,FRC,VC and TLC decreased.
Closing volume ,respiratory rate and work of breathing are increased. All these are accentuated in supine position !Dead space usually increases and may comprise up to 61% 0f tidal volume.

OBESITY-cardiovascular system

2009-11-11T13:52:00.000-08:00

Increased blood volume….but blood volume on weight basis is less than normal (may reach 45ml/kg compared to 70ml/kg in normal adults).
Left ventricular load is increased due to increase in stroke volume and cardiac work leading to increased LV filling pressures leading to heart failure.
Left ventricular failure and pulmonary vasoconstriction increases pulmonary artery pressure leading to right ventricular hypertrophy and dilatation.
Cardiac arrhythmias are frequent in obese due to myocardial hypertrophy and hypoxemia, coronary artery disease, increased plasma catecholamine concentration, fatty infiltration of pacing and conduction system, sleepapnoea syndrome and hypokalemia because of diuretic use.
Coronary artery disease:obesity is an independent risk factor for IHD, HTN, DM, hypercholesteremia and reduced high density lipoprotiens compounding the problem.
SVR reduced for any given arterial pressure as cardiac output is increased in obese.
HTN is more common due to increased renin-angiotension-aldosterone system activity, increased intravascular volume and increased sympathetic tone.
Pulmonary artery pressure is increased due to pulmonary vasoconstriction (caused by hypoxemia, hypercarbia or both) ,LV myocardial dysfunction with increased LV filling pressure, increased CO increasing arterial pressure in pulmonary vascular bed, polycythemia due to hypoxemia increasing intravascular volume.

OBESITY-aetiology

2009-11-11T13:44:00.000-08:00

Obesity occurs when net energy intake exceeds net energy expenditure over a prolonged period.
Genetic predisposition.
Medical disorders-endocrine abnormalities like Cushing’s disease, hypothyroidism and drugs ex corticosteroids, anti depressants, antihistamines.
Psychological factors.
Ethnic influences-Africans and Mexicans and Asians with central distribution of fat are at higher risk.
Socioeconomic factors-obesity is seen more in poor strata in developed world and in rich in developing world !

OBESITY-classification on BMI basis.

2009-11-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

Normal 20-25 Overweight 25-30 Obese (obesity class1) 30-35 Morbidly obese (obesity class2) 35-40 Super morbidly obese (obesity class3) >40

OBESITY-introduction

2009-11-11T08:13:00.000-08:00

Obesity is a condition of excessive body fat!
Obesity is a metabolic disease in which adipose tissue comprises greater than normal proportion of body tissue and amount of fat tissue is increased beyond a point compatible with physical and mental health and normal life expectancy.
The name is derived from Latin word Obesus meaning fattened by eating.
Body mass index (BMI)=body weight (kg)/height squared (in meters).
BMI >30 is obese, BMI>35 is morbid obesity.
Obesity is a multi organ disease.
Perioperative mortality and morbidity increases with BMI.
Morbid obesity :twice the ideal body weight (or) Relative weight>2.0

The Story of Paul in Medical terms that is OBESITY!

2009-11-11T07:40:00.000-08:00

Hi! Paul what happened to you? you were so cute when you were a child! But you turned out so ugly looking exceeding morbidly obese!Let me dedicate this story of obesity to you because you are the most weighty in the world today.

Bt Brinjal!

2009-10-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

My teacher who taught me at college had surname by Brinjal and a popular poet of our area is called by the name(Vangapandu) of Brinjal.Our people make a mouthwatering Clusterbrinjal Curry(Gutti Vankaya Kura) which is famous all over the world! The word Vankaya(Brinjal) is almost mixed with the lives of Telugu people that they they eat ,talk and grow the same in every second of their lives! My wife grow it in the backyard and make a curry or fry out of it to fill my stomach every alternate day ! Of course she is very happy in proving her strong support of vegetarianism! Now a days my favourite Brinjal is getting a new name due to a new avatar of genetic modification and it is called Bt Brinjal!Bt Brinjal is a transgenic brinjal created out of inserting a gene [Cry 1Ac] from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis into Brinjal. The insertion of the gene into the Brinjal cell in young cotyledons has been done through an Agrobacterium-mediated vector, along with other genes like promoters, markers etc. This is said to give the Brinjal plant resistance against lepidopteran insects like the Brinjal Fruit and Shoot Borer (Leucinodes orbonalis) and Fruit Borer (Helicoverpa armigera). It is reported that upon ingestion of the Bt toxin by the insect, there would be disruption of digestive processes, ultimately resulting in the death of the insect. India is the Centre of Origin for Brinjal or Eggplant. Brinjal has been cultivated in India for the last 4000 years or so and has many historical references in various languages. It is grown all over the country, year-round and is one of the most popular vegetables of India. But,now a days our friend Brinjal is not at all happy because it has many doubts regarding GM risk assessment in Indian conditions.GM technology is unpredictable and imprecise, that too when released in an open environment situation.Several studies on Bt crops in particular and GM crops in general show that there are many potential health hazards in foods bio-engineered in this manner. GM-fed animals in various studies have shown that there are problems with growth, organ development and damage, immune responsiveness and so on. With Bt crops, a recent study from Madhya Pradesh in India shows adverse human health impacts in farm and factory workers with allergies caused by Bt Cotton. Itching skin, eruptions on the body, swollen faces etc., were also reported, correlated with levels of exposure to Bt Cotton.A study from Phillippines shows that people living next to Bt Corn crop fields had developed many mysterious symptoms, especially during pollination time.It has also been shown from studies elsewhere that genes inserted into GM food survive digestive processes and are transferred into the human body. They are known to have transferred themselves into intestinal bacteria too. Bt toxin had caused powerful immune responses and abnormal cell growth in mice. It has also been shown that all the Cry proteins in Bt crops have amino acid sequence similar to known allergens and are hence potential allergens.Resistance development in the target pest is predictable and therefore, even the companies promoting Bt Brinjal are already talking about resistance management. They say that a structured refuge of 5% of non-Bt Brinjal is needed as a strategy for resistance management.
There have not been adequate tests done to assess the changes to the farm level ecology or stress intolerance of Bt Brinjal. In the case of Bt Cotton, however, it is now admitted in official records that Bt Cotton is more vulnerable to sucking pests than non-Bt counterparts, that it is more stress intolerant and so on. Disease incidence on Bt Cotton is also seen to be higher than on non-Bt Cotton.In the case of Bt Cotton, it is only after a few years of commercial cultivation that recommendations related to some changed management practices are being made by the industry and the government. It is obvious that the research phase of the development of the transgenic did not happen long enough or comprehensively enough for such lessons to emerge during the experimentation phase. Experiments then, are happening at the expense of farmers!The farmers have committed suicide because Bt cotton is not economically viable.So I fear the same story would be repeated with my favourite friend and pray for proper precautions to be taken by Government and the Scientists!Long live Happy Brinjal!!

Story of Horace Wells!

2009-10-21T02:09:00.000-07:00

A century ago, on January 24, 1848, one of the principal actors in the drama of anaesthesia died in prison by his own hand at the age of thirty-three. Born at Hartford, Vermont, on January 21, 1815, Horace Wells studied dentistry at Boston, and practised at Hartford, Connecticut, when about 1840 he became interested in the possibility of using nitrousoxide ("laughing gas") as a painkiller during tooth extration.Horace Wells was one of the most well thought of and competent dentists of his era. In fact, he was ahead of his time in his thinking and in his scientific approach to the problems of dentistry His practice, which began in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1836 may have been one of the most successful and financially rewarding practices in the country. When he was only 23, Wells published An Essay on Teeth, an early American dental text in which he condemned the pain-relieving nostrums and other dental quackery of his day. In the early 1840s, Wells began a partnership with his former pupil William Morton. In 1844, the pair even won an award for a dental instrument case they designed and exhibited. Yet their partnership was not a financial success, and they parted ways after only two years in business together. Wells was the first of the New England group to conceive the idea of producing insensibility to pain through the administration of a chemical gas ! The story of Horace Wells' role in the history of anesthesiology traditionally begins on the evening of December 10, 1844. On that evening, Gardner Quincy Colton, a medical school dropout and itinerant chemist, was givinga lecture and demonstration, Wells and his wife attended the event.As part of his presentation, Colton invited members of the audience to inhale the gas and experience. Samuel Cooley a young drug clerk who happened to be sitting next to Wells volunteered. Cooley was immediately intoxicated by the gas, became giddy, and began jumping about the stage. In the process, he struck his legs against a wooden bench as well as against the floor.However, he did not seem to react as if injured and continued prancing about the stage. After the effect of the gas had worn off, although Cooley could not recall his actions,he found that the skin (on his knees) was severely abraised and broken.After keenly observing the situation Horace Wells decided to use the so called laughing gas for the extraction of tooth! Moreover,Wells himself had a wisdom tooth that was troubling him and was willing to experiment on himself if Colton was willing to participate in the experiment. Colton was, and a time was arranged.On the morning of December 11, 1844, Colton brought a bag of nitrous oxide to Wells' office. Wells'colleague, John M. Riggs, was called in, and Wells took the gas. Once Wells was under its influence, Riggs extracted the molar about which Wells had complained.Wells exhibited no discomfort during the procedure.

Afterwards, Wells was reported to have exclaimed, "It isthe greatest discovery ever made! I didn't feel it so much as the prick of a pin!" A new era in tooth-pulling!" There was much excitement over this experiment, and at Wells' request, Colton taught him how to prepare the gas.During the ensuing weeks, Wells and Riggs used nitrous oxide as an anesthetic during tooth extractions:Wells used the gas on at least 12 patients, and Riggs used it at least once, as part of a procedure in which he extracted six teeth at one sitting.Wells then traveled to Boston to share the findings of his discovery. In Boston, he contacted a former student and partner, William Thomas Green Morton, who was at that time enrolled at the Harvard Medical School. Morton,along with other dentists in the area, reportedly welcomed Wells' discovery, for all were familiar with the pain associated with tooth extractions. With Morton's help, Wells met with John C. Warren, Chief of Surgery atthe Massachusetts General Hospital. According to Wells, Warren warmly received him and agreed to allow Wells, in early 1845, to lecture the students on the use of nitrous oxide for the prevention of pain,to be followed by a demonstration of the effects of nitrous oxide.After delivering his lecture, Wells waited for several days for the demonstration. He was originally scheduled to provide anesthesia during an amputation! However,the operation was postponed!As an altemative, Wells instead agreed to extract a tooth from a patient to whom he would administer the nitrous oxide.The patient was given the gas, and Wells began to extract one of his teeth.Unfortunately, Wells began the procedure before the full anesthetic effect had occurred, and the patient screamed out as the extraction began.Although the boy reportedly later admitted that he did not know when the tooth had actually been removed because he had not felt it, the demonstration was said to be "an imposition" and "a hum bug affair"!
Wells retumed to Hartford shortly thereafter.Severely dejected and possibly experiencing a mental breakdown,Wells ceased practicing dentistry for a time, advertising inthe April 7, 1845 Hartford Courant that he was dissolving his dental practice and referring all old and new patients to Riggs.Sometime later that year, however, Wells again began practicing dentistry and continued to use nitrous oxide successfully, as later attested to by 40 citizens of Hartford.

After Morton's successful demonstration of ether anesthesia in October 1846, an account of which was provided in the Boston Medical and Surgical Joumal in November, Wells published a letter in December outlining the events of December 1844 and January 1845 in an attempt to establish a claim on the discovery of anesthesia. To further his claim, Wells traveled to Paris in early 1847 and petitioned the AcademieRoyale de Medicine for recognition.He then returned to the United States and published a fuller account of his discovery, to which he attached the 40 depositions attesting to his work.Still not satisfied that he was receiving the recognition he believed himself due, Wells went to New York City to pursue his interests,experimenting with ether and chloroform in addition to providing nitrous oxide anesthesia (he advertised his services in the New York Evening Post in early January 1848). Through his experiments, however, Wells became addicted to chloroform.Caught up in his addiction,on January 21, 1848, his 33rd birthday, Wells rushed out into a street in a fit of delirium and threw sulfuric acid over the clothing of two prostitutes.He was committed to New York's infamous Tombs Prison. Imprisoned and despondent,Wells ended his own life on January 24, 1848. Ironically, Wells committed suicide by slashing his left femoral artery, but not before inhaling some chloroform that had been smuggled into the prison, allowing himself to be anesthetized while he died!Even more ironic, however, was that 12 days beforehis death the Academie Royale de Medicine voted that Wells was "due all the honor of having successfully discovered and successfully applied the use of vapors or gases whereby surgical operations could be performed without pain" such that Wells was henceforth to be recognized as "the first person, who first discovered and performed surgical operations without pain ... and to the last day of time must suffering humanity bless his name." His notification of this honor arrived in New York after his death!

First Anaesthetist !(GOD)

2009-10-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

God created Eve from the rib of Adam after putting him to sleep!Thus He became the first anaesthetist in the world!Of course He is the Generator, Organiser and Destroyer too!

Eternal Vigilance!

2009-10-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

" Freedom from pain should be basic human right,limited just by our knowledge to achieve it"-Sharpe etal, in Clinical Anaesthesia.Contemplating since long time to write some thing on my life, the day at last is set today as the day of Diwali following the day of World Anaesthesia Day !So the pain relief should be attained by all means by unlimited knowledge.Unlimited knowledge is possible through eternal vigilance which is the price for safety!Can a limited person attain unlimited knowledge? That is why there is an endless struggle from times immemorial to get rid of this pain!