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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 4, 2016 at 7:21am

Reason for frothing lake...
Phosphates in detergents is what causes frothing Bellandur lake in Bangalore.
Based on a report by researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Thursday he would consider restrictions on detergents which were considered the primary reason for the froth that has engulfed the nearly 700-acre lake.

“I will take it up with the department concerned, to check if an alternative that is environmentally friendly and cost-effective to phosphates can be used. If we can ban diclofenac (a painkiller for cattle which was found to be the reason for the mass deaths of endangered vultures), then we can surely consult and think of a better alternative,” he said at a seminar on climate change here.

The Minister was briefed about the problems of Bellandur lake, where froth started to rise alarmingly in April 2015, and within a month, a portion of froth was even seen catching fire.

A recent report by researcher T.V. Ramachandra on the pollution in the lake, submitted to the Minister, conclusively shows that the froth appeared because of higher concentration of phosphates in the lake.

Phosphates form a major component in household detergents, and make their way to the lake through the estimated 500 million litres of sewage that flows into Bellandur and Vathur lakes. Phosphates do not disintegrate, and continue to remain in the water, which ends up being used for agriculture further downstream of the lake.

The researcher had previously said that more than 70 per cent reduction in phosphates was needed to reduce eutrophication (excessive nutrients in the lake that cause dense growth of plants, including water hyacinth) in the lake. This sort of reduction has been seen in lakes of developed countries where stringent measures on phosphates were imposed to preserve waterbodies.

On May 16, 2015, Pockets of froth on the lake caught fire, which is believed to have been caused by built-up methane in the bubbles.

High phosphate regions are when the limit reaches 4.22 to 5.76 parts per million (for drinking water, less than 0.1 ppm prescribed by the WHO)

Enhanced biological oxygen demand is when 119 to 140 parts per million (should be 30 ppm or less)

Decreased dissolved oxygen is 0 to 1.06 parts per million

Excessive phosphate encourages wild growth of algae and aquatic plants which sucks up oxygen from the lake and chokes inlets. This in turn adversely affects flora and fauna of the lake.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 4, 2016 at 7:15am

103rd version of Indian Science congress was inaugurated by Indian PM, Mr. Narendra Modi in Mysore on 3rd Jan., 2016.
On Sunday, the opening day of the 103rd Indian Science Congress on the verdant campus of Mysore University, top foreign and Indian scientists again highlighted India’s particle physics research initiatives.
After playing a key role in international research initiatives like the Large Hadron Collider project at CERN to find the Higgs Boson, India is participating in several mega initiatives — a global nuclear fusion experiment called International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France, a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO-India) and a world-class, underground India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO).

“Nearly 10 per cent of the contribution in the ITER project is from India. This will help in leapfrogging India’s nuclear fusion programme,’’ former ISRO chairman K Kasturirangan said Sunday during a talk on mega science projects being taken up by India.
The ITER project, which involves the European Union, the United States, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea apart from India, will create the world’s largest confined plasma physics experiment facility in an effort to move towards full-fledged nuclear fusion plants for power generation. The reactor is scheduled to begin basic experiments by 2020 and will produce 500 MW using nominal energy inputs, Kasturirangan said.

The Rs 1,500-crore observatory for neutrinos (a subatomic particle) is planned near Theni in Tamil Nadu.
LIGO-India is an international collaboration to study gravitational waves, which were incidentally first theorised in Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Scientists from the US, UK, Germany and Australia, under the aegis of an Indian Initiative for Gravitational Observations (IndIGO), will help Indian scientists set up and operate a world-class observatory.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 1, 2016 at 7:43am

What is your real weight?

How much would you weigh on another star? The timescale of turbulence and vibration at a star's surface, based on its brightness variations, tells you its surface gravity. If stars had solid surfaces on which you could stand, then your weight would change from star to star. Here we show how much a 75-kg adult would tip the bathroom scale in the surface gravities of three stars. The sun is hotter than a sauna, but don't expect to lose weight there. You'd weigh 20 times more than on Earth. A red giant star (the far-future fate of our Sun, with a diameter about 35 times larger) has a much weaker pull at its surface, so you'd be 50 times lighter.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 31, 2015 at 7:21am

Reusable launch vehicle trial in 2016 - ISRO
India’s reusable launch vehicle being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is slated for trials in 2016 and will help reduce the cost of access to space in the long run, said ISRO Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar.
The project was still in the experimental stage and the demonstration vehicle will have a range of 100 km, though eventually it will be like a space shuttle. The ISRO uses multi-stage rockets for satellite launch, but the reusable vehicle will be a single-stage rocket to start with. The single-stage rocket will have a solid propellant stored in casing. For a reusable vehicle, the casings have to be re-used or rebuilt and its evolution will hinge on cost benefits, said the ISRO chairman.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 31, 2015 at 7:18am

Bipolar disorder, or manic-depressive illness, causes dramatic mood shifts – often called episodes – in which the person is overly excited, extremely sad or depressed, or a mixed state of both, including irritable or explosive behavior, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Causes of bipolar disorder (BP) are thought to be both genetic and environmental, and researchers have long suspected that disruption in normal daily circadian rhythms, including sleep and wake cycles, can precede mood shifts.
Researchers in a recent study found that those with bipolar disorder awoke later and slept longer, on average were awake fewer minutes overall, and were active for shorter periods than those without the disorder. Researchers also found that those with bipolar disorder displayed lower activity levels while awake and had greater variations in sleep and wake cycles. The findings are reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A team of international scientists led by UT Southwestern Medical Center and UCLA researchers have identified a dozen inherited traits related to sleep, wake, and activity cycles that are associated with severe bipolar disorder. Researchers also were able to tie the traits to specific chromosomes, providing important clues to the genetic nature of the disorder, as well as potential new avenues for prevention and treatment.
The 13 endophenotypes (biological or behavioral markers found more commonly in those with a certain disease than without) are: mean of awake duration, amplitude, Hill acrophase, interdaily stability, interdaily variability, median activity, relative amplitude, mean length of sleep bouts during the sleep period, mean number of sleep bouts during awake period, time of sleep offset, time of sleep onset, mean total minutes scored awake, and WASO (total minutes in awake bouts after sleep onset).
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/23/1513525113.abstract

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2015 at 8:18am

New medicine to fight drug -resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for causing tuberculosis (TB). Scientists from India and the US say they have discovered a group of compounds that can kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis by disabling a major defense mechanism it uses to survive in the human body.
The study, supported by the National Institutes of Health, India’s ministry of science and technology and the Wellcome Trust-Department of Biotechnology alliance was published in ACS Chemical Biology.
These plant based compounds show tremendous promise as lead scaffolds for the development of new, anti-TB treatments. Specifically, these compounds inhibit the function of a critical enzyme responsible for survival of M. tuberculosis .
The new compounds belong to the ellipticine plant alkaloid family, which also is active in targeting cancerous cells. The active compounds have exerted a very high activity against drug-resistant M. tuberculosis strains isolated from patients of Indian origin. The new compounds have shown potent bactericidal activity against active as well as dormant form of drug-susceptible and MDR/XDR strains.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschembio.5b00517

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2015 at 6:43am

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2015 at 6:13am

Which hemisphere of the brain does what? Here is the explanation with proof!

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 29, 2015 at 7:04am

Arsenic contamination of underground water in the Indian subcontinent:

https://vimeo.com/33354622#embed
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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 25, 2015 at 7:56am

HIV antibody infusion safely suppresses virus in infected people

A single infusion of a powerful antibody called VRC01 can suppress the level of HIV in the blood of infected people who are not taking antiretroviral therapy (ART), scientists at the US National Institutes of Health report in a paper published on 23rd Dec, 2015. The researchers also found that giving HIV-infected people VRC01 antibodies by infusing them into a vein or under the skin is safe and well tolerated, and the antibodies remain in the blood for an extended period.

The researchers found that while antibody infusions did not reduce the amount of HIV in blood cells, they reduced plasma viral load more than 10-fold in six of the eight people who were not on ART. In the two people in this group who began the study with the lowest viral loads, the antibody suppressed HIV to extremely low levels for approximately 3 weeks--as long as VRC01 was present at therapeutic concentrations. In the other four people whose HIV levels declined, their viral load fell substantially but did not reach undetectable levels. In the two people not on ART whose viral loads remained steady despite the antibody infusion, it was subsequently found that the predominant HIV strain in their bodies had been resistant to VRC01 at the outset. The antibody also did not appear to have any effect in people taking ART, whose virus was already suppressed.

- Sciencecodex.com

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