Category Archives: GENERAL

President’s Durga Puja Greetings

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The President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind in his message on the eve of Durga Puja has said:-

“On the auspicious occasion of Durga Puja, I extend greetings to my fellow citizens and wish them happiness and prosperity. The festival celebrates the triumph of virtue and destruction of evil.

Durga Puja is also a festival that cherishes the love we feel for daughters in our families. It symbolises feminine energy, empowerment and determination. Let it further our resolve to build a society in which every woman is able to achieve her true potential- and be an equal stakeholder in every avenue of human achievement. May this be a moment of blessing for our country and our collective well-being”.

Group project? Taking turns, working with friends may improve grades

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It has become an almost essential element of academic life, from college lecture halls to elementary classrooms: the group assignment.

Dreaded by some, loved by others, group projects typically aim to build teamwork and accountability while students learn about a topic. But depending on the assignment and the structure of the groups, a project can turn out to be a source of great frustration — for instructor and students alike — or the highlight of the school year.

Now a University of Washington-led study of college students has found that the social dynamics of a group, such as whether one person dominates the conversation or whether students work with a friend, affect academic performance. Put simply, the more comfortable students are, the better they do, which yields benefits beyond the classroom.

“They learn more,” explained Elli Theobald, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology and the lead author on the study, published July 20 in PLOS ONE. “Employers are rating group work as the most important attribute in new recruits and new hires. If students are able to demonstrate that they have worked successfully in groups, it would seem that they should be more likely to land the job.”

Theobald is part of the UW’s Biology Education Research Group lab, formed by several faculty members in the Department of Biology about a decade ago to research how to most effectively teach biology to undergraduates.

A separate study by the BERG lab on group work, published in the July issue of Active Learning in Higher Education, finds that college students, when given a choice of whom to sit and work with in a large classroom setting, gravitate toward those who appear most like them — whether by gender, race and ethnicity, or academic skills.

Over the years, research spanning K-12 through post-secondary education has pointed to the value of group work in fostering collaborative skills and in cementing learning through interaction. In the sciences, labs are a common, though not the only, form of group work, Theobald said. As with many disciplines, STEM fields lend themselves to readings, worksheets and other activities that can be completed by multiple people working together.

For this study, researchers compared survey responses and test scores stemming from two different project styles — single-group and “jigsaw” — with three assignments each during two sections of an introductory biology class at the UW. Each of the 770 students enrolled in one of the two sections of the course experienced each project style at least once. In a single-group activity, student groups completed a worksheet together, relying on their notes and textbooks. In a jigsaw, student groups were assigned specific sections of the worksheet; students then were shuffled to new groups in which each person in the group had completed a different section of the worksheet and could teach their new groupmates what they had learned. Students took an eight-question test after each assignment.

The study found that students who reported a “dominator” in the group fared worse on the tests than those who didn’t express that concern. It also found that students who said they were comfortable in their group performed better than those who said they were less comfortable.

The jigsaw activity appeared to result in more collaboration: Students were 67 percent less likely to report a dominator in jigsaws than in single-group activities. “This suggests that jigsaw activities with intentional structure more effectively promote equity than group activities with less intentional structure,” researchers wrote.

The nearly 770 students who completed all the assignments, tests and surveys had formed two- and three-person groups with those who sat near them in class. (Jigsaw assignments later shuffled initial groups.) Two-thirds of participants were female; people of color, including students who identify as Asian, Under-Represented Minority, and International, made up more than half of respondents.

While the gender and racial and ethnic makeup of the participants informed the study, Theobald said, researchers don’t have details on who worked with whom so as to extrapolate from the composition of groups. For instance, were the experiences of women who worked with men different from those of women who worked in all-female groups? If a group contained only one person of color, what was that person’s experience compared to the rest of the group? That kind of information is ripe for further research, Theobald said.

However, one noticeable data point emerged: International and Asian American students were six times as likely to report a dominator than white American students. “Not all students experience group work the same way,” researchers wrote in the study. “If one student dominates a conversation, it can be particularly jarring to students from cultural backgrounds that place more emphasis on introspection and thinking on one’s own as opposed to a direct relationship between talking as a way to work through ideas.”

Though the data was collected from college students, the findings translate to other settings, Theobald said. She pointed to a study Google conducted to determine what made groups successful — establishing group routines and expectations (“norms”) and adding a brief window at the beginning of work time for casual talk. Such findings, along with those of the UW study, can inform employers as well as K-12 teachers about productive group work, she said.

The younger the students, the more structure a teacher is likely to have to establish, Theobald added. But when teachers make an assignment sufficiently interesting and complex, and manage student behavior, there is a potential for students to work together happily and productively.

“If we can get our groups to be more comfortable, students should learn better and work better,” Theobald said.

New type of supercomputer could be based on ‘magic dust’ combination of light and matter

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A team of researchers from the UK and Russia have successfully demonstrated that a type of ‘magic dust’ which combines light and matter can be used to solve complex problems and could eventually surpass the capabilities of even the most powerful supercomputers.

The researchers, from Cambridge, Southampton and Cardiff Universities in the UK and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia, have used quantum particles known as polaritons – which are half light and half matter – to act as a type of ‘beacon’ showing the way to the simplest solution to complex problems. This entirely new design could form the basis of a new type of computer that can solve problems that are currently unsolvable, in diverse fields such as biology, finance or space travel. The results are reported in the journal Nature Materials.

Our technological progress — from modelling protein folding and behaviour of financial markets to devising new materials and sending fully automated missions into deep space — depends on our ability to find the optimal solution of a mathematical formulation of a problem: the absolute minimum number of steps that it takes to solve that problem.

The search for an optimal solution is analogous to looking for the lowest point in a mountainous terrain with many valleys, trenches, and drops. A hiker may go downhill and think that they have reached the lowest point of the entire landscape, but there may be a deeper drop just behind the next mountain. Such a search may seem daunting in natural terrain, but imagine its complexity in high-dimensional space. “This is exactly the problem to tackle when the objective function to minimise represents a real-life problem with many unknowns, parameters, and constraints,” said Professor Natalia Berloff of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, and the paper’s first author.

Modern supercomputers can only deal with a small subset of such problems when the dimension of the function to be minimised is small or when the underlying structure of the problem allows it to find the optimal solution quickly even for a function of large dimensionality. Even a hypothetical quantum computer, if realised, offers at best the quadratic speed-up for the “brute-force” search for the global minimum.

Berloff and her colleagues approached the problem from an unexpected angle: What if instead of moving along the mountainous terrain in search of the lowest point, one fills the landscape with a magical dust that only shines at the deepest level, becoming an easily detectible marker of the solution?

“A few years ago our purely theoretical proposal on how to do this was rejected by three scientific journals,” said Berloff. “One referee said, ‘Who would be crazy enough to try to implement this?!’ So we had to do it ourselves, and now we’ve proved our proposal with experimental data.”

Their ‘magic dust’ polaritons are created by shining a laser at stacked layers of selected atoms such as gallium, arsenic, indium, and aluminium. The electrons in these layers absorb and emit light of a specific colour. Polaritons are ten thousand times lighter than electrons and may achieve sufficient densities to form a new state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, where the quantum phases of polaritons synchronise and create a single macroscopic quantum object that can be detected through photoluminescence measurements.

The next question the researchers had to address was how to create a potential landscape that corresponds to the function to be minimised and to force polaritons to condense at its lowest point. To do this, the group focused on a particular type of optimisation problem, but a type that is general enough so that any other hard problem can be related to it, namely minimisation of the XY model which is one of the most fundamental models of statistical mechanics. The authors have shown that they can create polaritons at vertices of an arbitrary graph: as polaritons condense, the quantum phases of polaritons arrange themselves in a configuration that correspond to the absolute minimum of the objective function.

“We are just at the beginning of exploring the potential of polariton graphs for solving complex problems,” said co-author Professor Pavlos Lagoudakis, Head of the Hybrid Photonics Lab at the University of Southampton and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, where the experiments were performed. “We are currently scaling up our device to hundreds of nodes, while testing its fundamental computational power. The ultimate goal is a microchip quantum simulator operating at ambient conditions.”

 

Antibody protects against Zika and dengue, mouse study shows

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Brazil and other areas hardest hit by the Zika virus – which can cause babies to be born with abnormally small heads – are also home to dengue virus, which is spread by the same mosquito species.

A new study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that an antibody that protects against dengue virus is also effective against Zika in mice.

Antibodies remain in the bloodstream for weeks, so one or a few doses of an antibody-based drug given over the course of a woman’s pregnancy potentially could protect her fetus from Zika, with the added benefit of protecting her from both Zika and dengue disease, the researchers said. Dengue causes high fever, severe headaches, and joint and muscle pain in children and adults but does not directly harm fetuses.

“We found that this antibody not only neutralizes the dengue virus but, in mice, protects both adults and fetuses from Zika disease,” said Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine and the study’s senior author.

The study is published Sept. 25 in Nature Immunology.

Since dengue and Zika are related viruses, the researchers reasoned that an antibody that prevents dengue disease may do the same for Zika. Diamond and graduate student Estefania Fernandez collaborated with Gavin Screaton, MD, DPhil, of Imperial College London, who had generated a panel of human anti-dengue antibodies years before.

The scientists infected nonpregnant adult mice with Zika virus and then administered one of the anti-dengue antibodies one, three or five days after infection. For comparison, another group of mice was infected with Zika virus and then given a placebo. Within three weeks of infection, more than 80 percent of the untreated mice had died, whereas all of the mice that received the anti-dengue antibody within three days of infection were still alive, and 40 percent of those that received the antibody five days after infection survived.

To find out whether the antibody also could protect fetuses from infection, the researchers infected female mice on the sixth day of their pregnancies with Zika virus and then administered a dose of antibody or a placebo one or three days later.

On the 13th day of gestation, the amount of Zika’s genetic material was 600,000 times lower in the placentas and 4,900 times lower in the fetal heads from the pregnant mice that were treated one day after infection, compared with mice that received the placebo. However, administering the antibody three days after infection was less effective: It reduced the amount of viral genetic material in the fetal heads nineteenfold and in the placentas twenty-threefold.

These findings suggest that for the antibody to effectively protect fetuses from Zika infection, it must be administered soon after infection. Such a goal may be unrealistic clinically because women rarely know when they get infected.

However, giving women the antibody as soon as they know they are pregnant could provide them with a ready-made defense against the virus should they encounter it. Antibody-based drugs have been used for decades to provide temporary protection against infectious diseases such as rabies when there is no time to vaccinate or, as in the case of Zika, when there is no vaccine available.

The key to using this antibody as a preventive drug would be to make sure that antibody levels in a woman’s bloodstream stay high enough to protect her fetus for the duration of her pregnancy.

Diamond and colleagues are working on identifying how much antibody a pregnant woman would need to ensure that her fetus is protected from Zika. They also are exploring ways to extend the antibody’s half-life in the blood, to reduce the number of times it would need to be administered.

Having anti-dengue antibodies circulating in the bloodstream for months on end poses a risk, though, because antibodies that protect against one strain of dengue virus sometimes worsen symptoms if a person is infected by another dengue strain.

To avoid the possibility of accidentally aggravating an already very painful disease, the researchers mutated the antibody in four spots, making it impossible for the antibody to exacerbate dengue disease.

“We mutated the antibody so that it could not cause antibody enhancement of dengue infection, and it was still protective,” said Diamond, who is also a professor of pathology and immunology, and of molecular microbiology. “So now we have a version of the antibody that would be therapeutic against both viruses and safe for use in a dengue-endemic area, because it is unable to worsen disease.”

Child abuse affects brain wiring

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Impaired neural connections may explain profound and long-lasting effects of traumatic experiences during childhood

  • For the first time, researchers have been able to see changes in the neural structures in specific areas of the brains of people who suffered severe abuse as children.
  • Difficulties associated with severe childhood abuse include increased risks of psychiatric disorders such as depression, as well as high levels of impulsivity, aggressivity, anxiety, more frequent substance abuse, and suicide.
    Severe, non-random physical and/or sexual child abuse affects between 5-15 % of all children under the age of 15 in the Western world.
  • Researchers from the McGill Group for Suicide Studies, based at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University’s Department of Psychiatry, have just published research in the American Journal of Psychiatry that suggests that the long-lasting effects of traumatic childhood experiences, like severe abuse, may be due to an impaired structure and functioning of cells in the anterior cingulate cortex. This is a part of the brain which plays an important role in the regulation of emotions and mood.
  • The researchers believe that these changes may contribute to the emergence of depressive disorders and suicidal behaviour.

Crucial insulation for nerve fibres builds up during first two decades of life

For the optimal function and organization of the brain, electrical signals used by neurons may need to travel over long distances to communicate with cells in other regions. The longer axons of this kind are generally covered by a fatty coating called myelin. Myelin sheaths protect the axons and help them to conduct electrical signals more efficiently. Myelin builds up progressively (in a process known as myelination) mainly during childhood, and then continue to mature until early adulthood.

Earlier studies had shown significant abnormalities in the white matter in the brains of people who had experienced child abuse. (White matter is mostly made up of billions of myelinated nerve fibres stacked together.) But, because these observations were made by looking at the brains of living people using MRI, it was impossible to gain a clear picture of the white matter cells and molecules that were affected.

To gain a clearer picture of the microscopic changes which occur in the brains of adults who have experienced child abuse, and thanks to the availability of brain samples from the Douglas-Bell Canada Brain Bank (where, as well as the brain matter itself there is a lot of information about the lives of their donors) the researchers were able to compare post-mortem brain samples from three different groups of adults: people who had committed suicide who suffered from depression and had a history of severe childhood abuse (27 individuals); people with depression who had committed suicide but who had no history of being abused as children (25 individuals); and brain tissue from a third group of people who had neither psychiatric illnesses nor a history of child abuse (26 people).

Impaired neural connectivity may affect the regulation of emotions

The researchers discovered that the thickness of the myelin coating of a significant proportion of the nerve fibres was reduced ONLY in the brains of those who had suffered from child abuse. They also found underlying molecular alterations that selectively affect the cells that are responsible for myelin generation and maintenance. Finally, they found increases in the diameters of some of the largest axons among only this group and they speculate that together, these changes may alter functional coupling between the cingulate cortex and subcortical structures such as the amygdala and nucleus accumbens (areas of the brain linked respectively to emotional regulation and to reward and satisfaction) and contribute to altered emotional processing in people who have been abused during childhood.

The researchers conclude that adversity in early life may lastingly disrupt a range of neural functions in the anterior cingulate cortex. And while they don’t yet know where in the brain and when during development, and how, at a molecular level these effects are sufficient to have an impact on the regulation of emotions and attachment, they are now planning to explore this in further research.

Goodbye, login. Hello, heart scan

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Forget fingerprint computer identification or retinal scanning. A University at Buffalo-led team has developed a computer security system using the dimensions of your heart as your identifier.

The system uses low-level Doppler radar to measure your heart, and then continually monitors your heart to make sure no one else has stepped in to run your computer.

The technology is described in a paper that the inventors will present at next month’s 23rd Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Communication (MobiCom) in Utah. The system is a safe and potentially more effective alternative to passwords and other biometric identifiers, they say. It may eventually be used for smartphones and at airport screening barricades.

“We would like to use it for every computer because everyone needs privacy,” said Wenyao Xu, PhD, the study’s lead author, and an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“Logging-in and logging-out are tedious,” he said.

The signal strength of the system’s radar “is much less than Wi-Fi,” and therefore does not pose any health threat, Xu said.

“We are living in a Wi-Fi surrounding environment every day, and the new system is as safe as those Wi-Fi devices,” he said. “The reader is about 5 milliwatts, even less than 1 percent of the radiation from our smartphones.”

The system needs about 8 seconds to scan a heart the first time, and thereafter the monitor can continuously recognize that heart.

The system, which was three years in the making, uses the geometry of the heart, its shape and size, and how it moves to make an identification. “No two people with identical hearts have ever been found,” Xu said. And people’s hearts do not change shape, unless they suffer from serious heart disease, he said.

Heart-based biometrics systems have been used for almost a decade, primarily with electrodes measuring electrocardiogram signals, “but no one has done a non-contact remote device to characterize our hearts’ geometry traits for identification,” he said.

The new system has several advantages over current biometric tools, like fingerprints and retinal scans, Xu said. First, it is a passive, non-contact device, so users are not bothered with authenticating themselves whenever they log-in. And second, it monitors users constantly. This means the computer will not operate if a different person is in front of it. Therefore, people do not have to remember to log-off when away from their computers.

Xu plans to miniaturize the system and have it installed onto the corners of computer keyboards. The system could also be used for user identification on cell phones. For airport identification, a device could monitor a person up to 30 meters away.

Xu and collaborators will present the paper — “Cardiac Scan: A Non-contact and Continuous Heart-based User Authentication System” — at MobiCom, which is billed as the flagship conference in mobile computing. Organized by the Association for Computing Machinery, the conferernce will be held from Oct. 16-20 in Snowbird, Utah.

Additional authors are, from the UB Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Feng Lin, PhD (now an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver); Chen Song, a PhD student; Yan Zhuang, a master’s student; and Kui Ren, PhD, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor; and from Texas Tech University, Changzhi Li, PhD.

Weight loss for adults at any age leads to cost savings, study suggests

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Helping an adult lose weight leads to significant cost savings at any age, with those savings peaking at age 50, suggests a new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study.

The findings, which will be published online September 26 in the journal Obesity, suggests that a 20-year-old adult who goes from being obese to overweight would save an average of $17,655 in direct medical costs and productivity losses over their lifetime. If the same person were to go from being obese to a healthy weight, an average savings of $28,020 in direct medical costs and productivity losses can occur. Helping a 40-year-old adult go from being obese to overweight can save an average of $18,262. If the same person went from being obese to normal weight, an average savings of $31,447 can follow.

A high body mass index (BMI) is linked to a higher risk of serious conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers. Subsequently, a high BMI and associated conditions can lead to high medical and societal costs and productivity losses. More than 70 percent of adults in the U.S. are considered to be overweight or obese, which in direct medical expenses alone costs nearly $210 billion per year.

“Over half the costs of being overweight can be from productivity losses, mainly due to missed work days but also productivity losses. This means that just focusing on medical costs misses a big part of the picture, though they’re a consideration, too,” says Bruce Y. Lee, MD, MBA, executive director of the Global Obesity Prevention Center (GOPC) at the Bloomberg School. “Productivity losses affect businesses, which in turn affects the economy, which then affects everyone.”

When absenteeism occurs in the workforce, others, at times, have to take on a larger workload. This all funnels downstream and adds to the societal costs of obesity. And health insurance premiums increase across the board, even for healthy patients, as insurers spread the cost of obesity and its associated conditions.

For the study, the researchers developed a computational simulation model to represent the U.S. adult population to show the lifetime costs and health effects for an individual with obesity, overweight and healthy weight statuses at ages 20 through 80 in increments of 10. The model used data from the Coronary Artery Disease Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) and Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) studies and included 15 mutually exclusive health statuses that represented every combination of three BMI categories (normal weight, overweight and obesity) and five chronic health stages.

The model simulated the weight and health status of an adult as he or she ages year by year throughout his or her lifetime to track the individual medical costs and productivity losses of each person. The estimated direct medical costs to the insurer and health care facility, productivity losses and sick time were included.

The research team found that cost savings peak at age 50 with an average total savings of $36,278. After age 50, the largest cost savings occur when an individual with obesity moves to the normal weight category as opposed to the overweight category, emphasizing the importance of weight loss as people age. This finding is important because people aged 50 and older make up more than 60% incremental societal costs, which includes higher taxes to support government insurance and higher copays and other out-of-pocket expenses.

“Most previous models have taken into account one or a few health risks associated with obesity. Subsequently, the forecasted costs may be unrealistic,” says Saeideh Fallah-Fini, PhD, a former GOPC visiting scholar who was part of the research team. “In our study, the model we developed takes into account a range of immediate health complications associated with body weight, like hypertension or diabetes, as well as all major long-term adverse health outcomes, including heart disease and some types of cancer, in forecasting the incremental health effects and costs to give a realistic calculation.”

Results from this study could inform policymakers about the specific implications and costs associated with obesity in order to design more successful interventions that are tailored to specific groups (defined by age, current health condition and weight). Understanding the resulting lifetime costs and health effects for an individual with obesity at different ages can also aid physicians and other health care professionals in implementing more targeted preventive management decisions for patients with high BMIs and associated health conditions. On the flip side, it could be beneficial for patients to better understand the health outcomes associated with potential future health risks and impending medical costs, given their existing BMI status and health condition.

Finally, realizing the reverberating effects of obesity on the productivity of their employees and consequently their profits, employers may look to redesign or sponsor healthy lifestyle programs with weight-loss initiatives. In turn, this could decrease absenteeism and poor performance. “In the end, the heart of a business is its employees,” says Lee. “Having employees who are overweight and unhealthy is akin to a football team trying to compete with chronically injured players.”

Kandla Port renamed as Deendayal Port

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The Ministry of Shipping has issued a notification renaming Kandla Port Trust as Deendayal Port Trust with effect from 25th of September, 2017. Kandla Port, located on the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat, is one of the twelve major ports in the country. As per the Ministry’s notification, the Central Government, in exercise of powers conferred on it under Indian Ports Act, 1908, made the amendment to replace “Kandla” with “Deendayal”.

While inaugurating various projects at Kandla Port in May this year, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had given the suggestion for renaming of Kandla Port after Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, who stood for the uplift of the poor and weaker sections of society. The Ministry of Shipping issued the required notification on the occasion of the closing of the year long centenary celebrations of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay.

Vice-President inaugurates a “Crusade for Toilets” in Karnataka

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The Vice President, Shri M Venkaiah Naidu, today inaugurated the “Swachhta Hi Seva” and “Shouchalayakkagi Samara” (A Crusade For Toilets) Programme in Karnataka. He was presiding as the Chief Guest over a public event at Hubli.

The Vice President later visited Konnur Village, in Naragund Taluk, Gadag District, where he initiatied the activity of ‘Tippe Samskarane’ (Waste Processing). He also inaugurated a “Shudda Kudiyuva Neerina Ghataka” (Purified Drinking Water Plant), visited the Janata Colony in the village, and addressed a “Shouchalayakkagi Samara” public gathering at the local high school.

Speaking on the occasion, the Vice President emphasized the need for Swachhata to become a jan aandolan. He complimented the taluka, district and State for the good progress made by them. He urged all present to participate in Swachhata activities and said that Swachh Bharat Mission is a national program, a people’s program, and not one of any particular political party. He gave several examples of ordinary people making extraordinary contributions, including Ms Lavanya, a young girl from Karnataka who persuaded her unwilling family to build a toilet and then went on to inspire her entire village. The Vice President appreciated the fact that many young women are now demanding toilets before they get married into another family.

On the occasion, the Vice President also honoured 13 Village Panchayat Presidents and the Naragund Taluka Panchayat President, the achievers of “Shouchalayakkagi Samara”. He also declared the rural areas of Naragund Taluk as an ODF block.

Shri Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala, the Governor of Karnataka, began his address by thanking the Vice President for starting the Swachhata Hi Seva campaign from Karnataka. He also emphasized the importance of caring for one another, as enshrined in the slogan of the government, ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’. He said that to care for others, we need to start by taking the initiative ourselves in the direction of a Swachh Bharat.

Shri Ramesh Jigajinagi, the Minister of State, Drinking Water and Sanitation, congratulated the State government on the occasion and re-emphasized the importance of the Swachhata Hi Seva campaign. He reiterated the fact that the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, in his recent visit to Uttar Pradesh, had appreciated the naming of a toilet as “Izzat Ghar”.

Shri H.K. Patil, Karnataka Minister for Rural development and Panchayati Raj, gave a snapshot of the progress being made by the State under the Swachh Bharat Mission and said that both, the State and the nation, were moving at a good pace towards becoming clean and free from open defecation.

In his welcome address at the gathering, Shri Parameswaran Iyer, the Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, shared a nationwide progress update on Swachh Bharat Mission and appreciated the good progress being made by the Government of Karnataka in meeting the goals of the Mission.

Shri P.C. Gaddigoudar, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, and Shri B.R. Yavagal, MLA, Naragund, were also present on the occasion.

Sachin Tendulkar Participates in the Swacchata Hi Seva Campaign

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Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar came out in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachhta Hi Seva campaign leading the cleanliness campaign in Mumbai. He did ‘shramdaan’ by cleaning the streets in Bandra. Continuing the trend of celebrity support to this campaign Malayalam superstar Mammootty has accepted Prime Minister Narendra Modi invitation to participate in the Swachhta Hi Seva movement.

The campaign also saw endorsement from faith leaders. In a special event, hundreds of volunteers came together to participate in a swachhata drive from Laxman Jhula to Ram Jhula in Rishikesh. Organised by members of Parmarth Niketan, Rishikesh’s largest ashram, the event also saw participation of Swachh Bharat Mission officials as well as foreign visitors from more than 10 countries.

National Cadet Corps Officer Training Academy, Kamptee also launched the fortnight long ‘Swachhta Hi Seva’ cleanliness campaign. Maj Gen AP Bam, SM, VSM, Commandant, Officers and Staff of Academy, Course students of Pre-Commission Course and Permanent Instructors of various NCC Units of all three services of Indian Armed Forces attended the programme.

‘Samagra Swachhata” became the philosophy in Meghalaya at an event in Mylliem Block, where the Governor, Shri Banwarilal Purohit graced the occasion. Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand have launched several “Swachhta Hi Seva Rath” reaching the unreached areas and spreading the message about the safe toilet technology, health and hygiene amongst community. In J&K, garbage from various areas situated on the banks of Wullar lake was collected and disposed of in true spirit of Swachhta Hi Seva.

Acting as an inspiration for many, in Jamshedpur a Class VII girl built a public toilet from her 2-year savings and was honoured by the Hon’ble Chief Minister as a sanitation champion certificate.

Dino-killing asteroid’s impact on bird evolution

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Human activities could change the pace of evolution, similar to what occurred 66 million years ago when a giant asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, leaving modern birds as their only descendants. That’s one conclusion drawn by the authors of a new study published in Systematic Biology.

Cornell University Ph.D. candidate Jacob Berv and University of Bath Prize Fellow Daniel Field suggest that the meteor-induced mass extinction (a.k.a. the K-Pg event) led to an acceleration in the rate of genetic evolution among its avian survivors. These survivors may have been much smaller than their pre-extinction relatives.

“There is good evidence that size reductions after mass extinctions may have occurred in many groups of organisms,” says Berv. “All of the new evidence we have reviewed is also consistent with a Lilliput Effect affecting birds across the K-Pg mass extinction.” Paleontologists have dubbed this phenomenon the “Lilliput Effect” — a nod to the classic tale Gulliver’s Travels.

“Smaller birds tend to have faster metabolic rates and shorter generation times,” Field explains. “Our hypothesis is that these important biological characters, which affect the rate of DNA evolution, may have been influenced by the K-Pg event.”

The researchers jumped into this line of inquiry because of the long-running “rocks and clocks” debate. Different studies often report substantial discrepancies between age estimates for groups of organisms implied by the fossil record and estimates generated by molecular clocks. Molecular clocks use the rate at which DNA sequences change to estimate how long ago new species arose, assuming a relatively steady rate of genetic evolution. But if the K-Pg extinction caused avian molecular clocks to temporarily speed up, Berv and Field say this could explain at least some of the mismatch. “Size reductions across the K-Pg extinction would be predicted to do exactly that,” says Berv.

“The bottom line is that, by speeding up avian genetic evolution, the K-Pg mass extinction may have temporarily altered the rate of the avian molecular clock,” says Field. “Similar processes may have influenced the evolution of many groups across this extinction event, like plants, mammals, and other forms of life.”

The authors suggest that human activity may even be driving a similar Lilliput-like pattern in the modern world, as more and more large animals go extinct because of hunting, habitat destruction, and climate change.

“Right now, the planet’s large animals are being decimated–the big cats, elephants, rhinos, and whales,” notes Berv. “We need to start thinking about conservation not just in terms of functional biodiversity loss, but about how our actions will affect the future of evolution itself.”

Smartphone apps reduce depression

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New Australian-led research has confirmed that smartphone apps are an effective treatment option for depression, paving the way for safe and accessible interventions for the millions of people around the world diagnosed with this condition.

Depression is the most prevalent mental disorder and a leading cause of global disability, with mental health services worldwide struggling to meet the demand for treatment.

In an effort to tackle this rising challenge, researchers from Australia’s National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM), Harvard Medical School, The University of Manchester, and the Black Dog Institute in Australia examined the efficacy of smartphone-based treatments for depression.

The researchers systematically reviewed 18 randomised controlled trials which examined a total of 22 different smartphone-delivered mental health interventions.

The studies involved more than 3400 male and female participants between the ages of 18-59 with a range of mental health symptoms and conditions including major depression, mild to moderate depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and insomnia.

The first of its kind research, published today in World Psychiatry found that overall smartphone apps significantly reduced people’s depressive symptoms, suggesting these new digital therapies can be useful for managing the condition.

Lead author of the paper, NICM postdoctoral research fellow Joseph Firth says this was an important finding which presented a new opportunity for providing accessible and affordable care for patients who might not otherwise have access to treatment.

“The majority of people in developed countries own smartphones, including younger people who are increasingly affected by depression,” said Mr Firth.

“Combined with the rapid technological advances in this area, these devices may ultimately be capable of providing instantly accessible and highly effective treatments for depression, reducing the societal and economic burden of this condition worldwide.”

Co-author, NICM deputy director, Professor Jerome Sarris highlighted the importance of the findings for opening up non-stigmatising and self-managing avenues of care.

“The data shows us that smartphones can help people monitor, understand and manage their own mental health. Using apps as part of an ‘integrative medicine’ approach for depression has been demonstrated to be particularly useful for improving mood and tackling symptoms in these patients,” said Professor Sarris.

When it comes to the question of “Which app is best?” and “For who?”, the results suggested these interventions so far may be most applicable to those with mild to moderate depression, as the benefits in major depression have not been widely studied as of yet.

The researchers found no difference in apps which apply principles of mindfulness compared to cognitive behavioural therapy or mood monitoring programs.

However, interventions that used entirely ‘self-contained’ apps – meaning the app did not reply on other aspects such as clinician and computer feedback – were found to be significantly more effective than ‘non-self-contained’ apps.

The authors suggested this might be due to the comprehensiveness of these particular stand-alone apps rather than the combination of therapies.

Despite the promising early results, there is currently no evidence to suggest that using apps alone can outperform standard psychological therapies, or reduce the need for antidepressant medications.

According to co-author and co-director of the digital psychiatry program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a clinical fellow in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr John Torous, the research is a timely and promising step forward in the use of smartphones in mental health.

“Patients and doctors are faced with a vast array of mental health apps these days, and knowing which ones are actually helpful is imperative,” said Dr Torous.

“This research provides much needed information on the effectiveness of apps for depression, and offers important clues into the types of apps which can help patients manage their condition.”

Jennifer Nicholas, a PhD Candidate at Black Dog Institute and co-author of the paper says with the knowledge that apps can be effective for managing depression, future research must now investigate which features produce these beneficial effects.

“Given the multitude of apps available – many of them unregulated – it’s critical that we now unlock which specific app attributes reap the greatest benefits, to help ensure that all apps available to people with depression are effective.”

For a better ‘I,’ there needs to be a supportive ‘we’

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If you’re one of those lucky individuals with high motivation and who actively pursues personal growth goals, thank your family and friends who support you.

People who view their relationships as supportive may confidently strive for growth, new University of Michigan research shows.

U-M researchers used data from samples from the United States and Japan to determine if personal growth is an outcome of an individual’s traits or the positive relationships they have with others.

In Study 1, about 200 participants were randomly assigned to one of three relationship conditions: supportive, nonsupportive and neutral. In the two main conditions, some had to consider a person in their life with whom they felt comfortable (or not) and did not worry (did worry) about being abandoned by them. The neutral group had to consider an acquaintance for whom they did not have strong feelings.

Participants read a hypothetical scenario in which they had to choose between a higher-paying job with high familiarity (Company A) or a lower-paying job that required learning that would help their long-term career development (Company B).

Among those in the supportive relationship condition, 65 percent selected Company B, whereas 40 percent of those in the nonsupportive condition chose the same company. Fifty percent of the neutral group picked Company B.

Participants who thought about a supportive person were more willing to choose a job that promoted personal growth, even at lower pay, in part because they had more self-confidence, the study indicated.

Studies 2 and 3 analyzed people’s perceptions of the support received from family and friends to determine personal growth tendencies in two cultures.

Using data from the Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, more than 3,800 participants in Study 2 rated the support received from family and friends. The questions included: “How much does your family (do your friends) really care about you?” and “How much can you open up to them if you need to talk about your worries?” They also rated their willingness to develop their potential and grow as a person, as well as self-confidence.

People who reported their relationships to be supportive had a greater willingness to grow personally and felt more self-confident, the study showed. The results were similar in the data from the Survey of Midlife Development in Japan, which sampled about 1,000 people.

“The more supportive people judged their relationships to be, the higher their personal growth tendencies, even in a culture that puts more emphasis on the collective rather than the individual,” said David Lee, the study’s lead author who obtained his doctorate in psychology at U-M.

Overall, the findings support the “I-through-We” perspective, which means the social tendency to connect with others, and the individual tendency to strive and grow as individuals, are not mutually exclusive and may augment and magnify each other.

“In other words, relationships do not necessarily conflict with but help sustain one’s personal growth,” said Oscar Ybarra, U-M professor of psychology and of management and organizations.

The findings thus address both the importance of distinguishing yourself from others by fulfilling personal goals, but also being a good group member by fulfilling social obligations and cultivating supportive relationships.

“Building positive social connections with others should put people in a good position to receive social support that is instrumental to personal growth, as well as allowing people to strike a balance between two fundamental values: to strive and connect,” said Lee, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University.

Meet Bilal Dar, the Boy Behind Plastic-free Dal lake

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In his “Mann ki Baat” Prime Minister Narendra Modi focused on a boy named Bilal Dar who drew the attention of many for his self-less service to keep the famous Dal Lake in Srinagar free from plastic waste. He is now made the brand ambassador of Srinagar Municipal Corporation.

“We can see in “Swachhata Hi Sewa” movement as to how the electronic media and the print media in our country can render a big service to the country. Just a few days ago some one drew my attention towards Bilal Dar, a young man of 18 years from Srinagar. And you will be glad to know that Srinagar Municipal Corporation has made him their brand ambassador and when there is a talk of brand ambassador, there is a general feeling that he/she must be a Cine artist or a sports-personality. But not in this case.

“Bilal Dar got connected to the ‘Swachhata Abhiyan’ or Cleanliness Campaign since the age of 12-13 years and has been working for the last 5 to 6 years. He clears plastic, polythene, used bottles, dry or wet waste – every piece of dirt from Aisa’s biggest lake near Srinagar. He also earns from this activity. His father had died of cancer at a very young age but he connected his livelihood with cleanliness. I congratulate Srinagar Municipal Corporation for taking this initiative towards sanitation and for their imagination to appoint an ambassador for this cause of cleanliness because Srinagar is a tourist destination and every Indian wants to go there; and if such attention is given to Cleanliness it is a very big achievement in itself.

“And I am glad that they have not only appointed Bilal as their ambassador but also given him a vehicle, and also a uniform and he goes to other areas and educates people about cleanliness and inspires them and keeps tracking them till results are achieved. Bilal is very young age wise but is a source of inspiration for all of us who are interested in cleanliness. I congratulate Bilal Dar,” sid Modi.

Rajamouli, Rajinikanth Support 8-day Swachhata Hi Seva Campaign, 201 Districts OD Free

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After 8 days of Swachhata Hi Seva Campaign, 201 Districts are ODF now. Swacchata Hi Seva campaign has fostered collaborations, across the country, to fight against the evils of open defecation. In a major milestone, the rural sanitation coverage has increased with 4 districts being declared ODF today taking the total tally to 201.

After a week of the Swacchata Hi Seva campaign, the movement received support from Bollywood. Superstar Rajinikanth responded to the government’s call by committing to extend full support to Swachhata. Filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli also extended full support to the Swachhata Hi Seva Campaign.

In Balasore, Odisha scientists and staff members of Interim Test Range (ITR) Chandipur, picked up brooms and cleaned roads. As a part of on-going Swachhata Hi Seva programme, several activities have been taken up across Assam.

In response to the government’s invite to be a part of the Swachhata Hi Seva campaign, famous breast cancer expert, Dr P Raghu Ram (Director City Based KIMS-Ushalakshmi Centre, President Association of Breast Surgeons of India), stated, “ I have Decided to conduct the Swachhata Iniative in Ibrahimpur, my adopted village, in remotest part of Telangana State”.

The students of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Bihar garnered support to the Swacchata Hi Seva campaign, by undertaking cleanliness drive in their school. The young mascots of Swachhata Hi Seva andolan, undertook numerous activities.

India Tourism, along with Gujarat Tourism, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), Institute of Hotel Management (IHM) Gandhinagar, Travel Agents, Tour Operators, Hoteliers and Approved Guides organized a cleanliness drive at the Shaking Minarets, a world heritage site.

Rs.50K Stipend for Sports Persons Going for Olympic, Asian Games

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The Olympic Task Force has recommended that stipend of Rs 50,000 per month be paid to the elite athletes preparing for Tokyo Olympic, Asian Games or Common Wealth Games to meet pocket expenses.
The Government, accepting the recommendation, on Friday took decision to give stipend of Rs 50,000 per month and  has selected 152 elites under the TOP scheme. All the athletes will get benefit from this decision. The stipend will be paid with effect from 1st September, 2017.
 This decision was announced by the Minister of State youth affairs and Sports Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore (Retd.) on social media platform as follows:
Rajyavardhan Rathore on Twitter: “MYAS @IndiaSports announces Rs 50k/month pocket allowance for 152 elite athletes preparing for Tokyo/CWG/Asian Games. Athletes first, always!”
Rajyavardhan Rathore on Twitter: “The allowance applies wef 1 Sep 2017 & is purely for pocket expenses of elite athletes. Committed to providing all resources to our champions”
Further, Government is getting in touch with all the athletes selected under TOP to get training & competition exposure plan and any further assistance required for preparation of prestigious competitions.

Japan Provides $76 Million Loan for Alang-Sosiya Shipyards’ Upgradation

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India has signed $ 76 Million loan deal with Japan International Cooperation Limited (JICA) to upgrade Alang-Sosiya Shipyards to upgrade the environment management plan at the recycling yards.

The total cost of the project will be $ 111 million, out of which $76 million will be provided as soft loan from JICA. Out of the remaining amount, $25 million as taxes and fees will be borne by Government of Gujarat and the balance $10 million will be shared by Ministry of Shipping & Government of Gujarat. The project will be executed by Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) and is likely to be completed by 2022.

This project will help the Alang-Sosia ship-recycling yards to comply with international safety & environmental regulations. This will attract more business at the recycling facilities at Alang, thereby further consolidating India’s share in the global ship-recycling industry.

This project will also help in safeguarding the marine and coastal environment. The use of advanced decontamination technology will rule out the possibility of fire accidents in oil and chemical tankers, thereby ensuring workers safety.

The project is expected to result in increase in direct employment from 50,000 to 92,000 people and in-direct employment from 1.5 lakhs to 3 lakh people.

Is the Earth warming? The ocean gives you the answer

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Humans have released carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and the result is an accumulation of heat in the Earth’s climate system, commonly referred to as “global warming”. “How fast is the Earth’s warming?” is a key question for decision makers, scientists and general public.

Previously, the global mean surface temperature has been widely used as a key metric of global warming. However, a new study published in AGU’s Eos proposed a better way of measuring global warming: monitoring ocean heat content change and sea level rise. The authors come from a variety of international communities including China (Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences), U.S.A. (NCAR, NOAA, and University of St. Thomas) and France (Mercator Ocean).

To determine how fast the Earth is accumulating heat, scientists focus on the Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI): the difference between incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave (thermal) radiation. Increases in the EEI are directly attributable to human activities that increase carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Extra heat trapped by increasing greenhouse gases mainly ends up in the oceans (more than 90% is stored there). Hence, to measure global warming, we have to measure ocean warming!

On the other hand, the amplitude of the global warming signal compared with natural variability (noise) defines how well a metric tracks global warming. This study shows that the temporal evolution of ocean heat content has relatively high signal-to-noise ratio; therefore, it requires 3.9 years to separate the global warming trend from natural variability. Similarly, for sea level rise, 4.6 years are sufficient to detect the climate change signal. By contrast, owing to weather, El Niño – Southern Oscillation and other natural variability embedded in the global mean surface temperature record, scientists need at least 27 years of data to detect a robust trend. An excellent example is the 1998-2013 period, when energy was redistributed within the Earth’s system and the rise of global mean surface temperature slowed – sometimes call a “hiatus”.

This study suggests that changes in ocean heat content, the dominant component of Earth’s energy imbalance, should be a fundamental metric along with sea level rise. Based on the recent improvements of ocean monitoring technologies, especially after 2005 through autonomous floats called Argo, and advanced methodologies to reconstruct the historical ocean temperature record, scientists have been able to quantify ocean heat content changes back to 1960, even though there is a much sparser historical instrument record prior to 2005. Sea level rise is best known since 1993 when altimeters were first launched on satellites to enable sea level change observations to millimeter accuracy.

According to the most up-to-date estimates, the top-10 warmest years of the ocean (indicated by OHC change at upper 2000m) are all in the most recent decade after 2006, with 2015-2016 the warmest period among the past 77 years. The heat storage in the ocean amounts to an increase of 30.4×1022 Joules (J) since 1960, equal to a heating rate of 0.33 Watts per square meter (W m-2) averaged over the entire Earth’s surface– and 0.61 W m-2 after 1992. For comparison, the increase in ocean heat content observed since 1992 in the upper 2000 meters is about 2000 times the total net generation of electricity by U.S. utility companies in 2015.

It is evident that scientists and modelers who seek global warming signals should track how much heat the ocean has stored at any given time, i.e. ocean heat content, as well as sea level rise. Locally, in the deep tropics, ocean heat content directly relates to hurricane activity. Ocean heat content is a vital sign of our planet and informs societal decisions about adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

New hope for ‘bubble baby disease’

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Babies born with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (SCID) syndrome are defenceless against bacterial and viral infections that would be virtually harmless to most healthy people. If untreated, SCID is often fatal within a baby’s first year of life.

Research led by the University of Hong Kong has resulted in a new testing regime that could speed up the diagnosis of SCID, allowing more infants to receive life-saving treatment within a critical timeframe.

For the best chance of survival, infants with SCID should be treated as soon after birth as possible, and preferably within three-and-a-half months. However, poor recognition of SCID by front-line doctors is leading to delays in diagnosis, later treatments and poorer outcomes.

The authors of a recent study, published in open-access journal Frontiers in Immunology, have developed a “checklist” of potential SCID markers: a family history of early infant death, persistent candidiasis (often presenting as persistent thrush), Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) infections, and low absolute lymphocyte counts. “Flagging” an infant showing any one of these four factors would allow potential SCID patients to be fast-tracked for further tests and treatment.

Many countries – including much of Asia and the UK – do not test for SCID in their newborn health-screening programmes, with front-line doctors often left to diagnose the fatal condition. By using this checklist, the authors believe that identification, and hence treatment, of SCID patients will be possible much sooner.

Without a working immune system, newborns with SCID are highly vulnerable, and many will repeatedly visit doctors with serious and recurring infections before being diagnosed.

“The recognition of SCID by doctors is poor in Asia, resulting in delayed diagnoses that jeopoardize the chance of treatment success,” explains lead author Professor Yu Lung Lau, who focused his research on Asian and North African patients. “We wanted to see if we could identify any clinical features that would help doctors to diagnose SCID earlier.”

The study of 147 patients looked at how long it took for doctors to diagnose SCID, relative to the age the babies were first brought to their doctors, and what symptoms they had.

They found that it took an average of two months for babies to be diagnosed, and that the average age at diagnosis was four months old – beyond the critical age for treatment (which is usually stem cell transplants or gene therapy) to begin.

As the researchers examined the data, four SCID “markers” emerged. Taken in isolation, none helped reduce the time taken for a diagnosis. However, 94% of the patients studied showed at least one of the four factors.

“Family history of early infant death due to infection was useful to aid earlier diagnosis, but it was not due to doctors realizing the importance of the family history, but rather due to the family taking the child to see the doctors earlier,” says Lau. “This demonstrates the failure of our medical training and systems in using family history to aid earlier SCID diagnosis.”

Candidiasis emerged as one of the most common infections. Unfortunately, as thrush is relatively common in all infants, its presence actually slowed down the time to diagnosis.

Complications from the BCG vaccination also appeared frequently, and over 88% of the patients in the study had a very low absolute lymphocyte counts (ALC).

“Our main recommendation is to perform lymphocyte subsets for any infant with one or more of the following clinical features: family history, persistent candidiasis, BCG infections and ALC less than 3×10^9/L”, explains Lau. “This would confirm the diagnosis of SCID, if present”.

For the time being, newborn screening remains out of reach in much of Asia, so education of front-line doctors and parents is key.

“Our recommendations may help earlier diagnosis of SCID, and need to be communicated to doctors as well as to ordinary citizens, who can then urge the doctors along our recommendation,” concludes Lau.