Imaging a Lie

Dr.S.S.Verma

We should follow the path of truth but telling lies is a bestowed character on human beings and used sometimes to hide more serious things particularly by criminals. In old days when liars were also afraid of GOD, spiritualism used to play a great role in stopping people from telling lies and also in the detection of lies. But in the present civilization self interest or greed has become the paramount character of human and spiritualism has failed to prevent telling & detecting lies. So, technology has taken over the social and spiritual methods of lie detection. A polygraph test is the standard lie-detection tool employed by law enforcement and intelligence agencies for nearly a century which measures the stress of telling a lie, as reflected in accelerated heart rate, rapid breathing, rising blood pressure, and increased sweating. The polygraph is widely considered unreliable in scientific circles, partly because its effectiveness depends heavily on the intimidation skills of the interrogator. Moreover, sociopaths who don't feel guilt and people who learn to inhibit their reactions to stress can slip through a polygrapher's net.
Scientists and engineers are always working to devise a more effective technique to detect lies which can be helpful for easy identification of the culprits in the society. Scientists are making use of latest developed imaging techniques towards detecting lies by imaging deception in the brain itself. The major noninvasive neuroimaging techniques used are positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), along with electro-encephalography (EEG), an earlier technique for monitoring brain activity. Advances in all these techniques are enabling scientists to produce remarkably detailed computer-screen images of brain structures and to observe neurochemical changes that occur in the brain as it processes information or responds to various stimuli. Each technique has its own advantages and each provides different information about brain structure and function.
MRI uses magnetic fields and radio waves to produce high quality two- or three-dimensional images of brain structures without use of ionizing radiation (X-rays) or radioactive tracers. Using MRI, scientists can image both surface and deep brain structures with a high degree of detail, and they can detect minute changes in these structures that occur over time. Within the last few years, scientists have developed techniques that enable them to use MRI to image the brain as it functions. Functional MRI (fMRI) relies on the paramagnetic properties of blood to enable scientists to see images of blood flow in the brain as it is occurring.
Thus researchers can make movies of changes in brain activity with greater precision as patients perform various tasks or are exposed to various stimuli. When people lie, they use different parts of their brains than when they tell the truth, and these brain changes can be measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). By mapping the neural circuits behind deception, researchers are turning fMRI into a new kind of lie detector that's more probing and accurate than the polygraph.
FMRI-based lie-detection systems seek to assess a more direct measure of deceit: the level of activity in brain areas linked with lying. Previous studies have shown that the brain appears more active when someone is telling a falsehood, especially the brain areas involved in resolving conflict and cognitive control. Scientists think that lying is more cognitively complex than telling the truth, and therefore it activates more of the brain. Research has shown that brain-activity patterns change when a person is asked to, say, read emotionally charged words rather than neutral ones.
The science behind fMRI lie detection is getting matured with astonishing speed. Researchers believe that fMRI should be tougher to outwit because it detects something much harder to suppress: neurological evidence of the decision to lie. The great danger is that something like fMRI is adopted as a means of lie detection and becomes the standard before it has been scientifically evaluated for this purpose. Scientists say that, like the physiological changes monitored during polygraphs, the brain-activity patterns measured during fMRI are not specific to deception, making it challenging to identify a brain pattern that definitively identifies a lie. Some practical obstacles stand in the way of its widespread use: the scanners are huge, costly and sensitive to head movement. With the development of technology, however, these limitations will be fixed and fMRI brain imaging equipment will become easily available and affordable, ensuring its increased use as a tool for lie detection.

Modern Geneticsa hopeful Panacea

Prof.P.L.Bakhshi

Modern genetics research seeks to advance the health of individuals and also to improve the human race. The Geneticists wish to use the acquired information to correctly diagnose, prevent and cure the deadly diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, mental disorders and cardio-vascular system aberrations. In this context the Human Genome Project, started in 1990, was one of the great feats of exploration in the history of Genetics. It was an international research effort to sequence and map all the genes of Homo sapiens that provides a blue print for human beings. The human genome of an estimated 24,000 genes formed of more than three billion DNA subunits (nucleotides) reside in 23 pairs of chromosomes and form our body's instruction manual. The H G Project was a thirteen year program and was successfully completed in April 2003. The Geneticists are now trying to find out what the genes exactly do and how they interact and this new age of discovery is apt to transform human health far better.
In August 2005 Chimpanzee's genome was mapped out who is closely related to humans as they shared a common ancestor about 5 million years ago. It has been found that more than 96% of gene material of Chimpanzee matches humans. Only four percent of the coding differs between the two relatives and somewhere in this catalog of differences lies the genetic blue print of traits that make us humans and that include- sparse body hair, upright gate, and the big creative brain. Moreover humans are highly susceptible to AIDS, coronary heart diseases, chronic viral hepatitis, malignant malarial infections while as Chimp's aren't. Studying the differences can help pin down the genetic aspects of such diseases.
Stem cell research is on the cutting edge of the science of Genetics today as it has the potential in many areas of health and medical research. Stem cells are primal cells common to all multi-cellular animals that retain the ability to renew themselves through cell division and can differentiate into a wide range of specialized cell types. Embryonic stem cells were first isolated by Dr. James Thomson in 1998 using leftover embryos donated by couples who had undergone fertility treatments. In order to overcome ethical concern scientists have now found amniotic fluid and placenta as a new source of stem cells and that does not involve destroying embryos. These cells can be harvested easily from samples taken for amniocentesis - which involves testing the amniotic fluid for any signs of genetic disorders. Researchers have directed amniotic fluid derived stem cells to become numerous cell lineages, including muscle, bone, nerve, fat, liver and the cells that line the blood vessels. They are fully confident that these cells will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair for engineered organs as well. The cells can also come from placenta and double in number every 36 hours.
In recent years stem cell research promises to offer unprecedented opportunities for developing new medical therapies for debilitating diseases. Cancers of specific types, diabetes; Parkinson's , Alzheimer's, hematological diseases; cardiac infarcts, skin and pigmentation disorders, orthopedic and cartilage injuries, neural degeneration and Spinal cord injury are among the conditions for which stem cell research is believed to hold the promise of a cure. In October 2006 the British scientists have grown a miniature human liver from stem cells in a world-first breakthrough. The technique which created the mini-liver will be developed to create a full size functioning version. Sir Magdi Yacoub, professor of cardiac surgery at the Imperial College, London along with his team has recently grown a specific tissue from the stem cells that works in the same way as the valves in the human hearts. This breakthrough has opened a whole new therapy concept to the treatment of congenital heart defects. About one percent of all newborns have heart problems including that of heart valves which can be detected with ultrasound tests at about 20 weeks of pregnancy. Heart valves grown from stem cells for infants and even adults will be more durable and effective than artificial or cadaver valves.
In the early months of 2005, bold experiments were carried out at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago to volunteers inflicted with Alzheimer's disease by injecting billions of viruses carrying repair genes in a bid to improve memory. Doctors remove the original genetic material from selected viruses and replace it with a gene that creates nerve growth factor.
Today Genetics has almost touched its Zenith and is racing ahead towards a day when finding root of disease will be well within the reach of the experts. A breakthrough has already been made in this direction. An international team of more than 200 scientists from six countries working since October 2002 on an ambitious goal of creating a human haplotype map (HapMap) reported that they are on the threshold of finding the genetic variation that make one person different from another, and what makes each prone to a particular illness.
Geneticists will thus have the know-how to pinpoint the elusive genetic basis of disease, i.e. why some people get sick by a particular disease while others don't. The findings are going to act as tool of genomics to the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of a number of common diseases like hypertension, diabetes, heart diseases, asthma, neurological disorder, cancer, etc

Online Child Safety

Aarti

It is disconcerting that the Internet we rely on for news, knowledge-sharing and quicker communication is increasingly being used to sexually exploit our children.
That more youngsters seem to be encountering unwanted exposure to pornography online is indicated by a new survey. According to a team of researchers at the Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, over 40 per cent of the 1500 Internet users aged 10 to 17, surveyed last year, reported being exposed to online pornography, though most claimed they were not looking for it. Two-thirds of those who were exposed felt it was “unwanted”. Most often, such exposure took place while using file-sharing programs to download images.
Child pornography, defined as a visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct and “live” online abuse of children for paying customers is a growing global problem. Notwithstanding the limited Internet access in some poor countries of Africa and Asia, child porn is believed to be growing at an alarming rate.
Media reports indicate that most child porn is exchanged for free online. At any given time, nearly 50,000 pedophiles online around the world mostly access websites based in Third World countries since laws there are more lax. Believed to generate an underground business worth over $12 billion annually, the online porno industry reportedly adds some 20,000 new child porn websites every month.
Pornographers are said to use, camera phones and other sophisticated devices to record child abuse, which they transmit around the world. Such sexual predators, besides distributing child pornography, also engage in sexually explicit conversations with children and seek victims in chat rooms. Instant messaging service is yet another forum for sex offenders to meet children.
Various researches have shown that pedophiles use pornographic photos to demonstrate to their victims what they want them to do. Besides stimulating the perpetrator, pornography facilitates child molestation in several ways. In a study of convicted child molesters, it was found that 77 percent of those who molested boys and 87 percent of those who molested girls admitted to the habitual use of pornography in the commission of their crimes.
A recent UN study on violence against children found that such abuses (like stalking/bullying children online and using the Internet to network for child sex tourism/trafficking) was not only pervasive, causing deep and lasting physical, psychological damage to the child victims but it outstripped the resources of law enforcement agencies.
In India, reportedly cyber crimes overall have increased by 38.6 per cent in 2005, although there are no statistics that measure the gravity of the crime. This January, ICMEC), Microsoft and Interpol trained Indian sleuths at the CBI Academy in Ghaziabad and Thiruvananthapuram on how to track down offenders who abuse the Net through blogs, photos, films and file sharing.
It needs to be realised that every child who views pornography will not necessarily be affected. Nonetheless, since the effects of pornography are progressive and addictive, such exposure can introduce children prematurely to sexual sensations that they are developmentally unprepared to contend with.
Prolonged exposure to pornography can prompt kids to act out sexually against younger, smaller and more vulnerable children. Apart from shaping the child’s attitudes, values and behavior, pornography can short-circuit and/or distort the normal personality development process.
Most importantly, by supplying misinformation about a child's sexuality, sense of self and body, it can leave the child confused, changed and damaged.
“With Internet posing considerable danger to children, apart from regulatory authorities, making the net for children is in the hands of the parents” says Shanti, a house wife. She permits her twin sons aged 8 years to play online games for a hour every day. The software installed restricts the sites which her children can visit.
Although 12-year-old Nitu has his own computer, he cannot use it on his own as it is password protected. The computer, kept in the drawing room, is switched on either by his father or mother only when one of them is around. It is also programmed limiting the websites he can surf.
Tips to keep kids safe
· Be alert over your child’s online activity.
· Never let your child enter chat rooms.
· Install software to restrict your child’s access to adult/porno web sites.
· Keep your credit card(s) out of your child’s reach so that it is never used by him/her even unconsciously over the Internet.
· Be aware of predators who may ask your child for phone numbers or personal information and eventually escalate it to a phone call.
· Any change in the child’s behaviour as a result of her/his spending time online merits your immediate attention.
Since pornography facilitates child molestation in several ways, it is better to be safe than feel sorry later.
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Forty years of hand-held calculator

G V Joshi

The year 2007 is the 40th anniversary of the first hand-held or pocket electronic calculator. It was created in 1967 by Dr Jack Kilby an electronic wizard working at the internationally well known company Texas Instruments based at Dallas in Texas, USA. It was a simple machine that could add, subtract, multiply and divide, just like more sophisticated mechanical calculators made by Burroughs and Facit, available then, but much faster and without cranking a handle.
Also known as the adding machines earlier, the hand-held electronic calculator threw out the abacus used by small businessman in China and Japan and the slide-rule used by scientists and engineers.
The abacus may be called the first hand-held calculator. It was invented between 500 BC and 2300 BC. The origin in uncertain. The Chinese call it Suanpan. They were used in China, Japan and Russia well up to the middle of 20th Century. It is said that the Russians used an abacus to carry out some of the intricate calculations for the launch of Sputnik I, on October 4, 1957.
Shortly after the invention of logarithms by Napier in 1614, Edmund Gunther plotted them on a 60-cm long wooden strips. In 1622, William Oughtred joined then together to create the first slide-rule.
The first mechanical calculator was made by the mathematician Blaise Pascal. The Difference Engine conceived by Charles Babbage was never built in full as technology to manufacture precise parts for it was not available then. But it showed how calculations more complex than simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division could be carried out mechanically.
Using the principles of Babbage’s difference Engine, scientists at International Business Machines (IBM) created the first electromechanical computer, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator in 1944.But it occupied a whole room.
In 1946, the first computer, the Electronic Numerical, Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was ready. But it used thousands of electronic valves, resistors, condensers and switches. It was housed in a 10-m x 15m room and weighed several tonnes.
Transistors invented in 1947, brought down the size of computers but a pocket electronic calculator was still far away. The idea of a hand-held calculator followed the invention of an integrated circuit (IC), the chip in electronic jargon. It was conceived by electronic wizards like Geoffrey Dummer, a British computer engineer, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Intel who also invented the process of making an IC. Integrated circuits were followed by a microprocessor-computer on a chip.
In 1967, Texas Instruments came out with their first hand-held calculator. The machine was only a little more powerful than its mechanical forefathers were. Since then many other companies have entered the field, manufacturing better hand-held calculators, capable of carrying out all scientific and mathematical computations. Hewelett Packard (HP) introduced the first hand-held calculator in 1972. Japanese were not far behind. Casio is a well-known name in the field of pocket calculators.
Most hand-held calculators have a display of both the entries as well as results. Earlier there were red or green displays, but today black display has taken over. Black displays (liquid crystal display) consume very little electricity and the batteries, therefore, last much longer.
One type of electronic calculator can handle complicated tasks similar to those done by personal computers. Such a calculator is called a programmable calculator. HP introduced their programmable hand-held calculator in 1974. Casio also makes programmable calculators and pocketbook size personal computers with about 10 kilobytes memory.
Today’s hand held-electronic scientific calculators can perform a wide range of complex scientific and mathematical computation and can also draw graphs. At one time students were not permitted to use calculators in class, home or in exams. Now thousands of students studying mathematics at high school stage and above use them in schools and colleges.
The hand-held calculators were followed by desk calculators which could also print out the results.
The worldwide sale of hand-held and desk calculators now runs in millions. Most homes, housewives and shopkeepers use them. The sales have gone down slightly now due to introduction of personal, laptop and palm-top computers, which also carry programs for scientific and engineering calculations. PTI Feature

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Beginning of Nanotechnology

Dr S S Verma

Constantly diminishing electronics have become a matter of course in today's IT-world. The yearly addition to the market of ever more powerful and lighter computers is something we have all started to take for granted. In particular, hard disks have shrunk - the bulky box under our desk will soon be history when the same amount of data can just as easily be stored in a slender laptop. And with a music player in the pocket of each and everyone, few still stop to think Albert Fert Peter Grünberg about how many cds' worth of music its tiny hard disk can actually hold. Recently, the maximum storage capacity of hard disks for home use has soared to a terabyte (a thousand billion bytes). Portable computers, music players, and powerful search engines, all require hard disks where the information is very densely packed.
Information on a hard disk is stored in the form of differently magnetized areas. A certain direction of magnetization corresponds to the binary zero, and another direction corresponds to the binary value of one. In order to access the information, a read-out head scans the hard disk and registers the different fields of magnetization. When hard disks become smaller, each magnetic area must also shrink. This means that the magnetic field of each bite becomes weaker and harder to read. A more tightly packed hard disk thus requires a more sensitive read-out technique. Towards the end of the 1990s a totally new technology became standard in the read-out heads of hard disks. This was of crucial importance to the accelerating trend of hard disk miniaturization which we have seen in the last few years.
Today's read-out technology is based on a physical effect that this year's two Nobel Laureates in Physics first observed almost twenty years ago. Albert Fert (scientific director of the Mixed Unit for Physics at CNRS/Thales in Orsay, France) and Peter Gruenberg (Professor at the Institute of Solid State Research in the west German city of Juelich) are awarded the Physics Nobel-2007 for the discovery of phenomenon called giant magnetoresistance (GMR). The generation of larger changes in electrical resistance even with very weak changes in magnetism helps the conversion of information stored magnetically on a hard disk to electrical signals that the computer reads. The GMR effect was discovered thanks to new techniques developed during the 1970s to produce very thin layers of different materials. If GMR is to work, structures consisting of layers that are only a few atoms thick have to be produced. For this reason GMR can also be considered one of the first real applications of the promising field of nanotechnology.
GMR technology may be regarded as the first step in developing a completely new type of electronics, dubbed spintronics. Spintronics is the use of the electron's spin, not only its electrical charge as in traditional electronics. A general prerequisite of spintronics is provided by the small dimensions created by nanotechnology. Yet another application of spintronics, which has already begun to emerge, is a magnetic working memory called MRAM. The point of MRAM is that it is possible to use TMR both to read and to write information and thereby create a magnetic computer memory which is fast and easily accessible. MRAM could therefore be used as a working memory, as opposed to the slower hard disk, but it would also be a permanent memory, which does not depend on electric power.
This means that MRAM could develop into a universal memory which would replace both the traditional RAM and the hard disk. The compactness of such a system may prove to be particularly useful in small embedded computer systems - in everything from kitchen stoves to automobiles.

Kites are tools of Science

G V Joshi

The International Kite Festival held at Ahmedabad as well as Jaipur brought people together from everywhere- be it from Japan, Australia, Malaysia, USA, Brazil, Canada and European countries- to participate in the Festival.
It is generally believed that the kite was invented in the Malay Archipelago. Even though it is generally considered to be only a toy, it has served as a scientific tool and provided humanity with a wealth of knowledge.
Kites are aircraft by definition; a heavier than air craft consisting of a wood or fiberglass frame which is covered by light fabric, paper, or plastic. To this craft is attached a string, which is held by the flier on the ground.
The kite achieves flight by virtue of its resistance to the wind provided by the string held firmly by the flier, and lift provided by the flow of air over and around the frame as in the wings of an aircraft.
The use of a kite as a scientific tool gradually spread from the Far East to the western world. Among the first to use the kite scientifically were Dr Alexander Wilson and Thomas Melville of the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
In 1749, they hoisted thermometers aloft on six kites, with fuses attached to each kite so that the instruments could be dropped from different altitudes. They were the first scientists to record temperatures above the surface of the earth.
Three years later in the United States, Dr Benjamin Franklin made his famous experiment proving that lightning is a form of electricity. No body for sure knows how he survived the shock.
Neither the steam, petrol nor the diesel engine, but the kite made possible the world’s first horseless carriage. The Englishman George Pocock in 1827 developed a four wheeled carriage which was towed along by two kites with strong strings about 500 to 600 metres long. These kites were similar to the Malay kites.
The Kite-Carriage, or ‘‘Charvolant’’, made many trips between Bristol and Marlborough in the UK at speeds as high as 30- kmph.
Before inventing the ‘‘Charvolant,’’ Pocock designed man-lifting kites and once used them as a means of climbing to the top of a steep cliff about 60 metres high.
Pocock also proposed that kites be used to tow vessels. The idea is being revived once again.
A giant kite designed to help save money spent on fuel could herald winds of change for commercial cargo shipping. A cargo carrier has been fitted with a hi-tech kite. The para-glider type kite is tethered to the bow of a cargo vessel.
Flying at a height of 100 to 300 m, the kite will propel the ship forward, allowing its engines to operate at reduced speed, thus cutting back on fuel consumption.
The idea of using a kite to haul a rope to an inaccessible spot was put to practical use in the United States in 1849, when engineers were considering methods to span the Niagara River with a bridge just below the famous Niagara Falls. One of them, T G Hulet, offered a prize of ten dollars to the first boy who could fly a kite with a stout string across the rocky, ice-choked river. After several unsuccessful attempts, a boy named Homan Walsh won the prize money. This string formed the beginning of a bridge that linked the United States and Canada. About 50 years after Pocock’s experiments, man-lifting kites began to appear all over the world. Lawrence Hargrave was among the first to build a man-lifting kite. In 1893 he built three large kites and attached them at intervals to a long stout string. The combined weight of his body and this rig came to about 100 kg, but he managed to raise himself 5-m above the ground.
In 1894, Captain BFS Baden-Powell, brother of the founder of the scouting movement, raised his 70 kg body to an altitude of 30 m.
Baden-Powell’s kites were sent to South Africa for use in the Boer War, to spy on the enemy, but by the time they arrived the fighting was over, so they were never put into use. His kites were also put to use in transferring mail from one ship to another.
In World War II, a plan was suggested for flying kites over ships to protect them enemy aircraft. The kites, darting back and forth on the shifting winds, supported steel wires which would form an effective aerial umbrella over the ships. Although never used in combat, the plan was successfully tested at sea.
Many a downed pilots owe their life to the humble kite. As part of the standard survival equipment in many aircrafts, a small collapsible box kite enables the pilot to carry his radio antenna high enough to summon help.
Besides carrying men aloft, kites were enabling men to look at the earth through the eyes of cameras. In the early 1880s, ED Archibald of England and A Batut of France had taken many pictures from cameras mounted on kites. But in 1906, George R Lawrence took a giant --sized picture of the San Francisco earthquake and fire. The photography of Earth from remote sensing satellite like Cartosat has evolved from this simple beginning.
The American meteorologists have made extensive use of the kites as a tool to probe the whims of the weather. From 1893 until 1933, they maintained a system of stations from which kites were flown at regular hours when the winds permitted. The American Merchant ships have also used kites to fly life lines to stranded vessels.
One summer morning in the year 1900, on the wind-swept dunes of North Carolina’s Atlantic coast in the US, two men intently studied the motions of a kite, which they were controlling by means of four slender wires. These men were Wilbur and Orville Wright, and they were learning some of the techniques that were later to be applied to the first heavier than air vehicle to carry a man aloft under its own power. Thus began the age of Aviation. (PTI)

Invisible Revolution

G V Joshi

Ratan Tata of India has made a very cheap car that also happens to be very small and called it "Tata Nano". But Tata Nano is 3,100,000,000 nanometers (3.1 meters) long. One nanometer (nm) is one billionth, or 1 0 raised to the power of -9 of a metre.
For a while there were a few things called 'mini' but now 'nano' has replaced 'mini'. However, most of them have nothing whatsoever to do with nanotechnology as it is understood by scientists. These are only trade names.
Now imagine a world in which microscopic sized robots are sent into the human body with the mission of detecting cancer cells, disassembling them, and sending them out into the bloodstream as waste products. 'This is the world of nanotechnology.
What exactly is a nano? The Greeks used the word "nanos" to mean 'dwarf'"... This term was first used in science in the 20th Century and in 1960 it was recognised when the term nanometre came into use. Crudely put, it could be thought of as about 10 atoms long.
There is not one event that alone can take credit for originating Nanotechnology.
India is rather late to enter the field of nanotechnology. However, isolated research work was going on from 1970s at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur and Delhi University's Chemistry Department.
Largely owing to the drive of Dr C.N.R. Rao, the well-known materials sciences expert at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (NCASR) in Bangalore and a pioneer in nano science in the country the Nano Science and
Technology Initiative (NSTI) was launched by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), under "Union Government In October 200l.
As science progressed into the 21st century, the importance of the emerging area of nanotechnology was becoming quite apparent to the Indian scientific community.
Our former scientist president Dr. A.P.J.Kalam initiated research in nanotechnology. He was one of the first to point out that the country's nanotechnology research was sub-optimal. In April 2004, he organised a meeting of nanotech experts to devise a national mission plan.
As a result the Government created a five-year national nano science and technology mission with a Rs. 1,000 crore funding.
Some progress has since been reported. Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai is just about to release a water purifier using nanotechnology.
As of today, no nanoparticle based water filter exists in the world. The filter developed by Dr Sreekumaran Nair, would be released by Eureka Forbes Ltd, well-known for Aqua-Guard brand of water filters. It removes pesticides from drinking water utilising metal nano-particles.
In a path-breaking innovation that could have implications in the fields of defence, space research and electronics, a team led by Dr Sulabha Kulkarni, of the University of Pune has developed an ultra lightweight aerogel, which uses carbon nano tubes (CNTs) synthesised by Prof O.N. Srivastava and his team at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi.
An anti-wrinkle cream uses a nanotechnology process to incorporate vitamin A inside a polymer "capsule." The capsule acts like a sponge, soaking up and holding the cream inside until the outer shell dissolves under your skin. Women who used the cream reported its anti-wrinkle qualities and said that the product was effective in firming skin.
For clumsy people who spill, spot and stain their apparel there is Nano-Care fabric, in which scientists have attached molecular structures to cotton fibres, forming a barrier that causes liquids and stains to bead up on the surface and prevent absorption. Treated fabrics are not only wrinkleproof but repel stains from tea, coffee, curry gravy and syrup.
Digital cameras just got better, thanks to nanotech. Nanotech based tennis rackets and balls are already available. The list is growing every day.
According to Dr C.N.R. Rao, 'The real problem is that India has to create the technical manpower to work in this emerging field. Unless this is done there will not be enough research in this field in the near future." There is a lot of interest amongst the young students but there are very few training centres in universities and colleges.
"Unless we invest more in people and institutions and equipment, which is very expensive, it is going to be difficult to catch up with other countries of the West as well as China." He further added. (PTI)

Stem cells- a genetic boon

Prof P L Bakhshi

Stem cell research is on the cutting edge of the science of Genetics today as it has the potential in many areas of health and medical research. Stem cells are primal cells common to all multi-cellular animals that retain the ability to renew themselves through cell division and can differentiate into a wide range of specialized cell types. Research in the human stem cell field grew out of findings by Canadian scientists Ernest A McCulloch and James E. Till in the 1960's. Embryonic stem cells were first isolated by Dr. James Thomson in 1998 using leftover embryos donated by couples who had undergone fertility treatments. Since then we continuously get information about new ways that researchers globally are trying to create human stem cells for scientific experimentation without running to ethical objections over destroying embryos. In order to overcome ethical concern scientists have now found amniotic fluid and placenta as a new source of stem cells and that does not involve destroying embryos. These cells can be harvested easily from samples taken for amniocentesis - which involves testing the amniotic fluid for any signs of genetic disorders, and also from the placenta. Researchers have directed amniotic fluid derived stem cells to become numerous cell lineages, including muscle, bone, nerve, fat, liver and cells that line the blood vessels and are fully confident that these cells will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair for engineered organs as well.
In recent years stem cell research promises to offer unprecedented opportunities for developing new medical therapies for debilitating diseases. Cancers of specific types, diabetes, brain disorders including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, hematological diseases, cardiac infarcts, skin and pigmentation disorders, orthopedic and cartilage injuries, neural degeneration and spinal cord injury are among the conditions for which stem cell research is believed to hold the promise of a cure. It is hoped that one day stem cells may be used to grow replacement tissue to be a perfect genetic match for patients with damaged organs. Although this research is in its infancy, its potential for ameliorating a number of serious, life threatening diseases has created a widespread hope among patients and their families coping with such diseases.
Researchers in recent years have developed enough of medical hope in umbilical cord blood and are of firm view that its healing powers may provide cures for many deadly maladies including heart attack, diabetes, stroke, Parkinson disease, Alzheimer's disease, muscular dystrophy and to treat autoimmune diseases. Besides childhood leukemia, sickle cell disease, aplastic anemia, the umbilical cord blood has in recent years been found effective to cure a rare genetic defect called Krabbe disease. Umbilical cord blood is rapidly replacing bone marrow in transplants for leukemia and other disorders because it is much easier to procure and has a much lower risk of rejection. More than half of all stem cell transplants in children are currently done with umbilical cord blood and the number is gradually growing in adults. Blood from a Baby's umbilical cord after it has been clamped and cut after delivery is now increasingly being saved by young enlightened parents because it is the richest source of stem cells- the building blocks of the blood and immune systems. In the laboratory the blood is processed and the stem cells harvested and stored in a cryogenic depository powered by liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius for future use. These cells can be harvested easily from the umbilical cord of newborns at no risk to mother or baby and then can be used to treat siblings, parents and even grand-parents. The benefits are tremendous. Cord blood has lower procurement cost- as it is easy to obtain it from umbilical cord, as compared with peripheral blood or bone marrow harvesting. Other advantages are off-the shelf availability, no risk to the donor and a lower rate of viral contamination. There is also an altruistic advantage. If the blood is not used to treat the baby from whom it was obtained, parents or siblings, and the family does not want to pay for its banking after 21 years, they can donate it to someone else provided it matches.
There are already a good number of umbilical cord blood banks around the world including India and in years to come their number will increase. The parents will be encouraged to donate umbilical cord blood to these banks where it will be frozen and stored for possible future use for their child or for other patients in need. At these banks the scientists are well trained in separating the stem cells from blood removed from the umbilical cord minutes after birth. They are then placed in a bioreactor (an electrical equipment invented by NASA to mimic the effects of weightlessness). Within this the stem cells multiply more quickly because of the freedom from the force of gravity.
Currently stem cells harvested from cord cells are used to treat 45 diseases and conditions, such as thalassaemia, leukemia, sickle-cell anaemia, several cancers. Most people choose to bank their baby's cord blood for health security so that a perfect match for the baby is available for treatment, should such an eventuality arise. Some are prompted by a medical compulsion, such as a family history of thalassaemia or cancer, or a someone in the family who needs stem cells for treatment.
In December 2007 it was reported that doctors in Japan used for the first time stem cells derived from liposuctioned fat to repair the craters left in women's breasts when cancerous lumps were cut out. This has raised the hope that women who get lumpectomies for breast cancer may have simple option involving stem cells for reconstructing the affected breast and can also be used to augment healthy breasts instead of artificial implants.

Charisma of spider silk

Dr. Pragya Khanna

Will you walk into my parlour?" said the spider to the fly; "'tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy. The way into my parlour is up a winding stair, and I have many curious things to show when you are there."
"Oh no, no," said the little fly, "to ask me is in vain, for who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again.
Spiders have been around since time immemorial and are certainly ubiquitous. One exasperating feature of the spiders is the creation of spider webs that are generally considered nothing but annoying. However, paying a little attention to the nature's unique conception reveals astounding information. A spider web or cobweb as it is commonly called is a structure built by the spider out of proteinaceous spider silk extruded from its spinnerets (spinning glands). Spider silk is one of the 7 great wonders of the animal kingdom. It is both light and strong. A typical strand of garden spider silk has a diameter of about 0.003 mm, which is 1/10th of the silkworm silk which is 0.03 mm in diameter. It is a remarkable substance in that it is fairly acidic and is not attacked by bacteria or fungi, the reason why cobwebs remain around for so long. The most intriguing question that comes to ones mind is how the silk made of protein is not decomposed by fungi and bacteria like all other proteins? Normally the protein is conserved by cooking, salting, drying or adding acid. The spider silk contains three substances that are imperative for its durability. They are pyrolidin, potassium hydrogen phosphate and potassium nitrate. Pyrolidins are very hygroscopic that is they are provided with water binding capacity and they prevent the thread from drying out. Potassium hydrogen phosphate makes the thread acidic and prevents fungal and bacterial growth. Though a low pH can cause denaturation of proteins, but Potassium nitrate helps in preventing this and the proteins are salted.
It is interesting to note that the spider silk is an extremely strong material and is on weight basis stronger than steel. It has been suggested that a pencil thick strand of silk could stop a Boeing 747 in flight. According to Mark Carwardine in The Guiness Book of Animal Records, 1995, "Spider silk is the strongest of all natural and man-made fibres". Paul Hillyard says in The Book of the Spider, 1994. "For an equal diameter, spider silk is stronger than steel and about as strong as nylon. It is however much more resilient and can stretch several times before breaking, it is twice as elastic as nylon and more difficult to break than rubber. The energy required to break spider silk is about ten times that of other natural materials such as cellulose, collagen and chitin".
In 1709 a Frenchman, Bon de Saint-Hilaire, established the prospect of making fabric from this silk. Many cocoons were boiled, washed and dried and the thread was collected with fine combs. He was able to produce some socks and gloves. However, later a study to the economic yield of this method revealed that this would never be profitable. It was calculated that 1.3 million spider cocoons were needed to produce one kilogram of silk.
As a small deviation before I finish this page I must mention that a number of legends are also associated with the spiders the world over. As a common saying goes, "If you wish to live and thrive let a spider run alive", this at least to some extent explains why in 1936 a policeman controlling traffic on the Lambeth bridge in London stopped all the traffic to let a large spider cross the road in safety. His actions were much appreciated by the nearby pedestrians who cheered wildly as the spider made it safely to the other side.
Having gained much knowledge of the spider silk and its awesome properties the researchers at the University of Massachusetts now report progress in creating spider's silk using genetic engineering techniques. According to the scientist David Tirrell, who wrote a review for the journal 'Science' describing the current research, the machinery of protein synthesis in the spider is manipulated to the advantage by creating genes that produce the amino acid sequence yielding the desired product -- in this case dragline silk. This would be used in the manufacture of bulletproof vests, parachute cords, bridge suspension cables, wear-resistant shoes and clothing, seat belts, rust free bumpers for automobiles, artificial tendons and ligaments, etc. Well I hope this small collection of bits and pieces of spider information have helped you appreciate spiders more fully.