Safety devices for personal protection

Narayani Ganesh, TNN | Sep 25, 2013, 08.32 AM IST
READ MORE Mata Amritanandamayi|Krishnashree Achuthan|Amrita University|Amrita Centre for Cyber Security
AMRITAPURI (Kerala): Help is at hand for the vulnerable, especially women, the elderly and children, say scientists Krishnashree Achuthan and Suja Devi Vijayagangadharan, US-trained researchers at the Amrita Centre for Cyber Security that is part of Mata Amritanandamayi's Amrita University in Kerala's Kollam district.

The fetching coastline with its swaying palm trees and black sands fringes the vast University campus, where cutting edge scientific research is happening quietly, often through collaboration with peer groups abroad. Research here however is largely oriented toward practical applications that would benefit the greatest number - the Amritamitra safety device is one such that is to be announced during Amma's 60th birthday celebrations.

The personal safety device - designed at the suggestion of Mata Amritanandamayi - is just 3.5cm X 3.5cm and can be carried on one's person without attracting undue attention. The trigger may be built into the device or placed at another location on the individual's body, behind the ear or tucked at the waist, for example. This is how it operates:

This device will empower women - or the elderly, the physically challenged or children - to trigger communication with family and police when in distress. The device will remain inconspicuous to the offender and yet easily activated by the victim with multiple options to ensure stealthy and secure communication. With the ability to record conversations, and communicate immediately by the press of a button or using sms and voice calls to multiple destinations, this device also offers automated information on nearest police station, hospitals, fire stations to the victim to get immediate help. The device will also have ability to video tape events in the near future. It can work in indoor and outdoor environments with minimal power consumption.

Another device to be inaugurated during Amritavarsham60 -the 60th birthday celebrations of Amma on September 27, 2013 - is the one named Amritaspandan, a wireless device for heart patients that will alert the wearer and those on the alert list like hospital and family of any impending heart attack or failure, also revealing the location of the person.

A slew of initiatives and projects are to be announced during September 26-27 by the Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM) including the scheme to adopt 101 villages throughout India, which is being called the Amrita Self-Reliant Village Programme (Amrita Swasraya Gramam) where Ammachi Labs will set up e-learning facilities and every effort will be made to provide for education, skills development and healthcare. A Rs 50 crore project will take off towards disaster relief work in Uttarakhand, largely for housing, care for orphaned children and women and to provide educational services.

Also announced will be breakthroughs in cancer research by the Amrita Centre for Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine, a new tablet-based learning programme for literacy called Amrita RITE and a clutch of exciting online innovations for the benefit and protection of society.

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Human brain tumour cells killed with drugs in mice

, TNN | Sep 25, 2013, 03.09 AM IST
READ MORE Johns Hopkins University|Johns Hopkins|Cancer
LONDON: Scientists have for the first time been able to completely erase human brain tumour cells in mice.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in the US have discovered that weeks of treatment with a FDA-approved drug halted the growth of and ultimately left no detectable trace of brain tumour cells taken from adult human patients and regrown in mice.

The type of tumour targeted by the researchers eventually progresses to a subtype of glioblastoma multiform — the deadliest form of brain cancer — known to be highly progressive. They arise as a lower-grade Glioma and are initially treated with surgery alone, but eventually they progress to the more lethal form of tumour. Survival is longer than with glioblastoma, but it is found in younger patients, those under the age of 50.

The scientists targeted a mutation in the IDH1 gene first identified in human brain tumours called Gliomas by a team of Johns Hopkins cancer researchers in 2008. This mutation was found in around 80% of progressive forms of brain cancer.

"Usually in the lab, we're happy to see a drug slow down tumour growth. We never expect tumours to regress, but that is exactly what happened here. This therapy has worked amazingly well in these mice. We want to start discussing the parameters of a clinical trial to see if this will work in our human patients," said study leader Gregory Riggins, a professor of neurosurgery and oncology at Johns Hopkins.

The IDH1 gene produces an enzyme that regulates cell metabolism.
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Indians going to Mars

REMINDS ONE OF THE COLONIZATION OF AUSTRALIA BY BRITAIN IN 1750-1900-THEY WERE SENT WITH  ONE WAY TICKET

 

Early Colonization of Australia
  In 1788 Britain sent prisoners to the Botany Bay penal colony. 

The First Fleet carried eleven ships full of prisoners.  The growing number of white prisoners caused problems for the native aborigines.  The aborigines suffered from diseases that were brought from the white prisoners.  In 1848 the governor of New South Wales did not accept anymore prisoners from Britain, but Western Australia, 1868, kept accepting.  Soon the prisoners made most of  population.Australia's It was hard for the prisoners at that time. The soil was not very suitable for farming therefore; the prisoners struggled for food.  Prisoners were put to service and they also raised sheep.
ship

Meet the Indians going to Mars

, TNN | Sep 24, 2013, 06.20 PM IST

READ MORE New York Times|NASA|Mars One Mission|Apollo programmes|Amulya Nidhi Rastogi
In the wise words of the 20-year-old Amulya Nidhi Rastogi, going to the moon was a fantastically-expensive piece of showing off, and not much more. "I must have been in class II when I read about man going to the moon and planting a flag there," he says. "But I couldn't understand why and I asked my father, 'Shouldn't we have done more? Maybe built a base there, set up a colony, a stepping stone to even more distant worlds?'"

 Those old questions must still swirl around in his head for the slight — he's slim, about 5ft 6 inches, and wears glasses — third-year student of mechanical engineering at the World Institute of Technology in Gurgaon has applied to the Mars One Mission, which aims to establish a human colony on our galactic neighbour by the year 2023.

 A rocket will take off from earth in late 2022 and, seven months later, will deposit four earthlings — two men and two women — on Mars. Once there, there will be no coming back, ever. Going to Mars then — there will of course be a huge, four-tiered vetting of the 165,000 men and women from around the world who have applied; applications are now closed — will mean staying there. But additional rockets will deposit four more permanent settlers there every two years.

 Vinod Kotiya is married and has a one-year-old daughter. But that did not stop the 32-year-old manager with NTPC from applying to the mission on the day the Mars One website began accepting applications. That early start had Vinod climb up to number three on the popularity charts — visitors to the website are asked to vote for the applicants — which of course saw Vinod getting a very cold shoulder back home.

 His wife, Priyanka, when he broke the news to her — sensibly, it could be argued, Vinod decided it would be better to tell her that he had applied to go to Mars after the fact rather than before — threatened to lie down in front of the rocket and not let it take off. Priyanka is somewhat more accepting of the move now that Vinod's popularity has climbed down to 15 on the charts; plus Vinod says that like a sensible Indian wife she has come to the conclusion that he will not make the cut and that, therefore, she has nothing to worry about.
[Amulya and his brother Tushar, who says he might write a book about his brother going to Mars]

 None of this sounds very new, says Professor Radhika Chopra, who teaches sociology at Delhi university. Her speciality is urban anthropology. "Remember," she says, "when you look at the history of trans-national migration out of India, there has never been any certainty that those migrants will come back."

 What she means to say is that when Indians have left these shores, they have always gone with the intention of settling down in the foreign lands they have travelled to.

 Applicants to the Mars One Mission, in effect, plan on doing exactly the same thing — leave, and settle down elsewhere.

 Of course, says Chopra, the Indians who have left the motherland have also stayed connected with her — either by shipping brides over after them or by other means. And that something similar, like a "Mars Facebook", will happen here too.

 Vinod thinks so too. And says that while there are no plans for a return journey so far — Mars One says that is because the technology to take off from Mars and return to earth does not exist as yet, and that coming back from our neighbour will mean a very large increase in travel costs — that could change in the nine years still left for that first rocket to take off.

 But Vinod, if you do get to go, Vaniya will be 10 then. Are you sure you will be able to leave her?

 "Well," says Vinod, "she could come after me." And adds, "I have to go. The answers to the secrets of the universe will not be found here."

[Vinod with his wife Priyanka and their 1-year-old daughter Vaniya. Vinod says his daughter could follow him to Mars]

 There are of course also more prosaic reasons for people wanting to go to Mars. Sameer Kumar Lowe says over the phone from Mumbai that his wife and son are dead set against him going, but that he's hoping for a salary and pension from the people putting together the Mars One Mission. (The project is being spearheaded by the Dutch entrepreneur Bas Landorp. And a bulk of the funds for the Mars One Mission will come from turning the selection process into reality television and broadcasting it.)

 Sameer, who currently works with MMRDA as a rolling stock advisor on their metro and mono rail projects, he worked with Delhi Metro before this as a rolling stock engineer, and the Indian Air Force before that as a radar engineer, says he has been frustrated by the fact that he hasn't been able to build a house as yet.

 And that a salary and a pension would make his wife and son, who has done a BTech but is currently unemployed, "financially secure". And of course, he adds with a laugh, the fame of being the first person on Mars will not hurt.

 Sameer, who says he is "fifty plus", says he will stay fit enough for the job.

 Whatever their reasons for wanting to go where no man has gone before, these men (of the 8,000 applicants from India, making them the fourth largest bloc after the Americans, the Chinese and the Brazilians, women make up an infinitesimal fraction) are in stellar (yes, pun intended) company.

 Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, wrote recently in the New York Times that Nasa's Apollo programme to get to the moon was a space race between the US and the USSR, and not much more. And that we should close that chapter in the space exploration history books.

 He then added: "Now I see the moon in a far different light — not as a destination but more a point of departure, one that places humankind on a trajectory to homestead Mars and become a two-planet species."

 Oh, and of course, Aldrin's words also prove Amulya right.

 A version of this article appeared in The Sunday Times of India on September 8. 
 comment:- "women make up an infinitesimal fraction"-shows level head thinking and analyzing by the fair sex
 
 well men are from mars -send them all off?no ,we need their help for the propagation of  humans of the future generations; till there are chances of survival of humans in mars


 
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