The Golden 80s

It did rattle all of us on a hot afternoon on May 20. There was a loud sound, like a thunder, and the doors rattled. I was waiting it to repeat, but nothing happened after the first boom. On checking, there were messages galore on Twitter. I was sceptical of posting a tweet, but then I retweeted one of them that reported the mysterious boom 16-20 km away. It was later confirmed by IAF that there was a sonic boom. It was caused by a routine IAF Test Flight involving a supersonic aircarft, said NDTV . "The sonic boom was probably heard while the aircraft was decelerating from supersonic to subsonic speed between 36,000 and 40000 feet altitude", said the NDTV report. After months of political row, Kerala government cancelled the agreement with US-based firm Sprinklr for collection and analytics of Covid-19 patient data, including those quarantined in the state. According to a report , the state government, through an affidavit submitted to the Kerala high court, sai...

Pangolins tolerate and survive a coronavirs infection, as they lack two key genes that detect the entry of viruses and then activate a series of immune responses to such an attack. According to a recent study,  published in Frontiers in Immunology ,  Pangolins lack (IFIH1), also known as MDA5, which is a intracellular RNA sensor. It also lacks Z-DNA-binding protein (ZBP1), This essentially means mammals like Pangolins can tolerate viral infections, instead of resisting or mounting a hyper immune response to such infections. At times. such responses affect the host's survival. The way Pangolins can tolerate viral infections can also explain why mammals like bats can carry or host a number of viruses without themselves getting affected seriously. But these animals can pass on the infections to human beings. The study concludes that "...pharmaceutical suppression of IFIH1/MDA5 and ZBP1-dependent signaling may be beneficial for human patients with overreactions to vir...

Analyte : In the blood or fluid samples collected and tested in the lab, this is the chemical that is used to identify the Covid-19 virus. See Assay also. Assay : A test conducted in a laboratory to diagnose the presence of an analyte. See Analyte also. Asymptomatic cases : Refers to people who are infected with Covid-19 virus, but do not show any symptoms of the infection. It is reported that asymptomatic people can transmit the disease to others even before being tested positive. See Symptomatic also. Case Fatality Rate (CFR) : This is the proportion of people from among the positive cases who will die from Covid-19 infection. Community Spread : Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as “the spread of a contagious disease to individuals in a particular geographic location who have no known contact with other infected individuals or who have not recently traveled to an area where the disease has any documented cases. Contact Tracing : WHO defines contact tracing as “…the...

Along with Covid-19 virus, there is no end to the misinformation circulating around about the virus, immunity, and how the virus can be stopped. The following content is just an attempt to write basic content about viruses, Covid-19, and immunity. A virus is a microorganism that requires another biological system to survive. These biological systems are plants, animals or bacteria. Viruses use DNA or RNA to replicate inside another biological system called Host. DNA replication is a process by which a daughter strand of the double helix is formed from the parent strand. Coronaviruses are RNA viruses (retrovirus) that use the biological machinery in a host cell to replicate or create more copies of itself. This is very important because of something called the central dogma of genetics or molecular biology: DNA > messenger RNA (mRNA) > Proteins. Retroviruses use an enzyme called reverse transcriptase (RT) to convert RNA to DNA in host cells and get latched on to the DNA ...

I've seen several ways in which people write the word, iPad. This is but very innovative. This is from an English news channel based in Bengaluru. Another indication of murdering English on a daily basis. 

It is the hope of a better home that drives migration, said acclaimed poet and writer, Ruth Padel, in an evening session on Poetry, Nature and a Changing World , at the Bangalore International Centre, Bengaluru. It was such an enthralling evening when the poet, who is the great-great-grandchild of Charles Darwin, talked about poetry, migration, conservation, climate change, Darwin, and so on. She also read a few selected poems, old and new. And I manged to get a few books signed by the distinguished poet.  The evening started with the poet reading an excerpt from her book, Where the Serpent Lives , and then the conversation went to Tiger conservation. On her many trips to forests in India, the poet said, that in a forest, we see so many things like leaves, squirrels, otters; but they are all related to the Tiger in one way or the other. And the Tiger is the meaning or at the heart of a forest.  In a similar vein, whether it is a book or a poem, we see and r...

Yet another typo on LinkedIn's pages. I do notice such mistakes daily on newspapers, emails and websites. But when it is on Linkedin, I can't stop writing a blog post.  On such an topical conversation, this was pure laziness. So, there goes my first post of 2020. Let it be a nice year!

A report on the Deccan Herald daily said that in Kengeri area of Bengaluru, power supply was disrupted after a 40-year-old tree fell on a couple of electric poles. In the last paragraph of the story, it says, "The electricity poles were expected to be replaced and power restored by late Saturday afternoon.". I was reading this report on Sunday morning. That is, nearly two days after the incident happened. So, was there was no one in the newspaper who could confirm whether the power supply was restored on Saturday evening? Would it have been better if the reporter had verified this and asked the desk to update the story? How difficult was this verification? What does this silly lapse say about Indian journalism? Irresponsible or shoddy? Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-infrastructure/a-dark-night-for-parts-of-kengeri-after-tree-fall-783655.html

Bengaluru was known as 'Garden City' because of its greenery, tree-lined avenues and parks. Officially there are 1247 parks and many 'undeveloped' parks. There is a park right opposite to my house. There are trees with bushy crowns, small trees, benches, and play area for children. In the mornings, I can see people of all ages walking, running, jogging. In the corners, lovers cuddle, pinch, squeeze, kiss and hug their emotions. In the evening the park gets noisy as children go wild, as expected like an unknown script. But the nights are dangerous. As the yellow streetlights are switched on, lumpen youth get in. in the dark corners, they scream, smoke and drink and smash the liquor bottles. Youth gone wild. The bottles, cans, and plastic covers are thrown around the trees and benches. A few are thrown out directed at someone's cars or bikes outside. Some are really creative: they throw the bottles under parked cars. Planting or destroying evidence. The re...

Typos are everywhere. You know it better than me. But typos in job portals? How can a well-known company justify it? This one is from the lord of job networking, Linkedin: This one is from a list in another job portal: It is laziness that is 'written' over typos and not lack of knowledge. It does affect your brand. It is not a 'small thing' as developers and QA say. It is serious.

One of the reasons why garbage disposal remains chaotic, inefficient and unscuccessful in India is the fact that the people think they have a right to generate waste. Once we create waste, we then decide to dump it on public spaces and wait for the municipal authorities to dispose it. The following waste appeared one fine day right opposite to my house. Why did someone dump it here? It took three weeks, multiple calls to BBMP, and then political help to remove the waste, as the corrupt garbage collector refused to remove it. If the responsible citizen had done some due diligence, should this tree waste could have been avoided? Citizens get the garbage disposal they deserve. They should understand that they have absolutely no right to create waste, dump that waste onto the roads, and lament that the municipal authorities did not remove it. 

In their enthusiasm to report the fire at the Bengaluru Aero Show 2019, the city's own Deccan Herald published a badly subbed copy with redundant expressions. In a report titled Over 300 cars burnt as massive fire engulfs Aero India , the newspaper copy trieds its best to sell the story, but with some stale expressions. The reporter does like the word, billow, which appears multiple times in the story. Then comes a slew of expressions, just to hype the disaster. In the Times of India also, there were redundancies galore in reports about the fire. The report says "an unextinguished cigarette butt or a short circuit" as probable reasons for the fire. Cambridge Dictionary defines Butt as the "part of a finished cigarette that has not been smoked!"

For such a simple sentence, this grammatical error is unpardonable.

The India media's expertise is primarily on politics, cricket, entertainment, and business. Their forte is not on science, unlike other well-known publications like The Guardian or the New York Times. When I read the headline, Mandya's lake man to build 15th pond with award money , I was not all surprised. I was sure that normal readers may not find the words, Lake and Pond, that intriguing. A discerning reader or someone who have studied Ecology will notice that there is something wrong here. A lake and a pond are not the same thing strictly from an ecological science point of view. Of course, they are static water bodies of varying sizes. But there are obvious ecological differences. One is there are man-made lakes and there are lakes borne out of natural phenomenon such as volcanic eruptions, retreat of ice sheets and earthquakes. Technically, there are differences in the structure, energy flows, ecological stratification, flora and fauna, and so on. There is an intere...

AP big story reports that the literary magazine, The Strand Magazine , has published an unpublished story from 1956. The story is titled, A Room on the Garden Side. AP reports that the story is "...Steeped in talk of Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas..." and is set in the writer's favourite city. Here's the link to the AP news story.

I like small blog posts. I think big posts, ranting on and on, are just fake. Synthetic and contrived. Created to impress. Soulless.Plastic. There is a song called Fake Plastic Trees from Radiohead. Poetry is rich, right? The experience the few words evokes is matchless. The neuronal networks it spawns are tremendous. I like to write brief blog posts.Small ones. If I have left anything unsaid or missed anything. you may fill it. 

Peter Bergen , CNN's national security analyst, asks some questions about the air strikes launched by US and its allies. In India, The Hindu asks what did the strikes achieve and what will be the response. Other Indian media seem to have been not aware of this development. There is a book club meeting today that will discuss books on World War I. I am sure someone will say this may be the beginning of another war. For the beleaguered Indians, what exactly is in store?

A blog post in Psychology Today says that the conservatives and the liberals reject evidence inconsistent with their ideologies. The report says because of asymmetrical ideological motivation "conservatives are more dispositionally distrustful of scientific evidence than are liberals. Also,  symmetrical ideological motivation  "...motivates people on the left and the right to reject evidence inconsistent with their ideologies..."

This page lists the new species of plants and animals discovered. The list is based on newspaper reports and will be updated till end of this month. Mesosticta davidattenboroughi - A type of damsel flies, shadowdamsels, named after Sir David Attenborough. Discovered from Burma. The hyperlink has a list of species named after David Attenborough. Hundreds of potentially new species of fungi discovered in the deep coral ecosystem from the University of Hawaii researchers. New species of Monkeyflower reported from Shetland, UK. Capinatator praetermissus, a new genus and species of arrow worms (Chaetognaths). New species of grass snake identified in England, says Guardian . Xibalbaonyx oviceps , a new species of giant sloth discovered from Mexico. Cycas pschannae and Cycas dharmrajii are two new Cycas species discovered from India, taking the total number of species in India to 14. New Species of Ocean Sunfish , the World’s Largest Bony Fish, discovered, says t...

Well known is the heavy metal Mercury's bioaccumulation in fishes and crabs. But a new study by University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, says that Mercury can affect the gene expression in algae found in aquatic ecosystems. The researchers studied the set of all RNA molecules that controls gene expression using molecular biology tools in a species of algae known as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The study says: "...mercury disrupted the metabolism of algae, with numerous genes being deregulated, regardless of whether the concentrations were comparable with those set by European environmental standards." For more information, click here to read the study details.