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- Man-made reasons for Uttarakhand disaster 1
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- Rains over past three days extreme weather event: scientists 1
- Monsoon arrives early; kills over 30 people in Uttarakhand
- Rush of hydropower projects on Ganga, tributaries
- Out of turn
- Don’t just cash in on tigers 18
- Pedestrian questions 14
- Weather dice is loaded 13
- “Come elections, our forests are looted” 10
- Odisha's waterman 6
- Kudankulam meltdown 5
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- Risk of corruption clouds Andhra Pradesh solar bids 4
- Waging war on state 4
- Is Ganga losing its resilience? 4
FOLLOW US ON
Diagnostic Methods
Testing time
Issue Date: Jul 31, 1997
Life-saving kit
Issue Date: Jul 15, 1997
Australian chemists
have developed
a simple test kit,
which could help
prevent millions of
Africans from
being poisoned by the
cyanide that
occurs naturally in
cassava, their
staple food. The test
involves mixing
100 mg of cassava
with 0.5 ml
of water. The mixture
is then placed
on paper containing
the enzyme
linamarase, which
reacts with
cyanide compounds,
releasing
hydrogen cyanide.
This gas is
detected with a strip
of yellow paper
containing picric
acid. Hydrogen
cyanide turns the
paper orange and
then brown (New
Scientist, Vol 154, No 2078).
Earlier the better
Issue Date: May 31, 1997
Winning laurels
Issue Date: Apr 15, 1997
V SREERAJ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
A team of researchers, including C R Santoshkumar, consultant haematologist at the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), has been recently awarded a us patent for inventing a method for the determination of oxidised sulfuhydrl amino acids (osaa) in biological fluids like serum and cerebrospinal fluid. The other members of the team are us researchers J Fred Kolhouse and John C Deutsch from the University of Colorado, Denver.
Portable cure
Issue Date: Jan 15, 1997
The revolution in microelectronics that created cellular phones and palmtop computers now allows
doctors to take their healing equipments out of the hospital and on to the road. A US-based firm Nonin has developed fully functional electro cardiogram machines, no bigger than a box of chocolates, pocket-sized blood-sample analysers and portable ultrasound machines that fit in a car's dickey. Also, the us Food & Drug Administration recently approved a paperback-size automatic defibrillator that can quickly shock a stopped heart back into normal rhythm.
Combination of rays
Issue Date: Aug 31, 1996
All in the blood
Issue Date: Jul 15, 1996
HAEMOGLOBIN, the ubiquitous component of red blood cells (RBC), known to
be a transporter of gases - ferrying
oxygen from the lungs to tissues and
carbon dioxide (c02) on the return
journey - has been found to distribute
a third gas on its rounds through the
body. This gas is nitric oxide (NO),
according to a team of researchers from
Duke University Medical School, us, led
Test at home
Issue Date: Jul 15, 1996
The US Food and Drug Administration approved the first home
screening test for the HIV virus,
submitted recently to it by Elliot J
Millenson, founder of University
Hospital Laboratory of Bethesda,
US. A person using the kit would
draw blood from a finger, put it on a
special laboratory paper and mail
the sample to a certified testing laboratory. The results would be provided a week later by telephone.
Negative results will be provided by
an automated message, which will
have information about what negative findings mean. Positive results
will be given personally.
Combating cancer
Issue Date: Dec 31, 1995
THE battle to conquer this killer disease
is on. Scientists work relentlessly to
devise better ways of diagnosing and
eliminating deadly tumours. Recently,
two groups of researchers, working separately, made yet another breakthrough
in this direction, reports New Scientist,
Vol 148, No 1998. Two techniques were
developed - one for better detection
and the other for painless elimination of turnours.
Reaching into the mind
Issue Date: Nov 30, 1995
IF WILHELM Roentgen was to see a modern medical imaging laboratory today
too years after the first x-ray images
he would not recognise it. From
ultrasound to magnetic resonance
imaging machines, from PET (positron
emission tomography) scanners to
radionuclides, the range of devices used
today for probing the human body is
mind boggling. But one common
feature which all these machines share
is the extensive use of computers.
