Saturday, December 25, 2010

Touching the base once again.

Its been ages since I wrote something in here. I always thought this is the best place from where one can have a conversation to the rest of the world .. one can have a dialog to the like minded people on earth. However, this blogger.com has lost its charm with the success of the social networking sites like Facebook. I guess now-a-days, i have been spending hours together in facebook and today I logged in to this site after quite a few months ...

I am not complaining about it but yes I do feel every website needs to amend certain features of its own in order to reach out to the mass. If we sit back a moment and think how Facebook is getting better and better everyday we will come out with few technical reasons and few marketing reasons. Now, I do understand that the features of a social networking site can't be similar to the blogging site but then again both these sites can work well if they are been positioned in the market in a proper spirit.

Hence if we leave aside the technical reasons we can still argue on the fact that blogger.com is not being positioned properly in the market.

Never-the-less, this blogging site has been an age old thing for me and I am going to come back to this site more often from now onwards ... just to have a dialog to the rest of the world, with people who manages to take some time out of facebook and try to involve themselves in true blogging.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

DNA tracks tigers in the wild

DNA tracks tigers in the wild

Genetics is now helping save endangered species, says S Ananthanarayanan

This study is a breakthrough in the science of counting tiger numbers ~ ullas karanth

GENETICS has entered all areas of modern life — bio-engineered food is commonplace, livestock breeding has become more aggressive with genetic intervention, medical science is revolutionised and in forensic science DNA fingerprinting, for identification and crime detection, is a daily occurrence.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, has just reported a study published in the journal Biological Conservation which describes a role that genetic methods can play in helping conserve the endangered Indian tiger. Samrat Mondol, K Ullas Karanth, N Samba Kumar, Arjun M Gopalaswamy, Anish Andheria and Uma Ramakrishnan, all working in the National Centre for Biological Science or the Wildlife Conservation Society and Centre for Wildlife Studies, both in Bangalore, have developed a DNA-based identification technique which enables sensitive and error-free tracking of tiger populations to monitor and tailor conservation strategies.

DNA fingerprint
If fingerprints are unique to identify people, their genetic makeup, as recorded in the million-fold variables of DNA, is surely unique over millennia. DNA is a microscopic but giant thread-like molecule found in the nucleus of cells and whose structure determines how a cell will behave. The DNA thread is a long sequence of units, each of which is a template for the production of one of 20 amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Sequences of such units specify separate proteins, which then act as communication between cells, the activity of one group of cells setting off the activity of another group, and so on. As there are millions of activities to be monitored in a living thing, the DNA is naturally millions of units long.
The remarkable thing about DNA is that it also has an efficient way to clone or create an image of itself — which happens when a cell has to divide. The DNA first splits into two complementary halves and the cell separates, with one half of the DNA in each part. The half DNA rapidly completes itself from the material of the divided cell and each half becomes a complete cell. In the case of sexual reproduction, as happens with animals, special male and female cells, each with only a half DNA, combine to form the new individual, with a mix of the DNA components of both parents.
It is in this process of the combination of millions of units of DNA of the parents that some variations must occur, and statistically, it is impossible that any two persons have the same final genetic make-up. In broad areas, of course the DNA would be similar, which accounts for racial and family resemblance, but in the details there are always differences, even in identical twins.
Laboratory methods are now available to identify and map parameters of DNA, rather like a fingerprint expert records the slant and width of whorls and loops in a human fingerprint, to enable comparison. DNA can hence be analysed, often entirely by automation, and compared, using computers, to say in a short time whether a pair of DNA differ or are similar. The ability has become important in crime detection, specifically in saying whether a given person has left her own DNA traces at the site of a crime, or even in demographic research, like tracing the wanderings of the Roman army by polling for Latin DNA features in European populations.

Counting tigers
Keeping count is an important part of managing anything. Science and engineering are centred around exact measurements and economists and governments depend on statistics — of resources, producers, consumers. Idealistic schemes to withdraw customs and excise departments result in loss of more than tax revenue – they block the data about movement and production that these departments collect!
But while collecting data of human activity is routinely implemented, collecting data about wildlife is challenging. To know the population of fish in the sea, to get data about migratory birds, we need to use methods of sampling and statistical analysis. One method of estimating the numbers of fish, for instance, is to mark a fixed number of fish and to send them back to mingle with unmarked fish. When a sample is later snared, the number of marked fish that appear would give an idea of how many fish there are in all.
While dyes and chemicals have been ways of marking fish, in the case of estimating how many protected whales had been killed, DNA fingerprinting of individual whales, and later watching for their meat to show up in the market was used. With fish and whales, and even with birds, which can be captured, such methods are feasible. But in the case of tiger populations, which the Wildlife Conservation Society has been monitoring these last 15 years in India, it is not practical to trap and stain tigers or most other usual population estimating methods.

Using poop
DNA fingerprinting was used, it is true, by firing sedating darts at tigers and collecting blood or tissue samples, but the method was cumbersome and hence not effective. The Bangalore scientists have now developed a technique of getting the DNA data from tiger droppings. This method is not only “non-invasive” but is eminently practical and amenable to largescale application by personnel with very simple training.
Once tiger DNA are catalogued, it is at least as effective as those tigers being “marked” and their movement or their presence, among others not so “marked”, can be tracked by regularly collecting samples of tiger dropping everywhere in the forest.
The “gold standard” for estimating tiger populations is the “camera trapping”, where individual tigers are photographed and identified by their unique stripe patterns. This is the rough equivalent of actual fingerprinting, but is clearly impractical where the tiger densities are low or the terrain is rugged. The study of estimation by droppings was conducted with collecting 58 samples in the Bandipur forest in Karnataka, and was validated against actual camera trapping estimation. Camera trapping is possible in Bandipur as the populations are in good numbers. The result of the study was that estimations from the DNA data found in droppings was accurate and reliable.
“We see genetic sampling as a valuable additional tool for estimating tiger abundance in places like the Russian Far East, the Sunderbans mangrove swamps and the dense rainforests of Southeast Asia where camera trapping might be impractical due to various environmental and logistical constraints,” said noted tiger scientist Dr Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
“This study is a breakthrough in the science of counting tiger numbers, which is a key yardstick for measuring conservation success,” he added. “The technique will allow researchers to establish baseline numbers on tiger populations in places where they have never been able to accurately count them before.”

The wonder of Mars in its seasonal glory

The wonder of Mars in its seasonal glory
The astonishing diversity of the Red Planet’s landscape is captured by the world’s most powerful camera, reports Steve Connor

THE most powerful camera that has ever been used to survey another planet is capturing spectacular pictures of the surface of Mars to reveal a rich tapestry of geological features. Located on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration probe launched in 2005, the HiRise camera has already taken detailed images of the outlines of ancient extraterrestrial seas and rivers – the first unambiguous evidence that shorelines once existed on the Red Planet.
The camera has also witnessed in high-resolution detail the moment when the warmth of the Martian spring forced puffs of dust through the thin polar caps of dry ice – solid carbon dioxide – to form weird “starburst” patterns on the surface of the planet.
“Spring on Mars is quite different from spring on earth because Mars has not just permanent ice caps, but also seasonal polar caps of carbon dioxide,” said Candice Hansen-Koharcheck, of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “What happens on Mars, we think, is that as the seasonal ice cap thins from the bottom, gas underneath the cap builds up pressure. And where gas under the ice finds a weak spot or a crack, it will flow out of the opening, often carrying a little dust from the surface below.”
In addition to operating in the visible light spectrum, the HiRise camera can “see” in near-infrared regions, enabling it to gather information on the mineral content of the rocks and dust that form the Martian landscape. Its telescopic lens gives it an unprecedented resolution for a space-probe camera, enabling it to distinguish surface features as little as four feet wide.
Such high-resolution images have enabled the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to build up an impressive library of landscape views showing richly layered materials, gullies and eroded channels, some perhaps formed in very recent times by running water. Nasa scientists believe the information will be invaluable if they ever have to choose a landing site for a possible manned mission to Mars later this century.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was designed to make a detailed survey of the Martian surface, as well as its immediate subsurface and its atmosphere. The goals of the probe are to determine whether life ever arose on Mars, to characterise the planet’s climate and geology, and to prepare for possible human exploration by locating, for instance, existing pockets of water that future astronauts could exploit for their life-support systems.
But the biggest of all questions was whether liquid water was ever around long enough to provide a basis for extra-terrestrial life to have originated and evolved. Although it is clear that water did once exist on Mars, and may still exist under its frozen surface, the question of life itself is still unresolved.
“While other Mars missions have shown that water flowed across the surface in Mars’s history, it remains a mystery whether water was ever around long enough to provide a habitat for life. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will study the history of water on Mars,” said a Nasa spokesman.
It took the orbiter seven months to cruise to Mars, followed by a further six months of careful “aerobraking” to get the spacecraft into precisely the right orbit to make its scientific observations. Following on from the previous Nasa orbiter, the Mars Global Surveyor, which finally died in April 2007 after battery failure, the Orbiter will make the most detailed geological survey of the Red Planet to date.

Monday, June 22, 2009




When the sun shines in the middle of the night
And the brownish owl wakes u up;
When the tiger sings the romantic song
And the nightingale shouts at the cub.
When a father stills his daughter’s meal,
And mother tries to eat her son;
This world doesn’t find a place to weep,
And we fail to make out whether its dusk or dawn.
Lord has taken his name in vain ,
We have screwed things up again;
Looks as if we want to live
But death is what gives us a relief;
As we start sinking in our own bath tub
The nightingale shouts at the cub.
The earth is going round and round
We are looking at things spellbound;
The lash green field got soaked in blood
The black witch cluttered the wall with mud;
Still we hang out at discs and pub
While the nightingale shouts at the cub.

Where can I find my home




From the city of joy to the city of gadgets and gardens and then to the city of resurgent India – life has taken me places and I have seen many a things which am sure has come to me as opportunities of lifetime.

To pursue my graduation when I left home I felt things just took a sudden turn in my life. Whatever I had in me, I mean some small beliefs, some superstitions, and soft corners for someone; I lost them in due course of time and then I started searching my home – a home in true sense of the term.

Well, my dear readers please don’t expect any classic thing in here because I am not at all a writer. At times you need to get things out of your system when they start bothering you too much. So, I am taking this opportunity to give a vent to my brain which is in a messy condition at this point of time. I have planned to dig into my past and bring out some experiences of my life which may not be the best ones but they have certainly taught me some great lessons.

Once a girl asked me about my life and she was interested to know about the number of girls I have dated in my life. I told her that the answer is written in a book that has several chapters, if she is really interested then she has to go through it but if at any point of time she gets attracted to the person she is reading about then she will prove the fact that she is the biggest fool under the sun. The girl never came across me after that. Here I am going to tell you the story of my life in chapters and if that makes you trash it then it will hardly make any difference in our lives, but certainly you are going to miss a chance to see how screwed up life can be.


Chapter 1: A perfect morning.

It was 8:30 am. I woke up at the ring of my mobile phone. It’s my mom calling. I pressed the green button to hear a sweet voice at a very high pitch.
“Its 8:30 and you are still sleeping!!!! Your class is going to begin at 9. Why you do like this. This is your first class in college. Don’t be late.”

I could hardly understand what she was talking about as it normally takes a couple of minutes for me to come out of the incubation mode. I just said, “Okay ma. I am going, will call you later.”

After I hung up the phone I realized that I am late. Got ready in no time and ran out of my hostel. I had to cross the entire campus to reach my department. I almost ran a marathon and if the sports minister of India would have seen me then he would definitely have nominated me for the 1000 m race at the Olympics. That seemed to be the run of my life and I was really scared. What if I get chucked just for being late in my first class at college?
Lot of things were crossing my mind as I reached my department exactly at 9’o’clock. While walking through the corridor I met my professor and wished him. Went inside the classroom and found there is only one seat vacant and the last benchers were staring at me as if they had been waiting for me for ages. Took my seat and just threw a smile to my colleagues whom I hardly knew.

The class started. It was mathematics, a subject I have always enjoyed. The class started with individual introductions. Everybody was talking about the place they were from and the ambition they have. Finally teacher turned at me and so were my fellow mates. I smiled at everyone, found some beautiful girls at the first benches; lots of ideas went through my mind for next few seconds, as I started speaking. “Hi everyone, this is Subhankar from Kolkata. I am here to become a successful person in my life.” My teacher shot a sudden and unexpected question at me. “What you mean by successful person? What you want to be?” I had no idea what-so-ever. Just answered, “Sir, I want to complete my course within four years. I guess that’s what I meant when I said success.” The whole class burst into laughter and my teacher threw a weird look at me. May be he was amused as well as shocked to see such a creature and thanked his lord for not giving such a specimen to him when he became father.

Never the less, my first class at college was not bad. On top of it my back bencher colleagues accepted me as one of them right after my weird introduction and the rest of the class got to know that they are about to face some weird music for the next four years in this department. In a word right in the very first hour of my college life I became quite popular among my classmates. At 10 we got a break and it was indeed a long break as our next class was from 11:30. So, we back benchers took this opportunity to know ourselves better while having some nice breakfast at the local fast food center (we used to call it tufri). One of them was my friend since school and we got introduced to the rest of the gang and formed a new gang. Who knew in next four years we will come as close as brothers?

Chapter 2: Skanda

SKANDA – the place where every scandal used to take a proper shape and the seniors used to stand as approvers of those gossips. So my first evening at Tumkur was a happening one. I just went along with my gang to skanda for some coffee after college and met our seniors for the first time. Normally Skanda is famous for its authentic BUN-SAMOSA and coffee. Raghu the worthy owner of the confectionary prepares the best coffee I have ever tasted. Apart from being a nice confectionary it was a place where the college life for the SITians normally begins.

After a formal introduction the seniors started enquiring about the babes of our batch. Within 5 minutes after being introduced a guy called KK asked me about the girls I had seen and I liked. I was a bit shocked to see all these things happening around me. But slowly started realizing the fact that I am at college now and things like these are pretty common. I knew very little about the girls of my batch and knew nothing about my senior ladies. So my answer was not at all a good one to create a gossip. But somehow KK got to know that I can be an interesting specimen. So I got the first invitation in the royal party that happens every night in any of those seniors’ apartment.

After gossiping for an hour or so these seniors started bitching about the ladies from their batch and I was taking the necessary information because I never believed that age can be a problem in any affair. Moreover after talking to those guys I came up with an inference that these ladies must be looking out for someone who can take them around and become a doggy type caring boy friend. I knew I am good in pretending so pretending like a caring boy friend is no big deal.

Chapter 3: A night in summer long ago ….

It was 7:30 is the evening and we were on our way to the dinning hall. My cell rang. Took the call and heard a weird voice saying, “Come down to Skanda after dinner. It’s urgent.” I got the hint and was thinking of oiling my ass a bit before I go to those sexually perverts who won’t even mind to go for anal sex with a guy when they smoke Marijuana weeds.

Anyway, I reached Skanda at 8:30 sharp and then from there went to an apartment near the CD shop next to Skanda. When I entered the room I could hardly see anyone as the room was smoky and suffocating. I started sweating as one guy in black shirt pulled me down and made me sit in the middle. I was not at all comfortable but then I thought how a fresher find things comfortable when he first meets his seniors. The moment I started getting soaked in the smoke of marijuana, I found a cigarette lighter hitting near my eye brow. I said, “Excuse me!!” A guy in black shirt answers, “Introduce yourself you Fucker”

After introduction things went even worse. I was asked to masturbate in front of the entire gang. It was kind of mental and sexual exploitation. That night I had to stay back as it was late at night and we were not allowed to enter the hostel after 8 pm. That night I experienced the life a college student can spend without too much of loses. Today when I go to office and present myself I remember that night when everybody stripped and screwed happiness of one another. Now, when I talk to my seniors, we go back to those days cherish every moment we spent together. It was a priceless night of 2003 summer.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

When feathers fall apart




Consider yourself in a depth of time, where every details of the ancient existence of mankind reveals the beauty of its age old tradition and the extravagant orchestration of the culture that prevailed years before. You, would love to confine yourself and feel every bit of it. Likewise, when you find yourself in such a confined space where every single object around reveals moments you spent with someone years before; what goes through you ?

Not too many people will find the answer to this question cause the question itself is so much ambiguous. I have asked this question several times to myself but couldn't find an answer to this. May be I have never explored those corners of my soul where I have locked a storm and today I get scared to open things up. Tempest, no matter how small it is, can bring tragedies to so many lives. I know slowly but certainly its going to crush my soul, my heart. Its going to crush me. But that is not the reason enough to bring tears to someone I loved more than I love myself.

Don't know where I will be going from here, but my soul will always be where it is at this moment and it will reside there forever till I take a new birth and come to this world with some fortune. No matter in which form, I will try to find my heart here. I may need to go down to the depth of time to find it, yet I will. I will find the depth someway or the other to find a new life for myself.