...Lets Blog :0 ?? Web Log

Migraine and Triptans

2008-06-18T21:45:00.010+05:30

Migraine and Triptans

Sumatriptan

Most of us have occasional headaches that are relieved by over-the-counter medications. When headaches are frequent or unrelieved by OTCs we usually consult a physician or tend to increase the doses of medications or even try home remedies… But at times, in some people/patients this does not bring and relief. The answer to this may be MIGRAINE. Unfortunately about of all the patients with migraine are not properly diagnosed and those who are, don’t receive proper treatment. .

Migraine has been first described in the EBERS PAPYRUS (of about 1550 BC is among the most important medical papyri of ancient Egypt. It is one the two oldest preserved medical documents anywhere). In 400 B.C Hippocrates used the method of “vomiting“ to treat migraines. It was Galen in 200 A.D who first introduced the term migraine from the Greek word hemicraine (meaning “half of the head”).

Migraine is caused by the vasodilatation of frontal branch of the superficial temporal-artery leading to neurogenic inflammation, due to release of chemicals like Neurokinin-(mediators of inflammation) from the primary sensory nerve fibres involved in pain transmission. Due to dilatation the nerve fiber coiling the artery gets stretched which gets depolarized and activated causing pain sensation.

Fig:Increased blood flow in an area of mesencephalon (arrow)

Various other theories claim to explain the pathophysiology of migraine
a. Depolarization theory
b. Vascular Theory
c. Serotonin Theory
d. Neural Theory
e. Unifying Theory (Combination of Vascular and Neural theories)

PHASES OF MIGRAINE
1. Early symptom, where development of the condition is prominent. Symptoms such as headache, fever etc. are seen during this phase.
2. Aura - A kind of disturbance seen in migraine sufferers before the migraine headache.
3. Pain - Headache phase where the actual migraine headache is seen. High levels of headache is prominent here.
4. Postdrome - The final phase of migraine headache.

DIAGNOSIS
Migraine may be diagnosed by symptoms and family history. Sometimes an MRI or CT scan is obtained to rule out other causes of headache like sinus inflammation or a brain mass. In the case of a complicated migraine, an EEG may be needed to exclude seizures. Rarely, a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) might be performed.

CAUSES
a.Bright lights, loud noises, and certain odors or perfume
b. Change in sleep patterns
c. High Stress
d. Smoking & alcohol
e. Allergic reactions
f. Menstrual cycle fluctuations & birth control pills
g. Foods containing tyramine.

TYPES
Migraine with aura: Migraine precedes with visual disturbances before the headache starts.
Migraine without aura: Does not have the aura stage

Aura consisting of at least one of the following:
Fully reversible visual symptoms
Fully reversible sensory symptoms
Fully reversible dysphasia.

TREATMENT .... to be continued

23:40 18th may
hemant

2008-06-18T21:32:00.002+05:30

COMPUTERS IN ORGANIC CHEMISTRY and CHEMONFORMATICS
SMILES AND SMARTS

Simplified molecular input line entry specification [SMILES]

SMILES is used for specification for describing molecules.

SMILES:: The simplified molecular input line entry specification or SMILES is a specification for unambiguously describing the structure of chemical molecules using short ASCII strings.

ASCII

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange, generally pronounced ass-key) is a character set and a character encoding based on the Roman alphabet as used in modern English. It is most commonly used by computers and other communication equipment to represent text and by control devices that work with text.
ASCII specifies a correspondence between digital bit patterns and the symbols/glyphs of a written language & is used on nearly all common computers, especially personal computers and workstations.
ASCII is, strictly, a seven-bit code, meaning that it uses the bit patterns representable with seven binary digits (a range of 0 to 127 decimal) to represent character information.ASCII is one of the most successful software standards ever.

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SMILES strings can be imported by most molecule editors for conversion back into two-dimensional drawings or three- dimensional models of the molecules.

The original SMILES specification was developed by Arthur Weininger and David Weininger in the late 1980s. It has since been modified and extended by others. SMILES is generally considered to have the advantage of being slightly more human-readable than InChI.

i.e
The IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI), developed by IUPAC and NIST, is a digital equivalent of the IUPAC name for any particular covalent compound. Chemical structures are expressed in terms of five layers of information — connectivity, tautomeric, isotopic, stereochemical, and electronic.

TYPES OF SMILES:: Canonical SMILES and Isomeric SMILES

The term Canonical SMILES refers to the version of the SMILES specification that includes rules for ensuring that each distinct chemical molecule has a single unique SMILES representation. A common application of Canonical SMILES is for indexing and ensuring uniqueness of molecules in a database.
The term Isomeric SMILES refers to the version of the SMILES specification that includes extensions to support the specification of isotopes, chirality, and configuration about double bonds. A notable feature of these rules is that they allow rigorous partial specification of chirality.

Graph-based definition of SMILE

In terms of a graph-based computational procedure, SMILES is a string obtained by printing the symbol nodes encountered in a depth-first tree traversal of a chemical graph.
“depth-first and tree-traversal are two types of algorithms”
The chemical graph is first trimmed to remove hydrogen atoms and cycles are broken to turn it into a spanning tree. Where cycles have been broken, numeric suffix labels are included to indicate the connected nodes. Parentheses are used to indicate points of branching on the tree.

Examples

Atoms are represented by the standard abbreviation of the chemical elements, in square brackets, such as [Au] for gold. The hydroxide anion is [OH-]. Brackets can be omitted for the "organic subset" of B, C, N, O, P, S, F, Cl, Br, and I. All other elements must be enclosed in brackets. If the brackets are omitted, the proper number of implicit hydrogen atoms is assumed;

· For instance the SMILES for water is simply O and that for ethanol is CCO. (i.e Hydrogens are trimmed off)

· The double-bonded carbon dioxide is represented as O=C=O and the triple-bonded hydrogen cyanide as C#N.

Branches are described with parentheses, as in Propionic anc and Floufororm

· CCC(=O)O for propionic acid

· C(F)(F)F for fluoroform, which could also be described by the non-canonical formula FC(F)F.

· Cyclohexane is represented as C1CCCCC1, the idea being that the two 'number ones' label the same position in the molecule, thus forming a ring with six carbons. It is to be noted that the label is the numeral (in this case the 1) rather than the combination of 'C1'.

· Aromatic C, O, S and N atoms are shown in their lower case 'c', 'o', 's' and 'n' respectively. Bonds in an aromatic cycle are rarely marked explicitly except in SMARTS search patterns. Thus Benzene is c1ccccc1.

Extensions

SMARTS is a modification of SMILES that allows, in addition to the SMILES elements, the specification of wildcard (*) atoms and bonds. This is used in specifying search structures and is widely used in chemical database search applications. This practice has led to a common misconception that chemical substructure search is achieved computationally by matching SMILES/SMARTS strings, when, in fact, it is achieved by the computationally more intensive search for subgraph isomorphism in the graphs reconstructed from the SMILES representations.

ASCII Code	Meaning

cc	any pair of attached aromatic carbons
c:c	aromatic carbons joined by an aromatic bond
c-c	aromatic carbons joined by a single bond (e.g. biphenyl).
O	any aliphatic oxygen
[O;H1]	simple hydroxy oxygen
[O;D1]	1-connected (hydroxy or hydroxide) oxygen
[O;D2]	2-connected (etheric) oxygen
[F,Cl,Br,I]	the 1st four halogens.
[N;R]	must be aliphatic nitrogen AND in a ring
[c,n&H1]	any arom carbon OR H-pyrrole nitrogen
[c,n;H1]	(arom carbon OR arom nitrogen) and exactly one H
*!@*	two atoms connected by a non-ringbond
*@;!:*	two atoms connected by a non-aromatic ringbond
[C,c]=,#[C,c]	two carbons connected by a double or triple bond
[CH2]	aliphatic carbon with two hydrogens (methylene carbon)
[!C;R]	( NOT aliphatic carbon ) AND in ring
[N;R]	must be aliphatic nitrogen AND in a ring
[n;H1]	H-pyrrole nitrogen
[c,n&H1]	any arom carbon OR H-pyrrole nitrogen

SMARTS Versus SMILES

All SMILES expressions are also valid SMARTS expressions, but the semantics changes because SMILES describes molecules whereas SMARTS describes patterns. The molecule represented by a SMILES string is usually, but not always, matched by the same string when used as a SMARTS.

Other 'linear' notations include the

1. Wiswesser Line Notation (WLN), ROSDAL and SLN (Tripos Inc.)

2. SYBYL Line Notation specification for unambiguously describing the structure of chemical molecules using short ASCII strings.

3. Recently, the IUPAC has introduced the InChI as a standard for formula representation.

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21:30 18th may
hemant

Stress Headaches

2008-06-04T14:30:00.002+05:30

Have you been to your doctor lately complaining about that unexplained bout of headaches or body pain? Only to be told that there's nothing wrong. Well, it could be work-related stress that is causing aches, depression and other health problems say health experts.

A survey conducted by India's industry body Assocham has revealed that "the menace of stress and mental fatigue has intensified in recent times at the top and middle positions of sectors comprising construction, shipping, banks, government hospitals, trading houses, electronic and print media, courier companies, small-scale industries, retail and card franchise companies".

As more of the Indian workforce rushes to catch up with the deadlines, the boundary between home and work is becoming blurred. As the work hours stretch and more and more jobs entail odd work hours, the stress levels among the Indian workers is increasing in an alarming way causing many health problems……

Well stress leads to a certain type of headache known as “Tension Headaches”
What are tension headaches??

What's in a name?

"Tension headaches" was first used to suggest that these headaches were the result of psychological stress and tension. Since they are not psychological in nature, that's misleading. "Muscle contraction" was used because increased activity of the pericranial muscles (pertaining to the periosteum of the skull, the periosteum being the fibrous membrane that lines the skull.) is so often involved. When researchers realized that was true just as often in episodes of migraine disorder, the use of "muscle contraction headache" was pretty much abandoned, and the term "tension-type headache" came into use.

"Tension-type" headaches, or tension headaches, are the most common type of headache. About 30% to 80% of adults occasionally experience this kind of headache. Tension headaches are more common among women than men. These headaches are sometimes called stress headaches, muscle contraction headaches, daily headaches, or chronic non-progressive headaches.

Tension headaches usually begin gradually and often occur in the middle of the day. A tension headache may occur on an episodic basis (less than 15 days per month) or on a chronic basis (daily or more than 15 days per month). Most people with episodic tension headaches have them no more than once or twice a month, but the headaches can occur more frequently.

What Causes Tension Headaches?

There is no single cause for tension headaches. This type of headache is not an inherited trait that runs in families. In some people, tension headaches are caused by tightened muscles in the back of the neck and scalp. In others, tightened muscles are not part of tension headaches, and the cause is unknown.

Tension headaches are usually triggered by some type of environmental or internal stress. The most common sources of stress include family, social relationships, friends, work and school.

Episodic tension headaches are usually triggered by an isolated stressful situation or a build-up of stress. Daily stress can lead to chronic tension headaches.

What Are the Symptoms?

In mild to moderate tension headaches, there is a constant, band-like pain or pressure that lasts from 30 minutes to all day. Tension headaches tend to be moderate or mild and are rarely severe. Unlike migraines they are not usually unilateral, throbbing or associated with light and sound sensitivity or nausea and vomiting. Other features of tension headaches may include:

Headache upon awakening
General muscle aches
Difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep
Chronic fatigue
Irritability
Disturbed concentration
Mild sensitivity to light or noise
Occasional dizziness

Chemical changes

Researchers now believe that tension headache may result from changes among certain brain chemicals — serotonin, endorphins and numerous other chemicals — that help nerves communicate. These are similar to biochemical changes associated with migraine. Although it's not clear why the chemical levels fluctuate, the process is thought to activate pain pathways to the brain and to interfere with the brain's ability to suppress the pain. On one hand, tight muscles in the neck and scalp may contribute to a headache in someone with altered chemical levels. On the other hand, the tight muscles may be a result of these chemical changes.

Another chemical in the body that may play a role in tension headache is nitric oxide, which is involved in the transmission of nerve impulses. Overproduction of nitric oxide has been linked to chronic tension headache and migraine. And substances that block the production of nitric oxide have been shown to reduce the muscle tightness associated with tension headache.

Because both tension headache and migraine involve similar changes in brain chemicals, some researchers believe that the two types of headache are related. A majority of people diagnosed as having migraine also get an occasional tension headache, and a quarter of people diagnosed with tension headache get occasional migraine. Some experts speculate that migraine may develop from the regular occurrence of tension headache. The distinctive migraine features form as the pain becomes more severe. Other research suggests that mild migraine is in reality a type of tension headache.

How Are Tension Headaches Treated?

Treatment for this type of headache usually includes nonprescription pain relievers such as aspirin or ibuprofen. Prescription medications (antidepressants like Diazepam) may be needed in some cases.

Therapies such as stress management or biofeedback may be used in an effort to reduce or prevent tension headaches.

14:30, 4th June
hemant..

Zune 2.5 is available now

2008-05-26T01:17:00.007+05:30

Zune 2.5

Hi ppl .. the all new zune 2.5 (software+firmware) is available for download at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6136349f-2b32-4946-83b5-a09775531ef4&displaylang=en

zune 2.5 package contains all the necessary updates required .... (a solution for those who complain saying that the zune software does not install on their machines ... xp vista this that....

The newer version is great.. helps u edit the metatags for the album/songs so tat yr ZUNE Library is pretty arranged.... autoplaylist feature.... minor changes in the interface of yr zune player (includes categorisation of videos into music tv movies etc...)

nywayz the required updates/essential pre installed software son yr computer include
from (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944938?sd=zune)
• The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
• Microsoft Windows Media Format 11 runtime with windows media player 11
• Microsoft Error Reporting 2.0
• XMLLite

some more zune tools from microsoft @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/browse.aspx?displaylang=en&productID=E461AD4C-3A41-4C10-8FEA-ED5051D0576D

hv fun.. enjoy ZUNE-ing

hemant
01:15 25th may

write write write.... wat do I write

2008-03-28T21:20:00.000+05:30

“I write. I write that I am writing. Mentally I see myself writing that I am writing and I can also see myself seeing that I am writing. I remember writing and also seeing myself writing. And I see myself remembering that I see myself writing and I remember seeing myself remebering that I was writing and I write seeing myself write that I remeber having seen myself write that I saw myself writing that I was writing and that I was writing that I was writing that I was wrirting. I can also imagine myself writing that I had already written that I would imagine myself writing that I had written that I was imagining myself writing that I see myself writing that I am writing.”
- Salvador Elizondo / The Graphographer

28th Feb 2008
hemant

Caps Key ... startup switch to your programs...

2008-03-04T21:42:00.005+05:30

Startup your windows applications on the stroke of CAPS key...

Free utility Capster is an amazingly small (5K) program that turns your Caps Lock key into a kind of startup mode switch. Choose a few programs that you sometimes would like to have started at Windows login, and Capster will place them in your Startup folder but launch them only if you hit Caps Lock before you arrive at your desktop. The obvious benefit is to folks who use their systems in two different modes—like wanting to have your email, calendar, and productivity apps opened when you're working, Capster is a free download for Windows systems only which can be found here [Capster] More apps can be found on the same link....

hemant
9:45 pm
4th Feb, 2008

Gmail on your RSS Feeds now.

2008-03-04T21:22:00.004+05:30

NOW READ your mail on your Feed Reader ...

Gmail has a introduced a new feature which is not available in other webmail applications:i.e feeds for unread messages.

For example, the feed http://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/ shows the most recent unread items from your inbox.
Gmail also offers feeds for your labels: http://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/labelname/,

B its always better have a comprehensive listing of all the unread messages, not just the ones that have a certain label. And it becomes little tricky also to remember all the labels... you might have a dozen of them to keep on your fingertips... And as "unread" is one of the many built-in labels in Gmail, so this can be used to obtain the feed: http://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/unread/

Gmail's feeds require authentication, so they don't work in many feed readers, like Google Reader or iGoogle.

hemant
9:15 pm
4th Feb,2008

Googol

2008-02-10T01:13:00.001+05:30

Did You ever notice this...........>

WHY SO MANY zeroes on the Google Search results page.... All the credit goes to GoOgOl
Googol which is 10 to the 100th power (i.e 1 followed by 100 zeros.

(10¹⁰⁰) or
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000 ,,,,,;;;;;;,,,,,,, quite a big number isnt it or,
also known as ten duotrigintillion or ten thousand sexdecillion

Well just 18 out of 100 digits calculates to about some few billion years. This is certainly a veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy long time...(i don know whether the universe will be existing to even witness Googol), ..Its very surprising to know that just a 9 nine year old named Milton Sirotta [nephew of American mathematician Dr Kasner] is the mastermind and inventor of googol... Amazing,,,isn't it...

Well I guess GOOLGE derives its name from GOOGOL and not surprisingly it always try to give its user, search results in very high ranges (example 1,680,000,000 results for just the word Google --- Stilll 81 more digits to go for google to get GooGoLED)..... :) :)

hemant
01:20
10th Feb, 2008

How (to make ) Things Work @ Howcast

2008-02-10T00:20:00.001+05:30

Today while browsing I came across this web site HOWCAST (www.howcast.com) on lifehacker..... You will surely remember the book titled ""How Things Work"" from your school days...
Well I guess HOWCAST is a combination of Pod Cast and this How To Make Things Work.... It contains Video Tutorials on several day to life tpoics ....it may be a very simple one as 'how to learn english' to... 'how to apply a lipstick'.....lol.....

I had a look at few of the videos... How To Make Chocolate Pot De Creme,,,How To Take Great Pictures With Your Cell Phone,,,,Extend Your iPod's Battery Life (this one s embedded below)
The video quality is very good and I found them better than those of YouTube's,,, (Howcast is created by the veterans of YouTube) and this is because the howcasts are wither submitted by itself or by its members but Howcast screens out inappropriate content by actively monitoring and responding to user feedback about any such content.

Its disapponting that all the Videos are not downloadable ... (If you wanna download and watch them later---no option here) but some Podcasts are available for download as RSS Feeds or as Apple iPod's podcasts . These downloadable videos are availabe at http://www.howcast.com/rss. Wat if you wanna share the videos with your friends.,,,,, well Howcast gives you an option to embed its Howcasts on your blog or webpage (I have embedded one below). Howcast permits a video file of max 100 mb..(Thats one limitation,,)

Well overall its a good informative site in the "How To s" categor covering almost all day to life topics like Food, Crafts, Health, Parenting, Business................many more...

I suggest you to atleast have a look at howcast,,, atleast if you are planning on how to live on a budget or backingup your iTunes Library

hemant
00:15
10th Feb, 2008

SAMPLE HOWCAST

Now Search for TRAIN RESERVATIONS on CLEARTRIP

2008-02-07T01:50:00.001+05:30

First of its kind on the Indian Railway Ticketing..... Now after indianrail.gov.in and irctc.co.in its India's first private (non govt) site for getting information about Train reservations.... (all destinations)

Simple interface and
Fast results

so check out @ http://www.cleartrip.com/trains ....

hemant
01:457th
Feb,2008

read more | digg story

Windows Vista SP1 to appear today? Will the VISTA bugs be solved now.....

2008-02-04T16:47:00.001+05:30

Microsoft Corp. will release Windows Vista Service Pack (SP1) on Monday, Feb. 4, according to reports Friday from Tech ARP, a Malaysian Web site. Other sources, meanwhile, claimed that Windows Server 2008 will also reach RTM (release to manufacturing) in the coming week. Vista SP1 will make RTM on Monday, said Tech ARP

HOPEFULLY MICROSOFT IS COMING OUT WITH A NEW UPDATE>>>WITH LESS BUGS IN IT...................................wait and watch...

hemant

16:30

4th Feb,2008...

Chacha Chaudhry & Billo are Here !!

2008-01-31T22:42:00.000+05:30

Reminds me of my School Days.... Clever Chacha and Saboo's stories were great time pass to read and enjoy. I remember buying them especially for my train journeys or sometimes borrow it from a Hindi library near my house, from where i use to get several binded volumes of Chacha Chaudhary, Tinkle, Biloo, Bhokal nd many other comics from Diamond Publications.......Well I came across a forum where there was this link which had a collection of few of them. I downloaded a few and thought to share it with you alll..... The collection include

Chacha Choudhary-Digest II
Chacha Choudhary-Digest III
Billoo Dadagir
Raman Digest
Chacha Choudhary-Storm of Raka
Chacha Choudhary-Sabu Aur Football

............... many more

Download it from Rapidshare. Click Here

There are 2 types of files with extensions (.CBZ & .CBR)
1. .CBZ This is a renamed .ZIP file and can be decompressed with any .ZIP file utility. Just rename the file to [filename].cbz to [filename].zip then decompress it with Winrar/Winzip/Windows Decompression Software or view directly viewed using CDisplay program (download CD Display) which displays the comic book images.

2. .CBR This is a renamed .RAR file and can be decompressed with any .RAR file utility. Just rename the file to [filename].cbr to [filename].rar then decompress it with Winrar or view directly viewed using CDisplay program (download CD Display Software) which displays the comic book images.

Happy reading ......

hemant
23:25
31st Jan, 2008

Orkut Is Banned !!!!

2008-01-31T22:06:00.000+05:30

ORKUT IS BANNED !!!!

Don't worry friends....Orkut isn't really banned... Its just that off late some viruses & worms have been causing this problem...[Not in the real sense....M Talking about the Computer ones !! ;) ]. This is just a mischief of the W32.USB Worm which blocks you from using Mozilla FireFox and open Orkut.com.

This is usually spread through any USB devices...It may be a Pen Drive or Thumb Drive or your personal Mp3 player, which may be even your apple iPod.
The Worm creates and runs an exe file (MicrosoftPowerpoint.exe) and install Autorun.inf in the root of your USB Drive. A duplicate svchost.exe is created which is the main culprit. It Brings out Pop Ups which may get on your nerves and drive you mad, because everytime you try to either use Firefox or browse your favourite Orkut.com it Popsup a very funny message saying that:

"Orkut is banned you fool, The administrators didnt write this program guess who did?? MUHAHAHA!!" with title ORKUT IS BANNED" (sounds funny !! )
or "I DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE..." ( Or else wat,,, ?? Let it start first)
or "USE INTERNET EXPLORER U DOPE"

Not only popups this worm/script also hides your hidden files and folders and doesnt even show them even after Enabling "Show Hidden files and folders" in the Folder Options-->View Menu.

Well every Worm has a cure and fortunately we have found one for this too.....
Following these simple steps will help you to eradicate the Worm and the annoying Popups

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to enable the task manager.
Go to the Processes tab
Search for svchost.exe under the image name . There are many of them but look for the one which has your username under the "Username" field.
Press DEL or Right Click and End Process to stop the scripting of these files
Look if any more of these are there (usually theres only one or max 2 copies of it) If you find more instances of them Repeat Step 3 and 4. (A word of caution here: Do not end process svchost.exe with "username" field as System, Local service or Network service.
Click on Start and Run and type C:\heap41a and enter & delete all the files in that folder.
Now go to Run and type regedit to open the Windows Registry Editor and Press Ctrl+F
Type "heap41a" here and press enter. The search results will show [winlogon] C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap(41 or 64a or 66a)\std.txt"
Select that and Press DEL. It will ask "Are you sure you want to delete this value?", click Yes. exit out of the regedit.
Thats it you are done.. No more Popups and you can even browse Orkut

hemant
23:44
31st Jan,2008

The Unexplained becomes Explained-- An Essay

2008-01-30T12:55:00.001+05:30

The Unexplained becomes Explained

Let There be light……….and, this was the beginning of the creation processof this wonderful universe. So vast, unbound, unexplored a mystery thatsurvived and surpassed anything, beyond compare. Truth is stranger thanfiction, but the undefying truth is the presence of life only on thisplanet named Earth. The miracles of man-made inventions only complementthe creator’s own. Genetics is undoubtedly one such a miracle that has andcontinues to explore the unexplored vistas of mysterious realms. The listis endless, be it an invention of genetic forces or adding values to thefood-consumption. Taking this factor into consideration, this essay wouldtake up the task of highlighting on three such marvels.

The discovery of living cells by Robert Hooke provided naturalists withnew vistas on life. Perhaps it was the excessive enthusiasm of this newworld, of the very small that give an ascend in the development ofgenetics -the field of genes and human kind. Developmental genetics hadalready grown its roots during 883-859 B.C during the reign of kingAssurnasirapalli II when scientists of his kingdom had started artificialpollination of date palms. Today the major crops have undergone extensivegenetic alterations to increase their yields and provide desirable traits,such as disease and pest resistance and special nutritional characters.Several million people in the world, most of them in Asia, go hungry eachday. Imagine a genetically engineered rice crop that could potentiallyreduce this number significantly, and provide resistance to diseases.Genetic modification of food has been going on for quite some time but itwas thirty years ago when a man named Norman-Borlaug won the Nobel PeacePrize for his development of high-yielding wheat varieties that helpedfeed people in developing countries. In 1999, Swiss and German scientistsannounced the development of a golden-rice genetically engineered toproduce beta-carotene, a substance that the body can convert to Vitamin A.The new rice was quickly heralded as a miracle cure for vitamin Adeficiency (VAD),a condition that afflicts millions of people especiallychildren and pregnant women. Severe VAD causes partial or total blindness;less severe deficiencies weaken the immune system. Hence Golden Rice todayhas proved to be very helpful in overcoming VAD.

DNA, with its gentle double-stranded spiral, is among the most elegant ofall the biological molecules. But the double helix is just not a beautifulstructure but it also give DNA incredibility and permanence, asillustrated by the great discovery of the Ice Man. On September 19,1991,German hiking in the Tyrolean Alps near the border between Austria andItaly spotted a corpse trapped in glacial ice. Moreover a copper-axe,dagger, bow and a quiver with 14 arrows were found alongside the body. Thebody was sent to the University of Innsbruck where it was refrozen andsubjected to scientific studies to establish his ethnic origin.Radioactive dating indicated that the Ice Man was approximately 5000 yearsold, who was shot in the chest with an arrow and died soon thereafter,after which the body became dehydrated in the cold air and remainedcovered by ice till 1991. Under sterile conditions, the investigatorsextracted DNA from samples and conducted polymerase chain reactions toamplify a very small region of his mitochondrial DNA a million fold anddetermined the base sequence of this amplified DNA and compared it withthe mitochondrial sequences from present-day humans.

This analysis revealed that Ice Man’s mitochondrial DNA sequencesresembled those found in the present day Europeans living north of theAlps. Together, radiocarbon dating, the artifacts, and the DNA analysisall indicate that the Ice Man was a Neolithic hunter. The Ice Man’s DNApersists and carries his genetic instructions even after the passage of5000 years is a testimony to the remarkable stability of the DNA and anachievement in the field of Genetics.Genetics has stretched its hands so far that today we can even imaginesituations where an extra set of eyes might come in handy, just like thatof Lord Shiva’s. It would be very unlikely for all of these structures todevelop at a site where eyes really don’t exist. Nevertheless, in 1995 agroup of geneticists succeeded in genetically creating fruit flies withextra eyes on their wings, legs and antenna. How was this amazing featcompleted?

This story of creating extra eyes actually began in 1915 when Mildred Hogediscovered a mutant fly with small eyes due to a recessive mutation in agene called eyeless. The product of the normal allele of this eyelesslocus is required for the actual development of fruit-fly-eye. It was in1993 when Walter Gehring and his collaborators genetically engineeredcells that expressed the eyeless gene in parts of the Drosophila where thegene is not normally expressed. When these flies hatched; they had hugeeyes on their wings, antenna and legs. They were not just normal tissuesthat resembled eyes but complete eyes with cornea, cone cells andphotoreceptors. However one drawback was that the flies could not use themto see because they were not connected to the nervous system. Todaygeneticists have found out that the eyeless gene has it counterparts inmice and humans also. The amplification in the developments of geneticshas been increasing day by day.Its not very far when a day would come when we would have 3 eyes forperception and 2 brains for powerful thinking. That’s the power ofGenetics.

Genetics has indeed opened up a deep treasure to be exploitedand explored. The instances --- in this essay are just a tipin the iceberg. A time would dawn when the unexplained wouldbecome explained and when we would come into Light fromDarkness, Into Knowledge from Ignorance and into Immortalityfrom Mortality. Till lead kindly light….!

hemant
12:45
30th Jan, 2008

Life On Mars ? A new Trip .......

2008-01-29T23:50:00.000+05:30

There is no doubt that "LIFE On MARS" is one of the most upcoming topic to grind and research scientists for the today's researchers,,, it may be whether the USA's Astronomers or Russian Cosmonauts..... The Study is still on... They are still wondering whether Life exists there or not... Well the speculations are very high that there is cent percent possibility of Life there....Strong experimental and practical evidences have been already found about the same...

It all began long back in the 17th century when scientists found out the presence of ice caps in Mars, but the thoughts only exploded in the 19th century when scientists came to know that there has been existence of civilizations on Mars long long time ago which was inferred after viewing some canals telescopically.... Later Viking who performed the Labelled Release experiments further proved that there is..........on MARS

In 1996 NASA gave firm evidences based on the meteorite (ALH84001) which fell on earth had the presence of fossilised microorganisms, carbonated globules, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and Magnetic globules (which are usually created by bacteria) were found,....further added to the same fact....

Recently, NASA claimed to visualize a naked woman on Mars,,,, Critics and scientists suppose this to be a mere illusion or some piece of rock or gas,,, watever it may be,, the result is that it has only increased the expectations for scientists to steadfastly prove that there is sustainable life in there....

Who knows after a few years there may be the development of a wholesome new life with different type of ------ beings,,, which may be not called as Human beings but some other beings...... a new civilization there or MARS even transforms into a new tourist spot for we alien Earthietes..... You or I may even go for a summer holiday trip to Marz.....Sounds Interesting....... !!!!!!!!!!

hemant
23:48
29th Jan,08

Start Off.....

2008-01-17T12:35:00.000+05:30

"" Actually, me no Sheikspeare. Me not even little finger of Sheikspeare. (u see, English not my mother's tongue.) But, me rite regularly in my blog. ""

.... This is wat sparked me off to start blogging.......

hemant