* On 5G Telephony - http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21646962-5g-mobile-wireless-will-be-faster-fibre-your-phone-steroids
* Nagoro - a Japanese village where life-size dolls outnumber people! - http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143300/fritz-schumann/valley-of-the-dolls
* DOS - Denial of Service attacks on the internet -- http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/03/economist-explains-25
* Solar on your roof - 101 - http://www.livemint.com/Money/RBdquY1XECHfxeCD5XnfTP/What-you-should-know-before-going-solar.html
* Photography - Karen Knorr - India Song -- http://karenknorr.com/photography/india-song/
* Mes Aynak - an ancient Afghan city being lost to Chinese copper mines ? -- http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/31/mes-aynak-afghanistan-buddhist-treasure
* Iceland - the world's greatest genetic lab -- http://www.wired.com/2015/03/iceland-worlds-greatest-genetic-laboratory/
* Meet Cyanogen -- the Android Killer -- http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/03/23/meet-cyanogen-the-startup-that-wants-to-steal-android-from-google-2/
* Discarded medical devices flood Indian markets -- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/First-worlds-discarded-medical-devices-flood-Indian-markets/articleshow/46696235.cms
* MRI Scans of Vegetables - http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mri-scans-produce-are-completely-amazing
* Best Headphones -- http://time.com/74886/best-headphones/
* Salil Tripathi on LKY and Singapore - http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/tJmgofWYWCJmdQYzaNbAtO/Lee-kuan-yews-Singapore.html
* LKY's Singapore - lessons India did not learn -- http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/rahul-jacob-what-china-learned-from-lee-kuan-yew-115032501154_1.html
* On development aid in Nepal -- http://data.parliament.uk/WrittenEvidence/CommitteeEvidence.svc/EvidenceDocument/International%20Development/DFIDs%20work%20in%20Nepal/written/18612.html
* Saudi's and the Swedish minister - http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9481542/swedens-feminist-foreign-minister-has-dared-to-tell-the-truth-about-saudi-arabia-what-happens-now-concerns-us-all/
* Wishes for desi's you hate -- http://www.buzzfeed.com/imaansheikh/wishing-you-biryani-without-boti
* Getting rid of Bunions -- http://naturalcuresnotmedicine.com/how-to-get-rid-of-bunions-with-this-simple-and-powerful-remedy/
* How to Write -- http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/ZPmaHVnmMNiqhAsHCxz8fP/How-to-write.html?utm_source=copy
* Use of Good Words -- http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/03/johnson-writing-style?fsrc=scn%2Ftw%2Fte%2Fbl%2Fed%2Fusegoodwords
* (26Mar15, Hindu) - Corruption in governance breeds antibiotic resistance - http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/corruption-in-governance-breeds-antibiotic-resistance/article7032499.ece
* (26Mar15 ToI) - China agrees to supply more Japanese Encephalitis shots - http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-03-27/news/60553555_1_japanese-encephalitis-je-vaccine-china
* On foreigners in Japan -- http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/03/23/voices/spare-thought-western-men-trapped-japan/
* Italian cheese made by Sikhs -- http://scroll.in/article/710676/Video:-The-Sikhs-who-make-Italy's-famous-Grana-Padano-cheese
* When India ate Beef -- http://www.rediff.com/news/column/when-hindus-ate-beef-india-was-never-conquered/20150324.htm
* Tharoor on Indian Railways -- http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-railway-budget-by-shashi-tharoor-2015-03
* Photography - Nikon35mm
- http://petapixel.com/2013/05/16/the-top-8-reasons-why-im-a-big-believer-in-35mm-lens-photography/
- http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/35f14ais.htm
- http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/10-best.htm
- http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/dx-dream-team.htm
- The best 35mm for DX - http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/dx-dream-team.htm
* Japan's policemen with big sticks - http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/20/reference/police-who-stand-with-big-sticks
* 10 Indian poets -- http://scroll.in/article/715138/Video:-On-World-Poetry-Day,-listen-to-the-works-of-ten-Indian-poets
* LinkedIn - What kind of pain can i solve? -- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-switch-careers-without-starting-over-liz-ryan?trk=hp-feed-article-title
* WSJ - India's fight against Big Pharma is a Just War -- http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/03/19/inside-india-indias-fight-against-big-pharma-patents-is-a-just-war/
. Last week, GoI withdrew patent protection for an emphysema drug marketed by Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH
. The country’s pharmaceutical sector was expected to grow to at least $48.8 billion in sales by 2020 from $11 billion in 2012
. India’s law sets a higher bar for protection than in some other countries, limiting the ability of companies to get patents for new versions of drugs whose active ingredients were previously known unless they can show significant therapeutic benefit.
. In 2006, India’s patent office refused to give Novartis AG a patent for Gleevec, an extremely effective drug for a rare cancer.
. In 2012, India’s Intellectual Property Appellate Board revoked a Roche Holding AG patent for a hepatitis C drug saying technology involved in the drug’s invention was “obvious” and could be replicated easily.
. In January, India’s patent office rejected a patent application from the U.S. biotech firm Gilead Sciences Inc. for a hepatitis C treatment, saying it lacked novelty and didn’t show significant efficacy over previously known compounds.
. The collective effect of a low bar for patents drives up healthcare costs and insurance premiums for patients.
* Ram, Vidya (19Mar2015): An answer to Fund-Bank domination - http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/vidya-ram/an-answer-to-fundbank-domination/article7007864.ece
* Kanjilal, Prateek (19Mar15): Borrowing from Nature - http://www.financialexpress.com/article/fe-columnist/borrowing-from-nature/55093/
* A reality-check from @RahulJacob -- http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/rahul-jacob-make-believe-in-india-115031801145_1.html @MakeInIndia #Manufacturing
* Horizontal Gene Transfer - http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21646197-human-beings-ancestors-have-routinely-stolen-genes-other-species-genetically
- Many of the matches are to genes of unknown purpose—for it is still the case, more than a decade after the end of the human genome project, that the jobs of many genes remain obscure. But some human transgenes are surprisingly familiar. The ABO antigen system, which defines basic blood groups for transfusion purposes, looks bacterial. The fat-mass and obesity-associated gene, the effect of which is encapsulated in its rather long-winded name, seems to come from marine algae. And a group of genes involved in the synthesis of hyaluronic acid originates from fungi. Hyaluronic acid is a chemical that is an important part of the glue which holds cells together. (It is also a frequent ingredient of skin creams.)
* 13 ways to eat Maggi noodles -- http://www.buzzfeed.com/niralishah/maggi-maggi-maggi
* Shyam - Elephant Trails , Tvm -- https://shyamgopan.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-elephants-i-never-saw/
* Churpi -- Yak cheese as dog snack in G8 -- https://news.yahoo.com/traditional-nepal-cheese-hit-overseas-dog-snack-072951741.html
* Top 15 websites for free images download -- http://www.jeffbullas.com/2015/03/17/15-top-websites-to-find-free-images-for-your-content-marketing/
* BBC's Hypocrisy -- http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/merchants-of-black-imagery/article1-1327094.aspx
. we need to break free from the vicious grip of the merchants of the black imagery who earn their fortunes by marketing globally some of our weakest chinks.
* Mighty Mites -- http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/mites/dunn-text
* Paul Kalanithi in WP - Before I Go: A Stanford neurosurgeon’s parting wisdom about life and time -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/03/12/before-i-go-a-stanford-neurosurgeons-parting-wisdom-about-life-and-time/
- "Everyone succumbs to finitude.... The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed."
* WSJ - Smart-enough Watches -- http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-just-smart-enough-watch-is-better-than-an-apple-watch-1426181071
* What ails Indian Science (2014, R Prasad) -- http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/what-ails-indian-science/article5863637.ece
- in the case of the U.S., the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are outside the government bureaucracy.
- the malaise of promotion based on years of service, and not by achievement
* Origin of expressions -- http://www.grammarly.com/blog/2015/14-expressions-with-crazy-origins-that-you-would-never-have-guessed/
* Bangladesh vs. MNCs - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-08/-10-copy-of-gilead-s-blockbuster-sovaldi-appears-in-bangladesh
* Cricket - sledging -- http://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/cricket-sledging/
* Salil Tripathi -- An Argument Without Beef -- http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Nv56zpiYyDRgiD8fgbnmOL/An-argument-without-beef.html
* WSJ - 11Mar15 - Four Years After Tohoku -- http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/03/11/photos-four-years-after-the-tohoku-disaster/#slide/1
* NYT -- http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-doctors-give-in-on-vaccines?
* FT - India Healthcare -- http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0b916fde-c64a-11e4-9bf4-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3TyylVhOd
* Cabron's prob -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosing_spondylitis
* On Virgil's quote on 9/11 memorial -- http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/opinion/07alexander.html?_r=0
* Science as art - http://www.nature.com/news/science-as-art-wellcome-image-awards-2015-1.17118
* Why are only white people called expats? -- http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/mar/13/white-people-expats-immigrants-migration
* Its never too late to start a venture -- http://digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/never-too-late-start-venture
* Words -- http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/bob-ombinate?bftw&bffb&utm_term=4ldqpgy#.rpNqOABvBg
* Is most of our DNA garbage? -- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/magazine/is-most-of-our-dna-garbage.html
- Genomes are like biological books, written in genetic letters known as bases; the human genome contains about 3.2 billion bases.
- the onion’s genome was five times bigger --
- why do the broad-footed salamander (65.5 billion bases), the African lungfish (132 billion) and the Paris japonica flower (149 billion)?
- The human genome contains around 20,000 genes, that is, the stretches of DNA that encode proteins. But these genes account for only about 1.2 percent of the total genome. The other 98.8 percent is known as noncoding DNA.
- 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published a short paper in the journal Nature setting out the double-helix structure of DNA.
- In 1964, the German biologist Friedrich Vogel did a rough calculation of how many genes a typical human must carry -- 6.7 million
- 2001 - The Human Genome Project team declared that our DNA consisted of isolated oases of protein-coding genes surrounded by “vast expanses of unpopulated desert where only noncoding ‘junk’ DNA can be found.”
- John Rinn @Harvard - studies RNA, but not the RNA that our cells use as a template for making proteins -- studies an RNA molecule (hotair) that, somewhat bizarrely, was produced widely by skin cells below the waist but not above.
- Rinn’s research revealed that hotair acts as a kind of guide for Polycomb, attaching to it and escorting it through the jungle of the cell to the precise spots on our DNA where it needs to silence genes.
* History in perspective - a great piece by @DalrympleWill on the supreme act of corporate violence in world history http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders
- - on 28 August 1608, William Hawkins had landed at Surat, the first commander of a company vessel to set foot on Indian soil.
- Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador sent by James I to the Mughal court, is shown appearing before the Emperor Jahangir in 1614
- 1739, when Clive was only 14 years old, the Mughals still ruled a vast empire that stretched from Kabul to Madras. But in that year, the Persian adventurer Nadir Shah descended the Khyber Pass with 150,000 of his cavalry and defeated a Mughal army of 1.5 million men.
- Three months later, Nadir Shah returned to Persia carrying the pick of the treasures the Mughal empire had amassed in its 200 years of conquest: a caravan of riches that included Shah Jahan’s magnificent peacock throne, the Koh-i-Noor, the largest diamond in the world, as well as its “sister”, the Darya Nur, and “700 elephants, 4,000 camels and 12,000 horses carrying wagons all laden with gold, silver and precious stones”, worth an estimated £87.5m in the currency of the time.
- August 1765, when the young Mughal emperor Shah Alam, exiled from Delhi and defeated by East India Company troops, was forced into what we would now call an act of involuntary privatisation.
- Within a few years, 250 company clerks backed by the military force of 20,000 locally recruited Indian soldiers had become the effective rulers of Bengal.
- sing its rapidly growing security force – its army had grown to 260,000 men by 1803 – it swiftly subdued and seized an entire subcontinent.
- The first serious territorial conquests began in Bengal in 1756; 47 years later, the company’s reach extended as far north as the Mughal capital of Delhi, and almost all of India south of that city was by then effectively ruled from a boardroom in the City of London.
- In many ways the EIC was a model of corporate efficiency: 100 years into its history, it had only 35 permanent employees in its head office.
- After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, a victory that owed more to treachery, forged contracts, bankers and bribes than military prowess, he transferred to the EIC treasury no less than £2.5m seized from the defeated rulers of Bengal – in today’s currency, around £23m for Clive and £250m for the company.
- Clive... committed suicide in 1774 by slitting his own throat with a paperknife
- By 1803, when the EIC captured the Mughal capital of Delhi, it had trained up a private security force of around 260,000- twice the size of the British army – and marshalled more firepower than any nation state in Asia.
* Fall of the Ottomans -- http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/01/fall-of-the-ottomans-eugene-rogan-review
* INDIA's DAUGHTER - (5Mar15) - Salil Tripathy -- why it should be seen in India -- http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/34Ls4cgDsZaDbEH8TdLBmN/Why-Indias-Daughter-should-be-seen-in-India.html
- http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/comment-article-rape-rhetoric-and-reality/article6705077.ece
* USA - dollar spending on diseases -- http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/03/the-diseases-we-spend-our-health-dollars-on/
* A scientist and an artist -- http://www.frontline.in/arts-and-culture/scientist-as-an-artist/article6954702.ece?homepage=true
* Nikon camera with a 83X zoom! -- http://www.wired.com/2015/03/nikons-new-point-shoot-absurdly-long-zoom-range/
* #Genes that adapt and remember -- an excellent book review -- http://www.wired.com/2015/03/fat-sick-blame-grandparents-bad-habits/ #Epigenetics #Methylation
* Economic Survey 2015 -- file:///C:/Users/Dinakar/Desktop/EconSurvey-2015-vol1.pdf
- Subsidies to the poor (pp23) -- Rs.377,000 Cr (4.2% of 2011 GDP)
- Agri - area, production (pp 78-79) -- Foodgrains - 126mHa; 265 mT-- Oilseeds 28mHa; 33 mT-- Pulses 25 mHa; 19mT
- Agri extension -- 59% of farmers have no access to govt research & extension (NSSO data)
- GM crops - rethinking needed (pp80)
* BCG-CII Report on the Indian IT Sector (2013) - http://cii.in/WebCMS/Upload/BCG%20CII%20report%20on%20Domestic%20IT%20-%20March%202013%28final%29.pdf
* Regulating Genome-Edited Crops (not-yet GMOs) -- http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150225132251.htm
* China Cement production -- http://www.igsnrr.cas.cn/xwzx/jxlwtj/201405/P020140522355603140914.pdf
- From less than 50 mT (1978) to over 2000 mT now.... India is no.2 at 360 mT
* Budget 2015 -- Speech
- India's Annual Budget INR 17,774,770,000,000 to USD = 287,129,901,878 US Dollar (17 Lakh Crores = $ 287 Billion)
- Rs. 1 Lakh Cr = US$. 16 Billion
* 1995, Newsweek -- A prediction that went haywire -- http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306
* Labnol - Removing password protection from PDF files -- http://www.labnol.org/software/remove-pdf-password/20017/
* Indian shrines in SE China -- http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/medieval-southeastern-china-neighbours-india-shrine-remote-village/1/421327.html
- traders from south India made Quanzhou and its surrounding areas their home during the reign of the Song (960-1279 AD) and Yuan (1279-1368 AD) dynasties when Quanzhou was the busiest port in the world.
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