Cell Phones May Cause ICU Machinery to Hang up


By Martha Kerr

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters Health) Jan 31 - The electromagnetic energy emitted by cell phones may be strong enough to interfere with mechanical ventilators in the intensive care unit, even to the point where a ventilator may shut down, Harvard researchers reported here Thursday.

Biomedical engineer Cheryl Iden Shaw presented results of a study on the effects of cell phones set at a variety of strengths ranging from 16 milliWatts (mW) to 600 mW on 20 different medical devices, including mechanical ventilators, defibrillators and Doppler sonographs. The researchers used a Nokia cell phone and Cingular wire service.

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Thursday February 13, 7:34 PM

India launches new initiative to stabilise population
By Indo-Asian News Service

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New Delhi, Feb 13 (IANS) India Thursday announced the creation of a Rs.1 billion fund to carry out activities and programmes aimed at stabilising its burgeoning population of over one billion.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs cleared the setting up of a Rashtriya Jansnakhya Kosh, or National Population Stabilisation Fund, an autonomous body that will be headed by the prime minister.

The body will have representation from government, industry, NGOs and civil society, and the health and family welfare minister will be its vice-chairman.

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hursday February 13, 7:35 PM

Conduct stem cell research, Kalam urges cardiac surgeons
By Mohammed Shafeeq, Indo-Asian News Service

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Hyderabad, Feb 13 (IANS) President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Thursday asked Indian cardiac surgeons to conduct intensive research on stem cell applications for the heart.

Kalam interacted with delegates at the 49th meet of the Indian Association of Cardiovascular-Thoracic Surgeons here from Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi through videoconferencing.

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Shuttle report revealed 'blowtorch' risk of space debris
19:00 12 February 03
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

If an impact from space debris was a factor in the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, NASA had been given ample warning. A report published in 1997 predicted a scenario that has disturbing parallels with what may have befallen the spacecraft...

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HOW TO MAKE LINKS

For those who know HTML this is very easy. For others, I'll explain it to you.

HTML is the language in which web pages are coded. Every web page is basically a text document written in HTML. It appears as it does only when viewed through a browser.

HTML is all composed of tags! Each HTML tag comes within the angle brackets ie. '<' and '>'. You have to give some values inside the tag to make it work. I don't think I need to bore you further as it's easy to just 'by hearten' the rest of it. Hehe...

So if you want to make a link, type in this

<a href="link URL">link name</a>.

So, if you want to give a link to CNN's site... here's what you type in

<a href="http://www.cnn.com">CNN's Web Site</a>.

and it will appear as



CNN's Web Site



I hope it's clear. Reply



Cheers

Hey,

Anil and Archana! I hope you guys understand that you can actually copy the interesting stories you encounter on the web and paste them on to the blog page. They will appear on this page so that all of us can read it. The stories can be fun or informative. It's upto your discretion. Let's help each other to browse better!

CHeers

Diarrhoea may protect against colon cancer

22:00 10 February 03 NewScientist.com news service

The scourge of every traveller - diarrhoea - may protect against colorectal cancer. The bacterial toxin that causes the illness was also found to slow the growth of dividing colon cancer cells to a crawl, US researchers found.

Researchers now hope this mechanism can be harnessed to fight cancer - without the unpleasant side effects.

GianMario Pitari at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, looked at enterotoxins from Escherichia coli - the main cause of diarrhoea in people visiting or living in foreign countries.

They found that E. coli spreads itself by producing a toxin that mimics a natural colon process and provokes diarrhoea. However, the toxin also causes a flood of calcium into the affected cells, stopping colon cancer cells from replicating rapidly.

Read the whole article

RNAi protects living animals against disease

10:32 10 February 03 NewScientist.com news service

For the first time, biologists have published a report showing how harnessing an ancient immune system in mammalian cells can protect living animals against disease.

The team used a technology known as RNA interference (RNAi) to halt hepatitis in mice. The result's are "pretty amazing, considering this represents our first attempt," says Judy Lieberman at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "We haven't optimised it at all."

If the technique works in humans, it represents a new treatment strategy for a huge variety of diseases and infections.

RNAi involves stimulating an attack on the messenger RNA that a gene sends to a cell's protein factory. This is achieved by designing tiny RNA molecules that match a sequence in the target gene.

Read the whole article

How to BLOG : Dr. Krishna Kumar Venkitachalam ( view bio )

Finally, our unofficial blog is officially uploaded. Hihihi! Here's what this means folks. Blogs are basically meant for easy web publishing. You can type in or paste anything that you find relevant and then simply click a post button so as to let everyone view it on this web page. This is the buzz on the web these days. I'll explain how to do it.

First of all, this blog can only be used by a select few who are invited by me. Of course, I can invite all of you. But then, this is meant only for those who use the internet frequently. That's why I've selected a very few. So, for those who go the e-mail invitation, they can click on the link on the e-mail. They will be taken to the blogger.com page for signing in or signing up (means creating an account). Creat an accout with the passowrd and username that you want. Once you have done that, you go to our blog page where you can post. The rest of the steps are mentioned below.

On the top left there is a form entry where you can type in or past the text/html you want to appear on the site. After you are done, simply click post & publish. The content will appear on our blog page which is http://mctvm96.tripod.com/blog.html. If you just click the POST button, the item gets posted on the blog page but is not published as as to appear on the blog page on our site.

This is for the first time users. Those users who have accounts can later on log in to blogger.com with their own username and passwords. Once you do that, you would see the link to our blog page which will be something like '96 Batch Blog'. Click on that to go to the blog page.

I hope it's clear. For any doubts just e-mail me.

Cheers

Dr. Kay

Dr. Krishna Kumar Venkitachalam

Good Day,

I'm making the first step towards instant publishing for all my friends from the '96 Batch Medical College, Trivandrum. Here you can publish your experiences and ideas at the click of a button and get it published.

I will like to add that this is one of the few things that our senir and well wisher Dr. Sameer Badarudeen has pointed out to me. Thank you Sameer for all the advice and support!

Dr. Kay