Sep 03 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

Your skin is much smarter than you think

MM





Neurons in human skin perform advanced calculations, previously be lieved that only the brain could per form. This is according to a study from Umea University in Sweden published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. A fundamental characteristic of neurons that extend into the skin and record touch, so-called first-order neurons in the tactile system, is that they branch in the skin so that each neuron reports touch from many highly-sensitive zones on the skin.According to researchers at Umea University, this branching allows first-order tactile neurons not only to send signals to the brain that something has touched the skin, but also process geometric data about the object . “Our work has shown that two types of firstorder tactile neurons that supply the sensitive skin at our fingertips not only signal information about when and how intensely an object is touched, but also information about the touched object's shape“ says Andrew Pruszynski, who is one of the researchers behind the study.
The study also shows that the sensitivity of individual neurons to the shape of an object depends on the layout of the neuron's highly-sensitive zones in the skin.
“Perhaps the most surprising result of our study is that these peripheral neurons, which are engaged when a fingertip examines an object, perform the same type of calculations done by neurons in the cerebral cortex. Somewhat simplified, it means that our touch experiences are already processed by neurons in the skin before they reach the brain for further processing“ says Andrew Pruszynski. MM

Sep 03 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

Govt Sets up Committee to Look into Green Laws

New Delhi: Our Bureau





It has been tasked with drafting proposed amendments to five environment laws

The environment ministry has set up a committee headed by former cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian to review environment-related laws and statutes even as it marked the Narendra Modi government's 100 days in power.In an order issued on Friday, the ministry has specifically listed five laws -the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, Forest ( Conservation) Act, 1980, Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 -for the committee to look into and suggest amendments to ensure that these laws meet their objectives.
Besides Subramanian, the committee includes former environment secretary Viswanath Anand, retired Delhi High Court judge Justice AK Srivastav and former additional solicitor general of India KN Bhat. It has two months to review the laws and recommend amendments.
The ministry has also asked the committee to suggest amendments to the existing laws to reflect the various court orders and judicial pronouncements that relate to these laws.
One such judicial pronouncement is the Supreme Court order in the TN Godavarman Thirumulpad case--the July 2011 judgment on the LaFarge Umium Mining case. In this context, the constitution of an independent environmental regulator will be one of the issues that the committee will have to consider.
In the LaFarge Umium Mining case, the court had asked the government to set up an independent environment regulator for appraising projects, enforcing environmental conditions for approvals and imposing penalties on polluters.
Despite the fact that a blueprint for a regulator had been prepared by the then environment minister Jairam Ramesh, there was no effort by the government to set it up after Ramesh was moved to the rural development ministry.
Subsequently in January 2014, the court had asked the ministry to set up the regulator by March 31.
Another issue that will arise in reflecting judicial pronouncements in the green laws is the Supreme Court orders relating to the sequencing of forest and environment clearances.
Amendments to the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1976 to ensure that it is line with India's obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is pending in the Rajya Sabha. This too will be reviewed.
Increasing penalties for violations of environmental laws is expected to be among the issues that the committee will address.
The committee has been asked to draft proposed amendments to the five laws so as to ensure that the laws fulfil the objectives with which these were enacted.
Meanwhile, marking 100 days in office, environment minister Prakash Javadekar said on Tuesday that he had been able to rid his ministry of the `roadblock ministry' nickname it had earned for itself over the past decade. “This ministry had become notorious as a place where everything would get stalled,“ he said.
“Avenues for corruption and discretion have been plugged,“ the minister added, referring to the online submission for clearances. Javadekar also stressed on the efforts made to decentralise the clearance process by increasing the threshold of projects being considered by state governments from 15 hectares to 40 hectares.

Sep 03 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

SECOND OPINION - Uncivic sense

Jug Suraiya





More than just physical infrastructure, our squalid cities lack mental infrastructure

The other day i saw a man peeing in full public view. Men relieving themselves in the open ­ not only in the so-called `Millennium City' of Gurgaon where i happen to live, but all over India ­ are a common sight not worth remarking upon.Except that this man was doing it right in front of a glitzy mall.
Had the man taken the trouble to walk just a few short yards, he would have had access to the mall's clean, hygienic public toilets, at no cost to himself. Yet he chose to urinate in the open. Or maybe he didn't choose to do so, but that it just came naturally to him: he wanted to relieve himself, so fine, he might as well do it there and then, right where he was.
I would have forgotten this commonplace incident if it were not for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's proposal to provide indoor lavatories in villages ­ specifically to ensure privacy and security for women, who risk sexual assault by going outdoors at night to answer nature's call ­ and to create a hundred new cities.
The women of India, particularly of rural India, will owe the PM an immeasurable debt of gratitude if he can deliver on his promise. But this sentiment is perhaps unlikely to be shared by their male counterparts.
Indians in general, and Indian men, in particular, have arguably the lowest civic sense in the world. It is this lack of what could be called `mental infrastructure', together with lack of physical infrastructure, that increasingly is turning our cities and towns into living nightmares of filth and squalor.
Indian cities are among the dirtiest and most polluted in the world. Even the `sacred city' of Varanasi is not immune from this urban contagion, daily dumping tonnes of untreated human waste into the Ganga, turning the so-called `holy' river into a sewage drain.
We can, and we certainly ought to, install lavatories in village homes.We can also project creating a hundred new cities, to accommodate the continuing migration from the rural hinterland to urban areas as the country's workforce, slowly but inevitably, turns from agriculture to manufacturing.But these new cities will soon become as derelict and dysfunctional as all our other cities for lack of the mental infrastructure of basic civic sense.
Indians, notably Indian men, pee and crap where they will, even if toilet facilities are available to them. We routinely throw our garbage out of our homes onto the public streets with little or no regard as to who's going to collect it, and what's to be done about its disposal. We flout all traffic rules, resulting in a daily death toll of accidents and lethal outbursts of road rage.
We can plan to build cities, but it seems we ourselves are not planned, or mentally programmed, to live in them, and soon turn them into urban wastelands. And the tragic irony is that the Indian subcontinent boasted one of the earliest and best-designed cities in the world called Mohenjo-daro.
Before thinking of building a hundred new cities, or even one new city , we should think of how we're to reclaim our lost civic sense. How do we citizens of India become its true city-zens?
secondopinion@timesgroup.com http:blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.comjugglebandhi

Sep 03 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Noted Jamia scholar accused of plagiarism

Akshaya Mukul

New Delhi:





A shocking case of plagiarism has come out involving Janaki Rajan, a leading educationist teaching in Jamia Millia Islamia's department of teacher training & non-formal education.Rajan, also a member of the National Council of Teacher Education, whose work among teachers in Delhi and elsewhere has received wide acclaim, has been accused of lifting portions of her 1991 PhD thesis from Jadunath Sinha's book Indian Psychology: Cognition, a 1958 publication of Sinha Publishing House.
Huge chunks of Rajan's 1991 dissertation -Cognitive Development in Primary School Children with Particular Reference to the Con cepts of Space and Time -from Osmania University are allegedly taken from Sinha. Rajan's list of bibliography does not mention Sinha's book as a source. Rajan told TOI, “This is not true. I will comment only if it is brought to my notice.“ She refused to give any explanation. The plagiarism was discovered by a research scholar working on perceptions of teachers of higher education on the role of mass media in checking corruption. Sinha was a Premchand Roychand Scholar who taught in Meerut College. He was also author of a two-volume history of Indian philosophy . A subsection of Rajan's chapter II (Review of Literature) is entirely taken from chapter VIII of Sinha's book.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com





Sep 03 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Death row convicts get one final open hearing

Dhananjay Mahapatra

New Delhi:





The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to shed its nearly 60-year-old rule to allow death row convicts another chance to argue in open court and plead for life, further narrowing down the possibility of the application of death penalty.A five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice R M Lodha, by 4-1 majority, decided in favour of giving condemned prisoners another chance to seek life term by ruling that petitions seeking review of judgments upholding capital punishment would henceforth be heard in open court.
Till now, all review petitions were considered in chamber by the judges with out taking assistance from petitioners’ lawyers. Now, the court said the rule would be diluted to allow open court hearing for such petitions against SC judgments confirming death sentence by a three-judge bench. The judgment to hear in open court review petitions against death sentences confirmed by the SC was in keeping with the trend where the apex court has tried to restrict the scope for imposition of death penalty and had suggested standardization and tightening of the `rarest of rare' category .
Writing the majority judgment on behalf of the CJI R M Lodha and Justices J S Khehar and A K Sikri, Justice R F Nariman said, “We feel that when a convict who has suffered the sentence of death and files a review petition, the necessity of oral hearing in such review petition becomes an integral part of `reasonable procedure'.“ Justice J Chelameswar struck the lone dissent note.
Nariman said it was necessary to go beyond traditional procedures. “Death penalty is irreversible in nature. Once a death sentence is executed, that results in taking away life of the convict. If it is found thereafter that such a sentence was not warranted, that would be of no use as the life of that person cannot be brought back. This being so, we feel that if the fundamental right to life is involved, any procedure should be just, fair and reasonable. We feel that a limited oral hearing even at the review stage is mandated by Article 21,“ added Nariman.
Would apex court judges, who have long experience in discerning genuine cases, not be able to identify cases where death penalty needed to be converted to life term while considering review petitions in chamber without hearing the lawyers? The majority judgment answered it in simple words, “When it comes to death penalty cases, we feel that the power of spoken word has to be given yet another opportunity even if the ultimate success rate is minimal.“
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com

Sep 02 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi) 88% crack IIT-JEE in the first attempt Hemali Chhapia Mumbai:   The entrance exam to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has never had so many candidates who cracked the gruelling exam in the first attempt: 88% candidates qualified in the first shot this year.Last year, 69.6% of aspirants qualified after taking the IIT-JEE (advanced) for the first time. Another 27.2% had to take the test again before they could walk past the gates of the IITs. This year, merely 12% students qualified after taking the exam for the second time.Since the last two years, the IITs have only allowed candidates two attempts. “We are realizing that by restricting the number of attempts, the IITs are getting students who are very welltrained. I am not sure if it is putting more pressure on students, but students are a lot better prepared,“ says an IIT director. Slicing the statistics further shows that of the 9,795 students currently sitting in the first-year classrooms across IITs, the count of those who cracked the JEE (advanced) in the first attempt stands at 6,725 (68.65%). Data till 2007 shows about 10% of the total aspirants were taking the JEE for the third time (or more). But with more students taking the test seriously, JEE-2006 saw the share fall as 43.5% candidates qualified in their first try, as compared to JEE-2005 in which only 28.49% got through the first time around. In fact, a dean from IITMadras believes these statistics are a result of the changing profile of those who are making it to the IITs. “Students who are now walking into the IITs are mostly from cities and from middle-class households who can afford to pay for tuitions,” he says. Most of those who qualified—20,636 or 76%—are from urban centres, 3,862 (14.22%) are from towns, and 2,654 (9.77%) are from villages. Again, making for a sharp economic divide on campus, two large cohorts of students in the current batch are from the upper-middle classes and from the lowerincome groups. This year, 3,586 or 13.2% who qualified disclosed that the annual family income is over Rs 8 lakh. Three years ago, data revealed that about 9.3% of the qualified candidates had an annual family income of over Rs 10 lakh. For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com

Sep 02 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Women scientists enter IIT council

Akshaya Mukul

New Delhi:





The IITs, predominantly a male club that never had a woman director or scientist in its council, is in for a big change. HRD ministry has nominated two women scientists Tessy Thomas and Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath to the IIT council, the apex body of 16 IITs. A senior HRD official said, “The idea behind getting women scientists in the IIT council is to show that science is not the sole preserve of men. Women can be at par with men in carrying out research.“ He said these two can act as role models. Thomas is the first woman to head India's missile programme. She is in charge of Agni-4 missile project of Defence Research Develop ment Organisation. Ravin dranath helped establish National Brain Research Centre. Her research on neurogenerative disorders can be used to develop disease-modifying therapies.IIT council is headed by HRD min ister and consists of three members of Parliament, chairpersons and directors of all IITs, chairperson of UGC, director general of CSIR, chairman and directors of IISc, nominee of HRD ministry and three appointees each of the ministry and AICTE.