We have all heard of Concorde aircrafts, which can fly faster than sound. When flying at max speed, these aircrafts generate what is called a 'shock wave' – a kind of disturbance that occurs in nature when a body is moving faster than sound. Imagine the high energy generated! Now imagine harnessing that energy to kill off micro-organisms.
It is estimated that there are around 6 to 12 million Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infected people in India, most of them are unaware about the infection. This virus which spreads by direct contact with the blood of infected persons can cause severe liver complications which may lead to cancer. Among many strains of the virus, HCV genotype 3a is the predominant strain of the virus found in the Indian sub-continent. The good news however is that we may soon have a vaccine against this strain of the virus.
While dreaded names like cancer and AIDS have been traditionally looked upon as 'menaces', it is quite remarkable how tiny microorganisms can bring down whole populations of creatures a billion times larger than themselves. Salmonella, comprising a vast group of microbes, is known to cause a host of gastrointestinal problems, an example of which is typhoid fever.
A well-known disease, typhoid is suspected to have been around since 430 BC, and continues to affect a large proportion of the world population. In the year 2010 alone, twenty seven million cases of typhoid fever were reported, in which children were most commonly affected.
In a recent finding, Utpal Nath and his graduate student Mainak Das Gupta from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have discovered and classified four types of leaf growth and have also identified a molecular regulator in the leaf that is responsible for this diverse patterns of leaves that we see in nature today.
In a breakthrough for nano-drug delivery systems, scientists from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have engineered a nanovector that can specifically home in on liver cells and destroy viral RNA.
Prof. K.P. Gopinathan, Recipient of the Kerala State Award for Lifelong Accomplishments in Science.
If you are healthy, you have nothing to fear of this organism.
A group of scientists from IISc have reported an easier and more rapid method to detect different viruses causing acute and persistent diarrhoea in children. The team has developed a cell-based rapid detection and enumeration method to demonstrate the diarrhea-inducing potential of different enteroviruses, which were isolated from children suffering from diarrhea.
A new non-invasive method to detect oxidative stress in the brain may help in early detection of brain disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The new technique, developed by the researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, is based on Raman spectroscopy.
The Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is an entire spectrum of conditions, caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Since its discovery in the 1980s, the condition has gained worldwide notoriety not just as a killer – more than 35 million deaths as of 2012 – but also because of the social stigma associated with the sexually transmitted disease.