Ride ‘smart’ on PRTC buses soon

In an effort to provide convenience to commuters, the cash-strapped Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) in the Northern Indian state of Punjab has decided to introduce smart tickets for passengers travelling in its fleet of buses.

Electronically generated tickets would be introduced in all PRTC buses in a phased manner. For the purpose the PRTC has decided to procure electronic ticketing machine (ETM) .

According to PRTC sources, the corporation has taken a cue from State Transport Corporation in Karnataka and also from the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation to implement this project.

Officials of the PRTC had studied the electronic ticketing systems in these two organisations, which had been running successfully.

As a pilot project, the PRTC had introduced about 50 ETMs in its KM scheme bus depot of Patiala. The project turned out to be a big success.

According to PRTC Managing Director Manvesh Singh Sidhu, the ETMs would help check revenue losses because of people travelling without tickets.

The electronic tickets would have detailed information like the boarding and destination stations and the date and time of travel, PRTC said.

The corporation informed that in the first phase, it plans to introduce electronic tickets in Patiala, Chandigarh and Bathinda since all these depots were already computerised.

New Technology to Kill Foodborne Pathogens Developed

Researchers at University of Georgia have developed a new and effective technology for reducing contamination of dangerous bacteria on food and battle the increasing number of food poisoning incidents.


The new antimicrobial wash rapidly kills Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 on foods ranging from fragile lettuce to tomatoes, fruits, poultry products and meats. It is made from inexpensive and readily available ingredients that are recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

This new technology also has commercial application for the produce, poultry, meat and egg processing industries.

According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the U.S. alone, foodborne pathogens are responsible for 76 million illnesses every year. These widespread outbreaks of food-borne illnesses are partly attributed to the fast-paced distribution of foods across the nation.

Right now, a chlorine wash is often used in a variety of ways to reduce harmful bacteria levels on vegetables, fruits and poultry, but because of chlorine's sensitivity to food components and extraneous materials released in chlorinated water treatments, many bacteria survive.

Chlorine is toxic at high concentrations, may produce off-flavors and undesirable appearance of certain food products, and it can only be used in conjunction with specialized equipment and trained personnel. In addition, chlorine may be harmful to the environment.

"We can't rely on chlorine to eliminate pathogens on foods. This new technology is effective, safe for consumers and food processing plant workers, and does not affect the appearance or quality of the product. It may actually extend the shelf-life of some types of produce," said Michael Doyle, one of the new technology's inventors and director of UGA's Center for Food Safety.
Doyle is an internationally recognized authority on food safety whose research focuses on developing methods to detect and control food-borne bacterial pathogens at all levels of the food continuum, from the farm to the table.


Developed by Doyle and Center for Food Safety researcher Tong Zhao, the new antimicrobial technology uses a combination of ingredients that kills bacteria within one to five minutes from application.

It can be used as a spray and immersion solution, and its concentration can be adjusted for treatment of fragile foods such as leafy produce, more robust foods such as poultry, or food preparation equipment and food transportation vehicles.

"The effectiveness, easy storage and application, and low cost of this novel antibacterial make it applicable not only at food processing facilities, but also at points-of-sale and at home, restaurants and military bases. The development of this technology is timely, given the recent, sequential outbreaks of foodborne pathogens," said Gennaro Gama, UGARF technology manager in charge of licensing this technology.

Source-ANI
RAS/S

India on US human trafficking watch list

India has been placed on the US second worst category of human trafficking watch list for the fifth year in a row for allegedly failing to show evidence of increasing efforts to combat the problem.

“India is a source, destination and transit country for men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation,” an annual US State Department report released on Wednesday said.

The 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report revealed that the Government of India does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, though it is making significant efforts to do so.

Despite the reported extent of the trafficking crisis in India, government authorities made uneven efforts to prosecute traffickers and protect trafficking victims, the report said, suggesting that that internal forced labour may constitute India’s largest trafficking problem.

Releasing the report, the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the goal of the report covering 170 countries is to shine a light on recent accomplishments and encourage governments in their resolve to confront those who prey on the weakest and most vulnerable members of society.

“Together, we are confident that this modern, growing abolitionist movement will continue to rescue, rehabilitate and restore the lives of those from whom so much has been taken,” she said.

Referring to the report, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons’ Director Mark Lagon said that India has made efforts on the child labour front and rescued many victims.

“But India still doesn’t recognise bonded labour as human trafficking. It has weak anti-corruption efforts and prosecutions are too few,” Lagon said.

The report said that India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Nepali children are also trafficked to India for forced labour in circus shows.

Indian women are trafficked to the Middle East for commercial sexual exploitation, the report said. There are also victims of labour trafficking among the thousands of Indians who migrate willingly every year to the Middle East, Europe and the US to work as domestic servants and low-skilled labourers.

Men and women from Bangladesh and Nepal are trafficked through India for forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation in the Middle East. Indian nationals travel to Nepal and within the country for child sex tourism, the report revealed.

In India itself, men, women and children are held in debt bondage and face forced labour working in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture and embroidery factories.

While no comprehensive study of forced and bonded labour has been completed, NGOs estimate this problem affects 20 to 65 million Indians.

The report further said that women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage.

Children are subjected to forced labour as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups.

Describing lack of punishment of traffickers as a critical challenge, the report recommended an expansion of central and state government law enforcement capacity to conduct intrastate law enforcement activities against trafficking.

India’s efforts to protect victims of trafficking varied from state to state, but remained inadequate in many places during the year, the report stated.

Calling India’s efforts aimed at the prevention of trafficking in persons as inadequate, the report said the government did not report new or significant prevention efforts addressing the prominent domestic problems of trafficking of adults for purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation.

The country also did not report any efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts. Similarly, the government failed to take any steps to raise awareness of trafficking for nationals travelling to known child sex tourism destinations within the country.

India has not ratified the 2000 UN Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Protocol, the State Department report said.

Saarc knowledge centre takes off in India

The ambitious proposal of setting up a common university for eight Saarc countries has taken off with the dedication of land for the institute by India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee here on Monday.

Speaking at the dedication ceremony in Maidan Garhi, Mukherjee announced that the South Asian University (SAU) would hold its first academic session in 2010.

The main campus in New Delhi will be hosting nearly 5,000 students and an international faculty. It will also have campuses in all other seven South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries—Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan.

“The university will help realise the dream of thousands of young men and women who will gather here, not only for high quality education, but also in a spirit of fraternity and friendship,” Mukherjee said.

It may be recalled that the proposal for setting up such a university was mooted by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 13th Saarc Summit in Dhaka in December 2005.

The External Affairs Minister stressed that Saarc has moved towards it relatively quickly as an inter-governmental agreement on it was signed only at the 14th Saarc summit held in New Delhi last year.

Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Member PK Chaddha has been entrusted with the responsibility to oversee the university’s construction, land acquisition and drawing up its charter, byelaws, business plan, governance structure and course curricula.

Chadha will hold the post of CEO of the Saarc university for two years until the university becomes functional in 2010 when a Vice-Chancellor would be appointed.

The project is being executed by the ministry of external affairs in consultation with the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Department of Education of the Human Resource Development Ministry.

The Government of India has offered to bear the entire cost of setting up the university which is expected to be a non-profit Public-Private Partnership (PPP).

Once fully operational, the SAU would witness free flow of students as well as faculty from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives. The university will offer both undergraduate as well as post graduate courses.

Total Ankle Replacement Without Metal Implants

Researchers say that patients having severe arthritis can now opt for total ankle replacement without having to put up with metal implants.


For years, patients have had the option of total joint replacement in the hips, knees, and ankle with titanium and other metal devices, but now researchers from UC San Diego Medical Centre have come up with a total ankle replacement technique that would offer increased mobility and pain relief.

"Up until now, patients have had two options for replacing their ankle joints: metal implants or fusion of the joints," said Daniel K. Lee, director of foot and ankle surgery at UCSD Medical Centre.

"Now there is an option that actually restores the ankle with an FDA-approved biologic material that is similar to the collagen found in cartilage," he added.

During the surgery, Lee removed the damaged cartilage around the ankle joint through a four-centimetre opening. The collagen material was then moulded into the joint where it adapts to the contour of the patient's ankle.

"Unlike a metal device, the advantage to this material is that the implant can be customized in size and contour for every patient's individual need. No matter how the patient's ankle is shaped, the collagen is a perfect fit," he added.

Later in order to allow the material to integrate fully with the ankle joint, a temporary external device was used to stabilize the joint area while keeping it "distracted" or open for a period of 4-6 weeks.
The cylinder-shaped device was attached by small pins, which served as a shock system to keep the joint free from friction and movement until healing is complete.


The device is then removed entirely, which keeps the patient's ankle free from any metal parts.

"Within 3 weeks after surgery, we see an incorporation of tissue onto the damaged cartilage," said Lee.

"The idea here is to avoid fusion of the ankle and to add longevity to the joint. We want to give patients as much mobility as possible so they can get back to the activities they love the most," he added.

The results of a study will be described in late 2008 in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery.

Source-ANI
RAS/S

Delhi will not meet slum-free target by 2010

The government’s plan to make Delhi slum-free by 2010 seems to be a distant dream as the government will not be able to erect the required eight lakh housing units for slum dwellers within the scheduled timeframe.

Delhi’s Urban Development Minister Raj Kumar Chauhan said the government will only be able to provide one lakh units to the slum dwellers across the state.

The government is trying to beautify the city by 2010 as the games are expected to bring in thousands of foreign tourists. The slums present a grim picture, with people living there without basic facilities like water and sanitation.

Chauhan said under the various housing schemes of the government, four lakh houses would be provided to slum dwellers in future.

He further said the process to invite applications for the first 10,000 houses from slum dwellers would begin shortly and added that the real picture will emerge only after we get applications for the 10,000 units.

These houses are being built under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and will be given to those whose annual income is not more than Rs 60,000 per annum.

The slum residential complexes under the Rajiv Ratna Awas Yojana (RRAY) have been planned in the city’s peripheral areas like Narela, Najafgarh, Shahdara and Jahangirpuri.

These will have basic amenities like schools, parks, transport, drinking water, electricity and shops for daily needs, state government officials said.

“Wherever land is available, the government will construct multi-storey housing apartments for them. The first 10,000 units will be constructed in Bawana. It will be ready for allotment by August 2008,” Chauhan claimed.

The city’s Mayor and Chairperson of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), Arti Mehra, underlined the need for a proactive approach to make the capital slum free.

She said that providing accommodation to some 3.5 to four million people living in slums is not an easy task; there should be a deadline to construct the houses.

The Planning Commission estimated a shortage of 25 million houses for the urban poor in the next five years.

Cancer, Epilepsy Surgeries may Be Improved by Laser 'microscalpel'

A mechanical engineering Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin has developed a laser "microscalpel" that has the potential to destroy a single cell while leaving nearby cells intact, thus paving the way for precision surgeries in conditions like epilepsy.


Adela Ben-Yakar said that scientists can now remove a cell with high precision in 3-D without damaging the cells above and below it.

"And you can see, with the same precision, what you are doing to guide your microsurgery," he said.

Femtosecond lasers produce extremely brief, high-energy light pulses that sear a targeted cell so quickly and accurately the lasers' heat has no time to escape and damage nearby healthy cells.

As a result, the medical community envisions the lasers' use for more accurate destruction of many types of unhealthy material. These include small tumors of the vocal cords, cancer cells left behind after the removal of solid tumors, individual cancer cells scattered throughout brain or other tissue and plaque in arteries.

A commercially available femtosecond laser system and microscope was developed recently for LASIK and other eye surgeries, but the system's bulk limits its usefulness.

en-Yakar's laboratory has overcome technological challenges to create a microscope system that can deliver femtosecond laser pulses up to 250 microns deep inside tissue. The system includes a tiny, flexible probe that focuses light pulses to a spot size smaller than human cells.
Ben-Yakar's experimental system and its use to destroy a single cell within layers of breast cancer cells grown in the laboratory is described in the June 23 issue of Optics Express.


Within a few years, Ben-Yakar expects to shrink the probe's 15-millimeter diameter three-fold, so it would match endoscopes used today for laparoscopic surgery. The probe tip she has developed also could be made disposable, for use operating on people who have infectious diseases or destroying deadly viruses and other biomaterials.

To develop the miniature laser-surgery system, Ben-Yakar worked with co-author Olav Solgaard at Stanford University's Electrical Engineering Department to incorporate a miniaturized scanning mirror.

Ben-Yakar and her graduate student Chris Hoy, another co-author, also used a novel fiber optic cable that can withstand intense light pulses traveling from an infrared, femtosecond laser. To make the intensity more manageable, they stretched the light pulses into longer, weaker pulses for traveling through the fiber. Then they used the fiber's unique properties to reconstruct the light into more intense, short light pulses before entering the tissue.

For the study, she directed laser light at breast cancer cells in three-dimensional biostructures that mimic the optical properties of breast tissue. She has since studied laboratory-grown, layered cell structures that mimic skin tissue and other tissues.

Ben-Yakar is also investigating the use of nanoparticles to focus the light energy on targeted cells. In research published last year, she demonstrated that gold nanoparticles can function as nano-scale magnifying lenses, increasing the laser light reaching cells by at least an order of magnitude, or 10-fold.

"If we can consistently deliver nanoparticles to cancer cells or other tissue that we want to target, we would be able to remove hundreds of unwanted cells at once using a single femtosecond laser pulse," Ben-Yakar said.

"But we would still be keeping the healthy cells alive while photo-damaging just the cells we want, basically creating nanoscale holes in a tissue."

Source-ANI
RAS/S

Seismic network soon in Bhutan

The Government of Bhutan is planning to establish a seismic network to help understand and minimise earthquake risks in the country.

Announcing this at a workshop on seismic data sharing in the region, Bhutan’s Department of Geology and Mines Director General Dorji Wangda said that five trial seismic stations have been conducted in the past.

Citing shortage of funds and manpower as hindrances in establishing the seismic network, Wangda said that through this workshop the participants hope to come up with concrete decisions regarding the establishment of the network.

The workshop, organised by Unesco and the United States Geological Survey and Earth Science Organisations in the South Asian Region, was attended by seismologists and engineers from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the US.

Stating that Bhutan lies in an earthquake risk zone, a UNESCO Consultant Frederick Simon said a seismic network is necessary, which will help understand and develop safe construction practices and earthquake reduction risks.

He also called for the construction of earthquake resistant buildings in Bhutan to stay away for the natural disaster.

The country needs to consider establishing a permanent network and there should be some portable stations that they can deploy in the potential damp sites or other locations, Simon added.

Cuban Scientists Unveil Lung Cancer Vaccine

Cuban scientists on Tuesday unveiled a therapeutic lung cancer vaccine which they say is the first in the world and extends the lives of victims by up to five months.


Gisela Gonzalez at the Havana Molecular Immunological Center, where the unveiling was held, said that research on the Cimavax EGF vaccine began in 1992, with the first clinical test in 1995.

It is the first registered vaccine in the world designed to battle lung cancer, said Gonzalez, who heads the medical team that developed the compound.

The vaccine, based on two proteins, triggers an immune response from the victim's body and has no side effects, Gonzalez said.

The research team's director of clinical investigations, Tania Crombet, said that the vaccine serves as a compliment to conventional methods like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, allowing cancer victims to live between four and five months longer, and improves their breathing and decreases their pain.

The vaccine is available in Cuba, and will be commercialized in Latin America, starting in Peru, Gonzalez said.

Advanced tests are currently underway with 579 lung cancer victims at 18 Cuban hospitals. Other tests were carried out in Canada, Britain, while tests are scheduled in Malaysia, Peru, and China, Gonzalez added.

In Buenos Aires, an Argentine-Cuban consortium announced in February that a study of the Cuban vaccine is underway involving more than 700 patients in six countries, including India and Singapore.

Source-AFP
SRM

Climate change risks even microbes

Not just humans, climate change will also impact the microscopic world of bacteria, fungi and other populations that support life on Earth.

worldenviornmentday.jpgKathleen Treseder of the University of California studied the effect of rising temperatures and fungi on carbon stores in Alaskan boreal forests, one area of the globe that is experiencing greater warming than others.

“There is a lot of frozen dead material under the snow pack. There is as much carbon trapped in the soil of northern ecosystems as there in the atmosphere. It is not known that what is going to happen if these environments heat up,” Treseder said.

She started her research with the hypothesis that an increase in temperatures would lead to increased decomposition by fungi.

Rising temperatures should result in greater release of carbon dioxide from the soil, as it is a by-product of decomposition, reports IANS.

She found that nitrogen levels in the soil increased as temperatures rose, which tends to suppress fungal decomposition rates.

“In reality as temperatures increase we tend to see greater nitrogen availability in the soil. It suppresses activity and diversity. What we end up seeing is less carbon dioxide production from fungi as temperatures increase in northern ecosystems,” Treseder said.

Rising temperatures are also having an effect on snow pack and glaciers, which could be detrimental to the communities of micro-organisms living below them.

“As global temperatures rise and glaciers retreat, these micro-organisms lose their habitat. They will probably become extinct before we can study them and get a better idea of their contributions to the ecosystem,” the study concluded.

Treseder said that it microbes are truly sensitive to global changes and was unsure how they will respond.

Rimonabant Approved for Use in NHS

Controversial diet drug, rimonabant, has been approved for use on the NHS despite indications that the drug may trigger suicidal behavior.


The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has approved rimonabant, but has said the drug may be unsafe for patients also taking anti-depressants. Many obesity specialists have welcomed the ruling despite there being reservations about the drug.

"We can be absolutely reassured that they have looked closely at the evidence and made an appropriate decision," said Dr David Haslam, the clinical director of the National Obesity Forum. "This is a very good drug, and there are very many people who have tried everything else, including other drugs, with little success, who might benefit from it."

However there have been many reports of violence and suicidal behavior linked to the drug since it was introduced in 2006 in the UK. Doctors will want to look at this before prescribing it widely.

Source-Medindia
RAS/L

EC pilot for cross-border eID recognition

The European Commission has launched a pilot project ‘Stork’ (Secure idenTity acrOss boRders linKed) to ensure the cross-border recognition of national electronic identity (eID) systems in 13 member states.

The project, to enable the cross-border provision of online services, will establish a number of trans-border pilot projects based on existing national eID systems, reports ePractice.

In practice, some of the most useful eID services will be tested by defining a set of common specifications allowing for the recognition of different national eIDs between the participants.

Without replacing national schemes, the new system will allow citizens to identify themselves electronically in a secure way using their national eID via electronic cards or other means.

The project, supported by the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP), will deal with foreign public administrations either from public offices, from their PC or ideally from any other mobile device.

With a €10 million funding from the European Commission’s Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP), as well as an equal contribution from the participating parties, ‘Stork’ will run for three years.

The commission said that the solutions developed and the experience gained by the project team will be shared