Download (12th Ed) 5th Mar 2015

[1]. Can SOLEs become the soul of learning?
Context: Early in January, Prof. Sugata Mitra visited India for the opening of Area Zero, a solar
powered glass building in Gocharan, West Bengal. A School in the Cloud Self-Organised Learning
Environment (SOLE) facility, it is the seventh of its kind —five of which are in India and the remaining
in the United Kingdom.
What is a SOLE?
A Self-Organized Learning Environment, or SOLE, can exist anywhere there is a computer, Internet
connection, and children who are ready to learn. In a SOLE, educators pose Big Questions to
students. With the help of the Internet and Granny Cloud volunteers around the world, students
discover the answers and new ways of thinking. Anyone can create a SOLE.
What is Granny Cloud?
The Granny Cloud is a global community of mediators who use Skype to work with children in SOLEs
across the globe. Granny Cloud members, or Grannies, are young and old, male and female. The goal
of the Granny Cloud is to stimulate children's curiosity, develop their confidence, and generally to
have fun.
What are Big questions?
Big Questions are the spark that ignites a SOLE session. They are meant to inspire a child's
imagination and encourage a genuine process of discovery. Big Questions connect more than one
subject and ensure that the SOLE inspires research, debate, and critical thinking
The beginning of SOLE
Hole in the Wall experiments
The beginning of SOLEs goes back to the Hole in the Wall experiments that Prof. Mitra performed in
the slums of Delhi, way back in 1999. By putting a computer on the wall he could observe that
children, with no previous experience with computers, organised themselves into groups, taught
each other and understood content that was initially beyond their grasp.
In order to test the limits of learning in this way, Prof. Mitra experimented further, urging Tamilspeaking children from the village of Kallikuppam to learn about DNA replication in English. To his
astonishment, their scores improved with time, and they never gave up. With a little
encouragement, the way a grandmother does to children; their scores were on par with Prof. Mitra’s
control school in New Delhi, a private school with a trained biotechnology teacher. This led to the
creation of Granny Cloud, which enables e-mediators from around the world to interact with
children on a daily basis.
Significance of SOLE
The current examination system focuses on memorisation of facts. The focus in the SOLEs is on
children being able to search for the information they need, when they need it. If examinations [and
the educators who create them] were to introduce the Internet into the examination hall it could
change the very core of how we create learning environments and bring in a great deal of relevance
to life outside the school walls.
Conclusion
While SOLEs maybe cause for optimism, it is important to mix it with caution. ASER reports
published in January suggest that even though enrolment is high in India these days, reading levels
are low, and worse, unchanged over the years. Considering SOLEs hinge around reading, there is
reason to believe this could be a major stumbling block at the start
[2]. Targeting drugs to diseased heart shows promise
Context: In an exciting finding that holds potential for on-target drug delivery to an afflicted
cardiac tissue and prevent heart attacks, Indian scientists have successfully delivered
therapeutics to a diseased myocardium through a nanoparticle-tagged peptide, which
resulted in improved functioning of the heart.
Current position in treatment of heart disease:
Currently no drug can treat heart ailment by directly targeting the heart tissues. Most of the drugs
are directed to related problems like diabetes and hypertension. And in most cases, the drugs that
treat cardiac conditions have toxic effect to other organs.
Only surgical intervention was the only option available so far and the other alternative of gene
therapy too was ineffective due to associated problems like tumourigenesis (formation of
production of tumors). He said that research has already shown that knocking down P-53, (a tumour
suppressing gene) would improve cardiac functioning considerably. But it would at the same time
lead to tumours all over the body.
The methodology
In a bid to overcome therapeutic challenge in treating cardiovascular dysfunction, the researchers in
this study delivered through a nanoparticle a small peptide that not only penetrated the tissue but
was specific to heart cells, cardiomyocytes. .About 80 per cent of the heart cells consist of
cardiomyocytes which give contractility.
Two animal models with compromised heart function due to cardiac hypertrophy were used in the
study. It was found that it not only improved cardiac function significantly but the p-53 gene was
suppressed only in heart without causing tumourigenesis in other parts of the body
Institutes that collaborated for study
Centre for Chemical Biology
Indian Institute of Chemical Technology,
CCMB
Department of Chemistry, IIT, Kharagpur
Division of Virology, National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, Kolkata
New Terms
Cardiomyocytes: Cardiac muscle cells or cardiomyocytes (also known as myocardiocytes or cardiac
myocytes) are the muscle cells (myocytes) that make up the cardiac muscle. Each myocardial cell
contains myofibrils, which are specialized organelles consisting of long chains of sarcomeres, the
fundamental contractile units of muscle cells. Cardiomyocytes show striations similar to those on
skeletal muscle cells, but unlike multinucleated skeletal cells, they contain only one nucleus.
Cardiomyocytes have a high mitochondrial density, which allows them to produce adenosine
triphosphate (ATP) quickly, making them highly resistant to fatigue.
P-53 Gene: The p53 gene is a tumor suppressor gene, i.e., its activity stops the formation of tumors.
The p53 gene has been mapped to chromosome 17.
[3]. Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health
(RMNCH+A)
Kindly visit this link: http://nrhm.gov.in/nrhm-components/rmnch-a.html
[4]. Raychaudhuri Equation or Landau-Raychaudhuri equation
Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri (14 September 1923 – 18 June 2005) was a leading Indian physicist,
renowned for his research in general relativity and cosmology. His most significant contribution is
the eponymous Raychaudhuri's equation, which demonstrates that singularities arise inevitably in
general relativity and is a key ingredient in the proofs of the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems.
Raychaudhuri was also revered as a teacher during his tenure at Presidency College, Kolkata. Many
of his students have gone on to become established scientists.
Lev Davidovich Landau (January 22, 1908 – April 1, 1968) was a prominent Soviet physicist who
made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. His accomplishments include
the independent co-discovery of the density matrix method in quantum mechanics (alongside John
von Neumann), the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the
theory of second-order phase transitions, the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity, the
theory of Fermi liquid, the explanation of Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau pole in
quantum electrodynamics, the two-component theory of neutrinos, and Landau's equations for S
matrix singularities.
He received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory of
superfluidity that accounts for the properties of liquid helium II at a temperature below 2.17 K
(−270.98 °C).
[5]. Gauging a lake’s water quality from space
Context: ‘Superhero vision’ technology measures European lake’s water quality from space
An international team of researchers has demonstrated a way to assess the quality of water on Earth
from space by using satellite technology that can visualize pollution levels otherwise invisible to the
human eye through 'Superhero vision'.
The research team from the University of Leicester, the Hungarian Academy of Science and industrial
partners has used the MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument hosted on the
satellite ENVISAT to measure pollution levels in lakes on Earth through 'Superhero vision', allowing it
to see wavelengths invisible to the human eye, which only sees red, green and blue light
While these methods have previously been used for seas and oceans, they are not readily available
for lakes, especially shallow lakes with complex optical environments defined by a mix of different
natural substances in the water.
Lake Balaton in Hungary was the subject location for this particular study. The area is popular with
tourists and is exposed to meteorological changes that could lead to accumulation of algae.
Link to the study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425714002739