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[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