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VK Sasikala – Once a kingmaker. Will she be a Maker or a Breaker?

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VK SASIKALA AIADMK

The disruption over her homecoming marked with so much of speculations. Clad in her green colour saree like the late CM Jayalalitha may be to reiterate that the mantle is still on her. This goes without saying as she is also flying the party’s flag on her car. After being expelled from the position of party chief by the present CM E Palaniswami, the man she handpicked as Chief Minister as part of the reward to comply with her vision and to overturn O Paneersalvam the present Deputy CM.  It’s perceived that she may claim her grounds.  But her modus operandi people keep contemplating.

Tamilnadu is awaiting a great shakening.  Let’s wait and watch what’s getting withered and what is going to stand firm at the wake of this shakening. The acid test is here to pass.

The toxin of Alzheimer’s spreads like ‘Trojan Horse’

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Alzheimer's trojan horse

Protein connected with Alzheimer’s disease use the brain’s cells as a “Trojan Horse” to intensify the disease.  The protein ‘tau’ which is present in the healthy brain cells is used by our brain for normal function to connect the neuron ‘tangles’, which is the core area of Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

The team from the Queensland Brain Institute at UQ have been trying to find how the protein spreads through the brain after an initial build-up, eventually causing these tangles.

Dementia expert Professor Jürgen Götz said their research revealed that the protein is carried by small sacs of material produced by brain cells called exosomes, which function like mails/letters – physical packets sent between two points which contains information. The brain unfortunately punches holes in these sacs, allowing the tau protein to spill out.

“This is all a natural mechanism of the cells in the brain, it’s almost like these cells are acting like Trojan horses, they contain these proteins that spill out and cause this damaging effect”.  Professor Götz says that now they have an understanding of how the protein is spreading through the brain, they can work on ways to halt its spread before it affects large areas of a sufferer’s neural network.

Currently, there is no treatment to either prevent or stop the effect of Alzheimer’s, with the only treatment currently available focusing on reducing the worst of the symptoms.

High ALERT – ‘KOBALOS’ A Malware with Linux stain is attacking Supercomputers worldwide

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Kabalos

This malware is versatile and is equipped with infrastructure mainly Command and Control structure.  Kabalos are targeting high performance computing clusters and super computers running multiple operating systems.  This new stain of Malware is named ‘Kabalos’ because it mimic ancient sprite from Greek mythology, known to be as a mischievous creature fond of tricking and frightening mortals.

Kabalos functions as a backdoor and is designed to steal SSH credentials / Secure Shell or Secure Socket Shell – a cryptographic network protocol for providing secure remote login, even over unsecured networks

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CANCER IS LIFE ALTERING BUT NOT LIFE DEFINING

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Dr V Shanta - Cancer Day

The second leading cause of death globally is cancer. The World Cancer Day cannot be ignored as it reiterates its message through out the world that ‘I Am and I Will’.  This campaign has an empowering message to induce commitment on people at various level there by raising awareness concerning cancer prevention. 

The day cannot be complete without remembering Dr.V.Shanta, who was the  Chair Person of the Cancer Institute, Adyar.  Dedicated her life to the prevention, treatment of Cancer and her contribution to the field of oncology through her commitment to research during her medical career of 65 years.  Which is humungous at all measures.  She remained a workaholic and accessible to patients till her very end.  The fight is not over.  Let the mantle of her legacy and responsibility fall on each one of us to carry forward what we could do best in our given capacity.

Here is a quick snippet of promising development in treatment and prevention of cancer

Immunotherapy breakthroughs – the drugs recognise and destroys cancerous cells. A big break through against previously untreatable cancers

Another technique is checkpoint inhibitor therapy – where proteins contained within cancer cells bind with immune cells, sends ‘off’ signals to the rest of the immune system there by disabling the body’s natural defences.  This checkpoint inhibitor therapy blocks this binding and allows killer immune T cells to seek and destroy the pathogen.  This therapy is still under trial.

While ‘vaccine’ for tumours is still underway predicting and giving precise elective treatment has come a long way

Nanotechnology – is yet another area of growing interest. By using nano capsules, it directly addresses the tumour cells without damaging the normal cells.

 

It’s time to act therefore we could live without the fear of cancer. Let’s create awareness and understanding about Cancer while breaking the myths and misinformation. As more than one third of the cancers are preventable. 

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YouTube ‘clip feature’…..?

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YouTube cut feature

To contend with streaming platforms such as Twitch, YouTube has come out
with a feature to capture short segments of content and share moments from
videos or streams. Right now, Youtube has announced that they are testing on
the clipping feature starting from today.

Clips on YouTube allows a person to select a 5-60 second segment of the content (video uploads and streams) to be shared on other platforms. If anyone is viewing content from one of the channels in this experiment, then the person may see a clip icon  ‘scissors’ der the video that will allow him to select a portion of the video that he may want to clip. The clip will be played on the original video and loop repeatedly.

Potato is the secret of weight loss…..?

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Potato diet

When we are on a weight loss the first thing that goes out of our diet is the potato. But the new fad diet is the extreme way of consuming nothing but only the cooked potatoes for a set period of time with the goal of achieving rapid weight loss. Many have claimed to have had a significant weight loss.  Of Couse, there are no scientific studies that have been done so far to support these claims.  But the thumb rule is to stay away from the deep-fried cooking.

But what is the Potato diet?

It’s committed to eating plain cooked white potatoes for three to five days to lose up to half a kg per day. No toppings recommended except for salt.  Another long term version of the potato diet which has cropped up in the recent times is the Spud fit challenge created by Aussie dieter Andrew Taylor, who ate nothing but potatoes for an entire year to shed around 50 kgs of weight.  In this version sweet potatoes, herbs, spices and even certain fat-free condiments are allowed like tomato sauce or barbecue sauce.

‘There’s nothing special about the potato in terms of weight loss,’ says an enthusiast. ‘It simply does whatever any diet tries to do: limits foods in order to limit total energy consumption. Most likely someone would get bored of eating nothing but potatoes pretty quickly and therefore end up eating less food overall compared to usual.’

The Parade and the Tractor Rally… Where will the eyeballs be?

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REpublic day and Famers rally

Republic day parade will be unique this year as there will be no chief guest.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his visit due to the rise of Covid cases in UK.  Government has downsized the spectators to 25000, parade route shortened,  tableaux reduced save the replica of the Ram Temple of Ayodhya alone and ofcourse no child below 15 will partake in the parade. Jawans to wear masks and social distancing for the onlookers

Farmers’ from all across the country are marching towards Delhi in order to take part in the scheduled rally. Tractors from Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan have reached on Tikri border as the farmers sit in for protest for nearly two months. Farmers’ leaders have said the tractor parade will remain peaceful and not affect the official Republic Day parade.

The farmers protesting against the Central government’s new farm laws have been given permission by the Delhi Police to hold a tractor rally on Republic Day. However, the protesters are not happy with the restrictions put on the rally by the police. Kisan unions say they wanted to go to the old Ring Road but have been given permission to hold a rally at a place which largely comes under Haryana.

Rupees 5, 10 and 100 notes to go out of circulation after March – RBI

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RBI demonetisation old notes

RBI is yet to send an official statement on halting the old currency notes. But many media reports that an RBI official has stated that these notes will not be in circulation as per the apex bank plan.

It’s also stated that new notes of Rupees 100, 10 and 5 have already come into circulation to help smoothen demands at the time of pulling off the old notes. Just being conscious to streamline demand by ensuring the circulation of the notes of the specific denomination to end the circulation of old currency notes without chaos.

Will Google and Facebook pay?

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The US has asked Australia to scrap the proposal to make Facebook  and  Google to pay for news sourced from local media outlets. Further it has asked Australia to study the markets further to develop a voluntary code if it’s appropriate.

But the proposed law formulated in Australia has the political support to make Google and Facebook get into price arbitration if the commercial agreement with Australian media has not arrived. Though the US has raised its concerns on the harmful outcome if the consensus was not reached. Australia seems not to be thwarted in spite of lobbying efforts.

The Australian government upped their antenna post the conclusion of their investigations that the tech giants market power in the media industry will lead to the situation that may pose threat to the country’s democracy. The progression of events pointing toward proceeding with mandatory code.

Nevertheless, Google and Facebook may be limiting their offering to Australia.  As of now for every A$100 of online advertising spend, A$53 goes to Google, A$28 to Facebook and A$19 to other media companies in Australia.