Where am I? Where do I go? How does the brain
understand its position in space and navigate effortlessly through
complex spaces? Scientists (British-American scientist Dr John O’ Keefe;
and Dr May-Brit Moser and Dr Edvard Moser from Norway) who discovered
"the inner GPS" in the brain have been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize
in Medicine. The positioning system they dis-covered helps us know where
we are, find our way from place to place and store the information for
the next time.
In his youth, Dr Keefe himself was not very clear
about where he wanted to be or where he wanted to go. He initially
studied the "classics" in school, then switched to aeronautics in
college, and finally turned to philosophy and psychology. In the 1960’s,
he started studying the electrical activity of individual cells in the
hippocampus. He found that certain cells burst into life when the rat
was in a particular position in the room. And different cells were
activated in different positions. He called them "place cells".
Initially his discovery was greeted with great ridicule and it took a
long time before the scientific community accepted this entity. In 1996,
he taught the Mosers how to record the activity in these cells. The
Mosers continued the work and discovered another fascinating pattern.
They found that as the rat navigated a particular path, a grid of cells
in the enterorhinal cortex would light up in special patterns. These
grid cells are in the same location as the cells that are lost in
Alzheimer’s disease. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease are known to lose
their sense of navigation and position very early, and this research may
eventually help in their treatment (Science; 6 October. 2014)
Nanoscopy – The Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2014
In 1873, Ernst Abbe declared that optical microscopes
could never see objects tinier than 0.2 micron which is half the
wavelength of light. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year goes to 3
scientists who shattered this belief. They have used ingenious
techniques which now enables us to be able to visualize the pathways of
individual molecules inside living cells.
In 2000, Stefan Hell from Germany developed
stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. In this technique, two
laser beams are utilized: one stimulates fluorescent molecules to glow,
and the other cancels out all fluorescence except for that in a
nanometer-sized volume. Scanning over the sample yields an image with a
resolution better than Abbe’s stipulated limit.
The two Americans who share the prize with Hell are
Eric Betzig and William Moerner, who laid the foundation for
single-molecule microscopy. In this method, the fluorescence of
individual molecules is turned on and off. Scientists image the same
area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each
time. Superimposing these images yields a dense super-image resolved at
the nanolevel.
As a result of this groundbreaking work, we can now
"see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain;
track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s
diseases as they aggregate; follow individual proteins in fertilized
eggs as these divide into embryos", according to a statement released by
the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
A Toilet for Every Home
In May this year, Katra Sadatganj Village in
Badaun (UP, India) was in the news because of the ghastly murder of 2
sisters who had ventured out to relieve themselves. The country’s
leading sanitation NGO, Sulabh International adopted the village and has
built 108 toilets covering every house. It has now started a "Toilet for
every house campaign". Sulabh founder Dr Bindeshwar Pathak quoted 2010
UN figures that state more people had access to a mobile phone than a
toilet in India. He has appealed to corporate houses and big
organizations to come forward and adopt villages to build toilets in
each household (The Hindu; 1 September. 2014).
Work on Holiday
Union Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, has mooted
the idea of "Work on holiday". In view of the shortage of medical
professionals in remote and hilly areas, he has suggested that senior
doctors could provide professional services while enjoying State
Government Hospitality with their families. If secondary and tertiary
services could be provided in this manner, the State Government could
concentrate on improving primary health services. The challenge will be
to develop a method of enrolling for the program and developing
consistent care at the periphery (The Hindu; 1 September. 2014).