The Discovery of Kannurin
A new antifungal has been discovered by the
scientists from Kerala. It has been named Kannurin, since it was
discovered in Kannur. Kannurin is a lipopeptide derived from the common
soil saprophyte, Bacillus cereus. The other important
lipopeptides derived from Bacillus cereus are polymyxins.
Shreejit and Ajesh chemically characterized Kannurin using electrospray
ionization mass spectra and infrared spectroscopy. It is a cyclic
hetopeptide and has strong antifungal properties against Cryptococcus
and Candida. It was also found to be active in biofilms which can
be used topically. This major breakthrough was published in the
Journal of Applied Microbiology in August and will have significant
pharmaceutical and biotechnology applications (The Hindu 5 September
2013, J Appl Microbiol 12 August 2013).
Death of a Doctor
When Narendra Dhabolkar was brutally shot dead by
gunmen on 20 August, he managed to achieve what he had been struggling
for, over the last 18 years. He started his career as a doctor. But
after 12 years of practice he realized his calling was social activism.
He was Maharashtra’s most vocal rationalist. His state wide movement
targeted god-men and superstitious practices. In recent years he had
been constantly working towards getting an anti-superstition Bill passed
by the Maharashtra Assembly without much success. The Bill’s main goal
was to protect common people from exploitation by quacks and conmen and
eradicate gruesome practices like human sacrifice, sexual misdemeanors
and magical remedies. The Bill had been written and rewritten several
times to accommodate suggestions and objections of various political and
social institutions. Why it was opposed with such fervor is
inexplicable, when it clearly does not even hint at curbing personal
faith, personal beliefs or even personal superstitions. Four days after
his death, the anti-black magic and superstition ordinance was passed in
Maharashtra (The Hindu 21 August 2013).
Freedom Online
Advocates for free online access will be glad to know
that nearly 50% of articles published in 2011 are now accessible free
online. The data is based on a study conducted for the European Union.
Stevan Harnad, an open-access campaigner and cognitive scientist at the
University of Quebec in Montreal was asked to check a random sample of
20,000 papers published in 2008 (from the Scopus database of papers run
by Elsevier). Yassine Gargouri, a computer scientist at the same
university designed a computer program to find free articles. They found
that 32% of the papers downloaded in December 2012 were free. But when
the group checked 500 of these papers manually using Google and other
search engines and repositories, the figure increased to 48%.They then
applied their own automated software, or ‘harvester’, to 320,000 papers
downloaded from 2004 to 2011, searching publishers’ websites,
institutional archives, repositories such as arXiv, PubMed Central and
academic networking site ResearchGate and the search engine CiteSeerX.
An average of 43% of articles was free.The share of papers published in
open access journals has risen from 4% in 2004 to 12% by 2011. But
manuscripts made free by other means have also increased. For example
many are free a year after publication and researchers themselves
archive articles online on repositories and personal websites. The
number also varies between countries, with Brazil topping the charts at
above 40% and the number in the US remaining below 10%. The proportion
of free online papers is likely to increase in the next few years. From
2014, the results of all research funded by the European Union will be
open access. And in February, the US White House announced that
government-funded research should be made free to read within 12 months
of publication (Nature News, 20 August 2013).
Frugal Science
Frugal science is an idea whose time has come. Groups
are morphing ordinary bicycle pumps to make nebulizers and pressure
cookers to make autoclaves. Solarclave is a solar operated device to
sterilize surgical equipment. It is easily transportable to remote
clinics and is simple for one healthcare worker to set up.Adher.IO is
another award winning behavioral diagnostics platform. It relies on a
combination of chemical diagnostic technology, wireless communication
technology, and economic incentives to encourage patients to stay on
their tuberculosis medication. Patients are given sets of test strips
that they use every day to prove that they have taken their medication.
If proper ingestion is present in their system, a secret numeric code
appears. The patient sends his proof code via an SMS to a central
processing database that tracks the patient’s compliance rates. For each
week that the patient succeeds in taking his or her medication, they
receive a reward in the form of cell phone minutes (New Scientist 4
September 2014).