[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 Tamil-speaking 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. Mitras 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 PenroseHawking 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 GinzburgLandau
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 lakes water quality from space

Context: Superhero vision technology measures European lakes 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