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A long time ago, man bega perceivin an ng and di ifferentiatin the ha ng ardness an nd colours of differe materia This m ay ent als. have b been the starting point of th p he questio onastowhatcompoundsmadeu up these materials and several oth her propert tiesquiteo obviouslyob bserved,su ch as colo our, hardne and the abilities of ess e substan nces to evaporate, melt an nd sublima ate. Firewasdiscovere ed.Bygivingheat,itw was to peratures of used t raise the temp compou unds and c convert the into wh em hat we wa ant. Drawing from an examp le, a people began hea ating iron, till a certa ain timewh henitbeganglowingandthought tit was go and ga old ave it a very valuab v ble standing.Thiswas stheeraof falchemy or l y. t magical chemistry At that time, su ch ideasw wereverythoughtprovoking. el lementthat tacteddiff ferentlyind different places. The notion of individual distinct lements came up and led to the el discoveryofanatom. Mancame upwith th heideaofm makingabiigsolidout tofdust as a model, which dire s ectly corres sponded to the atom discover with th atom o ms ry, he be eingoneof fthemany dustpartic clesthat co onstitutedt theamalgam mation.
Sc cienceadva ancedandp peoplerealisedthat th atoms of differe he ent elements are different because of d different properties f clei, as we as due to the ell of their nuc different number of e electrons an their nd rrangement around t d the nucleus. ar Sc cientists atomic mod dels were used to make big co m ompounds combining various el lements. d treme Chemistry developed endously during World War II. Even though the oncept of war is not very plea t asant, it co opened the way for th practical use of he hemistry in the world It alwa had n ays ch d. cr razy ideas in this cont text. Just as at one s po oint of tim the grea kings of France me at f
Following this, man entered the era of d elemen It was realised that there w nts. was not a universal element i.e. a sing i gle
conside ered lead to be the most valuab o m ble elemen on earth and used it in nt everyth hing, people made their marks by e creating explosive After a couple of g es. World Wars, and a lot of hardshiip, be mankinddidnotthinkchemistrycouldb used fo its goo Howeve this w or od. er, was proved wrong. Ch hemistry gave the wor rld compou unds of m medicinal and mater a rial value. Our forme Presiden Dr. Abd er nt dul Kalamm madeconst tructiveuse eofchemist try so as to have a direct impact on th he mentofsoci iety. betterm Chemistry began branching. It found its place in vari ious scie entific an nd technol logical field A biolo ds. ogical syste em like the human bo has various organ e ody ns. Chemistry was us sed to und derstand th he molecules that were as ssembled in differen ntmannerstoformthe eorgans,an nd their co ompositions and reactions to giv ve their pa articular functions. Materials we ere synthes sisedtorep placeorrep pairdamage ed ormalfunctioningorgans.
de esign suitable drugs. So, chemis stry has ha an impa on med ad act dical chemis and stry pharmacyan ndhealth.
Chemistry further bra f anched ou after ut ng the interactio ons of understandin materials with light an various gaseous m nd molecules. The nan otechnolog m gy side he elped in in ncreasing th surface contact he an the deliverability of the nanosize nd moleculesfo m orvariousap .Agreat pplications. ex xample of this is n anomaterial drug de eliveryfort thesolaren nergyconve ersions. Th here are ch hallenges a ahead beca ause the molecules we are pres m w sently deali with ing al lways leav some kind of negative ve n im mpact. Pollu utants from industries which m ar retheheartsofourw worldnow,a arenon biodegradable as well a biotoxic In the as c. fieldofmedicine,sidee effectsofmedicines reaconcern.Wehave enotcomeupwith ar an drug tha promises zero side effects. ny at s No drug can comp c pletely cur fatal re ai ilmentssuchasAIDSan ndcancer. We have touched the high tech but still W ha ave to make clean and inn m n novative de evelopment for our b basic human needs fo orabettera andhealthy ylife,inadd ditionto progress tow wards mod dern luxury and a y fa paced life. We hop that we can get ast pe th hebasicsrig ght.
de,afterunderstandin ng Onthe medicalsid the str ructural features of viruses an nd bacteria molecules that co a, ould fit on nto them a and supress their activity we a ere created dforcuringhealthprob blemscause ed bythem m.Hence,w wecannow wdevelopan nd
There are no words that can co s onjure up th hose e ze is feelings that made me realiz that thi is smylastfoot tstepinanin nstitutionwh here perhaps knowled dge is brew wed and its sweet ne s ectar overflow wsthosemistygreenhills senveloping gthe triangula promised land of Bhabha Ato ar d omic ResearchCenter,Mu umbai.
Forgett the starti week and a half that w ting ing d were
full of ut tter frustratio (though w BITSians h ons we have our own way of entertaining our rselves, be it any situation)broughtabo outbythecon ntinuoushagg gling to enter the "actua main ent r al" trance (that had remained unknown to us for a d almost a we eek).
Everyday standing waiting for no less tha 3 an hours to get our visitors pas looking ( ss, (and smiling) at the sec curity perso on's frown who seeing3 30ofusente eringonone eBARCeligib bility letter st tarted emitt ting his own belief of that n activity beingsomeh howunethical,thenqueuing forthes securitychec ckanddailyreadingthelong list of " "forbidden i items" inside the prem mises that som mehow mad us all fee that it wo de el ould have been a time saver if they had just e mention the list of items tha could actu ned at ually crosstho osemanyba arriers!! After we got our Identity ca r ards it was all a matter of just...half an hour!! The short b f beep sound at the m metal detect tor, the x xray scrutiniz zing eyes of the police emen, the long queue o people w of waiting for th heir turn to get ontothe elongblueb busesofBARCwithacapa acity
of 7580 pe eople but always carryi 110plus ing s jampacked peoplebum mpingonspe eedbreakers s yet gleamin chatting a through the winding ng all g path that led to ou respectiv divisions ur ve s perpetually reminding me that this largest t settlement in the world was after a part of d all f myIndia!Travellingfromthenorth hgatetothe e southgate especiallyon narainyday ywiththose e soft clouds hovering just above our heads, s giving an il llusion that that big ea arthen lamp p chalkedoutfromdiffere entvarietiesofflowering g plants on o one whole p piece of mo ountain, was s actually lit, with the se on one s ea side and the e distant sk kyline of Mumbai skyscrapers s silhouette against th setting sun were he e memories t that no cam mera could capture one c e reason bein no came or cell phone was ng era s allowedinsideitspremises! I had go a comput project based upon ot ter n "Dependenc Injection" in C# us cy sing Ninject t framework. AnApplicat tiondevelopedinObject t Oriented p programming paradigm using C# g m # consisting o a collectio of interac of on cting objects s having depe endencies u upon other components s (Services) to success sfully complete their r intendedpu urposehadt tobe worke edupon.The e application's focus on reusin ng existing g components and wiri s ing togethe disparate er e components to form a cohesive architecture s a e had led to a daunting task of reducing the g e dependencies. One way to m w mitigate the e proliferation of depen n ndencies wa by using as g Dependency Injection (DI), that allowed y n d injectingobjectsintoac class,rather thanrelying g ontheclasstocreateth heobjectitse elf. Dependency injection (DI) in objectoriented y d computer p programming is a technique that t indicates to part of a program w oa which other r objectsitca anuseand whereto l locatethem. It is a desig pattern t gn that separat behavior tes r from depen ndency resolution, thus allows loose e coupling. T The objects are configured by an n
JOURNALCLUB 5 BPHC external entity. Thus, instead of components havingtorequestdependencies,theyaregiven, orinjected,intothecomponent. There are many dependency injection frameworks available. My project focused on Ninject dependency injection framework for .NET applications. It is a fast, ultralightweight framework that expresses the mapping between a service type (generally an interface or abstract class), and an implementation type via Type Bindings in code. Most of the existing frameworksrelyonXMLmappingfilestosetup thebindingsbetweentypes. Through its fluent interface, Ninject allows to takeadvantageofthefeaturesofthelanguage (like typesafety) and IDE (like IntelliSense and code completion). It helps to split application into a collection of looselycoupled, highly cohesive pieces, and then glue them back togetherinaflexiblemanner.ByusingNinject, the code becomes easy to write, reuse, test, andmodify.Itwasaninterestingexperienceto work under highly accomplished scientists. To seetheirsincerityanddedicationtowardstheir work was aweinspiring and extremely motivating. Such an institution really propels onetogoinforresearchfield,somethingreally dreaded by most of us! On a whole the PSI experiencewastrulywonderful.
TheStockMarketEssentials
By -Darshit Shah
Everyone has at some time or the other in their life heard others talking about the stock markets. And, many of us have often stood there dumbstruck, not understanding half of what is being said. After reading this article, you might not be a pro on the Stock Markets, but will at least be able to listen and be a part of whatever conversation is going on. Lets first begin with the most basic term, Stock. So, what exactly is a Stock? A stock is, in its most primitive meaning, a part of the company. When you own a stock of a company, you are in a way, a part owner of the same company. Stocks are issued by companies in order to raise capitals and are bought by investors in order to acquire a portion of the company. Even a small share of the company will give the investors the right to have a say in how the company is run. Although they gain a portion of the companys profits, investors do not carry an obligation towards the companys defaults or lawsuits. A Stock Market, is a place where people trade their share of the company (The Shares/stocks they own). The most important Stock Exchanges in our country are the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE). Other cities like Ahmadabad, Kolkata, etc also have their own Stock Markets.
To own a companys share, that company must be a publicly listed company in any of the Stock exchanges. Originally, stocks were a piece of paper that said how much of a companys value it represented. But, today, in the digital age, we have digitized the whole thing, and stocks have been Dematerialized (Demat). Hence, to buy or trade in stocks, you need to open a Demat account with a registered Stock Broker. An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is the first distribution of shares of a company when it just gets listed on the public markets for the first time. Companies launch IPOs when they want to expand and are in need of capital, but do not want the burdens of a bank loan. The listing price of the company depends on the company's management, and you must subscribe to the IPO at that price. Later, the price of that stock is decided by the same factors that influence the market. If you are smart, Stock Markets are an excellent investment option. But, rash and ill-informed decisions can often spell your doom. To use the Stock Markets to your benefit, you must invest smartly. And for smart investments, you must keep track of the News and movements of the Stock markets. The price of a Share depends on various factors. The number of stocks of that
company, the dividend paid by it, the Fundamentals of the company, the political state of the country, and most importantly, Public sentiment. Dividend is the bonus that a company pays its stockholders out of the excess profits of the company after covering all costs and re- investments. Stock trading is not just about Buying Low and Selling High, but there are other things also, predicting the future movement of the stock and estimating the real value of a company. There are two basic types of trade cycles on the Stock Market. One is the Buy-Sell cycle while the other is the Short-Cover Cycle. The buy sell is the old, Buy Low Sell High cycle, while the Short-Cover is the opposite. You sell some Stock at a High price in anticipation that it will decrease, and then buy it back from the market to Cover for your sales. To invest in the stock market, you should be able to analyse the market on your own. Basing your investment decisions solely on others advice is equivalent of setting all your money on fire. There are two opposite schools of thought on how to analyse the market. We will cover both in brief. But, to know more about either, it is preferred that you go online and read up. The two ways are, Fundamental Analysis and Technical Analysis. Fundamental Analysis is a technique that attempts to determine a securitys value by focusing on underlying factors that affect a company's actual business and its future prospects. It looks to answer questions such as, Is it actually making a profit?
Is it in a strong-enough position to beat out its competitors in the future? Is it able to repay its debts? Is management trying to "cook the books"? There are literally hundreds of others you might have about a company. It all really boils down to one question: Is the companys stock a good investment? Think of fundamental analysis as a toolbox to help you answer this question. Most Wall Street and Dalal Street Stock market experts favour this technique, including Warren Buffet. But, mind you, this is a very very tough way of analysing and not everyone gets their Fundamental Analysis right. Technical Analysis on the other hand, does on focus on the internals of the company. Technical Analysts believe that everything that is to be known about a company can be known from its past prices. Also, they like to believe that the past price patterns, will always keep repeating itself in the future, and hence they can use these charts to predict the future prices. Hence, Technical Analysts study price history charts and make predictions about the direction in which a particular stock is heading. Neither of these techniques can be taught, especially not in one paragraph. It is advisable that you go online and look these up, for a good understanding of the same. With this knowledge, now you can atleast stand there, and understand a part of the discussion on Stock markets. Go ahead, have fun, and invest. Dont let your money stagnate, it only loses value.
civil enginee ering has gra adually evolved from m simple pra actices and methods s, to construction in extreme en nvironments using complex x analyses and technique es with the a aid of computers, robotics and d other sophistica ated technol logy. arliesttypesofengineering. yantemplesinMexico,c contemporar ryto rappan civilization, still stand tall. The entalsofplanningwhichseemsto bea concept had been ther for millen d re nnia. en public p places, the focus of ur rban existed in a ancient c all civilizations. The gineers of the ancien world mixed nt with open s spaces such as courtya h ards, d light and ventilation in the rooms n keeping priv vacy intact. They skillfully omeslivable at a time w e when electri icity,
From huts to houses, l logs to bridg ges, mud to o ood to steel we have c l come a long g cement, wo way. Thous sands of pe eople have engaged in n research an experime nd entation to give us the e
JOU URNALCLUB 10 B BPHC C fmaterialsa andhavehelpedusincre ease ciency.Over time, civil engineering has from simple practices and e y evolved f s, to co onstruction in extreme ments using complex analyses and ues with the aid of com e mputers, robo otics her sophistic cated techn nology.We h have o this stage only due to the effort of o ts been in the past, few of which have b nedbelow. or a va alley. The first man made bridges s weremadeofspansoflogs,wh hichevolved d es boopoles.Th hefirst book k to stone and bamb on brid dge engineering was written by y Hubert Gautier in 1716 6. Modern n cture now defines six types of x f architec bridges:
Beam bridges: the mo ost simple e ofstruct turalforms being sup pported by y anabutmentateach hendofthedeck.
Cable-s stayed bridg a bridge t ge that consists s of one or more column (normally referred to ns o as towers or pylons), wi cables supporting the r ith e bridge deck.
Acantilever bri idgeis abridgebuilt a t usingcantile evers, stru uctures th hat project t horizontally into space, supported on only one y e end.
A suspe ension bridge is a type of bridge in e n which the deck (the load-bearing portion) is g s hung belo ow suspen nsion cables on vertical suspenders. A truss bridge is a bridge co omposed of f connected elements (t typically stra aight) which h may be stre essed from t tension, com mpression, or r sometimes both in response to dynamic c
JOURNALCLUB 11 BPHC
loadsCable, Cantilever, Suspension and Truss
Environmental engineering
It is a new sub division of civil engineering whichisemergingnowadays.Ithasbecomethe need of the hour as environmental change is affecting humanity significantly. It focuses on usingalternativematerialsandpracticesincivil engineering to achieve sustainable development and reduce the burden on resources. It also includes practices like recyclingconstructionmaterialtoreducewaste generation. The field needs enormous advancementandhasalotofscopeinthenear future. Rainwater harvesting, landscaping or climate dependent architecture, they are branchingoutfromcivilengineering. BeitThestatueoflibertydesignedbyFrederick Bartholdi,giftedbyfrancetoUSA,orthestatue of Thiruvalluvar at Kanyakumari or even the statue of Buddha in Husain sagar lake in our own Hyderabad are structures built out in the water, overcoming great challenges and show great innovation. Civil engineering has evolved fromabasicsciencetoahighlymodernizedone overthesamefundamentals.Todayithascome to structures like BurjKhalifa, the 828meter skyscraper in Dubai. The future of civil engineeringisreallybright,withsomanymore engineerscomingup
bridges.
Genesis of roads
From the earliest times, one of the strongest indicators of a society's level of development has been its road system. A road built in Egypt by the Pharaoh Cheops around 2500 BC is believed to be the earliest paved road on record-a construction road 1,000 yards long and 60 feet wide that led to the site of the Great Pyramid. The Silk Route stretched 8,000 miles from China, across Asia, and then through Spain to the Atlantic Ocean. The modern world classifies roads into Metalled: The route of the roadway is dug down several feet,large stones were placed and compacted, followed by successive layers of smaller stones, until the road surface was composed of small stones compacted into a hard, durable surface. Asphalt: Asphalt also known as bitumen is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semisolid that is present in most crude petroleums and in some natural deposits. Concrete:Concrete surfaces (specifically, Portland cement concrete) are created using a concrete mix of Portland cement, gravel, sand and water. Composite surfaces: composite surfaces
combine Portland cement concrete and asphalt. They are usually used to rehabilitate existing roadways rather than in new construction. Bituminous Surface Treatment (BST) is used mainly on low-traffic roads, but also as a sealing coat to rejuvenate an asphalt concrete
pavement. It generally consists of aggregate spread over a sprayed-on asphalt emulsion or cut-back asphalt cement.
it sawhitepixel;elseass ignitavalue eofone. Th hiswouldcre eatethebina aryimagem matrixIas sh hown in the figure. Yo can resize your ou or riginal image into 45x45 using a function in e 5, op CV, and then digitiize it. This will help pen d yo to get all the binary image matrix I in a ou y similarsize. Tr raining proc cess include s the gener ration of th hedatabasethatistosto oreinthecomputers br rain, the pix distributiion pattern of every xel alphabet. First step is t collect as many a to pi ictures of an alphabet say A as possible (a around 100).Make digit binary matrix of tal m ea achimageof falphabetA A. Next step is to replace alll the zeros in each I t with (1). The resulting matrix is ca w e alled the in nputmatrixM M.
JOURN NALCLUB 1 13 BPHC dd t Now ad matrices M of all the images of alphabet A, and sto this final matrix wk is a ore s th (K=K character). txtfile.( estingandpr rediction> Te Sa the digita binary m atrix is Ik . You will ay al ha avetocalculate3valuesshownbelow, Heresa anexample There are three diff ferent image of alphab es bet e ut S. The binary inpu matrices I for each of themareshown,addedresultisalsoshown. . Observe the region where the pixels shou e, ns e uld not exis have neg st gative value and tho es, ose wherep pixelsshouldexisthavep positivevalue es. Carry o out the sim milar proced dure of ea ach alphabetandstore inacommo txtfile.Th on his base, which the comput ter txt file is your datab willutilizetorecogn nizeanalpha abet.Thema ain t t advantage of a database in txt file is that it ce, doesnt occupy a large spac and it is e,i.e.databa aseneedsto obegenerat ed reusable only once. Now, as our datab s base has be en we dy ter made, w are read to use it for charact recognit tion. Take an input image with a characte er.Alwaysre emembertouseacropp ed image, in which th alphabet touches t he he t edges of the image: the first st is same as tep database tion proc cess Ima ge format digitization. allyuwill Fina your get cognition rec quo otientQ You u will ha 26 weight matrice in your database ave es d co orresponding gtoeachalp phabet.Calculatethe va alues of Q, for the input binary mat f t trix, with ea achweightm matrix.Great teristhevalueofQ, moreconfidencedoesthe m esystem,be estowon th input pa he attern (inpu image) as being ut a similar to a pattern al ready know to it wn weight matri The alph ix). habet corres sponding (w to the weight matrix with maximum value of o t h Q,isthepredictedcharact Q ter. ed We have no compute the pro W ow ocess of da atabase gen neration an d prediction of an im mage. As told earlier gre eater the tra aining of th he databas se, more accurate are the a pr redictions of the algo o orithm. That means t gr reater are the number of images used to t cr reate the database of an alphabet, better is n th performa he ance of the software. So, if we S ta ake 500 images of ea ach alphabe while et, Aftercropping
JOURN NALCLUB 1 14 BPHC ion of the d database we will have to e generati deal wit 500x26 images. This process w th s will consume lots of m memory, wh hich we can nt e affordto ouseinamobilewhere storagespa ace islimited d. So,toso olvethisprob blemwehav veaprocess Runtime template generation Open C e e CV stores images in the form of pointers. S So, instead ofusingima A agesofanalphabetsay to crea ate a datab base, we created the c ese templatesatruntim me,usingap program.Op en CV has a predef s fined function which is capable of writing a text on a given bla nk in image, i a given font. So, we used a bla nk image and using the abov mention ed ve n ont function put a single alphabet in a given fo on the blank image, thus ge enerating o our y, ifferent fon nts template. Similarly using di einthefunc ction,wegen neratedallt he available templates of an alphabet, and used them f for tabase gene eration of that alphabe t et. the dat We car rried out a similar pr a rocess for all alphabets. So, the m memory usa at runtim age me nly getsreducedtotheamountusedtostoreon 1 blank image. But there is a limitation to it. f ble There are limited numbers of fonts availab function we are using. So, we can e nt in the f generate more than 3036 tem e mplates of an alphabet using above meth hod. Conto our on detectio is another technique which can be usedtosolvethispr roblem. As I told you earlier there are three modulles d r t of OCR software. Training and testin R . ng predictio on module have been alrea dy es b discusse in the Basic algorith ed hm. Now le ets discuss the prepro ocessing phase. The fir rst step is t thresholding an image. First convert a g F t coloured image into a grey sca image, a nd d o ale then car out proc rry cess of thresholding. Eve ery pixelin acolouredi imagehasa valuefrom 0 hresholding converts all the pixe a els 255. Th abovea certainvalu uecalledthre eshold(usua ally
12 to 1, res to zero. T 28) st Thus we get a black t an ndwhiteima age. N Nextstepiss segmentatio n,extraction noflines an letters. Use the simple lo nd ogic for ex xtraction,countthenum mberofblack kpixelsin ea row and store the value in a vector ach e (d dynamic arra in C++). This is your vertical ay r pr rojection. Th row whe a line be he ere egins will ha some black pixels, b the row above it ave but would be bla w ank with no black pix xels. This o meansthatiftwosuccess ivevaluesin m navector ar zero or some value> re s >zero, indicates the be eginning of line. Similar if two su rly, uccessive va alues in a ve ector, are so ome value>z zero and ze ero,marksth heendofline e. Fo letter se or egmentation , you can make a ounting number of ho orizontal pr rojection (co bl lackpixelsin neachcolum mn)oneach line,and us sethesamelogictomar gandthe rkbeginning en of the letter, as for t line. Cro nd the opping is ve ery essential feature of OCR after e R, th hresholding the image should be cropped, be efore segm menting it t. Similarly after y ex xtraction of letter, crop the image before p e fo ormingweigh htmatrix. Th heprocessw wehavesee nfortheOC CRisone of the most basic metho f ods. Deeper you dig in the rabb nto bits holes m more interes sting you willfindimage w eprocessing g.So,tryityo ourself.
JOURNALCLUB 15 BPHC
HISTAMINE
ByShrutiSinghKakan
The human body is made up of numerous organic present in the nasal cavity, increased vascular substances,proteins,lipids,nucleicacidstonamea permeabilitycausesfluidstoescapefromcapillaries few. Millions of chemical reactions involving these into the tissues. This causes running nose, watery organicsubstancesiswhatmakesabodyliving.One eyes, sneezing and nasal congestion. Another ofthemanyclassesofsubstancesfoundinourbody allergic symptom caused by histamine is isproteins.Thesearepolymericmacromoleculesof constriction of smooth muscles. In response to an aminoacids,eachoneuniquefromtheother.They allergen, histamine with other chemicals brings about this contraction. Often the smooth muscles performmultiplefunctionsthatareindispensibleto runthisnaturalmachine. Oneofthe1000000orso aroundtheairpassage(tracheae)constrictcausing suffocation and in extreme cases, there can be a proteins found in our body is Histamine, and like completeclosureofthetracheawhichisobviouslya every other protein,has a unique role to play. It is life threatening situation. This is what called so because it is made up happensinasthmaattacks.Hence,this of histidine(an amino acid) allergicresponseofhistamineisoneof residues.Histamine acts as a Histamineactsasa themajorcausesofasthma. neurotransmitter (chemicals neurotransmitter(chemicals that transmit signals from one thattransmitsignalsfrom The symptoms of some allergic brain cell to another) and is onebraincelltoanother) reactions are quite similar to those of involved in many allergic andisinvolvedinmany bacterialorviralinfections.Hence,the reactions and immune allergicreactionsand true cause of the problem can be responses. immuneresponses difficult to diagnose sometimes. The right diagnosis is very important As a neurotransmitter it is because only the right medication can released from neuron cells relievethepersonfromtheallergy.Thismeansthat called histaminergics. The actions of these cells modulate sleep. They fire histamines most when in cases of nasal congestion due to allergens, anti body needs wakefulness, fired more slowly when bacterial or antiviral drugs will not be effective. body is relaxing or feeling tired. And during sleep, Only antiallergic drugs will be able to cure the thefiringiscompletelystopped.Inshorthistamine symptoms.Histamine related allergies are treated is what keeps the body awake. It also protects the byaclassofdrugscalledantihistamines.Theyhave been in use since 1930. These drugs vary in their body against susceptibility to convulsions (involuntarycontractionofmuscles),lesions(partof mechanism of action. Some antihistamines effect atissuethatisdamaged)andstress. result by neutralising histamine so that it does not cause inflammation. Other antihistamines inhibit An allergy is a disorder or defect of the immune the inflammation causing chemicals released by systemthatiscausedbysubstances(allergens)that leukocytes with the help of histamine. Some are otherwise harmless. Histamine plays a major commonantihistaminesareClaritinandAllegra. roleinbringingaboutthesedefective responses.It Allergic reaction is a response of the immune isreleasedwhenallergenscomeincontactwiththe system that should not happen in the regular antigenboundedwhitebloodcells(mastcellstobe course of action because substances that cause precise) which causes several allergic symptoms. allergies should not be dangerous. Living with One of them is an inflammatory response. On allergic symptoms is annoying and potentially release,Histamineincreasesthepermeabilityofthe dangerous. Antihistamines are the drugs that nearbybloodvesselsandgapsarecreatedbetween provide us relief and comfort from these faults of the cells of vascular tissue causing blood fluids to our immune system. Our immune system is seep out into the regions outside cells. Thus, a swelling or an inflammation is produced. The intended to protect us whereas in this case its releaseofhistaminealsotriggersnearbyleukocytes actions are contrary. But after all, nothing can be tosecretechemicalsthataidininflammation.When perfectandsothereareloopholesinourdazzlingly allergens come in contact with the mast cells complexandseeminglyfoolproofimmunesystem.
JOURNALCLUB 16 BPHC
TRUTHbehindEUREKAmoments
BySagarika
Ronak sat in his room flipping through the newspaper. His horoscope read: youll come across new opportunities and this will help combatyourboredomofdailylife. YasurethoughtRonak.Hislastfewdayshad comprised of nothing but studying till late nights and sitting through endless there petrified with their jaws dropped. Then thefigurebegantotalkWell,Ihopethisgoes well.IamSusanandIdontbelongtoyourtime asamatteroffactnowhereclosetoit,Imfrom 2111. Therewasalongpauseandtheatmospherein the room grew tense. Shubham jumped out of the bed and sprinted towards the door but Ronakheldhimback.Shubhamturnedtowards him and saw a mischievous glint in his eyes whichsaidthiscouldbefun.BynowShubham was entirely confused to defy or even comprehend anything so he obediently sat down. Susan began to talk again, This went betterthanusual.Attimespeopletrytothrow meout. What do you mean? Do you time travel very often?askedRonak. YesasamatteroffactIdo.Ibelongtoasecret society named Illuminous. It has comprised of humongous scientists from all times. It dates back to the time of Archimedes. Our job is to safeguardourfuturebymodifyingourpast,or better making sure the past is exactly as we knowit.ItallstartedwhenDrSamulehadmade the time machine in 2040. Ever since we have been going back in time whenever it is appropriateandlettheconcernedpersonknow astowhattheoryinphysics,chemistryandalot morethingshehastoworkonorpropose You are bluffing, how that is even possible? Intervened Ronak. Susan smiled and began to talk again, Dont you notice several theories
examinations. He saw no reason as to why todayshouldbeanydifferent. His best friend Shubham barged into his room with a heavy book in his hand. I am tired of mugginguptheseendlessformulas.Cantthere bejustoneformulatomakeourlivessimple?. WithathudhesatonRonaksbed. Allofasuddentherewasaflashoflight.Ronak and Shubham were taken aback. The two of them hardly got any time to register what is happening, when a human figure began to substantiate /emerge out of thin air. It was a girl,somewhereinhertwentieswhoseemeda lotlikeanyothergirltheyhadevermettilldate. However there was something peculiarly different about her .Her head seemed abnormally large with a receded hairline. Her fingers were long and she was dressed in an entirely white suit. Shubham and Ronak sat
JOURNALCLUB 17 BPHC havecomeupandformulasproposedwithouta plausibleexplanationandweacceptittobethe work of genius or we come to the conclusion that these great men are very intuitive. Later howevertheirworkisprovedbyothers.Take David Rutherford for instance he discovered nitrogen by removing all other components of airknownatthattime.Howcouldhebesosure that the 78% air left with him was purely nitrogen.EvenLaplaceseemedtohavecomeup with his length contraction formula intuitively withnoproof. Sowhoistherealscientist?askedShubham Even I am in no position to answer that question .But you could give these scientists some credit because they are the ones who were open minded enough to believe in time travel. Ever since Archimedes time Illuminous has been running and recruiting people. They have been maintaining record of exactly what timeandplacetheymetpeoplefromfuturefor ourreference.Youaresoontobeapproached IfIamguessingrightwearesoontocomeup with some new theory, was Ronaks swift reply. You guessed it right noble prize winner Dr. Ronak Kaushik ..Susan continued, You are to workwithlightandprismsandmakeinvisibility a reality. These are your papers. She dug into her coat pocket and removed an envelope which she handed over to Ronak.As for you Shubhamyouaretocomeupwithoneformula which can explain almost all laws of electromagnetism. Hold on, Shubham seemed to be tensed what if you had never approached me would our future be any different, Very different in fact,Susantriedtoexplain,Bythetheoryof paralleluniverseeverytimeImodifythepasta parallel universe is created. One universe is deprivedofknowledgebuttheotherisnot.Itis inourinteresttoenlightenourpastforabetter future. Well in that case I want to stick to this universe. was Shubhams firm reply. I will workonthisformulamyself. I knew it you would do that. You are very famous in our society as you are the first scientisttorejectsuchanoffer.Iguessitstime formetoleave. Just one last question said Ronak Why is it you are a bit Different. Well its because of evolution. Long hours of working on the computer have increased the length of our fingers. Our brain has been working a lot so it grew in size and our heating mechanisms are only improving so hair is of no use now to us. Now I should get going. All the best and good day. There was a pop sound and the room wentsilent. Hundred years down the line Susan appeared out of thin air inside a cubical box attached to heavymachinery.Asshewalkedoutofthebox she spoke to her colleague, Mission 57
numberoflinesasthe numberof animals th have. Then they would leav them hey T ve fo grazing and will cro out each of the or a oss lin nesasthea animalscam meback.So oabacus wasamajordevelopme w entforcalcu ulations. Th was the early pha his e ase, then ca ame the ne extphasew withthedis scoveryofz zeroand Arabic nume erals. It ma mathem ade matics a co ommon lan nguage for trade all over the o world.Itisin w nthisphase ethatmath hematics be egan to evolve as a s science rath than her ju ustbeingam mediumfor rtrade.
Py ythagorasw wasoneoft thepioneer rsofthis ag ge.Hemadeadetailed dstudyoft triangles an ndcameup pwiththef famousPyt thagoras th heorem wh hich laid th foundat he tion for fu urtherstudy yoftrigono ometry.
Descart tes develo oped the coordina ate geomet and op try pened a di imension f for time an motion studies. Time went o nd on and w had Euclidean geometry to we g Newton nian Calculu The nex phase ca us. xt an be calle the mod ed dern phase of which w we allarea apart.Itisinthisphasethatpeop ple started discov vering mathematiics nstance, pro obability w was everywhere, for in develop by a guy who wa a gamble ped as er. We go to se ot ee the principles of p mathem matics be eing imple emented in cloning, ,geneticse etc. Nash's equilibrium found application in m marketing and his famous game theo g ory s arket beha aviour quiite predicts the ma efficiently .So it went on and we ha ad ting device like Nap es pier's bone es, comput Pascalin neandfinallythecom mputer.Sow we saw how mathematics evolve and the ed ere are s still man ny avenu ues whe ere mathem matics can find applic cation. It ju ust needs our work on it.Mathematics is defined dasthephi ilosophyof thinking.S So, howwe ethinkabou uttheproblemathand d
is the mo ost import tant aspect. For in nstance,1+1 is the f 1 first proble one em st tudiesasastudent,to oakinderga artenkid th solution is simple; 2,but if we talk he ; ab bout grow wnups like us ,how many w an nswerscanwegive?D Dependingo onwhat we think, we can sa based on the w w ay orientationo ofthetwov vectorsthe eanswer ca lie betw an ween 2 an +2, we can say nd numerically it is 2 or we can say 1+1 r s eq quals 10,no we hav opened Boolean ow ve al lgebra.
So mathema o atics is vast and will continue t c to oevolveexponentially ybothinth heworld an in the mind of an individual. It is an nd m ex xponential growth lik the gro ke owth of ch harge in a capacit tor. So let the l mathematician in you e m evolve and we will discover yet many und disclosed mysteries m of ftheworld.
hemistry yofLov ve
!!Itisthefee elingthathasnoends.Ma any hersandartis stshavetriedtheirlevelbe est ure and gaug its depth. So why shou ge uld ersandscientistsstaybeh hind?Theyha ave edexperimentsandtriedt tofindwhatiits nginlove.So folks..settledownasIa am u our describe you what happens inside yo enyouarelookingatyour rsoulmate(a and thatyourwor rldisnowcom mplete!!) ing of love is divided into 3 stages ea s o ach by a cocktail of different hormones a and s.Thestagesare: es : This stage is driven by sex hormone osteroneand oestrogen(b bothinmena and men). action: This is the stage of being lov ve ck when yo our world appears to be a mingaroundo onecentrepoint.Thisstage eis racterizedbyt thefollowing3chemicals: Adrenaline: T This chemical activates yo l our stress respo onse, increas your blo se ood levels of adrenalin and co ortisol. This h has ming affect that when y t you such a charm unexpectedly bump into your new lov y ve, you start to sweat, your heart races a h and goesdry. yourmouthg
ARSHDEE EPSINGH
this novel relatio n onship. In short this chemical stimulate desire and reward es d ggeringanint tenserushof pleasure. bytrig It has the same e effect on the brain as o s taking cocaine. So yes, hippies are the est s tural high happie people as they get nat oflove eandartificiallhighofdrugs s. c) Seroto onin: It is one of lov ve's most import tant chemica that may explain als y Why your lover ke y eeps popping in your g though hts,whenyou uhavefalleninlove.
) nt ment is the bond that b 3) Attachmen : Attachm keepscoup plestogether longenoughforthem to have an raise childr and there are two nd e ren hormonesresponsiblefo orthis: a) Oxytoc cin :Also known as cuddling hormo one this ho ormone deep pens the feeling gsofattachme entandmake escouples feel much closer to one another.. r cin reason for th strong he Oxytoc is also r bondb betweenmoth herandbaby.
b) Vasopressin: This h hormone also helps to o ain long term relationship. mainta Vasopressinworks withkidneyt tocontrol thirst. Its role was unknow until wn ists looked at prairie vole Prairie t es. scienti volesa aredescendan ntsofratfam milywhose relatio onship and m mating pattern match with humans. Whe male prairie voles h en were given a drug that suppre g esses the withtheir effectofvasopressiin,thebondw erdeteriorate edimmediately. partne Sotheseare ethechemica alsthatmingle einside ourbodywhenyoufallinlo ove,butloveisreallya yo co omplex phe enomenon .Apart from these m ch hemicals, there are vario ous other fac ctors that co ontributefor love to blosso So try th om. hedrug of lo oveSafe,free andawesome e!!
Dopamine : Effect of th chemical is his d ed ess characterized by increase energy, le needforslee eporfood,focusedattentiion andexquisite edelightinsm mallestdetails sof
JOURNALCLUB 22 BPHC
CloudComputing
Cloud computing where data and applicationsexistascloudsonwebserver is a developing phase in IT. Few say, updated version of utility computing: basicallyvirtualservers,whichreducethe need for physical machines, are available over the internet. Others say, anything youconsumeoutsidethefirewallisinthe cloudincludingconventionaloutsourcing. ITneedstoincreaseoraddcapabilitieson the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel or licensing new softwares. Cloud computingencompassesanysubstitution based or payperuse service that in real time over internet, extends ITs existing capabilities.Inacloudcomputingsystem, thereisasignificantworkloadshift.Local computersnolongerneedtodoallheavy lifting when it comes to running applications. The networks of computers that form the cloud handle it instead. Hardware and software needs decrease on users side. The only thing users computer needs to be able to run is the cloudcomputingsystemsinterfacewhich isassimpleasawebbrowser.Therefore, an improvement in storage, processing power or technology enables innovations that were not possible before high speed internet.Forexample,itmadeproductions likeYoutubepossible.Anditmakesthese opportunities unusually accessible. It is different from traditional outsourcing; unlessonenegotiatedalongterm
HIMSHI
contact. One can often switch far easier thanchargingIToutsourcers.Whencloud computingisadoptedbyanorganization, itisthrownintothepoolwithrestofthe onlineworldinmanyways,whetherthisis theemploymentofsocialtools,SaaS,non relational databases or a host of other technologiesinnewcloud.Intheend,this serves many companies acquire the skills to complete effectively in 21st century by the awareness of greater internet and Web2.0. Globalization and recessionary economy has raised IT standards. Cloud computing has a vast potential in terms of retail methodologies that can minimize the operational cost by using the 3rd party based IT capabilities as a service. It will not only increase the ROI but also will help in lowering the total cost of ownership. Well see some very well funded new cloud startups that lack the baggage of existing leaders and bring a new sensibility (radical openness and transparency, new technology). Business users will be able to adopt many future cloud computing solutions entirely using selfservicewithlessandlessinvolvement of IT department. With fewer technical andeconomicbarrierstocreatenewways toimprovethebusiness,cloudcomputing will promote new budding entrepreneurs tousetoolstocreatesolutionsanyway.It willplayacrucialroleinrevolutionizingIT sector.
By-Sag garika T.
Until then, U ,
OUR TEAM R
FromL LefttoRig ght: TopRo ow:Sanjan naShah,A ApekshaSinghaneri,GarvMali ik,Himans huRai Middle Row : Sumeda Acharya, A e A Aishwarya KVN,Sah a haja Thalla , K. So am oumya, JatinC Chuglani,A ArshdeepSingh,JatinAdlakha a Bottom Row: Vaidehi Murarka, Kriti Po m oddar, Aishwarya Reddy, Jasleen J Sachde eva, N. S SaiChaitan nya, Ramit Mehta, Vaishna Palak Jha, Sripriya , avi, k AnushaB.,Prat thima
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