Schools 4 Online

Romance may happen every day, but finding true love in London is as rare as aliens in the galaxy, says one London-based economist.
Peter Backus, a teaching fellow of economics at the University of Warwick, has calculated that he has a 0.00034 percent chance of finding love in the British capital using the same “Drake” equation scientists use to determine the potential number of extra-terrestrials in our galaxy.

American astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake devised his namesake equation in the early 1960s.

The 31-year-old Backus — who lives on a narrow boat in central London — is not even that particular about his ideal match, requiring only that she be a London-based female, aged 24-34, with a university education.

“I am not trying to be an elitist or anything,” he said about his educational requirements. “Everyone has preferences. I just think we would have more in common.”
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A new fast-acting disinfectant that is effective against bacteria, viruses and other germs could help stop the spread of deadly infections in hospitals, German scientists said on Wednesday.
Researchers from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin said they had developed a fast-acting, practical formula which would kill germs on surgical instruments without damaging them through corrosion.

Disinfectants are the first line of defense against the spread of hospital-acquired infections and effective cleaning of surgical instruments is vital to beating them.

The German formula works against a wide range of germs, including some that survive ordinary disinfectants, such as Mycobacterium avium bacteria which can cause a tuberculosis-type illness and enteroviruses that may cause polio.

Drug-resistant bacteria, the so-called “superbugs,” are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide and poor hygiene among staff is often blamed for the spread of such infections. They kill about 25,000 people a year in Europe and about 19,000 in the United States.

In previous studies, the German team found a simple alkaline detergent that could eradicate prions — disease-causing proteins that are particularly hard to get rid of because they can become fixed onto surfaces through the use of some conventional disinfectants.

In their new study, Michael Beekes and Martin Mielke from the Institute’s hygiene department mixed the alkaline with varying amounts of alcohol and tested its ability to rid surgical instruments of bacteria, viruses and fungi and prions. They found that a mixture with 20 percent alcohol was best.

Beekes said he thought the new disinfectant could have a huge impact on hospital safety protocols.

“Standard formulations that eliminate prions are very corrosive,” he said in the study published in the Journal of General Virology.

“The solution we’ve come up with is not only safer and more material-friendly, but easy to prepare, cheap and highly effective against a wide variety of infectious agents.”

A Dutch study published last week found that the methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) superbug, which can cause blood poisoning, spreads not freely but in clusters, suggesting it is spread through healthcare systems by patients being repeatedly admitted to different hospitals.

An exotic type of symmetry — suggested by string theory and theories of high-energy particle physics, and also conjectured for electrons in solids under certain conditions — has been observed experimentally for the first time.
An international team, led by scientists from Oxford University, report in a recent article in Science how they spotted the symmetry, termed E8, in the patterns formed by the magnetic spins in crystals of the material cobalt niobate, cooled to near absolute zero and subject to a powerful applied magnetic field.

The material contains cobalt atoms arranged in long chains and each atom acts like a tiny bar magnet that can point either ‘up’ or ‘down’.

When a magnetic field is applied at right angles to the aligned spin directions, the spins can ‘quantum tunnel’ between the ‘up’ and ‘down’ orientations. At a precise value of the applied field these fluctuations ‘melt’ the ferromagnetic order of the material resulting in a ‘quantum critical’ state.
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It’s been implicated as the bacterium that causes ulcers and the majority of stomach cancers, but studies by researchers at Stanford University, UC Davis, and the University of Pittsburgh have found that Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) also may play a protective role — against the worldwide killer, tuberculosis (TB).
In an article appearing online in PLoS ONE, Jay Solnick, UC Davis professor of medicine and microbiology, and his co-authors report that H. pylori infection may enhance immunity against tuberculosis, a disease endemic in many parts of the world, and for which there is no effective vaccine.

“Here is a bacterium that we know is sometimes harmful and that is clearly associated with cancer,” Solnick said. “But it’s not that simple.”

Solnick explains that up until the 20th century, when public health improved and antibiotic use was widespread, virtually everyone was infected with H. pylori. That remains the case today in most developing countries, implying that H. pylori may have evolved with its human host because it confers some selective benefit.

“These new findings suggest that one such benefit may that H. pylori provides protection against tuberculosis, and perhaps other infectious diseases as well,” he said.
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The application will be invited from the first five rank holders in Agricultural Sciences, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, Chemical Sciences, Earth System Sciences, Engineering Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences, Taxonomy (Botany & Zoology) and History of S&T.
Each selected student will be eligible for a monthly fellowship of Rs. 9,000/- for the 1st and 2nd year and Rs. 10,000/- for the 3rd year. An annual contingent grant of Rs. 15,000/- and 10% H.R.A also will be granted to the research fellows.

Researchers will be selected on the basis of research aptitude test conducted by KSCSTE (date will be announced later) followed by personal interview. Candidates must register for Ph. D in the discipline in which they are selected for fellowship.

They must register for Ph. D Programme in any one of the Universities in Kerala, latest by the next admission time in the respective Universities in any case not later than one year after the award. They may carry out the research work either in University Departments, National Institutes or any recognized R & D Centres, which will be called the ‘Institution’. If they are already undertaking the research work, the Head of the Institution will intimate the fact to KSCSTE where they are undertaking research work.

Last date for the receipt of application is 10th November 2009