My Science Space

Father is someone, who builds an iconic image for his daughter. Father is someone, who holds an inspiration and raises benchmark for his children. Those who have him, are blessed with countless love, affection and motivation. I am too blessed with a kind, affectionate and a very gentle father, who shaped my life through his constant guidance and intellectuality, to rise above all adversities, all highs and lows, all ups-and-downs, and through all meandering curves that came across the path of my life. He kept pushing me to make me a better person and to emerge as a strong one in this fast approaching world. His words of wisdom, the knowledge and his experiences to see life, is just like a treasure in the ocean.  We share many similar traits being father and daughter and I am very thankful to have him in my life. His virtues and wisdom constantly inspired me with an old saying -"Age can never be a barrier but just a number" and we must keep learning and moving as long as we c...

In these trying times during pandemic, when most of the countries in the world are facing crisis to knock down the impact of pandemic and restore normalcy, Norway came forward to support the World Health Organisation in testing highly effective evidence-based Public Health and Social Intervention (PHSI)-based tools and measures to fight the impact of pandemic across the globe. Media Briefing on PHSIs The World Health Organisation on June 14th organised  a virtual press conference under the leadership of its chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus  on 'Public Health and Social Measures during COVID-19 pandemic', seeking more critical life-saving actions and support from all the governments across the world to control the menace of SARS-CoV-2. WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus   Norwegian Health Minister, Mr. Bent Høie announced to provide US$ 5.4 million as a financial assistance to the organisation for its research initiative on extracting best possible PHSIs-ba...

Is it possible to find the place of origin of a virus through the procedure of genome sequencing, so as to investigate further about its existence in this world on how it originated? Is 'SARS-CoV-2' synthetic or natural? Finding all possibilities by investigating the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is the need of the hour because it’s directly related to the existence of human chain and can pose a detrimental impact on human population directly or indirectly. Let’s just hope that it would have had evolved with the process of mutation only, the very basic nature of a virus by which it multiplies and evolve. But still, we can not rule out the possibilities of investigation, and post finding the truth, then we must knock out and dilute all the baseless theories that have emerged across the globe to sustain faith in humanity on this earth. If China stands by truth and humanity, then it should come forward in every possible ways to know the truth of the origination of SARS-CoV-2. There should ...

The immune system in a human body consists of a network of cells and proteins that protects the body against any severe infection or in case of a major attack by any pathogen, for instance, viruses, bacteria, fungus, parasites etc. The immune system has an innate ability to keep a record of every germ that passes across our body. These microbes once try to reenter the body, get marked as specific-antigens, memorised by cells in-advance from its initial attack. When the immune system within our body encounters an outsider like bacteria or a virus or any other parasite, it responds automatically. The White Blood Cells (WBCs), also called as leucocytes, circulate in the blood and lymphatic vessels of the body. These WBCs act like a watchdog, are vigilant to every action taking place inside our body, such as invasion by any pathogen to harm the normal functioning of the system. When they observe such kind of suspicious activities near the peripheral area, they target it and multiply in num...

The worldwide health emergency caused by ‘SARS-CoV-2’ since January 2020, in a lot of ways has brought focus on most of the loopholes regarding our lifestyle and the system that we all are dealing with at present; needs to revamp its core principles and services at a massive scale. Now, more than ever, there is a need of exhaustive collaboration between the governments (Centre and states & states to states), societies, healthcare professionals, financial institutions, social institutions and last but not the least, the citizens of the nation, to carry a new healthy-cum-honest vision & mission, a healthy thought-process, a healthy outlook for life, a healthy revamped system, all-in place with a new approach to deal with any kind of emergencies- health, social, financial, frontiers and so on. One of the creative yet important measures, Google, can work on is- embedding new algorithms within its search tool. This innovative build-up in the search tool must be based on ‘ Probabil...

The on-going pandemic spread of the virus ‘ SARS-CoV-2 ’ resulted in the generation of thousands of its genome sequences across the globe. And so, with its unparalleled rate of growth, scientists, researchers and global health leaders felt the need of having a proper phylogenetic framework in order to track and understand the gravity, patterns and determinants of the fatality imposed by the virus on the population all over the world. At present, there are over 35,000 genome sequences that have either a complete or near complete genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2. So, let us talk about the definition of genome structure of the virus first. What does a virus genome made of? Well, the virus genome consists of symmetric protein called as ‘capsid’, which is composed of either a single or a multiple protein. The virus can have either a DNA or an RNA- based genome, respectively. So, a virus genome alters through the process of mutation by changing a few genetic letters by infecting more people ...

In a recent development, the World Health Organisation gave it's approval to China's COVID vaccine Sinovac to be used under Public Health Emergency. But, sadly, Covaxin, which has been produced by India's manufacturing unit, Bharat Biotech, is still non-qualified to go, causing a hiccup for those who already have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and would not be able to travel internationally till it gets approved. At present, Covaxin is approved in just nine nations all over the world- Iran, Philippines, Mauritius, Mexico, Paraguay, Zimbabwe, Nepal, Guyana and India whereas Covishield (the Indian AstraZeneca) has been accepted widely across 130 countries. A week back, Bharat Biotech had already sent its proposal to WHO and after its findings, it was learnt that only 90 percent of the documentation was complete and rest was yet to be assured and shared by the company. Till date, over two crores of people have been vaccinated in India so far. After pulling down the res...