Quick notes: Homework burden | Dr CP Mathew...

• Way to go: China seeks to lift homework pressures on schoolchildren



• Two Chinese Supercomputers Break Exascale Barrier: China is first to exascale and with two separate machines based on two different (but fully Chinese native) architectures.



• Atmanirbhar China: Alibaba open-sources XuanTie RISC-V cores



• ‘Sputnik Moment’: "Much of the Chinese military’s R&D is led by state-owned companies in the commercial sector, which isn’t counted as official defense spending". . . . . . . China's military progress is 'stunning'



• Baryaktar TB2: Ukraine destroys pro-Russian artillery in its first use of Turkish drones



• Fluvoxamine: Cheap, generic anti-depressant sold under the brand name Luvox, significantly reduces Wuhan Flu. "Fluvoxamine may reduce the production of inflammatory molecules called cytokines, that can be triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection".



• Ghar Wapsi Oncologist: Dr. CP Mathew, renowned cancer specialist, passed away at 93... The turning point in his life came in 1983 when he learnt that a terminally ill cancer patient who had been sent home to die not only survived but thrived with Siddha medicine. The oncologist immediately went all the way to the patient's home, and when he found the man was hale and hearty, Mathew Sir was determined to meet the wandering 'vaidyan' who had cured him.
  
  A month or so later, a phone call around midnight informed him that the 'vaidyan' had been located. Mathew Sir drove at 2am to meet the 'vaidyan'. The oncologist humbly volunteered to be his disciple and learn medicine at his feet. Quickly taking leave from the medical college and wearing a simple sanyasin's robe, Mathew Sir accompanied his newfound guru on his travels, often on foot.
  
  From 1983 to 1992, Mathew Sir and his team of junior doctors from various streams, including modern medicine, documented more than 3,900 cases of terminally ill cancer patients who survived on integrative medicine, after failed treatments at renowned cancer centres... He received Upanayana from Suryakaladi Mana and spent the rest of his life as a Sanatana Dharma Acharya.



• The Folly of Our Universal Vaccination: The danger is that immunity to one strain alone may lead to permanently impaired immune response to the three other serotypes, causing worse and longer illness. In chasing an empty fantasy of herd immunity, authorities are denying human populations everywhere the opportunity to develop the layered resistance against successive SARS-2 strains.



• Unsafe at any speed’: Made-in-India Maruti Suzuki Baleno scores zero in crash test, Toyota Yaris gets one star



• Make Paris ‘100% Cyclable’: Paris will gain 180 kilometers of new permanent segregated bike lanes and the number of bike parking spots will more than triple.



• Sand Baked Potato: Amazing Indian street food, Mainpuri, UP

Quick notes: Bio-warfare | Special flights...

• Biological warfare: There’s evidence that British colonists in 18th-century America gave Native Americans smallpox-infected blankets at least once.



• Healed with herbs: Ghanaian nurse based in the US and her family have defeated C-19 using herbs. “I soaked garlic, ginger and grains of selim in water for 24hrs and I started taking it orally. I also used another traditional healing method where for 20 minutes each morning, I sat by a bucket full of hot water and covered myself with a blanket so as for the body to absorb all the heat from the hot water”.



• Healthcare mess: Insurance-led healthcare with indifferent medical outcomes and cost inflation.

India heading down the same path of insurance led allopathic cost inflation and indifferent medical outcomes. Stop this and pursue ayurvedic wellness. @PMOIndia https://t.co/eTGql6FDD4

— राजीवः श्रीनिवासः (@RajeevSrinivasa) April 30, 2020




• Indian taxpayer's burden? Around 3-5 lakh non-resident Keralites are expected to return. State govt has written to the PM for operating special flights for Keralites stuck abroad.



• C-virus lingers in the air in hospital settings: C-virus could linger after being shaken from medical workers’ protective gear, or be present in the air in toilets used by patients. Some traces were also found in aerosol deposits on surfaces in ICUs.



• Tracking user data: Xiaomi, India's largest smartphone maker, sending browser data to China.. Xiaomi was also collecting data about the phone, including unique numbers for identifying the specific device and Android version. Such “metadata” could easily be correlated with an actual human behind the screen.



• America in a nutshell:
  

  America in a nutshell
  
  *26 million people laid off
  *Goldman Sachs CEO getting a 20% raise to $27.5M even as the two main investor advisors give the raise plan an "F" gradehttps://t.co/H0jpfAfCG1

  — Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) April 29, 2020




• Green stimulus: Pakistan pays out-of-work labourers to plant trees. The work includes setting up nurseries, planting saplings, and serving as forest protection guards or forest firefighters.

Quick notes: Neem cure, Temple funds...

• Neem packs powerful punch: Neem tree extract can reduce the migration and invasion capabilities of pancreatic cancer cells by 70 percent.



• Secular magic: What really happens to your money in Temple Hundi?



• Headley: Plan was to attack defence scientists at Taj Mahal Hotel, but logistics didn't allow.



• Sexual Misery in Allah's lands: In some of Allah’s lands, the war on women and on couples has the air of an inquisition.



• The Tipoo Rocket Myth:

1 of the big myths that is spread around is that Tipoo invented the rocket. The rocket had been around for a long time in the subcontinent

— manasataramgini (@blog_supplement) January 9, 2016




• What Soda Commercials Would Look Like If They Told The Truth:




• Diesel and you: Traffic pollution can cause 'facial dark spots'



• Phosphorus shortage? In the past, the phosphorus cycle was closed: crops were eaten by humans and livestock while their faeces were used as natural fertilisers to grow crops again. These days, the cycle is broken. Each year 220m tonnes of phosphate rocks are mined, but only a negligible amount makes it back into the soil.



• Russia’s forgotten Mari pagans: Reverence for nature permeates this culture. Yumo is considered the creator of the highest laws governing the cosmos.



• Unwelcome preacher:

La voila, just before a crucial parliament session! Predictably sad and irrelevant. https://t.co/Xnn96UKtXY

— Chitra Subramaniam (@chitraSD) February 12, 2016

Quick notes: Wembley protest, Old frauds...

• 'India's Daughter' filmmaker mobilises UK protest against Modi: She added: "Step one will be to find out exactly when and what time the Wembley event at which PM Modi will address a full stadium, will take place..."



• Tavleen Singh skewers Adarsh Liberal: Growing intolerance? What a bunch of old frauds these ‘intellectuals’ have proved to be 



• Discontent brews in Punjab: Possible return to militancy?



• Finding God for votes: Tamil Nadu's atheist leaders re-discover religious identity



• Australian accent is a product of early settler's heavy drinking: “The Australian alphabet cocktail was spiked by alcohol. Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns".



• Vata-Pitta-Kapha validated by genetics:

Ayurveda's Vata-Pitta-Kapha validated by genetics. Interesting paper in Nature Journal by CCMB: https://t.co/C0FRA7cm6T

— Suhas Mahesh (@suhasm) November 1, 2015

Quick notes: Language exchange, Tulsi genome...

• Make it an equal exchange: India, Germany to teach each others’ language



• Indian scientists decode Tulsi: The genome map will help in making new medicines using the plant.



• Save the bats, save the corn: Scientists and farmers have known for a long time that bats were a valuable contributor to the agricultural landscape, eating pests that would otherwise be eating crops.



• Boeing plans to finish some 737 jetliners in China: Boeing's China facility would paint 737 aircraft, conduct flight testing, and perform some interior installation.



• The daredevil fighter pilot who survived a Pakistani bullet. An Indian Prisoner of War escape story



• Hindu Wedding: Popular videos

Quick notes: Blow to dynasty, Trump on speculators...

• Blow to dynasty: Rajiv Trust told to return land in Amethi. "Samrat Cycles should have been returned to the UPSIDC after bankruptcy".



• Trump puts speculators on notice: "The hedge fund guys didn't build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky."



• What Chindu said: Muslim population growth "slows"..... What others said: Muslim population grew faster..... Assam's nine out of 27 districts are now Muslim majority..... Bengal beats India in Muslim growth rate. .....Pagan says: Ghar wapsi will work in Assam and Bengal if we pursue seriously.



• Holy Cancer – How A Cow Saved My Life:
  

  Amit Vaidya lived the American dream. A Gujarati, born and brought up in the US, with a Ph.D. in economics, he worked in the entertainment industry’s business department. “It was an active but not a healthy lifestyle as I was an overachiever,” says Amit. His dreams “were shattered” when a few months after his father’s death he was diagnosed with first stage gastric cancer. “The fall was great as I had risen to great heights when I was 27.”
  
  Opting not to do surgery, he went in for “aggressive chemo radiation” in New York. Two years later he went into remission. Within two months of his recovery, his mother was diagnosed with grade three brain tumour. “Nothing worked and I lost her too. Away in a foreign land, being the only child, I felt lonely and a scan showed my cancer had returned after 18 months. This time it showed up in my liver. Nine months later, in 2011, reports showed I was not responding to treatment and the cancer had spread to my lungs too,” he says emotionally.
  
  Doctors told Amit that his life too was just a matter of time. “Not wanting to burden my friends, I started planning my funeral. Facing death was not frightening as I had seen death in its face. Seeing the grace with which my mother let go of her life, gave me the courage to accept death. In a cinematic way, I was excited that I would be reunited with my parents. I got on a self destructive path as I had nothing to live for,” says Amit.
  
  He started “micromanaging his last moments and his funeral. “I also wanted to come to India once. Being a Bollywood junkie I wanted that cinematic touch of meeting my extended family here before my death.”
  
  Soon he planned a trip to India. “Part of me thought I would die even before my feet touched the ground. There was some irony in the fact that my parents born here made US their home and died there. And, I, who lived there, would come to India and die here. It was like a full circle.”
  
  The meeting with his relatives was “emotional”, but as “they had their own challenges, they were aghast when they discovered that I was critically ill. Doors were shut. I was again all by myself,” recalls a shattered Amit. “When I lived in Delhi with a friend I was told about alternative therapies. Their love and care for me made me greedy again for life.
  
  “An aunt also told me about an Ayurvedic hospital in Gujarat that claims to cure cancer in 11 days for just a rupee! Having nothing to lose I wanted to give it a shot.”
  
  So off he went and explains that the treatment was disciplined with yoga, meditation and he was made to drink a mix of “desi cow milk, curd, ghee and gobar, go-mutra. I was to drink it on an empty stomach. For years everything tasted like saw dust because of the chemo. It was easy to drink something that smelled and tasted as it should. Others there were traumatised by this. I kept faith and did it diligently. I saw no change but felt no worse either.”
  
  Scans showed that the cancer “had not spread”. Amit then went back to the hospital and lived there for another 40 days. Reports showed the cancer had decreased. “Wanting to continue the therapy,” Amit stayed with a farmer, who opened his house to Amit. “He offered me a tiny shack on his farm, a cot, a goshala with desi cows, a well and a toilet. I continued the therapy and after months was able to walk. Over time, walks became jogs, jogs became runs and I started finding joy in my mind. The villagers had time for me, which was the best gift I got, especially when I needed time to heal.”
  
  After 18 months Amit claims he is cancer free and decided “on planning to live his life instead of planning a funeral. I now talk to people about my journey and that healing is possible. I make time to spend with cancer patients. It is all free. I have started an NGO called Healing Vaidya.”
  
  He does not plan on going back to the US as “this country has given me much. I have learnt that people here don’t value what it can offer.”

  
  
  Chindu deleted this from their site for reasons known only to them.

Quick notes: Solar on border, Right to Clearance...

• BSF  to use solar energy for its remote out-posts, where no electrification is possible till date. 5MW solar energy plant in Gujarat.
  Solar's great advantage is that you can keep it distributed (while employing micro-inverters). A centralized plant that can be bombed makes no sense.



• Telangana cuts red-tape: The Right to Clearance will involve a provision to impose a fine of Rs.1,000 on officials for each day of delay in granting clearance to a project, besides allowing businesses to know the exact reason why a proposal is stuck.



• Make-in-India: Mahindra bags multi-million dollar aerospace deal with Airbus



• Who needs drones from Amazon? Smartphones and Motorcycles Fuel Hyperlocal E-Commerce in India.



• No more a Garden city: B'luru air 200 pc more polluted than national quality standard.



• Ayurvedic lead poisoning: Some preparations which use “bhasma” or ash may contain heavy metals such as lead, arsenic or mercury. ... So many quacks claim to be Ayurvedic experts.



• Preventing transmission of dengue fever: A group at Monash University has infected mosquitoes with bacteria that prevent the dengue viruses from taking up residence in the mosquito.



• Can China Be Contained?  Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China 



• Yogi Naeem:

Quick notes: Squatting 'observers', Bird killer...

• Squatting for decades: ‘No relevance’, Centre asks UN mission to vacate Delhi office.



• Neonicotinoids: Insecticides that kill bees are also killing birds



• Kerala ayurveda hopes to come to Neymar’s aid: If the soccer star does decide to go the ayurveda route, it will be a major boost for Kerala’s ayurveda sector.



• Javier Mascherano:  Bum injury and head injury in one game. "I stretched my anus on that move. The pain... it was terrible".

• PVN:

"Unlike Nehru, PV Narsimha Rao's knowledge of Sanskrit was profound. Nehru had a temper, PVNR a temperament": Natwar Singh
— हम भारत के लोग (@India_Policy) June 28, 2014

Quick notes: US manufacturing, Oil pulling...

• U.S. manufacturing: U.S. production costs catching up with China



• Is coconut oil the new Listerine? Oil pulling has antibacterial benefits, U of T prof says



• Eat less, preach less:  People in EU eat way more protein than necessary, nitrogen pollution can be brought down if they halved their meat and dairy consumption



• Unusual Concerts - Episode 1: Shyam Benegal's delightful documentary on Pt Mallikarjun Mansur



• Episode 2

Quick notes: Costly Indecision, Pricey Onion...

• Sam Pitroda on Kaangress Raj: : "When UPA government came to power at the Centre, the country's growth rate was eight per cent. During UPA-II, the growth rate started tapering down which had been largely a result of corruption, indecision and policy paralysis." 



• Worried about political cost, Kaangress govt to import onions: Food inflation accelerated to 11.91 percent last month. Onion prices in Delhi surged to 60 rupees a kilogram from 16 rupees three months ago. Potatoes have rocketed to 20 rupees a kilogram from 12 rupees in six months, while tomatoes quadrupled to 56 rupees in July compared with January.



• Google launches Hindi (Devanagari) handwriting support.



• The mineral content of jaggery is impressive— it has magnesium, potassium, calcium, phosphorous, iron and copper and is rich in Vitamins B1, B2 and vitamin C. One of the biggest benefits, stemming from its rich potassium content is that it helps maintain the acid balance in the body by reducing accumulation of acids and acetones.”



• Guru Stuthi by Sri M

Quick notes: Bribing the Poor, Gud is Better...

It is BJP v/s 3000 Cr freebies in Rajasthan: #Sample 100 Rs being distributed by officials after CM Gehlot's Durbaar! pic.twitter.com/qpuetGrqyW
— Albatrossinflight (@albatrossinfo) August 16, 2013

• Microsoft India Develops NFC Alternative: Dhwani Transmits Data Through Sound Waves



• The survival rate of Indian languages is certainly much higher than for indigenous languages in other countries that have experienced colonial domination. On the other hand, the rate of decline of languages in the country over the last 50 years is alarming. 



• Dronacharya awardee and legendary cricket coach Desh Prem Azad passed away following a cardiac arrest at a hospital in Mohali.



• Jaggery has a mineral content approximately 50 times greater than refined sugar and five times more than brown sugar. Jaggery's health benefits even go beyond the kitchen. It has long been observed that people who work in highly toxic surroundings and regularly consume jaggery, such as industrial workers in dusty or smoky environments, have little or no bronchial or lung discomfort. And a study in Environmental Health Perspectives reported that jaggery reduced the number of lesions formed in rats' lungs infiltrated with coal and silica dust.

Quick notes: Jobs number, Benchmark booster..

• 'Govt counted 40L jobs that weren't created': Against 1.39 crore that the Kaangress govt has claimed, only 93.5 lakh jobs were created.



• Samsung's Kaangress style slyness: AnandTech discovers hard-coded exceptions in Galaxy S4, intended to inflate benchmark figures.



• Bharat Ratna minus the award: Indian philanthropist, cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya, Devi Prasad Shetty has cut the price of coronary bypass surgery to $1,583. The same procedure costs $106,385 at Cleveland Clinic.



• Small states - exactly what problem do they solve? The experience of the last state creation process under the NDA govt, which gave birth to Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh, has not been uniformly positive.



• Tulsi leaves for fluoride free drinking water: Fluoride has been linked to a number of negative health effects like bone fractures, thyroid disorders and impaired brain development and function.

Vegan diet, the missing element

Of all the nutritional concerns that can plague vegetarians, nothing is more daunting than the specter of vitamin B12 deficiency (which can lead to anemia and neurological disorders). Conventional wisdom has it that this essential vitamin is virtually unavailable from plant foods. Surprisingly, Cow dung, is very rich in the vitamin.

Dr. Mozafar's investigation, showed that plants fertilized with cow dung have higher levels of B Vitamins including B12. Mozafar hypothesized that B12 produced by soil microorganisms might be absorbed through the roots into the plant itself. 

B12 Breakthrough - Missing Nutrient Found in Plants

First Person Plural: Microbiome

It turns out that we are only 10 percent human: for every human cell that is intrinsic to our body, there are about 10 resident microbes. Some researchers believe that the alarming increase in autoimmune diseases in the West may owe to a disruption in the ancient relationship between our bodies and their “old friends” — the microbial symbionts with whom we coevolved.

Where do these all-important bifidobacteria come from and what does it mean if, like me, you were never breast-fed? Mother’s milk is not, as once was thought, sterile: it is both a “prebiotic” — a food for microbes — and a “probiotic,” a population of beneficial microbes introduced into the body. Some of them may find their way from the mother’s colon to her milk ducts and from there into the baby’s gut with its first feeding. Because designers of infant formula did not, at least until recently, take account of these findings, the guts of bottle-fed babies are not optimally colonized.

Most of the microbes that make up a baby’s gut community are acquired during birth — a microbially rich and messy process that exposes the baby to a whole suite of maternal microbes. Babies born by Caesarean, however, a comparatively sterile procedure, do not acquire their mother’s vaginal and intestinal microbes at birth.

NYT: Some of My Best Friends Are Germs

Mother Nature Does It For Free

Previous studies have found that people who live near trees and parks have lower levels of stress hormones and that children with attention deficits tend to concentrate and perform better on cognitive tests after walking through parks or arboretums.

“Natural environments still engage the brain but the attention demanded is effortless. It’s called involuntary attention in psychology. It holds our attention while at the same time allowing scope for reflection and providing a palliative to the nonstop attentional demands of typical, city streets."

NYT: Easing Brain Fatigue With a Walk in the Park

Soak Up Some Sun

What’s flummoxed the medical fraternity is the growing incidence of vitamin D deficiency in a tropical country like ours where ample sunlight is available throughout the year. At least 60 per cent of patients have below 5 nanograms of vitamin D (the normal range in most labs is between 30 and 100).

Lack of vitamin D manifests itself through acute pain in the feet, shoulders, neck and joints in some individuals. Research has also shown link between vitamin D and low immunity levels, obesity and diabetes.

“There was a reason our ancestors started the day with prayers and suryanamaskars facing the sun, outdoors,”  

The Hindu: Soak up some sun

Why watching TV makes a man less virile

Men who watched more than 20 hours of TV every week had 44 percent lower sperm counts compared to those who watched almost no TV.

Daily Beast: New Study Says TV Watching Lowers Sperm Count

Do We Really Understand Cholesterol?

According to one study, people in north India eat 19 times more fat (mostly butter and ghee) than in the south, yet the incidence of heart disease is seven times higher in the south.

There is a large amount of evidence from human as well as animal studies showing that mood and intelligence are depressed by lowering cholesterol.

Ray Peat: Cholesterol, longevity, intelligence, and health

• The Low-Fat Dogma 
• Difficult News To Swallow

It's Not The Alcohol, Stupid

The blood-pressure-lowering effects of red wine are attributable not to its alcohol content, but to the beneficial chemicals called polyphenols that it contains, even in its nonalcoholic form. In fact, alcohol may limit the beneficial effect of the polyphenols.

When men drank gin, they experienced no change in blood pressure. With red wine, there was a slight but statistically insignificant lowering. But with nonalcoholic red wine, the men saw a significant decrease in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

NYT: Without Alcohol, Red Wine Is Still Beneficial

No Pills For Mild BP

A new review of almost 9,000 patients by the esteemed Cochrane Collaboration found that pharmacologically lowering blood pressure in individuals with moderately raised blood pressure (140-159 mmHG/ 90-99 mmHG) in individuals with no previous history of cardiovascular disease confers absolutely no benefit. No reduction in deaths, no reduction in coronary heart disease, and no reduction in stroke. The only thing that gets healthier by us taking these drugs is the coffers of the pharmaceutical industry.

So convincing was the evidence that these drugs do not work David Cundiff, one of the reviewers, suggested that patients, "throw away their blood pressure pills and focus instead on far more effective as well as evidence based approaches, such as exercising, smoking cessation, and eating a DASH (diet against systolic hypertension) or Mediterranean diet" - under a doctor's guidance of course.

ToI: 'No pills for mild BP' advice sends doctors' pulse racing