Demand-Supply Gap Leads to Five Fold Increase

         Flower, fruit prices nearly soared on the eve of Varalakshmi Vratam. The Vratam is celebrated on second Friday of Sravana masam by Telugus.
         While the prices of flowers like plain and coloured chrysanthemum, marigold, jasmine, rose and lotus were being quoted much above their normal rates in the wholesale market at Anadapuram, the situation was far worse in the retail market.
          For instant, a kg of chrysanthemum, usually priced at Rs 200-250 a kg, was on Thursday being sold for Rs 600, while the marigold, priced around Rs 70-100 a kg, was fetching Rs 200 a kg in the wholesale market. Similarly one dozen of chrysanthemums usually priced at Rs 15-20 a dozen was being sold for Rs 80 a dozen in the retail market.

contributed by: Siva.G@timesgroup.com

From my friend

I don't know who wrote "THE FINAL INSPECTION", but PLEASE keep this going!              

If it weren't for the United States military,

There'd be NO United States of America.

THE FINAL INSPECTION
The Soldier stood and faced God,
Which must always come to pass.
He hoped his shoes were shining,
Just as brightly as his brass.

'Step forward now, Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?'
The soldier squared his shoulders and said,
'no, Lord, I guess I ain't.
Because those of us who carry guns,
Can't always be a saint.

I've had to work most Sundays,
And at times my talk was tough.
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny,
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime,
When the bills just got too steep.
And I never passed a cry for help,
Though at times I shook with fear.
And sometimes, God, forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place,
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around,
Except to calm their fears

If you've a place for me here, Lord,
It needn't be so grand.
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand.

There was a silence all around the throne,
Where the saints had often trod.
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.

'Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burdens well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell.'
~Author Unknown

It's the Soldier, not the reporter

Who has given us the feedom of the press.

It's the Soldier, not the poet,

Who has given us the freedom of speech.

It's the Soldier, not the politicians that ensures

Our right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It's the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,

And whose coffin is draped by the flag

If you care to offer the smallest token of recognition and appreciation for the Military, please pass this on.

Complete coverage: Glasgow Commonwealth Games

Pos Country Gold Silver Bronze Total 

1 England 48 49 43 140 

2 Australi 40 40 44 124 

3 Canada 30 14 31 75 

4 Scotland 17 14 18 4 

5 India 13 23 15 51 

6 New Zealand 13 11 15 39 

7 South Africa12 10 16 38 

8 Kenya 7 8 4 19 

9 Nigeria 7 6 14 27 

10 Jamaica 7 4 7 18 

11 Wales 4 10 17 31 

12 Malaysia 4 6 5 15 

13 Singapore 4 1 2 7 

14 Cyprus 2 4 2 8 

15 Cameroon 1 3 3 7 

16 Papua New Guinea1 1 0 2 

17 Grenada 1 0 1 2 

18 Botswana 1 0 0 1 

19 Kiribati 1 0 0 1 

20 Trinidad and Tobago 0 2 2 4 

21 Pakistan 0 2 1 3 

22 Samoa 0 2 1 3 

23 Northern Ireland 0 1 4 5 

24 Bahamas 0 1 1 2 

25 Bangladesh 0 1 0 1

26 Isle of Man 0 1 0 1

27 Mozambique 0 1 0 1

28 Nauru 0 1 0 1 

29 Sri Lanka 0 1 0 1 

30 Ghana 0 0 2 2 

31 Namibia 0 0 2 2 

32 Uganda 0 0 2 2 

33 Barbados 0 0 1 1 

34 Fiji 0 0 1 1 

35 Mauritius 0 0 1 1 

36 Zambia 0 0 1 1

CWG-Kylie Minogue set to perform at closing ceremony

Kylie Minogue will perform at the closing ceremony of Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014 alongside Lulu, Deacon Blue and Dougie MacLean, it has been revealed. Kylie Minogue's performance will symbolise the Games' transfer to Australia's Gold Coast in 2018, the BBC reported.

Glasgow 2014 chief executive David Grevemberg said that they were thrilled to reveal the glittering line-up of Scottish and international talent joining us in Hampden Park for the closing ceremony.

David Zolkwer, head of ceremonies and artistic director, said that it was been an absolutely amazing time but now they had reached the bitter-sweet moment when they brace themselves for the inevitable goodbyes and the farewells.

BRICS: A strong model for governance

The BRICS model will need to demonstrate the efficacy of a second alternative governance structure to reform the Bretton Woods legacy, says Zorawar Daulet Singh. It has become customary for some Indian analysts to deride multilateral networks that haven't emerged from the Bretton Woods womb. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) invites particular scorn. But if Indian elites can get over their prejudices, they will discover that BRICS is fuelled by both a normative impulse to buttress national identities and an instrumental strategy to reverse the north-south divide. What is often missing in the post-Cold War discourse is that unipolarity and neoliberal globalisation was an internationalist phenomenon that sought to subsume rising power identities and nationalisms. The geopolitical and geoeconomic tumult over the past decade, however, has re-opened an identity challenge for rising powers. The question of where these states fit in the global system is again becoming relevant. As long as the Bretton Woods order could cede space and sustain the aspirations of its new entrants, this identity problem could be and was set aside in favour of international integration by the rising powers. But with the decline in America's capacity and leadership and consequent inability to co-opt non-western states into the old order, rising powers are re-asserting their national identities. As they reset their equations with the West, it is not surprising that BRICS states have found friction with the US, albeit in different degrees. BRICS is one platform for its members to project their distinct national identities and roles on a global stage without the pressures of socialisation and conformity that engagement within western-dominated institutions typically entails. But BRICS is also driven by instrumental reasons. For many, an anti-BRICS posture is essentially "a cut India's nose to spite China's face" argument. To be sure, there are challenges such as preventing a capital-surplus China from throwing its weight about in BRICS institutions. While the norm of equality has been established as a conscious antithesis to the hierarchical Bretton Woods norms, it is worth exploring why China is accepting an egalitarian approach to governance. Ironically, there is some similarity between China's approach to BRICS and US policies in shaping the post-1945 economic order. After the Second World War, the US emerged as a capital-surplus country with massive financial claims on the ravaged but then still industrially advanced Western Europe. The US invested in institutions to share power and decision-making authority with its former economic rivals to forge a rule-based economic community. While the destructive war that produced the extraordinary asymmetry between America and the rest of the world after 1945 is not valid in today's context, the logic for stronger rising powers such as China to initiate a similar process of sharing power and authority to create durable institutions exists. While it is unclear if China has acquired a sophisticated internationalist vision, it is finding it beneficial to invest in institutions where its relative financial prowess may not yield immediate national pay-offs. After all, other rising powers are only buying into this process because it is based on "democratic governance structures". For some this is a mere temporary expedience before China reverts to traditional geopolitical behaviour by steering BRICS into a Chinese handmaiden. But this argument presumes BRICS minus China is doomed to fail and Brasilia, Moscow and Delhi lack the agency and skill to shape their destinies and defend the shared norms that underpin BRICS. An optimal path for BRICS would be that Bretton Woods institutions gradually recognise their folly and seek to create a genuinely reflective and responsive governance system. Here BRICS would be the ideal partner and vehicle to bridge the western and non-western worlds, and, the north and south. Paradoxically, it is BRICS' success that might change western attitudes to global governance. Plainly put, BRICS will need to demonstrate the efficacy of a second alternative governance structure to reform the dominant one. But to influence global governance, BRICS needs to articulate their development norms and construct institutions that reflect these norms. According to World Bank data, developing countries now trade more with each other than with the advanced economies. China has played a central role in this expansion of south-south trade. But it has also produced imbalances. Although China runs surpluses with all its BRICS partners, Russia and Brazil as mineral-, commodity- and energy-rich exporters can compensate for inward Chinese manufacturing. India's problem is unique in that it lacks surplus natural resources to pay for its China imports. It also lacks manufacturing depth with the lowest share of manufacturing-gross domestic product ratio among emerging economies at 16 per cent. Until the global economic crisis, India was walking a tightrope by absorbing large capital inflows to pay for its industrial imports. As easy money dried up, and, India's domestic savings proved inadequate to sustain the state and private sectors, India's structural problems have become all too apparent. The New Development Bank offers an ambitious solution. Since the heart of the problem is the asymmetry in supply-side manufacturing capabilities between the BRICS economies, the bank will "mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies". Stephany Griffith-Jones of ColumbiaUniversity argues, "the BRICS bank will mark a significant shift in the international development finance architecture." She estimates that in two decades the Development Bank could reach a "stock of loans of up to US$350 billion," exceeding World Bank finance. If India can leverage the global power transition to potentially increase its developmental options, why should it squander that opportunity? Jim O'Neill, who dreamt up the acronym BRIC, recently admitted, "I never dreamed they would get together as a political group". Whether centrifugal contradictions will get the better of this collectivist endeavour is contingent on several factors but perhaps primarily on the evolution in world politics. But let's not game this before it happens. The trend lines are for an interdependent but chaotic multipolar world, not a Sino-centric Middle Kingdom. For a world deprived of governance, BRICS might just supply some order. The writer is a foreign affairs analyst and a doctoral candidate at King's College London.

Scientists map proteins produced in human body

 

Thirteen years after the human genome was sequenced, two research groups have independently mapped the extent to which cells in various organs in the body turn many thousands of genes into proteins.

From bacteria to humans, genes are made up of units of DNA, called base pairs. The sequence of base pairs in genes tell a cell's molecular machinery what proteins to produce. Ultimately, it is the proteins that carry out a myriad processes essential for life.

Once the over three billion base pairs that make up the human genome were sequenced, analysis of that data indicated that there are about 20,000 protein-coding genes.

In a paper just published in Nature, an international team of scientists led by Akhilesh Pandey of the Johns Hopkins University in the U.S and Harsha Gowda at the Institute of Bioinformatics in Bangalore has drawn up a draft map of proteins produced from 17,294 genes.

There was evidence for proteins coming from 18,097 human genes, reported Bernhard Kuster of Technische Universitaet Muenchen in Germany and his colleagues in a separate paper published in the same issue of the journal.

The two papers marked a “major advance”, providing comprehensive data about proteins expressed in different human tissues, commented R. Nagaraj of the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, who was not involved in either study.

Dr. Pandey and his colleagues examined proteins produced by normal cells in 30 tissue samples, adult and foetal as well as those found in blood. They found 'housekeeping proteins' from 2,350 genes that were produced in all tissues. On the other hand, proteins from 1,537 genes turned up in only one of the tissues. A number of proteins were expressed only during foetal development.

“The driving impetus for our work was to develop a reference of what is normal for human organs and cells,” said Dr. Pandey in an email. This information could provide clues to biologists seeking to elucidate the function of individual proteins. In addition, knowledge about organ-specific proteins could be used for detection of diseases arising in those organs.

“The day may not be too far when people have their protein profiles mapped, much like [personal] genome sequencing we have today. This could help us diagnose more diseases and diagnose diseases better too,” said Dr. Satish Chandra, Director of NIMHANS and a coauthor of the paper at a press conference in Bangalore.

In their paper, the researchers reported detecting proteins from 193 regions in the human genome that generally would not be expected to produce any, including genes considered dysfunctional. This suggested that “we do not yet have a thorough understanding of how our own genome works,” remarked Dr. Pandey.

Although proteins from about 84 per cent of all human genes had been found, those from the remaining genes may have eluded detection, remarked Dr. Gowda, a Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance Fellow. This could have occurred if the proteins were expressed in tissues or organs that had not been sampled. Alternatively, they might be expressed at very low levels, requiring special techniques to track down.

A large number of scientists at the Institute of Bioinformatics, a non-profit research organisation founded and headed by Dr. Pandey, contributed to the study. Researchers at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research in Chandigarh, the Armed Forces Medical College in Pune and the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bangalore also participated.

In the other Nature paper, Dr. Kuster and his colleagues catalogued the proteins found in various human tissues, cell lines and body fluids. They found that approximately 10,000-12,000 proteins were ubiquitously expressed.

Hundreds of genes described in the human genome “apparently do not code for protein any more,” observed Dr. Kuster. One example was a family of proteins, involving some 800 genes, that are important for sensing smell and taste. But proteins could not be found from more than half of those genes.

“Our interpretation of that is that perhaps modern humans don't rely so much on their sense of smell and taste as we used to a long time ago. Therefore, evolution essentially gets rid of those surplus genes at some point,” he told this correspondent.

On the other hand, there were parts of the genome that had not been associated with protein-coding potential but for which proteins turned up. “So this could be a new playing ground, if you like, where nature tries out new proteins and we don't necessarily know what they do yet,” he remarked.

(with inputs from Divya Gandhi, Bangalore)

Keywords: human genome sequencing, genes, proteins, base pairs, DNA, mapping protein profiles

The Article 370

The controversy over Article 370, granting special status to Jammu and Kashmir, continued unabated on Wednesday with J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah asserting that it cannot be abrogated unless the State’s Constituent Assembly is recalled.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological mentor, joined issue and asked Mr. Abdullah if he thought that the State was his “parental estate.” Sources close to Union Home Minister said that Rajnath Singh had declined to speak on the controversy, as he is scheduled to take charge on Thursday.

However, sources pointed out that Mr. Singh had made observations during election campaign on the subject, favouring a debate on the issue. Reacting to Omar’s remarks, RSS leader Ram Madhav said the state will always be an integral part of India with or without the provision.

“What a silly argument about Constituent Assembly! Indian Constitution too was made by Constituent Assembly but amended by Parliament 100 times. Article 370 and Instrument of Accession are two separate things six years apart,’’ Mr. Madhav tweeted.Talking to reporters after the National Conference core group meeting in Srinagar, Omar Abdullah asserted that nobody other than the State’s Constituent Assembly could revoke Article 370.

“How can BJP strengthen ties with people of J&K when they are hell-bent to damage the relation by virtue of Article 370?” Mr Abdullah asked. He also asked the Centre to make clear on who were the “stakeholders” it was talking to for repealing special status to the State. He said the move to re-open the issue would amount to re-opening the issue of the state’s accession with India.

Meanwhile, PDP President and Lok Sabha member Mehbooba Mufti said that the Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh had put his foot in the mouth on day one of assuming office.

She urged the Prime Minister to “discipline” his ministerial colleague.

Keywords: Article 370, Kashmir dispute, BJP, Narendra Modi, inheritance rights, secularism, J&K special status