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Parkinson's disease: some hope for patients
- Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder affecting the nerve cells in the brain that control movements. As a result the nerve cells or neurons do not make the chemical dopamine leading to disharmony of neurotransmitters and cause the disorder
- Around one per cent of the country's population is estimated to be afflicted with the disease, which is more common in men and usually occurs around 60 years (adult onset). However, it is manifesting almost a decade earlier among Indians and even cases of young onset (below 40 years) are on the rise
- In most cases relating to “young onset” of the disease, the cause could be genetic.
- Under the specialised procedure, called Pallidotomy, a small 2-3 millimetre lesion in the sub-thalamus region of the brain is done and specific nucleus responsible for causing the involuntary and excessive movement of either hands or any other limb is destroyed by giving radio-frequency ablation. This, in turn, would set right the imbalance in neuro-chemicals in the brain and in the circuit.
- Although another procedure -- Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), involving implantation of electrodes in brain and connected to pace-maker -- was also is in vogue to provide relief to patients suffering from PD
- Pallidotomy was far less expensive than the former technique.
- Pallidotomy was that it was a one-time procedure
“Study climate change impact on food production”
- “Develop science to overcome the impact of the changes in the climate on food production,” M.S. Swaminathan, eminent agricultural scientist, appealed to scientists
- He pointed out that around 50 per cent of India's currently favourable, high potential, wheat production area may be reclassified as a heat stressed, lower potential, short season growing environment by 2050.
- For each one degree Celsius rise in mean temperature, wheat yield losses in India are likely to be around six million tonnes per year. Hence, the major implication for research would be ‘shift selection from per crop productivity to per day productivity'.
- He pleaded that everyone should realise the dream of Mahatma Gandhi who said “unsustainable lifestyles and unacceptable poverty should become problems of the past to achieve harmony with nature and with each other”.
- With “fatigue setting in on Green Revolution”, he advocated an “ever-green revolution” which means increasing productivity in perpetuity without associated ecological harm.
- According to him, a green economy is one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risk and ecological scarcities.
- Charting a pathway to sustainable livelihood, he suggested bio-villages with a focus on natural resources conservation and enhancement.
- He underlined the role of terrestrial carbon banks in mitigating climate change.
- Dr.Swaminathan was confident that bioresources could be converted into jobs and income in an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable manner. “This is the only way to break the dichotomy between the prosperity of Nature and poverty of people”, he asserted.
