SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

A study published today suggests that the common female ancestor of all modern horses lived between 1,30,000 and 1,60,000 years ago.
- Though domestication of horses took place 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, they show high diversity.
- Domestication occurred in many locations across Eurasia.
- Scientists found that the male-inherited Y chromosome showed virtually no sequence variation. This has great significance — domestication of wild horses involved only “closely related male horses but allowed more variation in the female lineages,”
DNA analyses of sheep, cattle and goat indicate that domestication started from a handful of animals in a few places and took place around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. Hence, these animals show very limited genetic variation.
Domestication of wild horses played a key role in the rise of larger human settlements and great civilisations.

The critically-endangered grassland species, the Great Indian Bustard, will be counted in the desert terrain of Rajasthan in the second week of February. Rajasthan, specially its desert region, accounts for maximum population of the bird which is globally threatened and listed in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
- The Great Indian Bustard is the State bird of Rajasthan.
- The methodology to be adopted in counting would be of line tangent — from one point to another point, in straight line.
The Great Indian Bustard ( Ardeotis nigriceps ), whose number is estimated to be less than 500 in India, is found in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat besides Rajasthan.
Instances of hunting, habitat loss, change in land use and urbanisation are cited as reasons for the decline in their numbers.
The census is also being held in the backdrop of a plan to “rationalise” the territory of the park by excluding certain areas — which the Defence forces and well as those engaged in oil exploration are keen to keep out — incorporating others, if any, after studies.

In just two years, the celebrated adult stem cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka hopes that clinical trials will begin on curing the once-untreatable spinal injuries with the help of “reprogrammed” adult cells or ‘induced pluripotent stem' (iPS) cells.
Animal trials have shown promising results of transplanting iPS cells to treat paralytic spinal injury
The iPS cells have revolutionised research on regenerative medicine: they are free from debates over ethics — often raised in the use of human embryos — and reduce the risk of tissue rejection after transplant. Once established, these cells can be used to elucidate disease mechanisms and to screen drugs.
But creating these cells is both time and money-consuming
The risk of rejection by an individual's immune system can be minimised by matching donors with HLA (human leucocyte antigen), a form of “blood type” for human cells.
In Japan, for instance, just 75 unique HLA homozygotes would match 80 per cent of the population, he explained.

Cyber Society of India has asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to raise a pool of ‘empanelled information security auditors' across the country. They could then be deployed or allotted to different banks like the RBI allots statutory auditors.
All the banks do not have a proper information security policy and audit system. They have their own internal audit.
- Hence, an audit by competent RBI-nominated IS auditors may improve the quality of information security in banks
From this year onwards, that is, March 2012, all banks are required to declare their information security status (IS) in their annual reports as per the Gopalakrishna Committee report. This is for the first time that the banking industry is going to declare such IS status.
The Cyber Society of India also wanted RBI to issue a fiat to all banks, making it mandatory for them to send out mobile alerts to their clients on withdrawals.
- At present, mobile alerts are given by banks only on request.
- Many cyber crime police cases could have been avoided, if the customers had a mobile alert
“We are in the initial stage. Customer awareness is very low. Even a remote rural person is having credit and debit cards. All these justify the importance of information security to protect the interest of the customers," it added.