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working on Huntington, Alzheimer and Parkinson’s stem cell lines, Sidhu indicated. Significantly, this discovery is a welcome, ethical alternative to the controversial embryonic stem cells, which are more prone to immune rejection.

However it is too early to assume if iPSC is the preferred alternative, he warned, because they exhibit variability and instability in culture. The next step is to make these cells suitable for long-term propagation and therefore suitable to therapeutic use.

So what are iPSCs and how do they work?

In a two-stage process, e pithelial cells from a patient are taken and reprogrammed to pluripotent capabilities (previously done by viral particles with foreign genes exposing them to risk of mutagenesis). Since such cells are directly derived from the patient, therapeutic cells developed in the process will not be rejected when transplanted back (autologous therapy).

The iPS cells are treated to resemble embryonic stem cells in that they have the ability to regenerate and form into virtually any cell in the human body.

Japanese scientists first used the technique in 2007 to circumvent the role of embryonic stem cells. However the process relied on the use of lentiviruses, raising concerns about introduction of viral DNA sequences into the genome of the recipient cells.

The international scientific community has already welcomed the UNSW findings and Dr Sidhu hopes it will provide fresh impetus for increased collaborations.

“Our research is still in the discovery phase but positively looking into the future. A number of foreign labs are keen

Significantly, this discovery is a welcome, ethical alternative to the controversial embryonic stem cells, which are more prone to immune rejection to participate with us and it is all very promising”, he indicated.

Developing any new therapy, particularly cell therapy takes time ensuring that all the safety, efficacy and other ethical issues are addressed appropriately.

“With the current pace in this area of research, I would anticipate some positive cellular therapeutics within the decade,” he added optimistically.

Setbacks if at all are primarily Australia’s lack of strong R&D focus, he lamented.

Most big biotech and pharmaceuticals are off shore. “We urgently need to strengthen out transitional and translational research (bench to bedside) so that patients are helped quickly here. Likewise, any new area of research needs more funding to get off the ground quickly and new initiatives in national funding on dementia and stem cell research will be imperative to move this field forward quickly”, he pointed out.

Dr Sidhu who graduated from Punjab has been involved with assisted mammalian reproduction for nearly three decades. He was introduced to stem cell technology by pioneers Bernie Tuch and James Thompson. After moving to Australia, he helped found the stem cell lab at the Prince of Wales Hospital and later UNSW. He was also instrumental in developing the first human embryonic stem cell lines (heSC) Endeavour 1 & 2, both of which are protected by international patents.

“Stem cell biology is a fascinating new field and will revolutionise our understanding and our approach towards human health”, Dr Sidhu forecasts.

Dengue cases on the rise in New Delhi, total at total 1,370 Dengue cases continue to rise unabated in the national capital with 75 new cases of the vector-borne disease reported recently, taking the number of those infected to 1,370 so far.

A Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) official said that while 1,349 cases were from the city, 21 cases were from outside. Three people have succumbed to the vector borne disease so far in the city.

He said the central and south zones have been the worst affected with reports of 201 and 224 cases, respectively.

The indefinite strike by over 1,500 mosquito-breeding checkers could hamper anti-dengue operations and fogging measures in the capital.

The capital has been reporting an average of 70 dengue cases reported daily over the past few days.

Delhi reported 548 cases of dengue in 2007, 1,312 in 2008 and 1,153 in 2009.

Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) chief medical officer N.K. Yadav said, “We only take into account the cases tested for dengue using the Elisa test. Private hospitals generally don’t conduct this test as it is expensive, so we will not take their cases into account.”

Dengue is transmitted by the bite of the aedes mosquito. High fever for 4-5 days is usually accompanied by severe headache, pain in eyes, muscle and joint pain and rashes. After the fever goes away, the blood platelet counts start dipping, which is the most dangerous phase of the disease and requires monitoring.

The dengue situation in the national capital seems alarmingly similar to the 2006 outbreak, when 3,366 cases of the deadly fever were reported along with 36 deaths, doctors said.

Officials of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), which monitors and prevents vector borne diseases in the country, accepted that the number of dengue cases was alarmingly high in Delhi.

“There is a dengue outbreak in the city. Dengue cases will be under-reported as they (health agencies) take only confirmed cases which tested positive using the NS-1 antigen test. A total 33 government hospitals and other private hospitals are continuously checking the patients,” A.C. Dhariwal, director, NVBDCP said.

In 2006, when dengue outbreak was declared in the city, just 19 cases were reported from Delhi till Aug 27, he said.

Ringing the alarm bell, doctors from private hospitals said dengue cases this season have increased manifold as compared to the last three years.

“As compared to 2006, this year the incidence of this vector borne disease will be more, as even after the cases are being under-reported the total is 741. If we conduct proper surveys, the figure will touch thousands,” a doctor of a south Delhi private hospital said.

He added that in September the number of dengue cases may increase manifold.

New format unveiled for IPL, to be played with 10 teams in two groups

The Indian cricket board has unveiled a new format for the next season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), with the 10 teams split into two groups and the cap on team spending increased to $9 million.

The fourth season of the IPL will have 10 teams after the addition of two new teams. There will be 74 matches in total, compared to 60 earlier this year.

The format needed to be changed after inclusion of two new franchises -- Pune Warriors and Kochi.

There will be 70 league matches and four play off matches with each team having the same number of matches (14 in total - 7 home and 7 away) as in the previous IPL editions, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said in a statement after the meeting of the IPL Governing Council.

There will be one league table with teams divided into two groups of five teams each.

Each team would play the other four teams in its group twice (home and away), four of the five teams in the other group once (home or away) and one of the five teams in the other group twice (home and away).

The groups will be decided by a random draw, and similarly, which team will play the other from the other group twice or once will also be decided by a random draw.

This ensures all franchises will have the same number of matches at home as in the previous editions.

Teams are allowed to retain four players in their squads from the last event -- a maximum of three Indians and two foreigners.

The cap for each team to spend on the players at the auction was raised to $9 million from the $7 million.

The number of overseas players in the squad will be 10 with no more that four in the team.

Uncapped Indian players will now be getting Rs.1 million per annum if the player has not played or first played Ranji Trophy (first class or List A) in the 2009-10 or 201011 seasons.

It will be Rs.2 million per annum if the player has played Ranji Trophy (First class or List A) in the 2006-07, 2007-08 or 2008-09 seasons and Rs.3 million if the player first played Ranji Trophy (First class or List A) in the 2005-06 or earlier seasons.

As for the retention of players, up to four players per franchise may be signed for retention of which only up to three shall be Indian players and the squad size has been restricted to 30.

The board said it will manage all player contracts directly.

“All player contracts will now be managed by BCCI and signed by BCCI along with the franchise and the player. A new player registration and contract management process will be detailed soon. No player contracts can be signed until then. Player regulation for 2011 season will be circulated soon to all franchisees which will detail the player contract, registration and signing process,” BCCI secretary N. Srinivasan said in a statement.

Also, the catchment areas have been revised and this will be now aligned according to the association instead of a states. Pune can pick its team from the Maharashtra and Vidarbha Cricket Associations while Kochi has been alloted the Kerala and Madhya Pradesh associations.

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Data from Chandrayaan moon mission to go public

Voluminous scientific data, including rare images of the moon, from India’s maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 will be made public by the year-end.

“People will have free access to the huge data obtained from our first moon mission on a web portal that will be launched by this year-end,” a senior scientist of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

“The data has been split into two seasons, with the first dealing from November 2008 to February 2009 and the second from March to August 2009. The first season data will be archived by year-end and the second by mid-2011,” said ISRO’s space application centre director B. Gopala Krishna.

A total of 26 gigabytes of data and images will be uploaded after archiving the first season.

The archives will include chemical and mineral mapping, high resolution threedimensional mapping and topographical features.

The state-run ISRO launched the 514 kg mooncraft onboard the polar satellite launch vehicle Oct 22, 2008 from its spaceport Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km northeast of Chennai.

The Rs.3.9-billion Chandrayaan was the first mooncraft to have confirmed the presence of water on the moon.

After a 10-month rendezvous with the earth’s only natural satellite, the mission was terminated Aug 30, 2009 when the space agency’s Deep Space Network (DSN) at Bylalu, about 40 km from here, lost radio contact with Chandrayaan after computers onboard became non-functional.

“Though the dedicated portal will have a catalogue of the data, specific information will be made available for students and scholars pursuing research in space exploration,” Krishna said.

Indian space scientists are currently reviewing the voluminous data, including about 70,000 images relayed to DSN by the 10 scientific instruments Chandrayaan carried to the lunar orbit, about 100 km from the moon’s surface and over 400,000 km from the earth.

“Our scientists from various planetary groups are beginning to peer review the data from 10 of the 11 payloads. The same will be made accessible to the public as the lock-in period for the principal investigators of the mission to analyse will end by December,” Krishna said.

Of the 11 instruments, five were Indian and six were from the US and Europe.

ISRO scientists have used the planetary data system, developed by the USbased National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for preservation and utilisation of the archived information.

“We are also in the process of generating a topographical atlas and a mineralogical atlas of the moon from the data,” Krishna noted.

Detailed mapping of moon’s mineralogy and topography will pave way for further research possibilities.

“We will prepare an atlas of the moon with latitude, longitude, colours of areas, ice water, minerals and terrain from the sheets of topography in the data,” Krishna added. Chandrayaan accomplished 95 percent of its scientific and technological objectives before its mission was called off prematurely. It had been programmed to orbit the moon for nearly two years.

India test fires BrahMos cruise missile

In a first in the military world, the BrahMos cruise missile being jointly developed by capabilities.

“The missile flew in the designated complex trajectory conducting large manoeuvres and steep dive. This is the first time in the world that a supersonic dive has been realised by a cruise missile,” said BrahMos Aerospace spokesperson Praveen Pathak.

The Indian armed forces termed it a “perfectly precise flight”, he added.

The 290-km range BrahMos missile, which can travel 2.8 times the speed of sound, was tested for the army from the Integrated Test Range of Chandipur in here, some 230 km from Orissa capial Bhubaneswar, director of the test range S.P. Dash said.

“The launch met all mission requirements. It was a 100 percent fantastic launch,” Dash said.

Defence Minister A.K. Antony congratulated the armed forces and the defence scientists associated with the project for the “success”.

The launch was conducted in the presence of Director General of Artillery Lt. Gen. Vinod Nayanar, BrahMos Aerospace officers from different units of the army.

The sophisticated cruise missile has already been inducted into the Indian army and the navy. The Block-II version capabilities to hit precisely a small target in a cluster of larger targets were demonstrated from Pokhran recently.

“This new capability has made it even more lethal,” Pathak said in a statement.

The BrahMos missile is a two-stage vehicle that has a solid propellant booster and a liquid propellant ramjet system. It can carry conventional warheads up to 300 kg for a range of 290 km.

The cruise missile is capable of being launched from multiple platforms based on land, ships, submarines and aircraft, and currently the focus in on for the development of its air-launched and submarine-launched versions.

India and Russia are jointly designing the BrahMos missile, named after the Brahmaputra (India) and Moskva (Russia) rivers.

A regiment of the BrahMos-I variant, consisting of 67 missiles, five mobile autonomous launchers on 12x12 Tatra vehicles and two mobile command posts, among other equipment, is already operational with the army.

Delhi sends home 200 beggars Commonwealth Games host city Delhi has sent back to their respective states as many as 200 beggars.

Social Welfare Minister Mangat Ram Singhal has said that these beggars had served their prison sentences. Efforts were on to detain another 600 beggars before the October Games.

He said that he had asked for a weekly report on the drive against begging.

The Indian capital is reportedly home to over 60,000 beggars, and getting them off the streets is proving to be a cat and mouse game for the authorities.

The Tahirpur beggars home, with a capacity for 1,200, is under renovation. Toilets are being readied for more beggars as the drive is intensified.

The anti-begging drive is focussed in areas such as the New Delhi railway station, Connaught Place, India Gate and Khan

The Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, allows police to detain anyone found begging on the streets.

Orissa coaches tribal students to compete in competititve

Orissa, which has the second highest tribal population in the country, will start hightech coaching progammes from October exclusively for its tribal students to help them compete in tough competitive examinations.

The state government plans to enroll about 1,000-1,500 students of Class 10 and 11 from 19 state-run tribal schools located in the interior areas for the programme. Sanjeev K. Chadha, director of the state Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Welfare Department, said tribal students who are not enrolled in tribal schools would also be given the training

“Two special classrooms would be set up in government-run higher secondary tribal schools as most of the schools are primarily residential. The schools will be equipped with computers, projectors and liquid crystal display (LCD) boards,” Chadha said.

Students will be provided around 300 hours of coaching by high-quality teachers and instructors, physically or through online and video conferencing. The programme will cost about Rs.3 crore every year, Chadha said, adding that the coaching sessions will include in-depth coverage of all the concepts of physics, chemistry and mathematics.

The project will help students to look beyond industrial training institutes and encourage them to appear in competitive examinations.

The students would be prepared for examinations like the All India Engineering Entrance Examination, (AIEEE), Orissa Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) and the Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE), he said.

“We have already issued a tender to find out a good engineering coaching institute that would provide us the study material. We are likely to finalise this within the next few days,” he said.

“Since the Classes 10 and 11 are located mostly in interior areas and primarily residential, satellite technology will be used to train the students,” said Chadha.

Orissa has the second biggest tribal population in the country. The state has a population of over 36 million, of which more than eight million are tribals, according to the 2001 census. The Scheduled Tribe population is 22.13 percent of the state’s total population.

The percentage of literacy among the

Scheduled Tribes is 37.37 against the general literacy level of 63.8 percent . When it comes to functional literacy, the percentage is even lower.

The SC/ST Welfare Department will identify students who have the necessary academic background and basic ideas of Class 10-level physics, chemistry and mathematics, he said.

The department will assess the instructors for each school, a minimum of one instructor each for physics, chemistry and mathematics, he said.

The instructors will be assessed for their ability to facilitate classroom coaching and clear the doubts of students on the subjects, he said.

Security measures at CWG venues by Sep 15

Delhi Police will take over all the Commonwealth Games venues by September 15 and initiate security measures to ensure an incident-free sporting event.

“There will be full-fledged security measures in all Games venues by Sep 15. The security check in Commonwealth Games village will be done shortly, a specific date cannot be divulged,” Commonwealth Games Security and Planning Joint Commissioner J.K. Sharma said.

“Even though there is no specific threat to the Games, the security measures were to showcase that we are alert and well prepared for the mega sporting events,” he said. He said once the security personnel take over the Games venues, they will completely sanitise and seal them after a detailed check.

“Delhi Police, the nodal agency for Games security, will conduct various drills, including anti-sabotage checks, once they take over possession of the venues,” Sharma said.

Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat said, “We have not decided a specific date when the Delhi Police will take up the Games venues, but we are planning to take the security measures shortly.” The Commonwealth Games are slated for Oct 3-14.

Indian toilet model to be used in Afghanistan

Low-cost lavatory technique, developed by an Indian NGO, will be adopted by the US Army to build public toilets in Afghanistan, a senior US military official has said.

The US troops will build at least 40 toilet complexes linked with biogas generation plants in Kandahar as a part of the reconstruction process in the country.

The technical know-how of the model designed by Sulabh International would also be shared with the Afghan government so that it can be used in other parts of the country, said Maj. Edward T. Mears at the engineering wing of the US Army in Afghanistan.

“I would like to share these designs with the Kabul ministry and Afghanistan Ministry of Energy and Water. I would like to know specifically about volume of the digesters and factors for expected biogas generation,” the official wrote in a letter to Sulabh.

Sulabh has already built five community toilets in Kabul as a part of reconstruction projects funded by India.

Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of the Sulabh, has vowed to provide all assistance required to build more such toilets that are “economically sustainable as they are based on pay-and-use system”.

“The system is not only useful for sanitation but also generate bio-fuel which is considered one of the vital non-conventional energy sources,” Pathak said.

Quota for poor kids in private schools mandatory: Sibal Reserving 25 percent of seats for children of poor families in private schools would be mandatory and its violation would be punishable, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal has said.

“We will not budge an inch from this mandatory provision in the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009, as we want to give opportunity to all poor children to study in private schools,” Sibal said.

The government enforced the RTE Act April 1, 2010 to ensure free and compulsory education to all children between six and 14 years, including those below poverty line.

Though several private schools expressed concerns over the quota, failure to implement the provision in the next three years will be punishable once the amendment bill to the Act is passed by lawmakers in Parliament.

“If private schools do not comply with the provision, they will not be allowed to function, as it will be difficult to achieve the goal of inclusive education otherwise,” Sibal said on the margins of a function in Bangalore.

The national commission for protection of child rights has been mandated to monitor the implementation of the act, while a special division will undertake the task.

“All private schools will have to apply for recognition, failing which they will be penalised up to Rs.100,000. If they still continue to function without paying penalty, they will be liable to pay Rs.10,000 per day as fine,” Sibal said.

The commission will also set up a toll free helpline to register complaints against schools violating the provisions of the RTE Act.

To push elementary education to higher standards, Sibal said his ministry laid out plans to create “neighbourhood schools” where the school will mostly be managed by the residents (75 percent of the managing committee) of which 50 percent will be the mothers of the children.

“This way, we can reach out to children from lower economic status, minority groups, migrating and streets and bring them to schools thus fulfilling our goal of ensuring education to all,” Sibal added.

Sibal was in this tech hub to deliver the Vithal Chandavarkar memorial lecture at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

Chandavarkar was an industrialist, who served as Mayor of Bombay (now Mumbai) and also vice-chancellor of the University of Mumbai.

India needs adequate precautions for China: PM

Amid discordant notes in India’s ties with China, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that India has to take “adequate precautions” but can’t give up on peaceful resolution of issues with China.

Relations between the two Asian powers, the prime minister stressed, continued to be a mix of competition and cooperation.

The effort should be to create a milieu in which there can be peaceful competition, he said during an interaction with senior journalists in New Delhi.

Manmohan Singh was responding to queries on the state of India-China relations after Beijing denied visa to a senior Indian

Army general on grounds that his command included Jammu and Kashmir.

Manmohan Singh, on his part, pointed out that he had worked with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao closely.

The prime minister, whose first year in office saw the finalization of guiding principles and political parameters to resolve the boundary question, has always advocated that there was enough room for a rising India and a rising China in the Asian hemisphere.

Manmohan Singh’s comments came amid a difficult phase in India-China relations marred by sharp differences over a host of issues, including Beijing’s practice of issuing stapled visas to residents of Jammu and Kashmir.

The prime minister also made a strong pitch for the need to continue efforts to improve relations with Pakistan despite the July 15 foreign minister-level talks that ended in vitiating the atmosphere further.

“There are always mishaps,” in IndiaPakistan ties, the prime minister said while stressing that it was his sincere belief that India had to engage Pakistan regardless of the complexity of the set up in that country. He, however, added that he was also sensitive to the Indian public opinion after the Mumbai terror carnage.

Engagement and dialogue were the only way forward in Indo-Pak ties, he said, adding he hoped that Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi would accept Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s invitation to visit India.