A bouquet

Only for the brave. No entry to pregnant women!!!!!

Requires guts for the 'golden' handshake!!!


Shrikanth courageously married Priya on 29th Oct 2006!!! Hey....itz their first wedding anniversary......wishing them the very best ;-)

Wedding happened in the musical town Dharwad. Tons of his friends, and students from Friends of children landed up, and we had a whale of time!!!

Among other things, we decided to wish him over a balloon ;-)

From all of us, wishing Priya & Shrikanth, wonderful times togather!

The killer sniff

Over 1 million human killing every year by this species, makes it the most dreaded organism in the world. An organism tiny but wide-spread in 3rd world countries.

Yes, Mosquitoes.

Well, Man does want to kill them back. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. And, I believe, hez been largely unsuccesfull.

And Mosquees won't let us sleep in peace either. Typical arms & ammunitions against them have been some repellants that probably kill us than them!!!

So...what next ?

Lets look at the latest weaponary being sharpened in killer-labs!

Yes, Co2 (carbon-di-oxide) is a sign of life....esp Human life.......and Mosquitoes sense Co2....and can figure out the presence of humans based on the concentration gradient.

How do they do it ?

Thats an head of a mosquito, and it has some protrusions called antenna and maxillary palps. These house cells called neurons that can sense chemicals, and some of them specalised for Co2.

For example, Fruit fly (Drosophila Melanogaster) has 1200 such neurons to sense chemicals called olfactory neurons. Of these 45 of them can sense Co2.

And, how does that happen, wherz the knowledge, memory to recognise a Co2 chemical. Genes, yes, Genes encode that information and scientists recently have isolated two such genes Gr21a & Gr63a, and these togather carry information thats used in the Co2 sensitive neurons.

Wow! thats something, but where does that leave us with mosquito's ??

Yes, knowledge of the genes lead us to the molecular identity of the insect olfactory receptors (structures for binding with chemicals like Co2). And knowing the structure of the receptors one can come with other chemicals to bind with them, and either stop their functioning or mislead them.

Thus, new repellants could emit such chemicals, destroying the Co2 sensing ability or misleading the mosquitos.

Mission accomplished, rest in peace.

AeroIndia

Aeroplanes, my first love. Simply can't take my eyes away from anything that flys. I still can't believe it. How come.......

AeroIndia 2007, every 2 year event in B'lore. And, I seem to have attended all of them. This time with a camera. We were seated almost at the end/begining of the runway. And, it indeed was challenging to capture them. Will take sometime to putup the labels. Yes, missed Anand, my aerospace expert.

LCA - Light Combat Aircraft - The pride of India. You must meet anybody who has been remotely connected with it....chaps in various defense labs in B'lore....and the pride with which they gush!!!! Saras from NAL (?)
Sukhoi - dream machine - now with IAF.

My much wanted shot of the day. The orange fire from F-16. Nothing to beat this fighter interms of manouverability; swift movements.

Mig-35


Mig 35