Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
THE ANGER
THE ANGER: _ Prologue: Back in the 1700’s there was a Scottish surgeon called John Hunter regarded as one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day. He had a very bad temper and, not surprisingly, suffered from angina pectoris. He used to say: “My life is at the mercy of any scoundrel who chooses to put me in a passion”. This was prophetic. At a meeting of the board of St. Georges Hospital, he became involved in a heated argument, walked out, and dropped dead. The government of India wrote to UN that my personality is not good and I have to improve. They were referring to my alleged angry nature. I am using the word ‘alleged’ because the government had no contact with me and based their judgment on mere ‘hearsay’. Indian TV channel was investigating my performance in government hospital secretly and found that I […]
HEAT ILLNESS
HEAT ILLNESS: _ Prologue: Heat stroke is not new to the medical community. In 24 B.C., Roman soldiers with heat stroke were instructed to drink olive oil and wine while rubbing both liquids on the body. In the 1500s, physicians recommended stimulating friction and bloodletting to “release the heat”. In the 18th century, the cause of heat stroke was once thought to be drinking cold water. Patients would receive the diagnosis of “hurt by drinking cold water.” Amazingly, public pumps were posted with signs warning about the risk of sudden death from drinking cold water. Today, heat illness is the number one weather killer in the world and kills more people every year than tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and lightening. Heat illness is more common in poor & middle class people than rich people because air-conditioners are beyond the reach of majority of middle class people (especially in developing countries) and […]
THE CYCLONE
THE CYCLONE: _ _ Prologue: I am not fond of weather analysis. Many times I inadvertently watch weather forecast on TV which I find quite boring. Nonetheless, after discussing earthquakes and tsunamis, I felt that I should discuss adverse weather events which also affect our lives. A storm is any disturbed state of atmosphere, and strongly implying severe weather; marked by strong wind, thunder, lightning and heavy precipitation (rain, ice etc). Storms are created when a center of low pressure develops, with a system of high pressure surrounding it. This combination of opposing forces can create winds and result in the formation of storm clouds. Storms generally lead to significant negative impacts to lives and property. The vertical wind shear in thunderstorm can cause airplane crashes. Severe weather is also responsible for plenty of helicopter crashes, and delay launch of space shuttles. There are various types of storms including tropical […]
THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION Caveat: The purpose of this article is not to discuss any specific religion but to discuss relevance of various world religions in the context of science and therefore specific details about various religious beliefs relating to the existence, nature, and worship of any deity; and the values & practices advocated by any prophet or sacred text will not be discussed. Also, no attempt is made to show superiority or inferiority of any religion with respect to other religions. Instead, an attempt is made to discuss all religions together vis-à-vis science. I offer unconditional apology to anybody hurt or offended by this article. I am willing to post any criticism of this article below this article itself provided the browser logs in my website. _ Prologue: When I wrote an article on my wall in Facebook about “The Coincidence”, my intention was to educate masses about the […]
THE NANO WORLD
THE NANO WORLD Prologue: Can you identify what is this? A group of scientists discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one – not only would it save on electricity costs and cut carbon dioxide emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities. The picture speaks louder than the words. Majority people of the world know very little about nanotechnology & nanoparticles but we are ushering in an era of nano-revolution which is going to change our lives for ever. I myself was as ignorant as you on this subject until I decided to welcome the year 2011 with a novelty. Nano (symbol n) is a prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of 10 – 9 or 0.000000001. The […]
