2)Bhopal, Sept. 6 (PTI): Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan yesterday received the United Nations Certificate of appreciation for the efforts made by his government in realising the millennium development goals set by the world body.
UN millennium development Campaign Asia chief Minar Pimpale presented the certificate to Chouhan at a function here.

3)New Delhi, Sept. 6 (PTI): Having showcased India as a preferred tourist destination in the ‘India Now’ festival in the UK, the government today said it plans to organise similar events in other countries.
The three-month long event which climaxed in Regent Street Festival in London on September two, saw more than 650,000 visitors turning up from all walks of life.

Mumbai, Sept. 6 (PTI): The Bombay High Court today upheld a legal provision, which bans technique of sex-selection before conception.

Vijay and Kirti Sharma, a couple which already had two girls, had challenged the constitutional validity of the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994.

Their contention was, since they had two daughters, they may be allowed to select the sex of their next child, which is disallowed by the Act.

The division bench of Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice Ranjana Desai dismissed their contention saying that in view of the imbalanced sex-ratio in the country, the provision was valid.

Cases of obscenity for alleged obscene paintings with suggestive captions on Hindu gods and goddess were earlier filed against Hussain in various courts of Rajkot, Indore, Bhopal and Pandharpur (Maharashtra) by different persons.

2)Chennai, Sept. 5 (PTI): Pledging to fight American “imperialism”, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and CPI national secretary D Raja today hit the roads leading a ‘jatha’ from here to Vishakapattanam against the naval exercise, involving the US, in the Bay of Bengal.

3)New Delhi, Sept. 5 (PTI): The Law Ministry has rejected a CBI request to file an appeal against the trial court judgement acquitting Amit Jogi, son of Congress MP Ajit Jogi, in connection with murder of NCP treasurer in Chhattisgarh Ram Avtar Jaggi.

4)Kolkata, Sept. 5 (PTI): A six-member delegation from the Communist Party of China today called on West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and discussed various issues on business and civil society.

A spokesman of the delegation told reporters here that a business team would shortly come from China to explore the opportunities for investing in the state

5)New Delhi, Sept. 5 (PTI): The Supreme Court today declined to interfere with the recommendations of the technical experts committee (TEC) which had given its nod for dismantling the controversial toxic-laden Norwegian ship “Blue Lady” anchored at the Alang coast in Gujarat.

6)New Delhi, Sept. 5 (PTI): The Supreme Court today asked the authorities to make an endeavour for maintaining the water level of Omkareshwar dam project on river Narmada at 189 metre and expressed concern over the complaint that relief and rehabilitation has not reached to the people affected by the project.

7)Moscow, Sept. 5 (PTI): A prominent Russian scholar on India and ancient Vedas, Prof. Tatiana Elizarenkova, died here today at the age of 78. She was suffering from cancer. Prof. Elizarenkova was awarded with Padma Shri in 2004 for her outstanding literary and educational activities.

8)Bangalore, Sept. 5 (PTI): The challenge before the industry does not lie in the supply of talent but rather that of employability, Azim Premji, Chairman Wipro Ltd, said today.

9)A Delhi court postponed the verdict in the Uphaar Cinema fire case and the date for judgement will be announced on October 22.

Fifty-nine people had died in 1997 in a fire that broke out at the Uphaar Cinema because of faulty transformer as it screened the hit movie Border.

10)There’s disquieting news from the narcoanalysis of Hyderabad blast suspects Imran and Rafi. Both of them have said that three men involved in the August 25 blasts in Hyderabad are still in the city.

New Delhi, Sept. 5 (PTI): Indian scientists undertook their maiden expedition to the Arctic region to study climate change, glaciology and marine biology, government told the Rajya Sabha.

A team of five scientists has gone to the international research facility at Ny Alesund at Spitsbergen Island in Svalbard archipelago of Norway,” Minister for Earth Sciences Kapil Sibal told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

He said the scientists had initiated research in the fields of atmospheric sciences, microbiology, geology and glaciology.

“The major areas of research in the Arctic pertain to climate change and paleoclimate; glaciology and geology; marine biology and microbiology,” Sibal said.

De-salination: The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) has indigenously designed, developed and demonstrated a desalination technology for conversion of sea water into potable water based on Low Temperature Thermal Desalination (LTTD), Sibal said in reply to another query.

A 10-lakh litre per day capacity plant was commissioned on a barge in April this year, about 40 km off Chennai, which was successfully run for over a period of several weeks, he said.

The LTTD is a process under which the warm surface sea water is flash evaporated at low pressure and the vapour is condensed with cold deep sea water, he said.

The LTTD is quite different from the widely patented reverse osmosis and has several advantages over it, he said.

“The LTTD technology does not require any chemical pre and post treatment of seawater. It is pollution free and hence suitable for island territories,” Sibal said.

2)New Delhi, Sept. 4 (PTI): Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel today asked airlines to gear up to fly to destinations other than the US, Britain or Singapore sectors.

“There are so many airlines who fly in and out of the country but none of the designated airlines from India is flying there (new destinations),” Patel told reporters at a function to mark Jet Airways’s inaugural flight to Toronto.

3)Srinagar, Sept. 4 (PTI): A couple of days after he was divested of the forest portfolio in the wake of an artificial scarcity of timber, Jammu and Kashmir Housing and Urban Development Minister Qazi Mohammad Afzal resigned today and attacked Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad’s action terming it as an “unacceptable deviation” from coalition dharma.

4)Bharat Biotech launches two new vaccines

Bangalore, Sept. 4 (PTI): Biotechnology firm Bharat Biotech International (BBIL) has announced the launch of BioHib, the first indigenously developed and manufactured Haemophilus Influenza Type B (Hib) vaccine in India, and Comvac 4-HB, a tetravalent combination vaccine.

“BioHib is a safe and affordable vaccine that offers complete protection against Hib Infection”, a company release said. “BioHib is a conjugate vaccine that has proven its safety and efficacy in multi-centric clinical trials”.

While other Indian manufacturers had imported conjugation and manufacturing technologies from Europe and the USA, the scientific manufacturing and product development teams at Bharat Biotech have developed all processes required to manufacture Bio Hib in-house, the company said.

The company had made huge investments over the past four years into its Research and Development capablities and its manufacturing facilities to develop and manufacture BioHib vaccine.

The Comvac4-HB and BioHib enable the deployment of a combination pentavalent vaccine in a single injection, the release said.

 New Delhi, Sept. 3 (PTI): A group of scientists have suggested pushing the Indian Standard Time (IST) by half-an-hour to six hours ahead of GMT citing several benefits, including peak load energy savings to the tune of 16 per cent. The new suggestion avoids the risks associated with introducing two separate time zones, a proposal that has already been rejected by the government. “We propose advancing of the Indian Standard Time by half-an-hour to being six hours ahead of the Universal Coordinated Time,” senior scientists Dilip Ahuja and D P Sen Gupta said in a communication in Current Science. Such an advance would give an extra 30 minutes of daylight in the evenings when it is most useful for all of us. They suggest advancing the IST from being the time at 82.5 degrees East on the longitude (Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh) to 90 degrees East on the longitude (Bengal-Assam border). This move would make the IST six hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), or the Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), and make it the same as Bangladesh Standard Time. The scientists said that the total saving extrapolated for the year came to approximately 1.82 terra watt hour (TWh) out of the total nation-wide consumption of 592 TWh during 2003-04, which might not seem large. “The percentage savings in the evening peak energy, however, are about 16 per cent, which is substantial,” they said. The duo calculated the money value of the savings in the range of Rs 1,000 crore every year.

In its 17-minute flight all systems performed well and the rocket was able to place the 2160-kilogram indigenously built communications satellite in its designated orbit

It’s a great day. It proved reliability of GSLV. It was a magnificent performance,” said G Madhavan Nair, Chairman ISRO

There were smiling faces, bear hugs and handshakes after an anxious 17 minute wait when the rocket sped deep into space.

With this successful launch, ISRO has in one go erased the bad memories of the failed launch of GSLV of last summer, when a similar rocket carrying an identical satellite plunged to the depths of the ocean.

This launch had its own moments of anxiety with the on-board computer putting the launch on hold twice as there was a communication gap between the cryogenic engine and the on-board computer 15 seconds before its first attempted launch.

The satellite when it becomes functional three to four weeks from now, will boost the quality of television broadcasts we get and also help enhance coverage of direct-to-home broadcasts for the Indian region. It also brings ISRO one step closer to the commercialisation of its rocket systems.

India’s next big thing is the mission to the moon planned for early next year.

2)Houston, Sept. 3 (PTI): Renowned Bollywood actor, Kader Khan, and former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, Rajinder Sachar, have been conferred the honorary citizenship of the city of Houston. 3)Mumbai, Sept. 3 (PTI): Dismissing the provision that a government employee can not be ordinarily transferred before he completes three years at a posting, the Bombay High Court has said it is the government’s discretion to transfer an official in “exceptional circumstances.”

4)New Delhi, Sept. 3 (PTI): Come October, your car may run on petrol mixed with five per cent ethanol as the government is likely to make the blending mandatory. 5)TIRUPATI: S. Krishnamurthy (57), Director, Public Relations and Publications of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), who was seriously injured in a road accident near here on August 24, died here on Saturday.

The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-FO4 was scheduled to lift off at 4.21 pm with India’s latest communications satellite INSAT-4CR.

The countdown was stopped due to a ”technical snag in parameters related to the launch”, sources in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

As reporters waited with bated breath to watch the lift-off, there came the news that it had been deferred by 50 minutes.

It was announced that the launch had been re-scheduled for 5.20 pm. This was followed by another announcement that the lift-off had been deferred till 6.20 pm.

Later, sources in ISRO said the launch would be postponed to Tuesday if the rocket did not blast off at 6.20 pm on Sunday.

The GSLV was to put into orbit INSAT-4CR, which carries 12 high-power Ku-band transponders for direct-to-home television services, video picture transmission and digital satellite news gathering.

The last launch of the GSLV in July 2006 ended in failure, with the rocket falling into the Bay of Bengal shortly after blasting off from the Sriharikota launching range.

2)Manchester, Sept. 2 (PTI): Sachin Tendulkar has been appointed ambassador for the Manchester United Opus in India and the publishers are planning a similar epic about the Indian batting great.

Tendulkar, who was the guest of honour at the Premier League match between Manchester United and Sunderland, has been named Indian ambassador for the voluminous hardback epic about the club – and he revealed that the publishers, Kraken, are planning a similar book on Tendulkar.

3)Beijing, Sept. 2 (PTI): Former Indian captain Kapil Dev today advised the Chinese government to promote cricket in schools to popularise the game in the country.

4)Kerala’s PWD Minister T U Kuruvilla has resigned from the Cabinet over allegation of illegal land deal in Munnar.

5)India equalled the record for the highest goals scored in Asia Cup, trouncing Sri Lanka 20-0 in a Group B pool match of the BSNL Asia cup hockey tournament on Saturday.

Prabhjot Singh and Raghunath scored 5 goals each as the Indians equalled the record for the highest goals scored in the tournament ever.

Pakistan and Malaysia had earlier beaten Thailand by the same margin in the 1993 Asia Cup.

India’s best showing is however a 24-1 scoreline which came against United States in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

Their next take on South Korea on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Malaysia overwhelmed Hong Kong 13-1 and Japan pulled off an upset 3-1 win over 4-time champions Pakistan.

Tarapur, Sept. 1 (PTI): Fresh from the truce with Left parties, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday came out in strong defence of the Indo-US deal to end a three-decade long isolation, asserting that India cannot afford to “miss the bus” of nuclear renaissance.

He also affirmed that a strong nuclear energy programme was in the country’s “vital” interest.

Dedicating two high-efficiency nuclear reactors to the nation, he said international cooperation in nuclear power generation will not be dependent on any one country. “We will source supplies from many of the countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group including the US, Russia and France.”

There was no direct reference in his two speeches to the deal and the understanding reached on it with Left parties yesterday but the Prime Minister left no one in doubt that Government would move ahead on the agreement with the US.

Singh, who explained reasons for going in for nuclear energy, underpinned the need to pave the way for the country to benefit from “nuclear commerce without restrictions”.

The Prime Minister, who also addressed new graduates of BARC Training School, said Government stands “fully committed” to strengthening the autonomy of a nuclear research and development programme.

“Our unique three-stage programme, which is predicated on the need to utilise our vast thorium deposits, is a logical response to the needs of our economy,” he said.

“The NSG itself has made it clear that they will not do so till the India-specific Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA is finalised,” Singh pointed out.

Once these steps are taken, India can commence civil nuclear cooperation with all the 45 members of the NSG.

“This will signal the end of our international isolation of the past few decades. India is now too important a country to remain outside the international mainstream in this critical area,” he said.

He referred to the “modest target” of 20,000 MW of nuclear power generation by the year 2020. “This can be doubled with the opening up of international cooperation.”

Expressing full confidence in scientists and engineers, the Prime Minister said he believed that the removal of “iniquitous restrictions and shackles on our programme will enhance our indigenous capabilities”.

“A strong nuclear energy programme is in our vital interest and is important for our scientific development, energy needs and security,” he emphasised adding “it will add to our capabilities and strength as a nation”.

He said sustainability of our long-term economic growth was “critically dependent” on the country’s ability to meet its future energy requirements.

Noting that India’s three-stage nuclear power programme formed the bedrock of its long-term strategy, he said there was a need to expeditiously develop fast reactor technologies and intensify efforts to locate additional uranium resources in the country.

“We must take decisive steps to remove the uncertainties that result from shortfall in fuel supplies to avoid disruptions in our nuclear power production,” he said.

Follow-up on Sachar: More Govt. jobs for Muslims

New Delhi, Sept. 1 (PTI): In a “historic” move to give a better deal to Muslims, Centre on Friday said guidelines have been issued to improve their share in government jobs while a high-level Committee has been set up to remove “anomalies” in their representation in Lok Sabha and state assemblies.

In the follow-up action on the Sachar Committee report announced in Parliament today, the Centre has agreed in principle to set up an Equal Opportunity Commission to look into grievances regarding discrimination against Muslims.

It, however, remained silent on the Committee’s recommendation favouring reservation for the most backward in the 150-million strong community.

Tabling the statement in Lok Sabha, Minority Affairs Minister A R Antulay hailed the move saying “it is a historic occasion and it is a historic statement”.

In a 15-point action plan on the report of the Committee headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar that went into the social, economic and educational status of the Muslims, Antulay said that guidelines have already been issued to improve the representation of minorities in government, public sector enterprises, public sector banks etc.

Antulay said the high-level Committee has been constituted to review the Delimitation Act and the concerns expressed by the Sachar panel regarding anomalies in the representation of Muslims.

The Sachar committee had suggested a nomination procedure for political involvement of Muslims at the grassroots and had called for a “more rational delimitation procedure”.

Such a procedure should ensure that constituencies with high minority population are not reserved for scheduled castes.

The Sachar committee, set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March, 2005, had concluded that Muslims were a deprived lot and their share in government employment was mere 4.9 per cent, indicating that all was not well for the community.

The government announced targeted intervention for improvement of basic amenities and employment opportunities in 90 identified minority concentration districts, which are backward in terms of various developmental parameters.

It also said appropriate measures will be taken to improve the deficiency in civic amenities and economic opportunites in 338 identified towns and cities with a substantial population of minorities.

Efforts will be made for stepping up priority-sector lending to minorities from the present level to 15 per cent in three years, Antulay said, adding public-sector banks will open more branches in Muslim concentration areas.

He said financial institutions will promote micro-finance among the minorities, especially women, and public sector banks will monitor the disposal of loan applications for them while recording reasons for rejection.

Three scholarship schemes are proposed exclusively for the minorities. The corpus of the Maulana Azad Education Foundation will be increased and its operations expanded and streamlined, the minister said.

An inter-ministerial group has been constituted to plan and monitor the implementation of a comprehensive programme for skill and enterpreneurship development among Muslims and for ensuring that they have easy and smooth access to credit.

The outreach of upper primary schools will be expanded, particularly for Muslim girls, and where necessary, with “girls only” schools.

The minister said more Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas will be opened in areas with substantial Muslim population.

Priority, Antulay added, will be given to the opening of secondary and senior secondary schools in areas of Muslim concentration and a special literacy drive will be taken up in similar districts.

He said the madrasa modernization programme will be revised. The question of equivalence of qualifications from madrasas for subsequent access to higher education will be addressed, he added.

The government, Antulay said, has approved a revised coaching and remedial tuition scheme to improve the emplyability and academic performance of students belonging to minority communities.

Dissemination of information regarding health and family welfare schemes will be done in Urdu and regional languages and in districts, blocks and towns with substantial minority population.

Antulay said a comprehensive amendment of the Wakf Act is proposed to address existing deficiencies at the earliest.

A suitable agency will soon assist in the development of Wakf propertis so that the augmented income could be utilised for the purposes intended, he said.

Explore the exciting opportunities: Manmohan

Staff Reporter

MUMBAI: Urging the youth of the country to explore the “exciting opportunities” as “there is a nuclear renaissance taking place the world over,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stressed the government’s efforts for autonomy in India’s nuclear R&D programme. Speaking at the 50th graduation ceremony of the Training School of the Bhabha Atomic and Research Centre here, the Prime Minister lauded BARC’s contribution in nuclear science and technology.

“The Training School has evolved into a model institute, which is recognised internationally as a school of excellence. It is because of your collective efforts that India is ranked among the top few countries to have mastered the entire Nuclear Fuel Cycle,” he said.

Speaking about the importance of higher education and growth opportunities, he said the government was “fully committed to strengthening the autonomy of our nuclear R&D programme.” He said, “Our unique three-stage programme, which is predicated on the need to utilise our vast thorium deposits, is a logical response to the needs of our economy.”
Applications

He said, “I would urge you not to overlook the many other useful applications of nuclear technology. Our nation needs this technology in the areas of agriculture, food preservation, health care and industry.”

Mr. Singh drew attention to the growth and development the country is witnessing and said the graduates of the Training School and the youth should make the most of these changing times. He said, “When the world is willing to invest in India, in our future, we must also learn to invest in the world, and benefit from this two-way flow of ideas, of goods and services, of people and possibilities.”

Pointing out that those who had gone abroad to study are returning to work in India, Mr. Singh said, “I want to encourage a “reverse brain drain” so that Indians worldwide return home and contribute to our development.”

He said the government believed in investing in education and HRD for a better future. He announced his approval for five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, eight new IITs , seven new IIMs , and 20 new Indian Institutes of Information Technology.
New role models

Mr. Singh highlighted the decreasing interest in pure sciences and noted that new role models were needed, “I have earlier expressed concern at the declining enrolment in basic sciences in our colleges and universities. We are working to revitalise existing scientific institutions and creating modern new institutes of excellence. But at the end of the day the intellectual imagination of our youth will be fired by great names and great achievements. We need new role models in our scientific community.” Congratulating the toppers of the 50th batch and felicitating the overall toppers of the earlier batches, Mr. Singh said, “I wish to make one appeal. Be bold, be brave, be innovative, be curious and be open to new ideas, new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things. This is the scientific method.”

In his welcome address, Dr. Kakodkar emphasised self-reliance in BARC as the strategic R&D organisation and its development.

Satyam Computers kickstarts digital car project

Chennai, Sept. 1 (PTI): IT major Satyam Computers on Friday kickstarted its ambitious “India’s digital car” project, Hera FxV, a “technology demonstrator” aimed at attracting Research and Development in the automotive sector to the country.

B Ramalinga Raju, Chairman and Founder, Satyam Computer Services, launched the initiative at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) conference, titled “e-Automotive R&D 2007: The Opportunities Ahead”.

The Digital car is the effort of a consortium of different players like educational institutions and auto component majors, with Satyam acting as the integrator, sources at Satyam computers told PTI on the sidelines of the conference.

“This car will be a virtual vehicle, which is a demonstration of India’s technical capabilities. The project was inaugurated today and we hope to create the digital car in about two years,” they said.

The model, termed a “Mathematical Model” by the sources, could be replicated into a physical product down the years, they added.

Raju, in his address, said that automotive industry was poised for “transformational changes”.

“In fact, Satyam is now operating in sectors which were even unheard of in 19th century, an era of discovery, but are now some of the major revenue grossers for the company,” he said while terming the subsequent centuries as those of inventions and innovations.

Stating that the digital car project was an aimed at drawing global attention towards India’s technical prowess and design capabilities, Ramalinga Raju said more such efforts would establish India as an innovation led design hub.

The Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India, R Chidambaram, in his keynote address, called for more institute- academia interface to focus on R&D in India.

“Institutions are good in research but not in development and therefore there is a need for this interface,” he said, while stressing the need for what he called Directed Basic Research.

“This type of research is very important for India, especially for the long-term interests of the industry concerned,” he said.

The Working Group on Energy R&D in the 11th Five Year Plan had recommended for a National Hybrid Propulsion Platform, on a 50-50 cost sharing between the Government and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

“The focus will be on better fuel economy and lower Co2 emission,” he added.

U-M researchers dispute widely-held ideas about stem cells

ANN ARBOR: How do adult stem cells protect themselves from accumulating genetic mutations that can lead to cancer?

For more than three decades, many scientists have argued that the “immortal strand hypothesis” – which states that adult stem cells segregate their DNA in a non-random manner during cell division — explains it. And several recent reports have presented evidence backing the idea, according to Eurekalert, the news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

But in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, University of Michigan stem cell researcher Sean Morrison and his colleagues deal a mortal blow to the immortal strand, at least as far as blood-forming stem cells are concerned.

They labeled DNA in blood-forming mouse stem cells and painstakingly tracked its movement through a series of cell divisions. In the end, they found no evidence that the cells use the immortal-strand mechanism to minimize potentially harmful genetic mutations.

“This immortal strand idea has been floating around for a long time without being tested in stem cells that could be definitively identified. This paper demonstrates that it is not a general property of all stem cells,” said Morrison, director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the U-M Life Sciences Institute.

It remains possible that stem cells in other tissues use this process.

“We’ve been able to show that this is not a mechanism by which blood-forming stem cells reduce their risk of turning into cancer and, presumably, we should be looking elsewhere to understand what those mechanisms really are,” he said.

Stem cells generate all of the tissues in the developing human body, and later in life provide replacement cells when adult tissues are damaged or wear out.

Adult stem cells continue to divide throughout a person’s life, replenishing the supply of stem cells while generating other cells that develop into specialized tissues – muscles, nerves or blood, for example.

Like most cells in the body, adult stem cells divide through mitosis, the process of duplicating the chromosomes and distributing a complete set to each of two daughter cells.

During mitosis, the double-stranded DNA molecule splits into two complementary ribbons of genetic material. Each of the original strands is then used as a template to build two double helixes.

DNA encodes genetic information using a four-letter alphabet. Each time a new strand is assembled alongside the template strand, there’s a chance that an incorrect genetic letter will be inserted in the new strand, causing a mutation that could lead to cancer.

The immortal strand hypothesis, proposed in 1975, suggests that dividing adult stem cells always retain the older, or “immortal,” template strand. The new, mutation-prone strand goes to daughter cells that give rise to specific tissues.

This non-random distribution process is known as asymmetric chromosome segregation. Adult stem cells use it to minimize their chances of accumulating harmful mutations, according to the immortal strand hypothesis.

To test this idea, Morrison’s team administered a DNA-labeling substance called BrdU to mice for several days, giving the DNA time to incorporate the label. Then they extracted the blood-forming stem cells to see how many of them retained BrdU.

If the immortal strand hypothesis is right about asymmetric segregation, then under certain experimental conditions the adult stem cells should hold onto the BrdU label.

“What we found is that not many stem cells retained it,” said Morrison, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher.

“In fact, what happened with the label was completely consistent with what you’d expect by random chromosome segregation – which is known to be how most cells divide – and was completely inconsistent, in every context we looked, with the immortal strand model.”

The experiments also revealed that BrdU is not the general-purpose stem-cell marker many researchers thought it was.

Some scientists have assumed that BrdU-retaining cells found in a variety of tissues are stem cells. But Morrison and his colleagues are the first known to carefully measure stem cell purity among BrdU-retaining cells, and they found it to be “a very insensitive and nonspecific marker.”

The Nature paper will be published online Aug 29. The lead author is Mark Kiel of the U-M Life Sciences Institute, the U-M internal medicine department, the U-M Center for Stem Cell Biology, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

“This study suggests that researchers should test BrdU label retention as a marker before assuming it can be used to identify stem cells in other tissues,” Kiel said.

2)Bangalore, Aug. 31 (PTI): After catering to the requirements of the Indian armed forces for decades, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is now eyeing export of military hardware taking advantage of lower production costs at home. DRDO sees export potential for certain types of rifles, rockets, and radars, while it had also secured orders for delivery of BrahMos cruise missle developed by an Indo-Russian joint venture, its Chief Controller (R&D) Dr W Selvamurthy, told PTI here. 3)New Delhi, Aug. 31 (PTI): Government does not propose to make environment-friendly certification, Eco-Mark, compulsory on any category of products, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Namo Narain Meena told Rajya Sabha yesterday. To another question, the Minister said in a report entitled ‘World’s Top 10 Rivers at Risk’, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has listed the river Ganga as one of the world’s ten rivers facing risk.4)OAK RIDGE, Tennessee (AP): The $1.4 billion (euro1 billion) Spallation Neutron Source facility, though still powering up, has established a new mark as the world’s most powerful accelerator-based source of neutrons for scientific research. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced Thursday that the SNS’s neutron beam reached 183 kilowatts on Aug. 11, surpassing the 163-kilowatt record held by the ISIS facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England.