23rd March

Keep Watch

The article talks about the internal instability in Pakistan due to increasing insurgency in the eastern border as well as rising tension on LoC. 

While Pakistan faces tension on twin borders, it is unadvisable for India to revoke some of its troops from its western border considering the fact that tension in Pakistan can spill over to India as well. While the key to defeat Taliban is whether they can be denied safe heavens in Pakistan or not, US has already confirmed that the terrorists they are in search of are not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan. Already they have killed some 9 of the top 20 leaders of Al Qaeda but many of them still find a sanctuary in the areas of Quetta in Baluchistan province which includes Mullah Omar as well. If these safe heavens are denied then it is possible that their assets can come under direct attack which can destabilize Pakistan internally. Moreover, if dragged out of Baluchistan, these elements could possibly move to Pakistan heartland near Islamabad which is even more dangerous.

What is needed for India is to keep US and other key players in Pakistan engaged while keeping its vigil alive. 

Have a Heart

The article talks about the new artificial heart developed by the students at IIT-Kharagpur’s school of medical science and technology. The new heart is not only revolutionary but also affordable to common man with a price tag of Rs.1 lakh.

While scientists in US were the first to reach this breakthrough, US became the first country to approve such artificial device. On the other hand the scientists at IIT-Kharagpur created a heart 30 times cheaper then its US counterpart. The 13-chambered prototype, more resilient then the models anywhere else in the world has been successfully tried on frogs and experiments on goat is underway. If everything goes fine, permission from ICMR is what is needed. If the experiments go successful it would be a breakthrough in prosthetic research. It would also mean that the Bionic man would no more cost $6 million and the age of cyborgs would come sooner then we thought. 

However at the same time research is going on over regenerative medicines that use patient’s own tissue to generate a new heart. Its success would make artificial heart obsolete while eliminating the issue of organ acceptance in the body and naturally make cyborgs useless.