Staggering price for a paan-daan Over the centuries, the average Indian’s post-meal ‘chew’, the digestive ‘paan’, or betel leaf, has taken on fancy flavours and perhaps a fancier price. There was a time when Rajas, Maharajas, and their Rains and most other nobility swung important...
Princie, the pink diamond ‘Princie’, a rare, intense 34.65-carat pink diamond, described by Christie’s as one of the world’s largest and finest pink diamonds, was mined from the ancient Golconda mines. It belonged to the Nizam of Hyderabad and was auctioned in 1960 by his...
Paintings sold for Rs. 10 crores The highlight of Christie’s South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale in 2013 was Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, who was regarded as one of India’s finest abstract painters. He passed away in 2001. Two of his previously never-before-seen paintings fetched...
Doctors for You From Assam’s violence-hit Kokrajhar to Andhra’s floods, Dr. Ravikant Singh and his NGO, ‘Doctors for You’, are summoned first for medical relief during natural or man-made disasters. It all started when Dr. Ravikant was a medical student in Mumbai and his native...
Susruta, the original Indian surgeon Indian doctors and surgeons are the ‘professional descendants of the original Indian surgeon, Susruta, the 4th century BC disciple of Dhanvantri, the first Indian ‘doctor’. The ‘Sushruta Samhita’ describes over one hundred surgical instruments with names of birds or animals,...
Paper clip helps in surgery Most conventional disposable surgical devices that follow international standards are expensive. Not to be daunted by this, Indian surgeons have succeeded in inventing a variety of cheaper, indigenous methods to perform surgeries. According to a paper in the ‘Journal of...
Dua’s layer A new layer of the human cornea, called Dua’s layer, has been discovered by Harminder Dua, a researcher at the University of Nottingham in the UK. The new ‘layer’ is a 15-micron thick layer that sits at the back of the cornea, between...
Paper to detect cancer Sangeeta Bhatia of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, has developed a paper that can detect cancer. The paper test relies on nanoparticles that interact with tumour proteins (proteases) that release hundreds of biomarkers that can be detected in a patient’s...
Heart of the matter Dr. Hemant Thatte, a Mumbai-born senior cardiovascular surgeon at Harvard University, has worked out a 21-chemical solution that could help preserve a donated organ for up to a week prior to a transplant. At present, organs retrieved from brain-dead people can...
Hauz Khas, old and new Hauz Khas in South Delhi – just a stone’s throw from the imposing Qutab Minar – is now mainly a residential colony. Like most of Delhi, it is a fine blend of the really old and the new! Among the...
