Homemade food for your furry friends is a call away

Tired of preparing food for your dog after a long day at work? Now you can get home-made food for your dog delivered at your doorstep.

Published: 05th March 2019 01:24 AM |

A meet-up was held over the weekend at Besant Nagar beach
By Samuel Merigala

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Tired of preparing food for your dog after a long day at work? Now you can get home-made food for your dog delivered at your doorstep. This initiative, launched by Pet and Me, offers both vegetarian and non-vegetarian options, and has kicked off operations in Adyar.

These dog-friendly gravies are priced between `60 and `120, and can be mixed with rice or rotis. They are adequate for two meals. “We noticed that processed dog food has been reducing the life span of dogs. So, we wanted to provide pet owners a healthy alternative for their dogs,” said G Niranjan, co-founder of Pet and Me.

The gravies are loaded with omega 3,6,9 fatty acids and are devoid of spices used for making food for humans. “We noticed that most people feed their dogs the same food they eat. Certain spices such as chilly powder and salt are harmful for dogs,” he said.

He claimed that the recipes of the gravies which include potatoes, carrots, and peas have been developed over a year and was received well by dogs across breeds. In the Pet and Me dog meet-up organised on Saturday at Besant Nagar, pugs, labradors and German shepherds licked their bowls clean when they were fed the gravies with rice.

“Not only are gravies healthy and fresh, dogs also seem to enjoy the taste,” said Mackson Iverson, a resident of the city who took part in the dog meet-up with his pug.Dog owners can avail the gravies at a day’s notice by placing the order.

Pick up your phone

Dog owners can avail food at a day’s notice by placing orders through the Instagram page: pet_and_me, or directly contacting Pet and Me via WhatApp on 08072935389. The three delivery slots are 7 am to 9 am, 11 am to 1 pm and 6 pm to 8 pm.

Made to stand on TNSTC bus for 350 km, Chennai family gets Rs 36,000 compensation

Undergoing harassment from the conductor and also being an arthritis patient, A Abdul Ajeez submitted a petition at the District Consumer Redressal Forum Chennai South in 2010.

Published: 06th March 2019 04:23 AM  

By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Nine years after four of a family were made to travel standing in the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) from Chennai to Vedaranyam, despite having confirmed tickets, a city consumer forum directed the State Express Transport Corporation to provide a compensation of Rs 36,000 to the passenger.

According to the petition submitted by A Abdul Ajeez, a resident of Porur, in 2010, he had booked prior tickets for eight of his family members to travel to Vedaranyam. However, on the day of travel, he found after boarding, that the seating capacity of the entire bus was only 40 seats but he was provided with seat numbers till number 44.

The passenger had booked tickets two days in advance by paying a sum of Rs 1,155 from number 36 till 44. With the conductor denying the seats to four of his family members, they were forced to travel standing for the complete distance of 350 km till Vedaranyam. This was submitted in the petition.

Undergoing harassment from the conductor and also being an arthritis patient, A Abdul Ajeez submitted a petition at the District Consumer Redressal Forum Chennai South, seeking a compensation of Rs 2 lakh along with the ticket charges and medical expenses.

Countering the allegations, the counsel for State Express Transport Corporation (SETC) said that at the last moment, the timekeeper informed the conductor that passengers of another vehicle were to be accommodated in his bus, which was also informed to the passenger.

That the passenger was also made to travel in the same bus by adjusting with other co- passengers, was submitted by the counsel for SETC at the forum.

However, based on the documents submitted, M Mony, president of the Forum, directed the SETC to pay a compensation of Rs 36,203 including the ticket value, the medical expenses and for the mental agony caused to the passenger.

Irregularities alleged in post-matric scholarships

STAFF REPORTER

SALEM, MARCH 06, 2019 00:00 IST

Members of the Mannin Mainthargal Kazhagam staged a protest in front of the district Collectorate here on Tuesday alleging irregularities in the disposal of post-matric scholarships for students belonging to SC/ST community.

The protesters alleged that the State Government has not distributed the scholarship amount for the past two financial years and several students are affected due to this.

“Thousands of underprivileged students across the State are dependant on this scholarship and the State Government, despite allocating thousands of crores in the past three budgets, has not dispersed the amount promptly”, said S. Ezhumalai, Urban secretary of the association.

He added that several students had to discontinue their studies and take up irregular jobs due to this.

Thiruvalluvar University gets new V-C

STAFF REPORTER

CHENNAI, MARCH 06, 2019 00:00 IST

S. Thamarai Selvi has been appointed as Vice-Chancellor of Thiruvalluvar University, Vellore, by Governor Banwarilal Purohit, who is also the Chancellor of the university. Ms. Thamarai Selvi has a teaching experience of 35 years and at present, is a professor in the department of Computer Technology in Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University. She has also served as the dean of MIT for three years and has also been the director of the Centre for Technology Development and Transfer in Anna University.

London patient may be second in world to be cured of HIV
Milestone From Bone-Marrow Transplant Shows Cure’s Possible

Apoorva Mandavilli

06.03.2019

For just the second time since the global epidemic began, a patient appears to have been cured of infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The news comes nearly 12 years to the day after the first patient known to be cured, a feat that researchers have long tried, and failed, to duplicate. The surprise success now confirms that a cure for HIV infection is possible, if difficult, researchers said.

The report is to be published on Tuesday in the journal ‘Nature’ and investigators to present some of the details at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle.

Publicly, the scientists are describing the case as a longterm remission. In interviews, most experts are calling it a cure, with the caveat that it is hard to know how to define the word when there are only two known instances.

Both milestones resulted from bone-marrow transplants given to infected patients. But the transplants were intended to treat cancer in the patients, not HIV.

Bone-marrow transplantation is unlikely to be a realistic treatment option in the near future. Powerful drugs are now available to control HIV infection, while the transplants are risky, with harsh side effects that can last for years.

But rearming the body with immune cells similarly modified to resist HIV might well succeed as a practical treatment, experts said.

“This will inspire people that cure is not a dream,” said Dr Annemarie Wensing, a virologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. “It’s reachable.”Dr. Wensing is co-leader of IciStem, a consortium of European scientists studying stem cell transplants to treat HIV infection. The consortium is supported by AMFAR, the American AIDS research organization.The new patient has chosen to remain anonymous, and the scientists referred to him only as the “London patient.”

“I feel a sense of responsibility to help the doctors understand how it happened so they can develop the science,” he told The New York Times in an email. Learning that he could be cured of both cancer and HIV infection was “surreal” and “overwhelming,” he added. “I never thought that there would be a cure during my lifetime.”

At the same conference in 2007, a German doctor described the first such cure in the “Berlin patient,” later identified as Timothy Ray Brown, 52, who now lives in Palm Springs, California.

That news, displayed on a poster at the back of a conference room, initially gained little attention. Once it became clear that Brown was cured, scientists set out to duplicate his result with other cancer patients infected with HIV.

In case after case, the virus came roaring back, often around nine months after the patients stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, or else the patients died of cancer. The failures left scientists wondering whether Brown’s cure would remain a fluke. Brown had had leukemia, and after chemotherapy failed to stop it, he needed two bone-marrow transplants. The transplants were from a donor with a mutation in a protein called CCR5, which rests on the surface of certain immune cells. HIV uses the protein to enter those cells but cannot latch on to the mutated version.

Mr. Brown was given harsh immunosuppressive drugs of a kind that are no longer used, and suffered intense complications for months after the transplant. He was placed in an induced coma at one point and nearly died.

“He was really beaten up by the whole procedure,” said Dr. Steven Deeks, an AIDS expert at the University of California, San Francisco, who has treated Mr. Brown. “And so we’ve always wondered whether all that conditioning, a massive amount of destruction to his immune system, explained why Timothy was cured but no one else.”

The London patient has answered that question: A near-death experience is not required for the procedure to work. He had Hodgkin’s lymphoma and received a bonemarrow transplant from a donor with the CCR5 mutation in May 2016. He, too, received immunosuppressive drugs, but the treatment was much less intense, in line with current standards for transplant patients.

He quit taking anti-HIV drugs in September 2017, making him the first patient since Brown known to remain virus-free for over a year after stopping.

“I think this does change the game a little bit,” said Dr. Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at University College London who presented the findings at the Seattle meeting. “Everybody believed after the Berlin patient that you needed to nearly die basically to cure HIV, but now you don’t,” said Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at University College London.

Although the London patient was not as ill as Brown had been after the transplant, the procedure worked about as well: The transplant destroyed the cancer without harmful side effects.

So far, scientists are tracking 38 HIV-infected people who have received bone-marrow transplants, including six from donors without the mutation. The London patient is 36 on this list. Number 19 on the list, referred to as the “Düsseldorf patient,” has been off anti-HIV drugs for four months. Details of that case will be presented at the Seattle conference later this week.

The consortium’s scientists have repeatedly analysed the London patient’s blood for signs of the virus. They saw a weak indication of continued infection in one of 24 tests, but say this may be the result of contamination in the sample.

The most sensitive test did not find any circulating virus. Antibodies to HIV were still present in his blood, but their levels declined, in a trajectory similar to that seen in Brown. None of this guarantees that the London patient is forever out of the woods, but the similarities to Brown’s recovery offer reason for optimism, Gupta said. NYT

Scientists have long tried to duplicate the procedure that led to the first long-term remission 12 years ago

High court directs all postmortems in state to be videographed

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Madurai:06.03.2019

The Madurai bench of the Madras high court has granted an interim direction to videograph all the postmortems which are performed in the state after a petitioner raised concerns about the credibility of the reports and sought a direction to record all postmortems.

In his public interest litigation (PIL), R M Arun Swaminathan, an advocate and a resident of Madurai stated that he suspected the nature of postmortems performed at government hospitals.

When the petition was heard on Tuesday, Swaminathan stated that when examining the postmortem reports of four different people, it was found out that all four had the same identification marks. He said that it raises suspicion whether the postmortems were performed or the reports were just copy-pasted by just changing the name and father’s name of the deceased.

He further claimed that nearly 700 postmortem certificates of Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH) were not signed and they are yet to be sent to the concerned police stations. He also stated that though two postings of scientific officers have to be appointed in each of the 24 government medical colleges in the state, the present strength is only three.

Anna varsity’s exam system may not allay quality concerns

Adarsh Jain   06.03.2019  Times of India

For long, the quality of engineering graduates produced by Anna University and its affiliated colleges has come under question. To tide over this the institution is putting in place the most stringent assessment system, expecting every student to score 90%.

While the intention is to improve overall quality, what raises concern among educationists is the blindfolded approach with focus on marks instead of learning. Last week, Anna University announced that a student failing in a subject thrice would have to redo the entire four-year course.

While some, like education consultant Moorthy Selvakumaran, say this is the standard procedure followed across the country, others feel failure of a student is a reflection of the academic system and should be addressed thus. “The fact that a student has not been able to pass the subject is not just his/her responsibility. It is equally the fault of the teacher. One must be allowed to sit for the classes again for that subject,” said principal of a Salem-based college. Until now each semester exam had two sections. The first part comprised 10 twomark questions and the second part had five 16-mark questions.

According to the new rule, the second part is tweaked, with six questions, of which five are of 13 marks each and the last creative question is for 15 marks.

“While increasing difficulty level to test knowledge is good, the university should understand that creating a balance is also crucial,” said a professor of a Coimbatorebased college.

The issue came to light when results of the first semester examination were published. Teachers and students were appalled with the performance in engineering mathematics. “Our college’s average performance without mathematics is 80%, but if we include mathematics it drops to 35%,” said a professor from Namakkal.

“I do not question the degree of difficulty of the curriculum. It is important to revise the syllabus to stay updated,” he said but also stressed on the unstated rule that a paper usually has 25% questions with high difficulty to ensure an average 60% of the students can clear the exam. Experts state that each class has students of different calibre and interests.

Further, while the intention of the last question, which has to be answered creatively, is good, its point is lost as the duration of the exam is limited. “Writing six detailed answers along with 10 short ones in three hours is a big ask,” said the professor.

To bring in a more application-based, creative and flexible assessment, experts suggest decentralization of the examination system. Akin to universities abroad that give 60% weightage to internal assessment of assignments, seminars, tests and quizzes instead of one written exam. The evaluation is also transparent as the revaluation can be done in front of the student.

About five years ago, Anna University, took away the powers of its regional centres to conduct exams. “There are many institutions who exploit the decentralized system. They intend to produce only degree holders, not employable graduates,” said a mechanical engineering professor and principal. “Anna University needs to create a system where any malpractice in the examination process is identifiable,” he added.

The colleges have made representations to the Anna University management. “We are expecting that there will be some changes. The best solution would be to have an independent board that does not involve people holding positions in institutions to frame regulations and monitor the system,” said the principal from Salem.

(The author is a freelancer)

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