"Bond, James Bond" is no more

 Sir Sean Connery passed away at 90 in his Bahamas home😞. He was my favorite actor and he is missed. I saw his 'Dr. No' while I was still in college. It was a thriller that really thrilled me. I could not wait for his next, From Russia with Love. Thereafter I saw all the James Bond movies. 

Source: http://www.freemovie-tvwallpaper.com

Other actors were drafted to play his 'Bond' role and my interest in Bond movies waned. No one came anywhere near his stature, not even Daniel Craig.

For me James Bond meant Sean Connery. Stop.

He made many more movies other than James Bond. 

His other non-Bond movies that I liked were:

The Man who would be king

Finding Forrester

A goodman in Africa

The Untouchables

I sorely miss Sean Connery.

Wikipedia Entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Connery

List of Bond movies:

https://wanttoknowit.com/list-of-james-bond-movies/

He was very photogenic a feature that improved with age. Images related to Sean Connery:

https://tinyurl.com/yyymz85h

--------------😩😩😩

Another great guy a fantastic music maker who passed away 

https://hodentek.blogspot.com/2020/07/ennio-morricone-who-created.html

Je suis enseignant!

Au nom de l’idolâtrie, les musulmans ont détruit des milliers de temples en Inde en défigurant les images sculptées de diverses manières : décapitation ; coupe des mains et des jambes; hachage du nez et des oreilles; trous ennuyeux dans les parties privées féminines; organes génitaux découpés de figures masculines et diverses autres atrocités. De nombreux objets du patrimoine bouddhiste ont également été détruits dans d’autres parties du monde. 

https://tinyurl.com/y6ddwl6d

La récente décapitation odieuse d’un enseignant qui enseignait en quoi il croyait est barbare et médiévale. Comment pouvez-vous appeler le nom de votre Dieu tout en faisant cet acte, comme si cela lui plasait?

India's Corona Virus situation is slightly improving

 Both Indian news media and John's Hopkins' data seem to indicate that the Corona Virus situation is getting better.

 

Fortunately, the number of deaths though appearing big compared to the population has been low so far.

With the coming holiday and festival season coming this situation is likely to go the other way. Another environmental factor that my get the situation southwards is the increasing pollution and dust. I hope Bengaluru and various other municipalities made use of the restrictions to better plan their traffic situation in controlling air pollution.

 Happy Navratri for all our friends, family and Indian citizens.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/navaratri-2020-kalash-sthapna-date-puja-vidhi-muhurat-timings-6724917/

Dr. Reddy's Laboratory in India teams with Russia's RDIF for Sputnik V Vaccine trials

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Dr. Reddy's laboratory has received renewed approval to conduct late-stage clinical trials in India.

This new trial will have 1500 participants. Dr. Reddy's will do the clinical trials, and if approved will distribute the vaccine. RDIF will supply 100 million doses to Reddy's.

Other countries where sputnik V will be tried are Belarus, Venezuela and UAE. Russia is doing a Phase III trial with 40,000 participants.

If everything goes well Indian manufacturer will produce 300 million doses.

The above is abstracted from the Reuters' site.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-russia-india-idUSR4N2GK04T

Links to Sputnik V

https://sputnikvaccine.com/

Dr. Reddy's Laboratory is traded as an ADR (RDY).

This will change your views about cows

The latest wellness trend is 'Cow Hugging'. In India, cows are revered because they literally embody our Hindu divinities. It represents the residence of sum total of all of our deities. 

 In more practical terms cows provide their entire body for the humans. Starting from the milk and including the hide. Unfortunately, they are also killed for their meat. Killing an animal is deemed to be a cardinal sin.

Here is how the Hindus look at the cow. I would not like to place side by side how it is viewed by some.

Recently hugging cow seems to have given people some peace. This is not unusual. Not only hugging cows but also other animals such as pets offer comfort. Cow being a larger animal which is very warm, the effect is enhanced.  

Dried cow dung (poop in the USA) has been used for time immemorial in India as a fuel. In fact there used to be huge market for cow dung cakes. Manure based biogas has been used extensively in India and other countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas

Recently, it has been used to produce hydrogen and a facility is being built in California to produce hydrogen from feed gases including cow poop. 

https://hodentek.blogspot.com/2020/10/cow-poop-to-power-autos-and-power.html

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a29581764/toyota-2021-mirai-cow-manure-hydrogen/

https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a29575713/toyota-2021-mirai-cow-manure-hydrogen/

You don't kill a goose that lays a golden egg, do you?

Cow poop to power autos and power generation

 Cow poop is in use for power production using the methane gas in the poop. It requires vision and drive to make it to large scale use for producing Hydrogen. Toyota has been involved in getting hydrogen out of cow poop and in fact it is building a facility on California to produce hydrogen to power trucks, the Tri-Gen facility.

"The Fountain Valley tri-generation fuel cell system also demonstrated the versatility of fuel cells to utilize multiple feedstocks, suchas biogas and natural gas, to produce powerand renewable hydrogen that can be used to fuel light duty vehicles. Primarily runningon biogas, the system can also use naturalgas to sustain a consistent fuel flow in thecase of any disruption inbiogas availability or quality. "

The above is copied from this pdf;

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/12/f34/fcto_fountain_valley_success_story.pdf

Presently hydrogen cars are a bit expensive in the range of $60,000, but they are likely to steeply come down ones the infrastructer is built-up. Only Californians can drive hydrogen powered cars now but soon several European cities may also become supportive of hydrogen cars and especially long-haul trucking industry.

Here is a picture of Mirai 2021

India has perhaps the largest number of cows in the world and I believe it is most pertinent for India to use this resource. The concept of Kamadenu, an Indian Hindu belief that adores the cow for all the benefits it gives to human beings adds on more uses. In fact, cows are revered in India from time immorial.

More here:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a29581764/toyota-2021-mirai-cow-manure-hydrogen/

https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a29575713/toyota-2021-mirai-cow-manure-hydrogen/

Breaking COVID-19 News: Light at the end of tunnel for India and the world

 India has been battered by the Covid-19 virus which got out of China and attacked the world. It has left on its trail millions of people jobless; thousands and thousands of dead, and still raging unabated. For the poor in India and Brazil where health care facilities are not available for many, it has been very cruel. Many, many businesses may not survive its onslaught. 

On the bright side many vaccines (100's and counting) are being developed but whether it can come in time for the poor and downtrodden is questionable. Probably many more casualties will follow.

Testing to find whether one is being infected or not has been one of the biggest problems even before talking about an effective vaccine. These tests are neither easy, nor inexpensive. There is also an element of time involved for the test results to be available. Even after that, there is the question of whether it is reliable or not remains. The incubation period of the virus is another parameter which impedes the tracking and mitigation efforts.

Most of all, people are not ready to adopt a more responsible and proactive effort to stop its spread, either because prolonged quarantine deals a heavy blow to the economics, or that people are not ready to forego personal liberties.

Testing has a crucial role to play. India's new paper COVID-19 test could be the light we have been waiting for in India. 

"A team of scientists in India has developed an inexpensive paper-based test for coronavirus that could give fast results similar to a pregnancy test. The BBC's Soutik Biswas and Krutika Pathi unpack how it works." - BBC

A CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) based kit called Feluda made by the Tata's group (Known for its philanthropy) will be the first paper-based test available in India. Feluda was developed by CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB). 

Some highlights:

• It has been tested on samples from 2,000 patients that includes those who were tested to be positive.
• It takes about 45 minutes for the results of the test.
• It uses simpler apparatus compared to other tests.
• The new test has a sensitivity of 96% ensuring low false negatives and a specificity of 98% reducing false positives.

The CSIR team that developed the Feluda test

The CISR institute is working on a point-of-care-test.

The above post is based on the link below.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54338864

More references here:

India's drug authority approved paper-strip Covid-19 test that could return results within hour

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/indias-drug-authority-approved-paper-strip-covid-19-test-that-could-return-results-within-hour/ar-BB19Jcw2?ocid=uxbndlbing

New rapid COVID-19 test could be an ‘affordable’ breakthrough

https://nypost.com/2020/10/05/new-affordable-rapid-covid-19-paper-test-could-be-breakthrough/

India’s Feluda Covid-19 test cheaper, faster alternative to RT-PCR, say scientists

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-s-feluda-covid-19-test-cheaper-faster-alternative-to-rt-pcr-say-scientists/story-j1NF1WY5hMu9AZbAWqvMyN.html

Breaking News: CRISPR tool developers get Noble Prize in Chemistry 2020

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-nobel-prize-chemistry-awarded-charpentier.html