Science & Us

On October 16, 2022, Dr Dilip Mahalanabis died in Kolkata. In 1971, he pioneered the use of oral rehydration therapy in refugee camps near Kolkata saving many lives. This was the first time it was used in a crisis setting. 

In this episode of Science and Us, Suno India’s Menaka Rao speaks to Dr Rajib Dasgupta about the scientific mechanism of oral rehydration therapy and why it works to save lives during acute diarrhoea. Dr Rajib describes the twists and turns which led to the final acceptance of oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea treatment at the global level. The show is co-hosted by Rakesh Kamal. 

References

Dilip Mahalanabis: The ORS pioneer who helped save millions of lives | The Indian Express
MAGIC BULLET: THE HISTORY OF ORAL REHYDRATION THERAPY
ORAL MAINTENANCE THERAPY FOR CHOLERA IN ADULTS - The Lancet
Oral fluid therapy of cholera among Bangladesh refugees[1] Mahalanabis D, Choudhuri A B, Bagchi N G, Bhattacharya A K, Simpson T W
Oral rehydration therapy: the simple solution for saving lives | The BMJ
Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar launches Intensified Diarrhoea Control Fortnight – 2022 aimed at zero child deaths due to childhood diarrhoea 

Exploring intra-household factors for diarrhoeal diseases: a study in slums of Delhi, India

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In 2014, skeletons were found in the well in a Gurdwara in Ajnala area of Punjab. Who do the skeletons belong to? While historical records said that these could be Indian soldiers killed by the British during the 1857 armed uprising, there were several other theories about it. How did scientists go about investigating this mystery? We spoke to Dr J S Sehrawat, a forensic anthropologist from Panjab University. This podcast is the story of the fascinating world of forensic anthropology. 

Reporting and research - Menaka Rao
Co-host and audio editing - Rakesh Kamal

Additional Reading:

Short fieldwork report. Human remains from Ajnala, India, 2014
Forgotten, Discovered and Then Forgotten Again: The 1857 Martyrs in Punjab's Ajnala
Carbon dating, the archaeological workhorse, is getting a major reboot
Aspartic acid racemization of root dentin used for dental age estimation in a Polish population sample - PMC.
Forensic odontological sex determination of Ajnala skeletal remains based on the statistical equations generated from the odontometrics of known teeth - ScienceDirect
Dental Age Estimation of Ajnala Skeletal Remains: A Forensic Odontological Study
Pinpointing the Geographic Origin of 165-Year-Old Human Skeletal Remains Found in Punjab, India: Evidence From Mitochondrial DNA and Stable Isotope Analysis

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In the past couple of decades, we have been hearing of cloudbursts in some part of the country or another. How is the Indian Meteorological Department studying this phenomenon? Why are these incidents increasing over a period of time, and what can be done to minimize the damages cloudbursts cause, both to life and property?

To understand this phenomenon, we spoke to Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune studying climate change research, and extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, floods, heat waves, and cyclones among others.

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At 2000 deaths on an average per year, lightning kills more people than any other natural event or disaster. In this episode of Science & Us, we find out how climate change leads to an increase in lightning strikes, why it is not notified as a national disaster, and how we can protect ourselves from it. Our reporter Suryatapa Mukherjee speaks to Colonel Sanjay Srivastava, chairman of the climate resilient Observing System promotion Council (CROPC) and convenor of the Lightning Resilient India campaign. She also speaks to Arun Kundu, Secretary of Smart Future Foundation in West Bengal, about his work of visiting villages to make them lightning resilient. Our Contributing Editor Menaka Rao co-hosts this episode.

Annual Lightning Report 2021-2022  
Lightning occurrences and intensity over the Indian region: long-term trends and future projections
Projected increase in lightning strikes in the United States due to global warming.
Lightning kills more Indians than any other natural disaster. Can those deaths be prevented?

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In this episode of Science and Us, we explore how music helps autistic children communicate with others.

Suno India’s Menaka Rao speaks with Dr Nandini Chatterjee Singh, senior national programme officer, with Unesco Mahatma  Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) which works towards developing programmes and products that promote social and emotional learning and with the National Brain Research Centre in Manesar, Haryana. Dr Nandini conducted experiments with autistic children using functional MRI which gives us some understanding of how music and sung speech can open new frontiers for communication in autistic children. We also spoke to Meera Balachander, parent of an autistic man, Krishna Kumar to understand the role of music in his life.

The show is co-hosted by Suryatapa Mukherjee.

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This April, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi demanding that the spent fuel from India’s largest nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu be dealt with. What has been the Indian government’s way of handling nuclear waste? How does it correspond with the way other countries are dealing with their nuclear waste? Independent journalist, Hariprasad Radhakrishnan reports on this issue and explains it threadbare. Co-hosting this episode is Suno India’s Rakesh Kamal. 

For this episode, Hariprasad spoke to Dr TR Govindarajan, a retired professor of theoretical physics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences who is also a part of the Tamil Nadu Science Forum. He also spoke to environmental activists, G. Sundarrajan, an anti-nuclear activist who runs an NGO named Poovulagin Nanbargal or Friends of Earth and SP Udayakumaran, who was the face of the anti-nuclear protests in Kudankulam.

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This is the second in the two-part series on how gendered understanding of science affects the way research is conducted. In this episode, Suno India’s Menaka Rao speaks to Sayantan Datta about how the certainty of male-female binary affects the way science is done.  

Datta is a queer-trans science journalist and communicator who writes for feminist multimedia science collective, Life of Science. They also teach writing and communication at Krea University, in Andhra Pradesh. 

Menaka Rao, and Suryatapa Mukherjee hosted this episode.

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March 8 is International Women’s day. We have two episodes this month on how gendered understanding of science affects the way research is conducted. 

The first episode describes the protests led by feminist organisations on the unethical trials on contraceptive injections starting from the 80s till more recently. Conversely, we also discuss how there are very few women and almost no transgender persons enrolled in clinical trials which gives a very limited understanding of the impact of new drugs.

In this episode, Suno India’s Menaka Rao speaks to Dr Vineeta Bal, Dr Sunita Bandewar and Sayantan Datta. Dr Bal is an immunologist who worked at the National Institute of Immunology and is now a visiting faculty at Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research, Pune. Dr Bandewar is one of the working editors of Indian Journal of Medical Ethics and independent researcher in the area of bioethics and global health. Sayantan Datta, a queer-trans science journalist and communicator who writes for feminist multimedia science collective, Life of Science. They also teach writing and communication at Krea University, in Andhra Pradesh. 

The show is hosted by Menaka Rao and Padmapriya DVL. 

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What makes a healthy scalp? Scientists from the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal are working on understanding the scalp microbiome of Indians, both healthy and dandruff-ridden. They have now hit upon the role of coconut oil in maintaining a healthy scalp. Dr Vineet Sharma from IISER described the two ground-breaking studies on the scalp that have been done in their Institute. 

Show notes:

Frontiers | Comparison of Healthy and Dandruff Scalp Microbiome Reveals the Role of Commensals in Scalp Health | Cellular and Infection Microbiology
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-86454-1

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While scientists discovered a new snake species in the southern Indian state of Tamilnadu, little did they know that this discovery would unearth a 185-year old problem of name mix-ups done in the past. In 2016, Deepak Veerappan, working with the Natural History Museum in London, received a new snake species from Tamilnadu. It was considered similar to banded racer (a widespread species). For this, they had to describe the snake, look at finer details, and also compare it to a banded racer. When they looked at the morphology and DNA of the new species, they found it to be different from banded racer. When they probed further into banded racer for comparisons, they found that banded racer was wrongly classified in the category of wolf snake. And all this mix-up happened due to Albert Gunther, a scientist, working with the Natural History Museum between 1875 and 1895.

The specimens, snakeskin collection and paintings in the Natural History Museum, London and Bodleian Library, Oxford University among other repositories were analysed to deconstruct this. Though discovering a new species is not uncommon among researchers, this research traces back to historical archives and modern science to break a taxonomic confusion.

The story is based on a research paper published in the journal of ‘Vertebrate Zoology. Sharada Balasubramanian, an environmental journalist, spoke to authors Deepak Veerappan and Surya Narayanan, and renowned herpetologist Varad Giri, for this story.

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