My 2 cents on Israel- Hizbollah 2006

1) Hizbollah started it by kidnapping two soldiers. In past such kidnapping has been used for bargaining their prisoners out by both Hamas (Palestin) and Hezbollah.

However, the motive of Hizbollah this time is different after the voluntary evacuations of jewish population from Gaza strip and new prime minister at helm in Isreal.

2) Obviously, the heavy handed approach of prime minister Olmert is being critisized as too much or killing of innocent citizens.

But it is important to disarm hizbollah for various reasons.

3)
- Hizbollah is heavily armed !! militant group which can cross national borders (without the government backing) and plunge the country in to a war.
- it doesn't represent a soverign government and hence has no rights to be armed !!!.
- It is influenced by Syria and Iran which has its own agendas in supporting it.
- It has clearly islamic agenda which can endanger the christian minority and democracy in Lebanon and it has stated goal of destroying Israel.
- Moreover, they are fighting while hiding among civilians.

4) Diplomacy - France is going back its former protectorate just like English sitting in Basra and Afghanistan.

Reservation and affirmative action - some thoughts on implimentation

The idea is to discuss some feasible ways to impliment affirmative
action and also let the talents flurish. Moreover, the ways to tackle
"creamy layer" inside the SC/ST/OBC community who are taking unfair
advantage of the system is considered.

1) Affirmative action is necessary.

The socially and economically backward class has a right to join the
forefront of the society and taste the fruits of progress country has
made in last 50 yrs. This is important for a balanced growth and
healthy society.

2) Affirmative action should be implemented on the basis of economic
well-being and edicational level

Indian society has been troubled enough by the caste system. As a
secular nation implementing any steps on the basis of caste or
religion is against our constitution, so is the quotas based on caste.
It will divide the nation.

Instead, it is the level of education and economic well-being that
should be taken into consideration.

Students whose parents are not educated up to a college graduate level
and not earning enough should be give "free" school and college
education regardless of their caste or religion.
On the other hand, How can a person who finished an MBBS or a BE
(technology) could be considered backward class? Thus, quotas in
higher education (post graduate studies) should be restricted (see
below).

3) Quotas on job:

It is possible that even in the 21st century the educated person is
discriminated against because of their caste, but it is getting less
and less likely due to healthy private sector and cut-throat
compitition where talent is the only way. If the government wishes so
- they can have quotas in the job in govt. sector. Decision making in
Private enterprises should be private and should not be pressured by
Govt.

4) Restricting the creamy layer.

It is impossible to have everybody taking advantage of the affirmative
action at the same time and it is also impossible to stop some
families from falling to poverty. So it is very hard to put a stop as
to when affirmative action should end. But it is equally important to
stop the creamy layer from taking unfair advantage of the quota
system.

Instead, an SC/ST/OBC candidate should be given choices. Once in his
life time he can choose between having the affirmative action in
favour of him for Post graduate studies or his first job. The
affirmative action should stop there.
Similaraly children of educated parents (college graduate) should not
be able to take advantage of affirmative action after 3 generations of
their forefathers having utilized it . Though, economic aid should be
allowed to all those in need.

5) Caste and religion based advantages should be strictly forbidden
and constitution should be restored to remove reservation.

By the rights given to us in our constitution all indian are equal
irrespective of their caste or religion and this should be respected.
Reservation was a temporary measure and constitution was amended for
allowing it. Thus, it should be restored. Again, affirmative action is
important but it should not be the birth right on any individual.

The logic of mobocracy: Mandal II

This is to sound my protest against the newly introduced political move by Congress led UPA government in India.

First, let us review some points that are time and again cited in favour of reservation.

1) The "dalits" (SC/ST/BC and now OBC) have been kept at the periphery of the society and never given the polictical and social rights that they deserve
2) Their financial and educational levels are low in comparision to the "upper" classes, especially in the rural area.
3) The government need to improve their status by affirmative action - i.e. reserving upto 50% of seats in the education as well as job sector.

Above three points makes the assumption that social and financial well-being is tied with "caste" i.e. it is desided to which household you were born.

I should start with reminding the "Right to equality" that is given to all the citizens of India by our constitutions. I am aware that our constitution had been amended to introduce the reservation. But I still consier the reservation as UNCONSTITUTIONAL and reservation as an illigal step against the right to equality.

Second, I am not against the affirmative action. But instead of tying it with a particular caste (i.e. birth right) it should be given to the all economically and socially backward members of the society and it should be stopped after 1 or 2 generation of house hold has utilized their opportunities.

We all know that SC/ST enjoyes the reservation since last 50 years or so in every aspect of social life. So if reservation is working then they should have been the prosperous members of the society and after 3 or more generations that they have enjoyed this right it is a right time to remove reservation as given to them. However, if they still reqiure the support of reservation in order to prosper, that means that reservation given to particular caste has failed and the measure should not be applied to the larger section of the society as it will fail while hurting growth of rightful candidates.

Though, we all know that it such reservation has resulted in a creamy layer across SC/ST classes in terms of political and job markets. It hasnot changed the situation at the grass root level.

Why it is a political master punch from Congress?

Let us remember some history. Not so long ago Mr. VP Singh, then the prime minister of india desided to introduce the steps as Mandal panch required. This resulted in wide spread protests and self-immolation. It finally resulted in fall of the government. The next government Congress supported for a while and then pulled back its support, which lead to the political come back for the party and the government of Mr. PV Narsimha Rao. The reason being strong support for congress at the grass root level. The situation hasn't changed much. The Congress came back to power after Mr. Vajpayee's BJP govt. was defeated by support of the indian villages. So now, by introducing this contraversial moves (which no political parties can oppose !!) congress is making sure for a next strong government and a very strong vote bank. Thus, changing democracy to mobocracy.

Now discussion about an unrelated topic that gives the same message. The controversial movie (and book) "Da Vinci Code" was banned in
christian majority state of Nagaland citing its potential for political disturbance but the same reason was given for banning it in Punjab, where christians are in minority. It not only shows political hand on the neck of freedom of expression but again the "mobocracy" at work.

We, as Indians has to be aware of this poison else the dream of being 21st century suporpower would be drowned in the Indian ocean.

Got the Adsence running

Finally got the AdSence running today ... that was easy ... looks like I am finally getting hand of computers ....
Don't get impressed ... just go to Google As sense and copy paste the code at proper places.
Now let's see how fast the $$$ turn up !!!

Identifying good targets for making antibodies.

The idea is to identify regions that are highly antigenic and and specific to the protein under study. Looking at a multi species view that would mean that regions that are highly antigenic (immunogenic), conserved across orthologues but not conseved amond paralogs (homologues proteins in the same species). Also, the problem of cross reactivity could occur by identical stretches in non-related species. Thus, a blast is necessary on the entire genome to rule out the similar regions.

Finding antigenic regions
----------------------

Now in order that antibodies can react specifically to the regions in proteins, follwing properties are necessary.

1) The region should be solvent accessible
2) The region should be hydrophilic
3) The region should have a specific secondary/tertiary structure.

Such regions can be divided into two - 1) continuous stretches along the protein sequence and 2) Non-continuous stretches along the protein sequence but continuous in the tertiary structure (protein surface)

Other desired structural properties are - 1) presence of a proline (possibility of a cis confirmation), beta turn, and so forth.
3D structures would help identifying non-contiguous stretches.

Methods:
--------

1) Blast again Genome as well as PDB
2) SMART/Pfam
3) hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity index and
4) Secondary structure and slovent acessibility prediction (PHD)
5) Turn prediction and soforth.


Any suggestions are well come

The Big idea !!

The idea is to start a discussio blog about high-throughput molecular biology .. sharing some tips and trics of the trade.
I work on Bioinformatics so my posts will mostly be leaning towards computational biology.

Ofcourse other discussions are allowed !!
Check for more in future !!!