RESEARCH

Government is once again displaying its shocking lack of preparedness to prevent bird flu from entering the country and containing its spread among poultry thereafter. If people have not been infected so far, thank luck, not authority A s this article is being written, an Associated Press report filed at 5.30 pm, Saturday, January 19, informs that Government officials in West Bengal, despite accepting that the disease they are trying to fight and control is avian influenza, are "still waiting for test results to determine whether it is the H5N1 strain of the virus, which has been blamed for the deaths of 217 people worldwide since 2003". This shocking laggardness of the health department, which could -- let's pray it does not happen -- lead to the deadly virus crossing the species barrier to infect human beings, is unpardonable. "If some initial sign, initial indication a pandemic happens, we have to immediately pick up, detect this initial sign or signals and imple

T he Indian Railways’ act of using signal detonators (crackers) about a quarter kilometre away from outermost signal points to warn train drivers of approaching stations and yard’s staff of incoming trains under foggy conditions is a ludicrous anachronism in this high-tech era. The news comes in the wake of a recent Press release by the Railways that talked of a laser technology to be developed jointly by IIT, Kanpur, the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) and other industry partners on a “fog vision instrumentation” project, which will allow trains to run unhindered in foggy conditions. This is nothing impressive. The largest public sector employer has never suffered from a dearth of ideas. But converting science into practicable technology has always been a problem with it. Browsing the documents of the Commission of Railway Safety, one comes across a plethora of ideas for safety that were either not implemented at all, or were meant only for privileged trains like Raj