Bharat Ratna to Joshi

Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan on Wednesday hailed the government's decision to confer the Bharat Ratna award upon the legendary vocalist Pandit Bhim Sen Joshi, terming it as a great honour to Hindustani classical music.

"It is a great honour that one of the living legends in the world has received the country's highest civilian award. His contribution to the Hindustani classical music is unparallelled," an emotional Khan who is a 'guru bhai' of Joshi said.

He said Joshi with whom he shares a special relationship has taken the classical music to its greatest height and the award has come at an appropriate time when the classical music is facing challenges from other kinds of music like fusion and remix.

"It is a great honour to the world of classical music which is passing through a very critical and difficult time. Other kinds of music like fusion, remix and films are very different and which are not the identity of Indian and European classical music," Khan said.

The sarod maestro became nostalgic as he reminisced the days when young Joshi as a student came to his father Haafiz Ali Khan Sahib, a musician to the royal family of Gwalior to, learn Indian classical music.

"No wonder, the prestigious recognition will enhance the status of the classical music in the world," Khan who has carved a niche for himself in the Hall of Fame of Indian classical music said.

A recipient of several awards including the Padma Vibhushan, the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shree, the 86-year-old legendary exponent of Hindustani classical music, was chosen for the Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian award on Tuesday.

‘Bhuvan’ To Counter Google Earth

After Chandrayaan-1 mission, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is all set to add another feather to its cap.

On the lines of Google Earth, ISRO will soon launch an IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) image portal called “Bhuvan”, which will provide online maps based on Geographical Information System (GIS).

Speaking at the inaugural function of the 28th INCA International Congress on Collaborative Mapping and Space Technology, ISRO Chairman, G Madhavan Nair, said, “ISRO is planning to launch 'Bhuvan'. It is equivalent to the Google Earth, but is going to be much more precise.”

"It will provide the latest information on our natural resources. We are going to provide very accurate maps of the region with the latest picture. This will be more beneficial for the people of the country," said Nair.

The ISRO Chairman expects the service to start in the coming six months and hopes that it will become an important tool to get valuable and updated information to the people. He further informed that the required software and infrastructure of “Bhuvan” have already been established by the organization.

Nair said with this service they will have mapping of the entire earth, both in terms of the upper land surface and the exotic minerals down below.

"With Bhuvan we will be able to produce very local information which will be specific to only to our own country. This information available from this mapping system will be useful in addressing very local problems like floods, famines, infrastructure development, education and much more," Nair said.

Detects Early Stage Ovarian Cancer

Yale School of Medicine have developed a blood test with enough sensitivity and specificity to detect early stage ovarian cancer with 99 percent accuracy.

Results of this new study are published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. The results build on work done by the same Yale group in 2005 showing 95 percent effectiveness of a blood test using four proteins.

"The ability to recognize almost 100 percent of new tumors will have a major impact on the high death rates of this cancer," said Mor. "We hope this test will become the standard of care for women having routine examinations."

Epithelial ovarian cancer is the leading cause of gynecologic cancer deaths in the United States and three times more lethal than breast cancer. It is usually not diagnosed until its advanced stages and has come to be known as the "silent killer."

This new phase II clinical trial led by Gil Mor, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale, included 500 patients; 350 healthy controls and 150 ovarian cancer patients. Mor and colleagues validated the previous research and used a new platform called multiplex technology to simplify the test into one single reaction using very small amounts of serum from the blood. The new platform uses six protein biomarkers instead of four, increasing the specificity of the test from 95 to 99.4 percent. The team looked for the presence of specific proteins and quantified the concentration of those proteins in the blood.

The Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) independently evaluated the results of the test.

"This is the most sensitive and specific test currently available," said Mor. "Previous tests recognized 15 to 20 percent of new tumors. Proteins from the tumors were the only biomarkers used to test for ovarian cancer. That is okay when you have big masses of tumors, but it is not applicable in very early phases of the tumor. Testing the proteins produced by the body in response to the presence of the tumor as well as the proteins the tumors produce, helped us to create a unique picture that can detect early ovarian cancer."

Mor and colleagues have begun a phase III evaluation in a multi-center clinical trial. In collaboration with EDRN/NCI and Laboratories Corporation of America (LabCorp), they are testing close to 2,000 patients.

The test is available at Yale through the Discovery to Cure program. Yale has licensed the test to three companies: Lab Corp in the United States, Teva in Israel and SurExam in China.

Other authors on the study included Irene Visintin, Ziding Feng, Gary Longton, David C.Ward, Ayesha B. Alvero, Yinglei Lai, Jeannette Tenthorey, Aliza Leiser, Ruben Flores-Saaib, Herbert Yu, Masoud Azodi, Thomas Rutherford and Peter E. Schwartz.

'Twenty Twenty' released on Nov. 5

The much-awaited Malayalam film 'Twenty Twenty', starring 67 top actors, including Mammootty, Mohanlal, Suresh Gopi, Jayaram and Dileep, is expected to hit the theatres in Kerala on November 5.

The film, made by Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) to raise funds for its various charitable works, is said to be the biggest multi-starrer ever to be made in India. Besides the five top names in the Malayalam film industry, south India's top film diva Nayantara is also playing a role in the film, produced by actor Dileep and directed by Joshi.

The collection from the film will be used by AMMA for its various welfare activites. The association is presently paying about Rs 2,500 per month to 60 indigent artistes of yesteryears. Industry sources said getting so many actors and top heroes was a herculean task. All the actors had worked without charging any remuneration, but still due to the long shooting schedule of 70 days, the film has become very expensive, they said.

Mohan Lal and Prithviraj fans associations are reportedly unhappy over "not much importance" being given to their respective stars in the cinema posters. But efforts are on to sort out the issue. The fans association have even threatened to boycott the film. The satellite rights of the film have not yet been given, according to the sources.