ये शाम अपने में मदमस्त है The Evening

ये शाम अपने में मदमस्त है, न भुत न भविष्य है|
ये शाम अपने में मदमस्त है|
इस शाम की हावो में हवा में बहती मेरी रूह है|
मेरी साँस खोती मेरी अंदर, ये वो शाम जब मेरा मन स्थिर है|
आँखों में नमी, चेहरे पे झील सा शांत एहसास है|
आज की शाम मेरी जाम है|
ये शाम अपने में मदमस्त है, न भुत न भविष्य है|

अमित

Alternative stable states and spatial indicators of critical slowing down along a spatial gradient in a savanna ecosystem

My first Publication from TEE Lab: Theory suggests that as ecological systems approach regime shifts, they become increasingly slow in recovering from perturbations. This phenomenon, known as critical slowing down [CSD], leads to spatial…

Source: Alternative stable states and spatial indicators of critical slowing down along a spatial gradient in a savanna ecosystem

On the way to understand the mechanism of aging

After doing a lot of theory on early warning signals for abrupt transition in a bistable savanna ecosystem, at Theoretical Ecoolgy & Evolution laboratory, I have got an opportunity to start working on my interest. I have recently joined Sunil Laxman’s laboratory, inStem at NCBS, Bangalore to work on aging :). My motivation to join this laboratory is to work on “how manipulation in particular amino acid in the diet of yeast can affects the protein homeostasis and aging of this organism?

Currently, Sunil is helping me in refining the question as well as equipping myself with some new wet laboratory skills. I will update you soon about my work.

Cheers
Amit

Prof P Balaram is explaining why many Indian Universities do not stand in top world ranking universities?

Following is the video lecture link.

Selective excerpt from the above video.
Prof. P. Balaram-“What are Indian universities’ administrators concerned with? Indian universities’ administrators concerned with handling many local political situations many general political situations, there is no vice chancellor in India who is allowed anytime to do anything academic or worry about any academic things their universities. And therefore, having been the director of Indian Institute of Science for nine years, I can say that the Indian Institute of Science may be the last bastion, where even if you are the director of Indian Institute of Science, you can worry about something academic at least for twenty percent of your time but not more than that…in the night at least you can worry about academic matters…

It is not enough to have petty understanding of local politics, as being the driving force in determining the way this country will go.”z

Attended Association of Gerontology, India 2014 Conference

Here, I am giving brief introduction of the association of Gerontology (AGI), and in next few paras I have mentioned about the interesting events of this conference, some exciting news that I came to know. Prof. M.S. Kanungo founded the Association of Gerontology, India (AGI) in 1981, for the advancement of gerontology in India. This society’s work concerns all aspects of elderly population i.e., bio-gerontology, medical-gerontology and social-gerontology. Every two years AGI organises a meeting. This year it was at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Speakers came from BHU, AIIMS, JNU and many other research institutions.

Biogerontology session included talks on the effect of environmental and genetic factors on aging and age related disorders such as ameliorating effects of dietary restriction on aging, effects of natural compound and exercise on boosting the memory of diabetic and old mice. There was also one talk about reversing age related memory loss. Medical session included talks on ‘effect of aging on neuronal and glial population and on human pancreas’, use of serum sirtuin as frailty marker, and the tendency to fall in elderly people. Social session included talks on elderly abuse, elderly population in workforce, loneliness in elderly. There was many other interesting talks that I have not mentioned here.

There were some interesting informal discussions on making healthspan/lifespan ratio as possible as equal to one and AGI’s role in policy making for elderly population. On the second day of the conference, Minister of Social Welfare and Panchayats, Kerala, Dr. MK Muneer released Kerala Aging Survey and also discussed the Kerala Government’s motives to design policies to help growing elderly population.

I came across a great news for aging researchers during the conference: Government of India is going to establish two institutes on aging research: National Institute on Aging (NIA); one in Chennai, possibly within 3-4 years and another one in New Delhi maybe within a decade.

The next meet of AGI is going to be organized by Dr. A.B. Dey at AIIMS, New Delhi in September, 2016. I hope to present my work on the mechanisms of aging at the next meet.

story of passing away

deception

The world is nothing but a story of deception.

A story of passing away.

The night is pregnant with a child.

But nobody knows what the child will be…….

The child of tonight is tomorrow.

Nobody knows what it will be….

If it will be good for you or not.

Source: Ahmad Shah Massoud’s documentary 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjrFq97jAk0

Why to work on aging?

After an age we observe decline in function of our body, increase in vulnerability to many diseases such as myopathies (loss of muscles), organ pathology (kidney failure), heart attack,alzheimer disease and many more diseases. This is characterized as aging.
Continuous advancement in medical science has been increasing the life-expectancy of human. Hence increasing the population of old age people. It is as important to find the preventions and cures for diseases that occur in old people as it is for young people.

Vulnerability of many disease like Alzheimer, cardiac dysfunction or other age related disorder increases as we age. This raises a possibility that there might be some common underlying mechanism that causes most of such diseases. It is interesting to explore this possibility by revealing out the mechanism of aging. Hopefully, this may enable us to prevent age-associated diseases by taking action at primitive cause.