📰 ‘Safe houses’ for couples facing khap panchayat ire
Supreme Court issues guidelines for ensuring safety
•The district magistrate or police chief have to provide couples, who risk the wrath of khap panchayats, not only with logistics and protection at their wedding but also a “safe house” to stay during the first year of marriage.
•This is among the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court on Tuesday to be implemented in six weeks.
•The safe house, located in the same district or elsewhere, can accommodate the couple for a nominal charge. State governments have to establish safe houses in district headquarters.
•But before the district magistrate or the police chief take the couple under their official protection, they have to assess whether the “bachelor-bachelorette are capable adults.”
•The safe houses would function under the direct supervision of the jurisdictional District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police.
•In a strongly worded condemnation of khap panchayats, which gang up against young couples to force their presence and dictate punishments, Chief Justice Misra said khaps feel their duty is sanctified and their action of punishing the hapless victims is inviolable. Women are treated by the khaps as servile persons who have no desire for autonomy. Their families are either silent spectators or active participants in their torture. “Masculine dominance becomes the sole governing factor of perceptive honour.”
•These “feudalistic” entities have no compunction in committing crimes, the court said.
•The court gave a list of actions which trigger honour-based crimes: loss of virginity outside marriage; unapproved relationships; refusing an arranged marriage; divorce; demanding custody of children; scandal; and “falling victim to rape”.
📰 A game-changer for higher education
The renewed focus on RUSA is welcome, but its litmus test will be in how impartially it is administered
•The Union Cabinet’s decision recently to not only continue with the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) — ‘a Centrally sponsored scheme launched in 2013 to provide strategic funding to eligible State higher educational institutions’ — but also give it due importance augurs well for the system of higher education in India. That the government is backing the scheme speaks volumes about the robustness and relevance of the scheme.
Ground realities
•India is estimated to have over 800 universities (over 40,000 colleges are affiliated to them). About 94% of students of higher education study in 369 State universities. But the Central government’s slant toward premier institutions has continued ever since the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12), where in spite of a nine-fold increase in Budget allocation State institutions have been left to fend for themselves with funding mainly directed towards starting more Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management and Central universities. Today about 150 Centrally-funded institutions (less than 6% of students study in them) — corner almost the entire funding by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). To make things worse, investment by State governments has been also dwindling each year as higher education is a low-priority area. The University Grant Commission’s system of direct releases to State institutions which bypasses State governments also leads to their sense of alienation. Though they are the face of higher education in India, State institutions have been getting short shrift.
•It was to address these critical concerns that the MHRD launched RUSA. The scheme is largely based on the conditional release of funds linked to reforms in the key areas of governance, learning-teaching outcomes, reaching out to the unreached and infrastructure support. Unlike other schemes which are foisted on State governments in a one-size-fits all manner, under RUSA, States and institutions have to give an undertaking expressing their willingness to the idea of reform and agreeing to meet the States’ share of the cost.
•RUSA is a process-driven scheme. Its design and conceptualisation were finalised through extensive consultations with all key stakeholders, especially State governments. Preparatory grants were released to States to have the required systems, processes, and the technical support in place. Despite being voluntary, all States except a Union Territory (Lakshadweep) are a part of RUSA. All the State Higher Education Perspective Plans for five/10 years have been prepared after extensive stakeholder consultations. RUSA began with a modest allocation of Rs. 500 crore, but over time has seen its resource allocation being increased.
•For the current year, Rs. 1,300 crore has been provided. Since funding is conditional to performance, it is critical to have a robust monitoring and evaluation system in place. In this regard, geo-tagging, introduction of a public financial management system, a fund tracker and reform tracker system and regular video conferences have proved effective tools, since 2015.
Reform as core
•Governance reform is central to the scheme. State Higher Education Councils (SHECs) which have eminent academics, industrialists and other experts have been created, playing a major role, from an academic and professional point of view, in the formulation of medium- and long-term State perspective plans. In order to avoid arbitrariness, a State, for example, has to also give its commitment to creating a search-cum-select committee in the selection of vice-chancellors. Mitigating the bane of the affiliation system is also a major objective. This is achieved through a reduction in the number of colleges affiliated per university by creating cluster universities and promoting autonomous colleges. An important precondition is the filling up of faculty positions and lifting the ban on recruitment (as in some States).
•To improve learning-teaching outcomes, there is an effort towards improving pedagogy by capacity-building of faculty, selecting teachers in a transparent manner, adopting accreditation as a mandatory quality-assurance framework, implementing a semester system, and involving academics of repute and distinction in decision-making processes.
Visible change
•An independent performance review (of four years) of the scheme was done by IIT Bombay in 2017. It concluded that the funding linked to reforms has had a visible impact on higher education. When RUSA began, the gross enrolment ratio (GER) was 19.4%, faculty vacancies were at a shockingly high level of 60%, and a large number of universities were bloated with a teacher-student ratio of 1:24. Today, the GER is 25.2%, faculty vacancies are down to 35%, the ban on faculty recruitment by States has been lifted, and and the teacher-student ratio is now 1:20. Several universities in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have been right-sized, and critical governance reforms such as the formation of the SHEC and merit-based appointments of vice-chancellors in Odisha, Goa, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu are visible. There has been an improvement in the number of institutions accredited and their scores. In 2012, 106 State universities and 4,684 colleges were accredited. By 2017, an additional 145 State universities and 5,445 Colleges were accredited.
•RUSA can prove be a real game changer for higher education in the country. It has not only reprioritised the country’s needs, from funding just a few premier institutions to reaching out to institutions at the bottom of the pyramid, but has also changed the way regulators need to function. However its litmus test will be in how impartially the scheme is administered by the MHRD and the degree to which State governments allow the SHEC to function. Letting go of the governmental stranglehold over universities is linked to this.
📰 Rogue nation?
The West must find some means to bring Russia to the negotiating table
•Russia made headlines for all the wrong reasons this week, when a clutch of countries led by the U.S. expelled more than 100 of its diplomats and intelligence officers over suspicion that the Kremlin was behind a nerve agent attack on a Russian spy and defector to the U.K., Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury on March 4. Besides the U.S., 14 member-states of the European Union, including Germany, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Latvia, undertook coordinated expulsions, with Australia also joining them. In a sense this move, seen as the most dramatic, concerted such purge since the Cold War years, has been coming for some time. Last week the U.K. led the way when it expelled 23 Russian diplomats, but the week before that the U.S. had slapped Russia with sanctions against multiple individuals and entities for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election through covert online propaganda, including fake news. Beyond these specific charges lie other alleged violations: in Afghanistan, President Donald Trump’s senior-most ground commander has accused Russia of arming Taliban militants; on the North Korean crisis Mr. Trump mentioned in January that Russia was helping Pyongyang avoid UN sanctions; and the EU last year voted to extend into 2018 sanctions that prohibit its businesses from investing in Crimea. Has Russia truly gone rogue, and is this its grand strategy to reclaim its superpower status?
•The answer is yes and no. To an extent the U.S. response, significant though it may appear on the surface, signals to Russia an inconsistent application of any principles of bilateral and multilateral engagement. Scarcely a week ago, Mr. Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election, apparently against the advice of senior White House officials, and this drew sharp criticism even from fellow Republicans. He apparently did not deem the nerve agent attack a subject deserving of mention on that phone call. Yet, shortly thereafter he replaced National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster with John Bolton, a long-standing Russia hawk. What would concern democracy-minded Americans is that the expulsion of Russian diplomats might serve as an easy distraction device in the ongoing investigation into whether Mr. Trump or his associates colluded with Russian entities to influence the 2016 presidential election. Whatever the true intentions of the current U.S. administration are, it would be naive to assume that Moscow will miss any opportunity to tighten its strategic grip on global geopolitics, whether in terms of influencing foreign elections, undermining Western coalition forces in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, or shadow manoeuvres that exacerbate instability in the context of North Korea and Iran. Contrarily, it is imperative that the West, perhaps led by the U.S. or the EU, find some means to bring Mr. Putin to the negotiating table, the corollary of which is that he must eschew his current preference for political subversion.
📰 Honour killing guillotines liberty: SC
Upholds choice of consenting adults to love and marry as part of their fundamental rights
•Coming down heavily on crimes committed in the name of honour, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the choice of consenting adults to love and marry as a part of their fundamental rights.
•The apex court said, “Honour killing guillotines individual liberty, freedom of choice and one’s own perception of choice.”
Issues guidelines
•It issued a set of guidelines for authorities to safeguard young couples under threat for marrying outside their caste or religion. It ridiculed the “elevated sense of honour” of elders, the collective and khap panchayats who rain horror on couples for choosing to marry outside their caste, clan or religion.
•It termed the elders, presiding over murder in broad daylight, as “patriarchal monarchs” who believe they are the descendants of Caesar or Louis XIV.
•The court compared honour killing to some of the harsh punishments prescribed in the Code of Hammurabi dating back to 1750 BC.
•“The human rights of a daughter, brother, sister or son are not mortgaged to the so-called or so-understood honour of the family or clan or the collective... The act of honour killing puts the rule of law in a catastrophic crisis,” Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra observed in a 54-page judgment.
•He was leading a three-judge Bench, comprising Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud. The judgment came on a petition filed by NGO Shakti Vahini to curb honour crimes.
•The court held that the consent of the family, community or clan is not necessary.
•In a strongly worded condemnation of khap panchayats, which gang up against young couples to force their presence and dictate punishments, Chief Justice Misra said khaps feel their duty is sanctified and their action of punishing the hapless victims is inviolable. Women are treated by the khaps as servile persons who have no desire for autonomy. Their families are either silent spectators or active participants in their torture. “Masculine dominance becomes the sole governing factor of perceptive honour.”
•These “feudalistic” entities have no compunction in committing crimes. The police turn a blind eye and the administration hardly questions them.
•To highlight the terror inflicted on women, the Supreme Court gave a list of actions which trigger honour-based crimes.
•They include loss of virginity outside marriage; unapproved relationships; refusing an arranged marriage; asking for divorce; demanding custody of children after divorce; causing scandal or gossip in the community; and even “falling victim to rape.”
📰 Courts lack facilities, judge tells govt.
‘No water, power supply and toilets’
•How can people expect justice to be delivered by courts that function from “dilapidated” buildings which do not offer basic facilities like water, toilets and electricity, Justice Madan B. Lokur said on Tuesday.
•“I have visited a court where two courtrooms are separated by a curtain. When arguments are on in one court, the other one stops functioning,” Justice Lokur told the government in open court. Justice Lokur, the fifth senior-most judge in the Supreme Court and a Collegium member, was hearing a suo motu petition on overpopulated prisons.
•When senior advocate Vibha Makhija, for the government, said that it was “unfortunate,” Justice Lokur retorted that the “unfortunate” part was that the government had not done enough to improve the court infrastructure.
•On March 7, the government addressed the Lok Sabha on the steps taken to strengthen judicial infrastructure in districts through the Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) for ‘Development of Infrastructure Facilities for Judiciary.’ It said a total of Rs. 6, 100 crore had been released since 1993-94, out of which Rs. 2,655 crore (43.52%) was released after April, 2014.
More court halls
•Till date, 17,981 court halls and 14,467 residential accommodations had been made available for judicial officers of district and subordinate courts. Out of this 2,356 court halls and 935 residential accommodations were constructed between 2014 and now. In addition, 3, 139 court halls and 1,785 residential accommodations were under construction.
•The government told the House that it had approved the continuation of the CSS beyond the 12th Five Year Plan period, from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2020, with an estimated outlay of Rs. 3,320 crore.
📰 ‘Give social service duties to those sentenced to 6 months or 1 year’
SC suggestion comes after amicus curiae reveals that jails are overflowing
•Criminals sentenced to imprisonment for six months or a year should be allocated social service duties rather than be put in already overflowing prisons, the Supreme Court advised the government on Tuesday.
•The suggestion came from Justice Deepak Gupta, who is part of a Bench led by Justice Madan B. Lokur, after the court’s amicus curiae Gaurav Agrawal submitted that 240 jails across the country are housing inmates 150% above their normal capacity.
•Worse is the prison staff-prisoner ratio. Of about 77,000 sanctioned posts, 24500 lie vacant. Mr. Agrawal said Tamil Nadu and U.P. are some of the worst cases in prison staff-inmate ratio. Only about 5,000 prison staff monitor over 92,000 inmates in Uttar Pradesh. Tamil Nadu has about 4,000 prison staffers to monitor 13,000 prisoners.
•Mr. Agrawal said there are 18 jails exclusively for women. Plus there are separate areas for women in other jails, but there is complete disproportionality as far as space for women inmates are concerned. He said these jails were not modelled to house women inmates, especially those with minor children staying with them.
•The court also observed about the plight of undertrial prisoners who languish behind bars.
•“Sixty percent of those arrested need not be actually arrested. The police say there is no need for arrest, but they still do. Again, half of those arrested, need not be remanded, but they are still remanded,” Justice Lokur pointed out.
•The top court is hearing a matter relating to inhuman conditions prevailing in 1,382 prisons across the country.
•On September 15 last year, a Supreme Court judgment had encouraged the need for open prisons. It had urged for steps like the appointment of counsellors and support persons for prisoners, particularly first-time offenders.
•The apex court had suggested steps like more family visits for prisoners and use of phones and video-conferencing not only between a prisoner and family, but also his lawyers.
•It had directed the State Legal Services Authorities (SLSAs) to conduct a study and performance audit of prisons. It wanted the government to constitute a Board of Visitors to initiate prison reforms.
📰 Adulterators to face life term
Govt. to follow law commission mandate, hike fine from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 10 lakh
•The State government will impose exemplary punishment on food and milk adulterators, and plans to increase the penalty up to life imprisonment.
•The announcement has come close on the heels of the unprecedented measures and changes in law suggested by the Law Commission of India’s report of 2017 to curb adulteration.
•Minister for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Girish Bapat announced in the Legislative Council on Tuesday that the government has already appealed against an order of the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court, which has declared contempt on the State’s decision to increase punishment in the first few cases earlier this year.
•“We have sought a response from our Law and Judiciary Department on this confusion. Once it is cleared, we will impose a minimum punishment of 10 years and maximum of life imprisonment on food and milk adulterators,” Mr. Bapat said.
•The minister was speaking after Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry data on food adulteration and spurious chemical products for the past three years was tabled in the Assembly. As per the data, the number of adulteration cases in the State has doubled from 1,162 in 2015 to 2,529 in 2017. Maharashtra ranks second after Uttar Pradesh, with not a single conviction in the three-year period, said Congress MLC Sanjay Dutt.
•Mr. Dutt’s ‘Point of Information’ was submitted along with the opinions of medical experts highlighting the danger to health from adulterated packaged food, milk and cooking oil, and other consumable products.
•“These have proven to be detrimental to health, causing fatal kidney failures and other health complications. The State government must explain the measures that are in place and what it is doing to deter criminals,” the legislator said.
•The Law Commission’s report had recommended amendment to the Indian Penal Code (IPC), increasing the fine from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 10 lakh, and amendments to Sections 272 (adulteration of food and drinks) and 273 (sale of noxious food).
•Mr. Bapat said the State government is committed to implementing these measures. “In the interim, we have strengthened out staff and manpower, increased more mobile laboratories to check adulterated food and milk,” he said.
•Mr Dutt pointed to a Patanjali product which bore a manufacturing date from April while being sold in March. “This is the lethargy of this government, which is allowing select companies to sell products with manufacturings dates which have not even arrived,” said Leader of the Opposition in the Council Dhananjay Munde.
📰 Not a single data breach in seven years, UIDAI tells SC
‘Aadhaar numbers in public domain often mistaken as breach from database’
•There has not been a single breach in the past seven years in the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) that stores and manages data for the country’s Aadhaar project, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey told the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
•On the second day of his powerpoint presentation, Mr. Pandey submitted that UIDAI did not “collect emotions, likes/dislikes or pull out data” of individuals. For UIDAI, authentication of Aadhaar details was “purpose-blind.” It had no aggregate record of the purpose, location or details of data of Aadhaar holders.
•“We do not collect details of transactions. All we do is see whether a person is authenticated or not... We get a lot of requests from the income tax department. They are under the impression that we have a lot of data. We tell them we do not,” the UIDAI CEO told a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.
•Mr. Pandey said “other organisations reveal Aadhaar numbers in the public domain” and this was often mistaken as breach from the Aadhaar database. He said he had been telling these organisations that “wherever you display Aadhaar numbers in public domain, display only the last four digits... but there are a lot of people who have to get to that mentality.”
Sharing of biometrics
•He said “core biometrics” like fingerprints and iris scans were only shared if there was a national security threat. Even this would require consent at the Cabinet Secretary level. “We have not received a single request so far,” Mr. Pandey said.
•Sharing demographic Aadhaar details like name, gender, date of birth and place would require the consent of the district judge.
•Data may be highly secure in the CIDR, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud observed. But was it safe in the hands of authentication user agencies, which also included private entities?
•“There is no point securing the CIDR unless the private operators are equally secured... for this a robust law is required,” Justice Chandrachud said.
•He wanted to know whether private operators could sell sensitive customer information as commercially viable data even before they biometrically signed in to ensure traceability and non-repudiation.
Constant improvements
•Mr. Pandey said the authentication process was done through the UIDAI software and any unauthorised sharing of personal information at the time of enrolment or authentication would make a person liable to imprisonment for three years under Section 37 of the Aadhaar Act.
•He said technology was challenged everyday and the UIDAI was constantly engaged in improving the safeguards. He said the UIDAI was working closely with the Justice Sri Krishna Committee on the data protection law.
📰 RBI restarts pre-policy talks
Central bank resumes consultations with industry, bankers
•After a gap of about one-and-a-half years, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has resumed the process of holding consultative meetings with industry groups and banks in the run-up to the monetary policy.
•RBI Governor Urjit Patel and the deputy governors met representatives of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Tuesday and are scheduled to meet bankers in the coming days.
•The RBI’s six member monetary policy committee (MPC) will hold its first bimonthly policy review of the new fiscal year on April 4-5.
Addressing perceptions
•Bankers said the RBI had faced a lot of criticism for a perceived lack of communication since Dr. Patel assumed charge in September 2016. The aim of restarting the consultative process could be to address such perceptions, bankers said on condition of anonymity.
•Earlier, the consultative meetings used to take place before the April and October monetary policy reviews.
•“There are enough indications that the green shoots of recovery are gathering traction in the economy and a policy action by the RBI which could refurbish business sentiment, support domestic demand and trigger the turn of investment cycle is very much needed,” CII president Shobana Kamineni said after the meeting.
‘Lift ban on LoUs’
•CII has ‘strongly’ recommended reintroduction of the letters of undertaking (LoUs), which were banned by the RBI in the wake of the $2 billion scam at Punjab National Bank. CII said the ban on LoUs — used in trade finance — was hurting genuine importers as their borrowing costs had increased.
•The industry lobby group also called for maintaining the ‘status quo’ on policy interest rates.
📰 ‘Complete road map on 5G will be ready by June’
‘Forum to also study related areas such as spectrum policy’
•India wants to take a lead position in adopting 5G technology and will prepare the roadmap for it by June, said Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan.
•“A high-level forum on 5G, which includes global experts, industry experts, IITs, IISc, has already commenced work and done a fair amount of deliberation. By June, India will have full roadmap ready on this,” Ms. Sundararajan said at a COAI event on catalysing 5G launch in the country, here on Tuesday. The forum was deliberating on the vision, goals and 5G roadmap, and would also look at related areas of spectrum policy, regulatory regime and pilot programmes, she added.
Vodafone-Idea merger
•The merger proposal of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular was in the final stages of getting DoT approval, the Telecom Secretary said, replying to query on the sidelines of the event.
•Pointing out that the merger proposal had already received the nod from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Ms. Sundararajan said, “FDI approvals are involved and also liberalisation of licences. There are a number of clearances involved. We are in the process of expediting it.”
•The merger, once completed, will create the largest telecom operator in the country. The two companies had last week named Balesh Sharma as the CEO of the merged entity.
📰 Bonds, bank stocks rally in relief after Centre plans lower borrowing next fiscal
‘Lesser likelihood of treasury losses for banks; upward pressure on rates to ease’
•Bonds rallied smartly on Tuesday sending yields sliding after the government’s announcement of a reduced borrowing plan for the first half of 2018-19 came as a big relief to banks that were staring at mark-to-market losses on their bond portfolios.
No front-loading
•The yield on the benchmark 10-year bonds fell 29 basis points to 7.33% — its biggest one-day fall in more than four years — after the government said on Monday it would borrow only Rs. 2.88 lakh crore in the first half of 2018-19. One percentage point equals 100 basis points. This would amount to 47.5% of the year’s gross market borrowing target, lower than the market’s expectation of 60%.
•The Centre also aims to borrow Rs. 50,000 crore less than planned in the next fiscal and said it would distribute borrowings across maturities. Earlier, bond issuances were concentrated in the 10-14 year tenure.
•The 10-year bond yield had touched a high of 7.78% earlier this month, worrying banks that were staring at mark-to-market losses.
‘Twofold impact’
•“The cooling off in the G-sec yields is likely to have a twofold impact [on] banks,” Karthik Srinivasan, group head – Financial Sector Ratings, ICRA, said in a statement.
•“First, the likelihood of treasury losses during Q4FY2018 has significantly reduced and second, the expectations of upward pressure in deposit and hence lending rates will now ease to some extent,” he added.
•Falling yields also lifted the sentiment in equity markets as banking stocks gained. The BSE Bankex rose 0.93% while the 30-share BSE Sensex closed 107.98 points, or 0.33%, higher.
📰 A thin film to save Great Barrier Reef
It protects the reef from the effectsof bleaching
•An ultra-fine biodegradable film some 50,000 times thinner than a human hair could be enlisted to protect the Great Barrier Reef from environmental degradation, researchers said on Tuesday.
•The World Heritage-listed site is reeling from coral bleaching due to warming sea temperatures.
•Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Biology have been buoyed by test results of a floating “sun shield” made of calcium carbonate that has been shown to protect the reef from the effects of bleaching. “It’s designed to sit on the surface of the water above the corals, rather than directly on the corals, to provide an effective barrier against the sun,” Great Barrier Reef Foundation managing director Anna Marsden said.
Easing stress
•The trials on seven different coral types found that the protective layer decreased bleaching of most species, cutting off sunlight by up to 30%. “It (the project) created an opportunity to test the idea that by reducing the amount of sunlight from reaching the corals in the first place, we can prevent them from becoming stressed which leads to bleaching,” Ms. Marsden said.
•Researchers from a breadth of disciplines contributed to the project, which was headed by the scientist who developed the country’s polymer bank notes. “In this case, we had chemical engineers and experts in polymer science working with marine ecologists and coral experts to bring this innovation to life,” Ms. Marsden said.
•With its heavy use of coal-fired power and relatively small population, Australia is considered one of the world’s worst per capita greenhouse gas polluters, with advocates urging Canberra to do more to protect the environment. The reef is also under threat from predatory coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish, as well as farming run off.
Small-scale deployment
•Ms. Marsden said it was impractical to suggest that the “sun shield” — made from the same material found in coral skeletons — could cover the entire 348,000 square-kilometre reef. “But it could be deployed on a smaller, local level to protect high-value or high-risk areas of reef,” she added. “The concept needs more work and testing before it gets to that stage, but it’s an exciting development at a time when we need to explore all possible options to ensure we have a Great Barrier Reef for future generations.”
•Hard corals produce a rock-like skeleton made of the same material as classroom chalk — calcium carbonate. Soft corals produce smaller amounts of calcium carbonate.
📰 Cell phone-based tech to allow at-home blood testing
•Scientists have developed a new cell phone-based blood testing technology that can provide immediate results in the comfort of one’s home or a doctor’s clinic.
•Researchers at the University of South Florida in the U.S. created a mobile version of the “Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay” , the gold standard technique used to detect the presence of an antibody or antigen. Instead of sending patients to a laboratory, the cell phone-based technology allows for the very same test to be conducted in the doctor’s office, clinic or even in a remote area.
•“The machines required for the incubation and reading are expensive and bulky. It allows patients to undergo testing and obtain results at point-of-care,” said Anna Pyayt, corresponding author of the study published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics .
•The Mobile Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (MELISA) device measures progesterone levels, a key hormone that impacts female fertility and is indicative of some cancers. MELISA consists of a water bath heater that incubates samples at a target temperature and analyses them via images taken by cellphone. It uses colour analysis to determine the RGB (red, green, blue) colour components of each sample.
•“It is designed to make biomedical testing simple and affordable.,” she said.
