📰 Will induct women in the military police: Army chief
Further scope of recruiting women will be explored, says Bipin Rawat
•Chief of the Army Staff Bipin Rawat on Saturday said the Army would induct women jawans in the corps of military police, and further scope of recruiting women in Army posts would be explored thereafter.
•“I am looking at women jawans in the military police. There are women at various other ranks and now we are going to increase the intake,” he said.
•There were several other fields where the Army was thinking of inducting women. Last year, the Army chief had announced that women would be recruited in ranks other than officers, citing various reasons. It was expected that the Army would induct 800 women military police.
•Gen. Rawat, who was in the city as reviewing officer of the Combined Graduation Parade of 139 Indian Air Force flight cadets at the Air Force Academy, Dundigal, said the Army already had women Judge Advocate General (JAG) and they were into education also.
•“We need language interpreters, cyberspecialists, apart from their role in information warfare domain, accounts and audit services,” he said.
•Earlier, Gen. Rawat said the Indian Air Force was the best among the air forces of the world and would continue to touch the skies with glory. As many as 139 trainee officers, including 24 women, joined the elite cadre of the Air Force as commissioned officers.
📰 Can business behave better?
It’s time to try a market-led approach to corporate governance
•Hardly a week passes nowadays without a new corporate governance-related issue roiling the markets. The ripples created by IL&FS and ICICI Bank had hardly begun to die down when news broke of Jet Airways’ principal lender, State Bank of India, ordering a forensic audit of the troubled airline’s accounts for the past few years. Even the august Reserve Bank of India’s board of directors, which met last week under new Governor Shaktikanta Das after the sudden and tumultuous exit of Urjit Patel, reportedly felt that governance standards at India’s central bank, which also doubles up as the banking regulator, needed some improvement.
•The trouble is, most of the solutions tried earlier appear to be not working quite as expected. Over the years, India has taken a number of steps to improve corporate governance and protect the interests of investors, lenders and other stakeholders. The Companies Act, one of the most massive pieces of legislation in the world, has been comprehensively reworked. When it comes to accounting and financial reporting, the Indian standard, IndAS, has been vastly tightened and brought more in line with global best practices, making assessments of corporate assets and liabilities much fairer and more transparent than they were under the previous Indian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (IGAAP) regime.
•When it comes to listed entities, the stock exchanges, which also function as first level regulators of compliance, too have tightened corporate governance norms. From defining the role, power and functioning of independent directors in a company’s board to even pushing affirmative action and gender parity by mandating a minimum number of women directors, policymakers and regulators have used both legislative action and regulatory direction to try to strengthen corporate governance.
•Yet clearly, all this, while helping, has not managed to actually solve the problem. From Vijay Mallya to Nirav Modi to Ravi Parthasarathy, “strong” promoters/leaders have managed to pretty much bypass all these checks and balances in pursuit of their own goals, till the point of no return is passed and the whole shebang collapses. As the Satyam saga demonstrated, when the chief executive and a cabal of executives and auditors actively collude in fraud and start lying to their boards, investors and creditors alike, it is pretty much impossible to detect trouble in time, let alone prevent it.
•Perhaps it is time to try another approach. One of using carrots, not sticks. Ultimately, companies – and the people who run them – understand the language of money best. So why not try to build in a financial incentive to better corporate governance?
The Brazilian example
•The Brazilian stock exchange Bovespa, did precisely that. Back around the beginning of the millennium, Brazilian exchanges resembled Indian exchanges a great deal. There was little protection for minority shareholders and governance lapses were rampant. Worse, there was investment flow to the U.S. – wherever a Brazilian company was cross-listed in an U.S. exchange, investors preferred to invest and trade there, because of perceived better protection and compliance standards.
•Its answer was to create the Novo Mercado – literally, new market — a premium board where companies could voluntarily list, but had to comply with enhanced corporate governance standards. Some of the key listing requirements in the Novo Mercado include: the share capital must consist only of common voting shares; same conditions provided to majority shareholders in the transfer of the company’s control will have to be extended to all shareholders (100% tag along); in case of delisting from Novo Mercado, holding of a public tender offer (PTO) for a fair price, with minimum acceptance quorum of one-third of the free float shareholders; companies must structure and disclose the process of assessment of the board of directors, its committees and the executive officers.
•There are more but you get the picture. Although similar in many ways to Clause 49 of the Listing Agreement between a company and a stock exchange on which it lists its shares (coincidentally, also introduced in 2000), the Novo Mercado provisions were more stringent and gave more powers to the exchange to delist a share for non-compliance.
•In the years that have passed, there have been several empirical studies which have demonstrated that over time, such a listing has served to bind a company to better corporate governance behaviour, has attracted shareholders willing to pay a premium for better disclosure, and over time, reduced cost of raising capital for participating company.
•Back home, a research paper published by NSE (Corporate Governance and Market Value: Preliminary Evidence from Indian Companies) concluded that there was a link between investor behaviour and corporate governance practices and that companies with better corporate governance scores did manage to attract a premium.
•The NSE is reportedly mulling a premium board to try and attract better-governed entities to try and list on it. This is long overdue given that many major global exchanges already have one. And given that SEBI has just allowed Indian companies to directly list abroad (without listing in India first), it is high time India got its own A List going, to prevent a flight of quality paper from Indian shores.
📰 Making India’s polluters pay
Indian plastic packaging manufacturers have made a small start towards recycling plastic. But unless they step up efforts in the coming years, they are unlikely to make a dent on the pollution problem
•When the Centre published the Plastic Waste Management (PWM) Rules in 2016, a key element of it was “extended producer responsibility” or EPR. The idea of EPR was to make the polluter pay. So, all sellers of plastic packaging were required to, within six months, install a system to collect their waste. Two years later, after much confusion about how EPR sewould work, experts say companies have finally begun to take baby steps.
•It’s a small start, and not enough to make a dent on the problem of India’s annual plastic waste of 7-9 million tonnes (CPCB estimates). Only about 45 companies have submitted their EPR plans to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), whereas the total number of such companies runs into several thousands, according to S.K. Nigam, nodal officer for PWM at the board.
•But, there is good news too — over the last one year, the CPCB has begun imposing EPR waste-recovery targets. Plus, it has started listing Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs), to whom manufacturers can outsource their obligations. These efforts have given a fillip to recycling efforts.
Long way to go
•“Things are looking positive,” said Richa Agarwal, a research associate in the Waste Management Team of Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment. “The work on EPR has started, but it still has a long way to go.”
•A survey of 20 companies randomly contacted by The Hindu reflects this situation (See box). All the 11 companies that responded to the survey claimed to have recycling programmes, although they did not share numbers. A majority of those who shared numbers had only small-scale or pilot projects. But nearly all had targets to reduce plastic consumption and increase recycling over the next decade.
•The idea of EPR is extremely critical to waste management. Today, India’s recycling sector is mostly informal, and consists of waste pickers and kabadiwallahs. With little help from municipal bodies, they are able to recycle almost 80% of a type of plastic called Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET). But the system is still inefficient, and almost half of the estimated 7-9 million tonnes of plastic doesn’t get picked up by the informal sector. This includes multilayered packaging (MLP) which doesn’t fetch waste pickers much money, because it can’t be recycled. EPR comes in here because companies can incentivise these workers to recover 100% of waste, including MLPs, said Pinky Chandran, a trustee at Hasiru Dala, a cooperative of waste pickers in Bengaluru. They can also help waste pickers upgrade technologically. For example, waste pickers who run dry-waste collection centres (DWCC) typically need baling machines to pack the plastic compactly. These bales can then be shipped to waste-to-energy plants. Such machinery can be provided under EPR.
•Yet, things haven’t been smooth since the Union Ministry for Environment and Forests notified the PWM rules. The rules made a reference to EPR, asking “manufacturers, importers and brand owners” of plastic packaging to work out the modalities of a system to recover their waste. But they left room for ambiguity.
•It wasn’t clear, for example, who was responsible for the waste: was it the producer of plastic film, the company who bought it to make packaging, or the brand owner who finally sold the packaging? There were other sources of confusion too. The 2016 rules required companies to register their EPR plans with State pollution control boards. But this would mean that companies having a multistate presence would have to register across several States. This ambiguity led to several delays in implementation of the rules, said P.C. Joshi, secretary general at PET Packaging Association for a Clean Environment, an industry body for PET manufacturers. This made submitting an EPR plan a giant task. “It was almost like complying with GST,” Mr. Joshi added.
•As a result, not much happened in the year after the rules were notified. Then, in 2018, the Ministry published an amendment to the PWM, which clarified the registration process. It also began recognising PROs on its website. The idea was that these organisations, which are experts at waste management, would undertake EPR on behalf of brands. As of now, only five such PROs are listed on CPCB’s website — Indian Pollution Control Association (IPCA), GEM Enviro Management, NEPRA Resource Management, Nepra Environmental Solutions and Shakti Plastic Industries. Several more have applied, said Dr. Nigam. And brands such as Pepsico, Dabur and Colgate Palmolive have begun using their services.
•Another major change this year was that the CPCB began setting targets for waste-recovery, something which didn’t exist before. Each company submitting its EPR plan must now recover 20% of the MLP it produces within a year, and 100% within three. Of course, these rules are only as good as the enforcement. Only about 40 companies have submitted their plans to the CPCB so far, and it isn’t clear how many have done the same with State pollution control boards. InThe Hindu’s survey, most companies which responded said they had programs, but did not specify numbers. The only company which did, namely ITC, said it recycled 7,000 tons of MLP in 2017, which adds up to 13% of the 52,000 tons of plastic packaging it sells each year.
•Still, there remain multiple challenges.
The MLP conundrum
•MLP, which is used in everything from tetrapacks to wafer bags and shampoo sachets and generates about 0.6 million tonnes of waste annually, cannot be recycled. For now, it is also irreplaceable, because the multiple layers of paper, plastic and aluminium in it are the only way to keep perishable foods and pharmaceuticals fresh for months at a time.
•Though several organisations worldwide are working on replacements, no low-cost alternative is on the horizon as yet. So, what do we do with MLP?
•The CPCB recommends that this waste be either used as fuel in cement kilns, or in waste-to-energy plants. However, Ashish Jain, the founder and director of IPCA, pointed out that the only two second-generation waste-to-energy plants in India today, which can process MLPs, are in Delhi. “If someone wants to recycle MLP in Guwahati there is no disposal facility,” said Mr. Jain.
•Moreover, not enough cement plants accept MLP as fuel, because the cost of segregation and transport does not make it economical compared to coke. Bengaluru, for example, has been struggling to get kilns to pick up the MLP-based fuel from the city. EPR can play a role here too, with companies subsidising the use of alternative fuels at cement kilns.
•It will take several years before all the systems are in place to fully address India’s plastic problem.
•“There are thousands of brand owners and producers, and millions of tonnes of plastic waste,” observed Mr. Jain. “This field needs new companies and new entrepreneurs. We need a lot more work to be done.”
📰 Nations inch towards climate deal at UN summit
A negotiator says delegates from nearly 200 nations have reached a ‘landing zone’ of agreement, but differences remain on issues of ambition
•Nations on Saturday inched towards a deal to implement the Paris climate goals, after all-night negotiations over a plan to limit global temperature rises exposed a range of conflicts.
•Speaking to AFP at the COP24 summit in Poland, a senior negotiator said delegates from nearly 200 nations had reached a “landing zone” of agreement.
•But sources close to the talks said differences remained stark on the issues of ambition, how the climate fight is funded and how best to measure and ensure the fairness of each nation’s efforts to reduce emissions.
Common rule book
•Delegates at the UN summit, held this year in the Polish mining city of Katowice, must agree on a common rule book to put the pledges made at the landmark 2015 Paris talks into practice.
•This means all countries, rich and poor alike, must agree to action that will cap global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees Celsius and stave off the worst effects of planetary warming, and to a safer cap of 1.5 degree Celsius, if possible.
Decision delayed
•The final draft decision text was repeatedly delayed as negotiators sought to form guidelines that are effective in slashing emissions while protecting the economies of both rich and poor nations alike.
•“Without a clear rulebook, we won’t see how countries are tracking, whether they are actually doing what they say they are doing,” Canada’s Environment Minister Catherine McKenna told AFP.
•Earlier in the day, Gebru Jember Endalew, chair of the Least Developed Countries negotiating group, said delegates had reached a “landing zone” of compromise after negotiations sailed past their Friday deadline and deep into the weekend.
•“It is a bit difficult to compromise when there are 190-plus countries,” he told AFP.
•At the heart of the matter is how each nation funds action to mitigate and adapts to climate change, as well as how those actions are reported.
•Developing nations want more clarity from richer ones over how the future climate fight will be funded and have been pushing for so-called “loss and damage” measures.
•This would see richer countries giving money now to help deal with the effects of climate change many vulnerable states are already experiencing.
Contentious issue
•Another contentious issue concerns the integrity of carbon markets, looking ahead to the day when the patchwork of distinct exchanges — in China, the European Union, parts of the United States — may be joined up in a global system.
•“To tap that potential, you have to get the rules right,” said Alex Hanafi, lead counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund in the United States.
•“One of those key rules — which is the bedrock of carbon markets — is no double counting of emissions reductions.”
•The Paris Agreement calls for setting up a mechanism to guard against practices that could undermine such a market, but finding a solution has proved so problematic that the debate has been kicked down the road to next year.
•Some observers had accused Brazil of seeking to muddy the date by which the provisions should enter into force.
📰 NGT sets aside Sterlite’s ‘unjustifiable’ closure
Directs TNPCB to issue fresh orders for renewal of consent
•The National Green Tribunal has set aside the Tamil Nadu government’s order for the closure of Sterlite’s copper smelter in Thoothukudi, terming the decision “unjustifiable.”
•“We allow this appeal, set aside the impugned orders and direct the TNPCB to pass a fresh order of renewal of consent and authorization to handle hazardous substances…subject to appropriate conditions for protection of environment in accordance with law, within three weeks,” a Bench, headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, said on Saturday.
•“The appellant [Vedanta] will also be entitled to restoration of electricity for its operations,” observed the Bench, adding that the plant had to comply with the suggestions put forth by the NGT-appointed committee.
•Responding to the NGT order, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami said the State government would file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the ruling.
Permanent closure
•The State had ordered the permanent closure of the plant over alleged pollution after violent protests in May.
•The Tamil Nadu government order on the closure of the Sterlite plant in May in the wake of the death of 13 people, killed in police firing at a rally of protesters opposed to the plant.
📰 India, Nepal and Bhutan plan task force to protect wildlife
Kanchenjunga Landscape, spread across the countries, to be monitored
•The governments of India, Nepal and Bhutan are actively considering having a joint task force for allowing free movement of wildlife across political boundaries and checking smuggling of wildlife across the Kanchenjunga Landscape, a trans-boundary region spread across Nepal, India and Bhutan.
•The development comes after forest officials and representatives of non-governmental organisation of the three countries visited parts of the landscape and later held a meeting at Siliguri in north Bengal earlier this month.
•Participants from India and Bhutan, who attended the meeting, told The Hinduthat setting up of a joint task force was a key requirement in the road map on achieving the objectives of free movement of wildlife and checking smuggling.
•The landscape stretches along the southern side of Mount Kanchenjunga and covers an area of 25,080 sq km spread across parts of eastern Nepal (21%), Sikkim and West Bengal (56%) and western and southwestern parts of Bhutan (23%).
•From India, Ravinkanta Sinha, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, West Bengal, participated in the meeting, whereas Nepal was represented by G.P. Bhattarai, Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. The Bhutanese delegation was led by Tashi Tobgyel, Department of Forest and Park Services. Representatives of the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network, an inter-governmental wildlife law enforcement agency, which held its first ever meeting in India in May 2018, were also present during the meeting.
Severe loss
•According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development ( ICIMOD), a regional knowledge development and learning centre, 1,118 sq km of riverine grassland and tree cover were lost in the landscape between 2000 and 2010. Around 74% of the area was converted into rangeland and 26% to agricultural land. Other than seven million people, the Kanchenjunga Landscape is also home to 169 species of mammals and 713 species of birds.
•Studies by ICIMOD suggest that between 1986 and 2015, as many as 425 people were killed by elephants (an average of 14 human deaths every year) and 144 elephants were killed between 1958 and 2013 (an average of three elephants every year).
•S.P. Pandey of SPOAR, a north Bengal-based wildlife organisation, who also participated in the discussion, said that every few months there were cases of elephants, rhino, gaurs and other mammals crossing over political boundaries, triggering panic among locals across the border and also posing a danger to the wildlife.
📰 Tamil Nadu, Karnataka are sparring over Mekedatu
What is the problem?
•Irritants resurfaced in relations between the riparian States of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka last month after the Central Water Commission (CWC) allowed the Karnataka Cauvery Neeravari Nigam to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) on a nearly Rs. 6,000 crore plan to build a balancing reservoir-cum-drinking water project across the Cauvery at Mekedatu. The project envisages building a balancing reservoir with a storage of 67 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft), which would also supply drinking water to Bengaluru and Ramanagaram districts, besides generating power. The proposal received the Karnataka Cabinet’s approval in February 2017 and the feasibility report was submitted to the CWC. The project could be completed in 2-3 years after construction begins, if all approvals are in place.
Why does Karnataka want this?
•Karnataka has been contending that there is a need to augment capacity to store excess water in monsoon surplus years. The recent heavy rain and floods resulted in Karnataka releasing excess water from the Cauvery to Tamil Nadu. This led to the State intensifying its efforts to build the Mekedatu reservoir. Water Resources Minister D.K. Shivakumar said the reservoir would help store excess water which can be released to Tamil Nadu during dry months, besides taking care of drinking water requirements of cities and towns of Karnataka. The excess water is of no use even to Tamil Nadu as it would run off into the sea. The project would not affect water release to Tamil Nadu, nor would it be used for irrigation, he maintained.
Why is Tamil Nadu opposing it?
•Tamil Nadu fears that Karnataka’s move to create more storage facilities would effectively prevent the flow in the Cauvery, the lifeline for agriculture in delta districts, besides being a major drinking water source for several districts. Farmers’ organisations fear this could turn the fertile Cauvery delta into a desert. “The reservoir is not just for drinking water alone, as claimed by Karnataka, but also to increase the extent of irrigation, which is in violation of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal’s award, as affirmed by the Supreme Court,” Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami said in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking withdrawal of the permission given to Karnataka. The State was quick to move the Supreme Court for a direction to the CWC to withdraw its letter of permission and restrain Karnataka from proceeding with the preparation of the DPR. The State also sought to initiate contempt proceedings against the CWC chairman, the Karnataka Water Resource Minister and others for “wilful disobedience” of the Supreme Court and Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal verdicts. Tamil Nadu said the Supreme Court had noted that the existing storages in the Cauvery basin of Karnataka should be taken into account for ensuring water releases to Tamil Nadu from June to January. “Construction of any new dam by Karnataka would alter the adjudication to the distribution of 10 daily/monthly releases to Tamil Nadu. This amounts to interference with the adjudication, which is in contempt of the Supreme Court judgment of February 16, 2018,” the petition said. Many parties rallied behind the Opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s protest in Tiruchi; the government convened a special session of the Assembly to pass a unanimous resolution calling upon the Centre to direct the CWC to withdraw the permission.
What was Karnataka’s response?
•Karnataka termed the challenge “misconceived, obstructive and factually baseless.” It rejected Tamil Nadu’s claims that the tribunal order barred the project and maintained that the reservoir would not affect the downstream flow in the river or jeopardise the livelihood of farmers.
What happens next?
•The Supreme Court has asked the Centre and Karnataka to respond to the petition filed by Tamil Nadu. The court said it would not, at present, go into the aspect of contempt of court. It also sought their responses to Tamil Nadu’s challenge to the Centre’s decision to give CWC chief S. Masood Husain additional charge as Chairman of the Cauvery Water Management Authority.
📰 Vital cog in the health-care wheel
•The health-care landscape in India is getting transformed at a blistering pace. Minimally invasive surgeries, improved patient outcomes, advanced techniques and smarter machinery are among a wave of innovations being led by the ever-evolving medical device industry. Aiding all this are industry experts who are bringing them to us. A significant contribution is being made by biomedical engineers, who are at the core of all patient safety measures.
•India, which was the host of the Fourth edition of the ‘WHO (World Health Organisation) Global Forum on Medical Devices’ at Visakhapatnam, December 13-15, is also witnessing a tirade against the quality of health-care equipment, with a special focus on the lack of adverse-event reporting.
•It is the time to understand the importance of biomedical engineers, who play a significant role in bringing transparency to medical device adverse-event reporting and yet are under-represented and underrated.
•The Global Health Observatory data repository notes that the density of biomedical engineers and technicians in India per thousand of population decreased from 0.32 (2014) to 0.31 (2015) to 0.23 ( 2017). This is an alarming trend, especially when WHO estimates that less than half of all medical equipment in developing countries is usable. The numbers highlight the need for more such engineers, who affirm the safety of a medical device by ensuring that they are safe, have quality and effective for the intended purpose.
Why India needs more
•It is important to understand the profile of a biomedical engineer in the medical industry. A rare combination of medicine and engineering, biomedical engineers collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop innovative technological solutions, evolve health systems, and ensure the correct deployment of medical equipment or devices. Using engineering principles, they create solutions for health care and are involved in the development and design of a medical product and its safety.
•In case of an adverse event, it is important to determine whether the root cause is surgical procedure-led, medical device-led or infrastructure-led. As a patient ultimately gets a surgical procedure and not a medical device alone, a biomedical engineer can effectively help distinguish the nature of the issue that led to an adverse event. For example, if a biomedical engineer works on the development of a device that enables a person with a disability to walk again, he helps the hospital to ensure that the device is working perfectly, and the patient eventually benefits from it.
•Biomedical engineers can help integrate vertical domain knowledge of various sectors in a comprehensive manner. The role of biomedical engineers ranges from national policy, regulations, technical standards and specifications, research and development, design, prototyping, clinical research, assessments, contracting, supply chain, deployment, integration with IT and business systems, monitoring, re-engineering, maintenance, adverse event management, inventory management and more. It goes without saying that their role is imperative in any modern health-care innovator, manufacturer, planner, care provider or government agency.
The future
•The Government of India, through its programme called the Biomedical Equipment Management and Maintenance Programme, aims to improve the functionality of medical equipment in public health facilities. However, the dearth of biomedical engineers is still a major challenge, which is what the WHO global forum attempted to address.
•The forum also demonstrated India’s commitment towards improved access to safe, effective, innovative, quality medical devices and diagnostics — a contribution to Universal Health Coverage and Sustainable Health Goals. The event also talked about the need for medical equipment maintenance strategies, methodology for the design of health technologies and regulations of medical devices.
•As we walk into the future of medical innovations, we must also invest in our medical professionals.
📰 IIT researchers 3D bioprint load-bearing bones
Development biology pathway by which load-bearing bones form was mimicked
•Researchers from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and IIT Kanpur have used a different approach to mimic the development biology pathway by which adult load-bearing, long bones are formed. The bone construct was fabricated by combining tissue engineering and 3D bioprinting. The study also helped in understanding the detailed gene expression and sequential signaling pathways that get upregulated when embryonic-stage cartilage becomes bone-like cells.
How bones form
•There are two ways in which bones are formed. In the case of cranial bones (which are not load-bearing), mesenchymal stem cells directly differentiate into bones without being converted into a cartilage. However, in the case of load-bearing, long bones, such as femur, stem cells first form a cartilage template, which then undergoes further differentiation to form bone cells. Bones formed from a cartilage template are designed to bear weight.
•Till date, all attempts to develop load-bearing bones using different scaffolds have been by differentiating the stem cells directly into bone cells thus bypassing the crucial, intermediate stage of cartilage formation. “The efficacy of such bone constructs is yet to be demonstrated in bearing loads. There is very poor correlation between bone constructs developed in vitro and in vivo . Also, gene expression pattern of these tissue-engineered bones largely differ from human adult bone,” says Prof. Sourabh Ghosh from the Department of Textile Technology at IIT Delhi and one of the corresponding authors of a paper published in the journal ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering.
•In a paper published last year in the journal Bioprinting, the same team used 3D bioprinting and bioink (which contains silk proteins, mesenchymal stem cells and growth factors) to tissue engineer the cartilage.
•In the latest work, the cartilage was first 3D bioprinted using bioink and cartilage characteristics were thoroughly characterised. The researchers then added a thyroid hormone (Triiodothyronine or T3) to the cartilage to facilitate the differentiation of cartilage into bone-like cells.
Stark difference
•Unlike bone cells formed directly from stem cells, bones formed through cartilage differentiation in the lab exhibited a stark difference — gene and protein expressions were similar to when bone development occurs naturally in the body.
•Also, the three key cellular signaling pathways for osteogenic differentiation were found to be upregulated. “When we followed a different strategy to develop bone there is more similarity to limb skeleton development in vivo,” says Prof. Ghosh.
•“The load-bearing capacity of a bone depends primarily on the quality of extracellular matrix. In loading-bearing bones, the extra cellular matrix comprises 95% while bone cells are just 5%. So if you are trying to fabricate a load-bearing bone construct it is better to have more extracellular matrix,” says Prof. Amitabha Bandyopadhyay from the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at IIT Kanpur and another corresponding author of the latest paper. “Compared to bone formed directly from stem cells, the extracellular matrix of the bone construct developed through the intermediate cartilage process was 10s of times higher.”
•“We followed a four-step process to develop the load-bearing bone. We first developed chondrocytes (cartilage) from stem cells and then differentiated them into hypertrophic chondrocytes. During this process, the sponge-like cartilage becomes a brittle tissue. While the brittleness is not good for cartilage, here it is following the development biology mechanism to become a bone,” says Prof. Ghosh. In the third step, the hypertrophic chondrocytes differentiate into bone-like cells (osteoblasts) and finally to adult bone cells (osteocytes).
•While it takes three weeks for the cartilage to be formed from mesenchymel stem cells (chondrogenesis), it takes another two weeks for bone formation (osteogenesis).
•Though the paper does not report on mechanical properties of the bone construct, Prof. Ghosh says mechanical studies carried out show better results than when the bone has been developed directly from stem cells. The team plans to undertake studies on animals.
📰 IISER Pune develops new model of evolution of bacterial colonies
The team experimented on E. coli populations, simulated asexual population growth
•Researchers from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune propose a change in the way epidemiologists estimate the growth and adaptation rate of bacteria. The paper, to be published in Evolutionary Biology,poses this challenge to both theoreticians and experimentalists who are studying the growth of asexual populations subject to periodic bottlenecks.
•Bacteria enter the body of a host organism and multiply into billions. But the population is not steadily growing within the body. There are periodic instances, known as bottlenecks, when they are purged in huge numbers. This could be, for example, when the host sneezes or defecates. On these occasions the bacteria gets into the body of a second host and spreads there. So the number of bacteria in the first host decreases considerably at the time of bottlenecks. In performing calculations, it is of interest to know which number to take as the estimate of population size of the bacteria, as this will also decide how they grow and proliferate. This size is related to and directly affects the extent or rate of adaptation, which is a measure of how much a trait has changed compared to the ancestor. The rate or extent of adaptation is ultimately the quantity that researchers seek to estimate or measure.
Harmonic mean
•A longstanding assumption made by researchers is that a quantity called the harmonic mean decides the rate of adaptation of the bacteria. The harmonic mean is the product of the population size at the bottleneck ( NO ) and the number of generations between two successive bottlenecks ( g ). However, there has been no empirical or theoretical test for the validity of the harmonic mean as a predictor of the extent of adaptation.
•“As a starting point, we performed experiments on E. coli populations to test if the harmonic mean of population size ( NOg ) can predict extent of adaptation. Our experiments revealed that this does not hold,” says Sutirth Dey of IISER Pune who is an author of the paper.
•Knowing the extent of adaptation is of interest, both theoretically and practically. When epidemiologists estimate the way a disease spreads, they frequently have to make predictions about the rate at which various types of bacteria will evolve under different conditions.
•The researchers then simulated the growth of asexual populations (those that multiply via fission) using their proposed model and found g, the number of generations between bottlenecks, to have a complex relationship with the rate of adaptation. While it partly enhances the extent of adaptation, they also obtained the counter-intuitive result that higher values of g decreased the extent of adaptation. This is counter-intuitive, because when there are more generations between two bottlenecks, it would appear that there are more fissions, and hence a greater scope for variation and adaptation. Because of this they propose in this paper that rather than using NOg , the factor NO/g where gvaries inversely should be used to calculate extent of adaptation.
•“We have not yet provided an analytical proof for this – we are working on it. Meanwhile this result is an invitation for theoreticians and experimentalists to re-examine some fundamental assumptions about how bacteria evolve,” says Dr Dey.
📰 New markers to monitor TB treatment
It is a pilot study involving just 15 people with TB
•Besides treatment, there is an urgent need for monitoring tuberculosis treatment to achieve better results. Researchers from the National Jalma Institute for Leprosy and Other Mycobacterial Diseases, have succeeded in identifying a couple of cell-based markers to study the response of TB patients to treatment.
•Currently, studying the sputum of the patient using microscope is the only tool for treatment monitoring. “Sometimes patients can’t produce sputum, especially children and elderly patients. And when the patient is undergoing treatment also, he does not produce enough sputum. The microscopy method has low sensitivity - it needs atleast 10,000 bacilli/mL to detect properly,” explains Dr. Sonali Agrawal, who completed her PhD from the Institute. She is the first author of the study published in Frontiers in Immunology.
•The researchers collected blood samples from about 15 individuals, who were newly diagnosed with pulmonary TB and studied the expression of immune cell associated markers - T regulatory markers and Th17 associated markers.
Flow cytometry
•The expression of cell-associated markers was studied by flow cytometry. This technique involves adding specific antibodies against cell-associated markers of interest. These antibodies carry specific fluorophores (or fluorescent tags) which when excited by laser emits fluorescence. The number of cells that carries a specific marker and multiple cell-associated markers can be detected by the flow cytometer.
•The individuals were undergoing anti-TB treatment for new smear-positive pulmonary TB (referred to as category I patients) and these markers were analysed again after two, four and six months. They found a significant decrease in the expression of CD25 marker and the subset of T regulatory cells (CD4+CD25+) and this decline was gradual as the treatment continued.
•The authors note that these cells can act as better markers for monitoring the treatment efficacy. Though previous studies have shown an association between T- regulatory cells and Mycobacterium load, this is the first study to establish the link in TB treatment by monitoring at different time points.
•“This is pilot study and needs movalidation. We are planning to carry out studies in a larger cohort,” says Dr. Madhan Kumar, Scientist from the Department of Immunology at the institute and corresponding author of the paper. “We are also working on developing a panel of more immune specific markers and take the test to the field, which may also help in predicting failure cases if studied on those lines. We observed that a subset of T regulatory cells, CD4+CD25+FoxP3 declined in patients who had resolved cavitary lesions by chest X-rays by the end of treatment. Thus this marker could also be useful in predicting favourable response in patients with extensive lung lesions”.
📰 Mutations that influence bipolar disorder, schizophrenia identified
Researchers have identified 42 rare mutations in the genes implicated in very severe mental disorders
•By sequencing the exome (the part of the genome composed of exons that gets translated into proteins) of 32 people from eight families who suffer from mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and psychosis, Bengaluru-based researchers have identified 42 rare mutations in the genes implicated in very severe mental disorders.
Heritability
•Mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and psychosis have nearly 80% chances of heritability, which indicates a genetic component. However, variations in a single gene cannot account for the manifestation of the disease. “So we adopted an approach to maximise the potential to identify the genetic components that influence the disease. This we did by studying the members of the same family who have the disease,” says Dr. Odity Mukherjee from Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem), Bengaluru and corresponding author of a paper published in the journalPsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
Three-step process
•The variants were identified through a three-step process — the variant should cause significant perturbation to the gene, should be shared across affected members within a family, and should not be present in healthy control. Eight healthy people from five of the eight families and 25 individuals who have no history of severe mental illnesses were used as controls.
•Not all the 32 people with mental illness had all the 42 variants. Each family has its own set of unique variants shared among its affected members, while also having more common variants shared across families that somehow cause similar kind of disorder, the researchers found.
•“We have identified variations in the genes which we believe influences the clinical outcomes. But we are yet to understand how these variations influence the clinical outcomes,” Dr. Mukherjee says.
•“The interesting part of our study is that the variants we identified are in genes that cause severe neurological disease or aberrant brain development. The variants [mutations] that cause neurological disease or aberrant brain development are not in exactly the same location in the gene that causes syndromes such as spinocerebellar ataxia and Cornelia de Lange syndrome,” says Dr. Sanjeev Jain from the Department of Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru and co-author of the paper.
Complexity unravelled
•The fact that the identified variations overlap with genes involved in both brain development, and brain degeneration, and also in genes that have been identified in other data sets suggests that the complexity of these diseases can be slowly, but surely, unravelled, says Dr. Jain.
•“We identify variants in genes hitherto not reported in the context of severe mental illness, but that could potentially contribute to disease biology,” the authors write in the paper.
•The researchers are planning to use induced pluripotent stem cell lines from these families and brain cells in vitro to understand how the variants affect the working of the brain cells. “This will help us understand how the genetic variants though different in each family cause similar kind of illnesses,” says Dr. Jain.
📰 Now, graphene can detect brain disorders
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis currently has no known objective diagnostic test
•Graphene, a form of carbon and a super-strong, ultra-light material discovered in 2004, enables flexible electronic components, enhances solar cell capacity, and promises to revolutionise batteries. Now scientists have added one more use to this list.
Detecting ALS
•They have found a potential new application of this material for detecting Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) — a progressive brain disorder for which there is currently “no objective diagnostic test.” This is described in the journalApplied Materials & Interfaces of the American Chemical Society.
•ALS is characterised by rapid loss of motor neurons controlling skeletal muscles, leading to paralysis.
•“We have a new exciting work on the application of graphene that may one day be used to test for ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases”, co–first author Bijentimala Keisham, a PhD candidate working under Vikas Berry, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC), told this correspondent in an email.
•Graphene consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, each atom bound to its neighbours by chemical bonds. The elasticity of these bonds produces resonant vibrations known as phonons.
•Graphene’s use to detect ALS exploits its ability to change these resonant vibrations in a very specific and quantifiable way when an extraneous molecule is introduced into the lattice, says the report. The foreign molecule affects the vibrational energies of graphene and the changes can be “accurately mapped using Raman spectroscopy”, a technique commonly used in chemistry to provide a structural fingerprint by which molecules can be identified.
•In their study the UIC team found a distinct change in the vibrational characteristics of graphene when Cerebro-Spinal Fluid (CSF) — found in the brain and the spinal cord — from patients with ALS was added to it. The researchers carried out the test using the CSF from 13 people with ALS; three people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and three people with an unknown neurodegenerative disease.
Three changes
•“The changes in graphene’s phonon vibration–energies, as measured by Raman spectroscopy, were unique and distinct,” Keisham said. “These distinct changes accurately predicted what kind of patient the CSF came from — one with ALS, MS or no neurodegenerative disease.”
•The authors, however, add this strategy does not analyse the Raman signal of the CSF but rather “looks at the change in the Raman signal from interfaced graphene”.
•“In summary, we demonstrate a robust system to investigate ALS by using graphene,” says the report. “The results suggest that our graphene platform can be used not only to potentially diagnose ALS, but also to monitor its progression,” it says.
