Scientists develop molecule to treat inflammatory diseases
MCC950 fights excess inflammasome-generation, can be taken orally and is cheaper to produce than current protein-based treatments
Scientists in Australia have developed a marvel molecule that fights one of the main causes of inflammatory diseases and could be the key in formulating improved treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s, arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
Researchers at University of Queensland, in collaboration with an international team, worked to develop the molecule that could lead to safer, cheaper treatments.
The molecule, known as MCC950, could help prevent inflammation in immune cells, Matt Cooper of the University’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience was quoted as saying by the ABC.
“It is one of the first molecules we’ve ever seen that can attack this complex we call the inflammasome — and that’s in every one of our immune cells, it’s a key part of our response to infection,” he said.
“But when it goes wrong, it activates these cells so then people become chronically agitated and [their] immune system goes into overdrive,” he said.
Stating that the molecule was tested on animals and blood samples from patients in the United States, Mr. Cooper said, “Patients have donated blood samples, these are patients with a very severe form of inflammation called Muckle-Wells syndrome.”
“We can see in those patients this immune response, this inflammasome is overactive and when we give the compound to those blood samples in a laboratory we can stop that process.”
Stating that the new molecule could be taken orally and would be cheaper to produce than current protein-based treatments, Mr. Cooper said the molecule was very small and passed from the gut into the bloodstream very quickly.
“But it also means it can go places that proteins can’t get to... particularly in the brain and, with multiple sclerosis, into the CNS — the central nervous system,” he said.
It was not clear whether the molecule could cure inflammatory diseases or just treat the symptoms, he added.
The study is a global venture with scientists from the U.S., Trinity College in Dublin and Germany.
The next step is clinical trials. The research was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
New laser technique to hunt for Earth-like planet
The hunt for Earth-like planets around distant stars could soon become a lot easier, thanks to a new laser technique developed by researchers in Germany.
The technique will allow a spectral analysis of distant stars with unprecedented accuracy, as well as advance research in other areas of astrophysics, such as detailed observations of the Sun and the measurement of the accelerating universe by observing distant quasars, researchers said.
Researchers successfully demonstrated how a solar telescope can be combined with laser frequency comb (LFC) - a tool for measuring the colour or frequency of light.
LFC has been responsible for generating some of the most precise measurements ever made. An LFC is created by a laser that emits continuous pulses of light, containing millions of different colours, often spanning almost the entire visible spectrum.
When the different colours are separated based on their individual frequencies - the speed with which that particular light wave oscillates - they form a “comb-like” graph with finely spaced lines, or “teeth,” representing the individual frequencies.
This “comb” can then be used as a “ruler” to precisely measure the frequency of light from a wide range of sources, such as lasers, atoms or stars.
The researchers, from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, the Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics and the University Observatory Munich, performed an analysis on the Sun by combining sunlight from a solar telescope in Tenerife with the light of an LFC.
Both sources of light were injected into a single optical fibre which then delivered the light to a spectrograph for analysis.
The researchers envisage using the new technique to not only study the star at the centre of our solar system, but stars much further away from us, particularly to find Earth-like planets that may be orbiting around them.
When a planet orbits a star, the star does not stay completely stationary, but instead moves in a very small circle or ellipse.
When viewed from a distance, these slight changes in speed cause the star’s light spectrum to change - a process known as a Doppler shift.
The researchers believe that an LFC would allow them to measure these Doppler shifts much more accurately and therefore increase the chances of spotting Earth-sized, habitable planets.
The study was published in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics.
NASA probe spots small moons orbiting Pluto
Exactly 85 years after Pluto’s discovery, the NASA spacecraft set to encounter the icy dwarf planet this summer has spotted small moons orbiting Pluto.
The moons, Nix and Hydra, are visible in a series of images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft at distances ranging from about 201 million-186 million km.
The long-exposure images offer New Horizons’ best view yet of these two small moons circling Pluto which professor Clyde Tombaugh discovered at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona Feb 18, 1930.
“Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto heralded the discovery of the Kuiper Belt and a new class of planet. The New Horizons team salutes his historic accomplishment,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.
Assembled into a seven-frame movie, the new images provide the spacecraft’s first extended look at Hydra (identified by a yellow diamond) and its first-ever view of Nix (orange diamond).
“It’s thrilling to watch the details of the Pluto system emerge as we close the distance to the spacecraft’s July 14 encounter,” added New Horizons science team member John Spencer, also from the Southwest Research Institute.
The first good view of Nix and Hydra marks another major milestone and a perfect way to celebrate the anniversary of Pluto’s discovery, he noted.
Nix and Hydra were discovered by New Horizons team members in Hubble Space Telescope images taken in 2005.
Hydra, Pluto’s outermost known moon, orbits Pluto every 38 days at a distance of approximately 64,700 km while Nix orbits every 25 days at a distance of 48,700 km.
Each moon is probably between approximately 40-150 km in diameter but scientists will not know their sizes more precisely until New Horizons obtains close-up pictures of both of them in July.
Pluto’s two other small moons, Styx and Kerberos, are still smaller and too faint to be seen by New Horizons at its current range to Pluto.
Millions at risk from rapid sea rise in Sundarbans
Scientists predict much of the Sundarbans could be underwater in 15 to 25 years.
The tiny hut sculpted out of mud at the edge of the sea is barely large enough for Bokul Mondol and his family to lie down. The water has taken everything else from them, and one day it almost certainly will take this, too.
Saltwater long ago engulfed the 5 acres where Mondol once grew rice and tended fish ponds, as his ancestors had on Bali Island for some 200 years. His thatch-covered hut, built on public land, is the fifth he has had to build in the last five years as the sea creeps in.
“Every year we have to move a little further inland,” he said.
Seas are rising more than twice as fast as the global average here in the Sundarbans where some 13 million people live. Tens of thousands like Mondol have already been left homeless, and scientists predict much of the Sundarbans could be underwater in 15 to 25 years.
That could force a singularly massive exodus of millions of “climate refugees,” creating enormous challenges for both India and Bangladesh.
“This big-time climate migration is looming on the horizon,” said Tapas Paul, a New Delhi-based environmental specialist with the World Bank, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars assessing and preparing a plan for the Sundarbans region.
“If all the people of the Sundarbans have to migrate, this would be the largest-ever migration in the history of mankind,” Paul said. The largest to date occurred during the India-Pakistan partition in 1947, when 10 million people or more migrated from one country to the other.
Mondol has no idea where he would go. His family of six is now entirely dependent on neighbours who have not lost their land. Some days they simply don’t eat.
“For 10 years, I was fighting with the sea, until finally everything was gone,” he says, staring blankly at the water lapping at the muddy coast. “We live in constant fear of flooding. If the island is lost, we will all die.”
On their own, the Sundarbans’ residents have little chance of moving before catastrophe hits. Facing constant threats from roving tigers and crocodiles, deadly swarms of giant honeybees and poisonous snakes, they struggle to eke out a living by farming, shrimping, fishing and collecting honey from the forests.
Each year, with crude tools and bare hands, they build mud embankments to keep saltwater and wild animals from invading their crops. And each year swollen rivers, monsoon rains and floods wash many of those banks and mud-packed homes back into the sea.
Losing the 26,000-square-kilometer or 10,000-square-mile region an area would also take an environmental toll. The Sundarbans region is teeming with wildlife, including the world’s only population of mangrove forest tigers. The freshwater swamps and their tangles of mangrove forests act as a natural buffer protecting India’s West Bengal state and Bangladesh from cyclones.
With rising temperatures melting polar ice and expanding oceans, seas have been rising globally at an average rate of about 3 millimeters a year a rate scientists say is likely to speed up. The latest projections suggest seas could rise on average up to about 1 meter or 3.3 feet this century.
That would be bad enough for the Sundarbans, where the highest point is around 3 meters (9.8 feet) and the mean elevation is less than a meter above sea level. But sea rise occurs unevenly across the globe because of factors like wind, ocean currents, tectonic shift and variations in the Earth’s gravitational pull. The rate of sea rise in the Sundarbans has been measured at twice the global rate or even higher.
In addition, dams and irrigation systems upstream are trapping sediments that could have built up the river deltas that make up the Sundarbans. Other human activities such as deforestation encourage erosion.
A 2013 study by the Zoological Society of London measured the Sundarbans coastline retreating at about 200 meters or 650 feet a year. The Geological Survey of India says at least 210 square kilometers of coastline on the Indian side has eroded in the last few decades. At least four islands are underwater and dozens of others have been abandoned due to sea rise and erosion.
Many scientists believe the only long-term solution is for most of the Sundarbans population to leave. That may be not only necessary but environmentally beneficial, giving shorn mangrove forests a chance to regrow and capture river sediment in their tangled, saltwater-tolerant roots.
“The chance of a mass migration, to my mind, is actually pretty high. India is not recognising it for whatever reason,” said Anurag Danda, who leads the World Wildlife Fund’s climate change adaptation program in the Sundarbans. “It’s a crisis waiting to happen. We are just one event away from seeing large-scale displacement and turning a large number of people into destitutes.”
India, however, has no official plan either to help relocate Sundarbans residents or to protect the region from further ecological decline.
Most families have been living here since the early 1800s, when the British East India Company which then governed India, Pakistan and Bangladesh for the British Empire removed huge mangrove forests to allow people to live on and profit from the fertile agricultural land.
Even those who are aware of the threat of rising seas don’t want to leave.
“You cannot fight with water,” said Sorojit Majhi, a 36-year-old father of four young girls living in a hut crouched behind a crumbling mud embankment. Majhi’s ancestral land has also been swallowed by the sea. He admits he’s sometimes angry, other times depressed.
“We are scared, but where can we go?” he said. “We cannot fly away like a bird.”
Dementia on the rise globally
Around 44 million people live with dementia worldwide and the figure is expected to triple and reach 135 million by 2050, according to a new report.
Dementia is “one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people worldwide”, the global report for dementia released by the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) said.
“In 2010, the global cost of care reached an estimated USD 604 billion worldwide, equivalent to one per cent global gross domestic product ” it said, adding the “devastating and prevalent” disease had huge social and financial burdens.
Experts noted that global understanding of dementia lags behind other diseases and is often mistaken as a normal part of ageing.
“Whilst there continues to be a social stigma surrounding dementia, the level of necessary funding will not be addressed equivalent to the need. In the US, funding for HIV/AIDS research is more than five times the level of that for dementia research despite the fact there are five times as many Americans with Dementia than with HIV,” the report said.
The report explores a wide range of dementia—related issues, including the current barriers and challenges besides innovative solutions, including raising public awareness, care innovations, new financial models and more effective regulatory frameworks.
Key recommendations
It offers governments 10 key policy recommendations, aimed at improving both outcomes for individuals living with dementia and for economies struggling to pay for the costs of caring for dementia.
“It’s clear that there is not one simple panacea for dementia that lies just beyond our reach. Rather, it will take the concerted and integrated efforts of leaders and innovators in all sectors to move the needle on this extraordinary social and economic challenge,” said Ellis Rubinstein, president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences who was appointed as the chair of the Dementia Forum. Dementia is one of eight reports presented at the 2015 WISH Summit where leaders, health experts and policy makers from around the world have met.
Small molecule with a huge potential
Recent findings on the role of IP7, a lesser known molecule, have revealed that it has potential to be developed as a drug for the prevention of stroke and cancer chemotherapy.
ATP molecule is known as a storehouse of energy and fuels the physiological activities. Another equally important but lesser known molecule is IP7, which too carries high energy and regulates many processes in the cell. This molecule consists of a sugar inositol and seven phosphate groups. Its levels in a cell are approximately thousand fold lower than those of ATP.
Studies conducted by scientists at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) in Hyderabad have revealed that IP7 plays a crucial role in DNA repair, blood clotting and protein synthesis by ribosomes.
The team led by Dr. Rashna Bhandari, Group Leader, Laboratory of Cell Signalling, CDFD found that mice with lower levels of IP7 show reduced blood clotting. Inadequate levels of IP7 led to reduction in another phosphate-rich molecule called polyphosphate (a long chain of phosphate groups linked to each other).
In mammals, polyphosphate is predominantly found in platelets and helps in strengthening blood clots during their formation. Polyphosphates housed inside platelets break up during clotting. These polyphosphates and other components get released to form a mesh that constitutes the basic structure for clot.
Lowering IP7 levels could have potential applications in the prevention of stroke or myocardial infarction by reducing clotting, said Dr. Rashna.
In their latest work which was published this month in the journal Biochemical Journal, the scientists, using Baker’s yeast, found that the fundamental cellular process of protein synthesis by ribosome was dependent on the levels of IP7 in a cell. “We found that yeast lacking IP7 have a decreased rate of protein synthesis and this process can be reversed if the molecules levels are restored,” she explained.
The scientists found that IP7 transfers one of its phosphates on to a protein that was responsible for the genesis of ribosomes and thereby regulates the process.
In the other study, Dr. Rashna and her team found that cells with lower levels of IP7 were able to trigger a response to DNA damage, but could not complete the repair process. While many of the cells die, a fraction of them continue to divide despite persistent DNA damage and such cells become susceptible to chromosomal abnormalities. “We can reverse these effects by making changes that allow IP7 levels in the cell to be restored,” she added.
“This study highlighted a novel role for IP7 in DNA repair in mammalian cells. Many cancer therapeutics act by causing DNA damage to kill cells. Reducing IP7 levels in a cancer cell might lead to increased cell death and could be one of the ways to supplement cancer chemotherapy,” Dr. Rashna added.
Displacement cuts life expectancy among tribal people
Displacement does more than efface identities and disrupt livelihoods, it can reduce life expectancy, finds a DNA study of a tribal community relocated from Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary.
Around 8,000 Sahariya tribal people were moved out of their ancestral homes in Kuno in 1998-2002 to make space for Asiatic lions brought in from Gujarat. The families suffered “acute stress” as they coped with their radically changed life in unfamiliar, semi-urbanized surroundings 10 km away, says a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To find a possible link between these tumultuous life changes and lifespan, scientists studied their subjects’ “telomeres” – the protective caps on either end of a chromosome – which are known to be associated with aging and disease. Premature telomere shortening has for long been used as an indicator of psychosocial stress and accelerated human aging.
Researchers studied physical stress (cortisol), psychosomatic stress (through self-assessments) and then conducted high resolution studies of telomere length among 24 individuals from the relocated Maziran village in the forest core.
They compared the results with identical tests on 22 individuals from Behruda village (in the sanctuary’s buffer) where no relocation took place (but the residents faced certain stressors such as “benign neglect from the Indian state”).
Those in the relocated Maziran, they found, “have statistically significantly shorter telomeres” compared with those in Behruda. “Consistent with expectations, we found significant associations between each of our stress measures… and telomere length,” they conclude. Telomere shortening has already been associated with several stress-inducing situations. But most studies in these scenarios have been conducted in “Western, educated, industrialized and rich” societies, say the authors adding that this could, therefore, possibly be the first study to link stress to telomere length in a developing country.
Telomere shortening among displaced tribal communities shows that these DNA stretches are clearly “a pan-cultural biomarker of compromised health and aging,” says the paper.
During interactions, parents among the displaced Sahariya families “expressed deep uncertainty about the future, particularly with respect to the welfare of their children, and wished to return to their predisplacement lives.”
Sahariyas are among the most marginalised communities, steeped in poverty, with high illiteracy rates and are geographically isolated.
Nanoparticles target fat deposits in blood vessels
Specially formulated ultra-tiny particles could curtail the growth of fat-laden deposits in blood vessels that can produce heart attacks and strokes, according to research from two groups of scientists in the U.S.
Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of ill-health and death worldwide. High levels of cholesterol in the blood along with chronic inflammation in arterial walls lead to ‘plaques’ of fatty deposits getting established in blood vessels and growing in size.
Should one of the plaques break open, blood clots can form that block the artery. If a coronary artery gets blocked as a result, a heart attack ensues. A stroke is produced when a blood vessel supplying the brain is affected.
Despite the success of cholesterol-lowering statins, the burden of cardiovascular disease in developed countries had remained immense, noted Oliver Soehnlein of the Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention at Munich in Germany.
Consequently, much research over the past 20 years had focused on development of anti-inflammatory strategies. However, many of these efforts had been unsuccessful at the preclinical or clinical stages, and “new therapeutic approaches are sorely needed,” he said in a commentary that accompanied a paper just published in Science Translational Medicine.
In that paper, scientists at Columbia and Harvard universities described trials carried out in mice with biodegradable nanoparticles. These nanoparticles were targeted at plaques with incorporation of a molecule that would bind to a substance found at such sites, type IV collagen.
In addition, the nanoparticles slowly released another compound, Ac2-26, that latched on to a protein,N-formyl peptide receptor 2 (FPR2/ALX), carried by immune cells — monocytes and macrophages — that drive inflammation in the plaques.
The nanoparticles were tested in laboratory mice with a genetic predisposition for high cholesterol in their blood that were fed a Western diet. The mice that received injections of the nanoparticles had much less plaque formation in advanced stages, reported Gabrielle Fredman and the other scientists in their paper.
The binding of Ac2-26 to the FPR2/ALX receptor had led to a dampening of excessive inflammation, without compromising normal immune function, and also initiated healing of damage to the arterial wall that occurred during plaque formation.
In another paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Prabhas Moghe of Rutgers University and colleagues spoke of developing nanoparticles with molecules that were specifically designed to strongly bind a receptor on macrophages. The receptor was involved in the uptake of fats into these immune cells, which then stimulated the inflammatory process.
Mice treated with the nanoparticles developed less pronounced plaques.
The nanoparticles described in the Science Translational Medicine paper could become a “significant approach” for treating cardiovascular disease, assuming that what had been shown with mice also held true in humans, observed C.C. Kartha, a professor at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram who studies the development of heart disease.
Mice that got the nanoparticles grew a thicker protective layer (or cap) over their plaques. As a result, such plaques were less likely to rupture. “At present, there are no drugs that can stabilise plaques and increase their cap thickness,” he pointed out.
The scramble to bring internet to more Indians
Silicon Valley has many of the world’s most innovative and influential Internet companies. India has millions of people untouched by the Internet but nonetheless potentially accessible. Put the two together, and it is inevitable that Internet giants can’t help but think about India’s untapped population.
That’s precisely what was on show last week – Facebook launching its solution to spread Net access in the land of a billion-plus people and Google joining the race with an outline of its own plan.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook got together with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications to launch in India internet.org, a service that offers subscribers free access to a pre-selected bouquet of Websites. Google’s plan, as outlined during the Nasscom India Leadership Forum toward the fag end of the week, is to use helium balloons to connect people to the Net.
Last year, their rival Microsoft announced a ‘white spaces’ project — a plan to use unused TV spectrum to provide connectivity.
That’s quite a high-profile list of companies trying to get Indians connected to the Internet. And it should gladden those who bemoan India’s relatively poor Internet record. The country’s Internet penetration is less than 20 per cent, whereas the likes of China, Russia and Brazil have got close to half their populations connected to the Net. The comparative percentage for developed countries such as the US, the UK and Japan is over 80 per cent.
Why India?
Never mind if these efforts are philanthropic or commercial. What’s true is more Internet is good for people; largely, if you disregard privacy issues. More Internet is also good for a country’s GDP, as a 2012 research paper from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College pointed out. It indicated up to a 0.46 percentage point increase in the GDP of low- and middle-income countries when a 1 per cent increase in broadband penetration is achieved.
But more significantly, more Internet is good for the Internet companies. As industry analyst Horace Dediu pointed out in his blog last year, Google’s revenues are positively correlated with the world’s Internet population. So, it makes sense for Internet companies to do everything to increases the size of the pool as also improve it. And if that involves, playing a part in providing infrastructure, so be it.
The Internet companies have launched or are planning to launch numerous initiatives toward this. Google Fiber, which seeks to provide “fiber-to-the-premises” at 100 times the broadband speeds of today, is one such. Facebook is said to be considering the use of drones and satellites to connect people.
Geographically, it makes sense to look for virgin territory. China has more people than India but its user base is already nearing 650 million, twice the US population. Also, internet is more restrictive in China to outside players than many other parts of the world, and there are lots of technical and social filters. In this context, India fits the bill perfectly. A recent Morgan Stanley report predicted India’s user base to exceed 600 million in 2020, which means 46 per cent of the population would have been covered. What’s more important is that, by that time, the total Internet market would have risen by a compounded annual growth rate of 43 per cent to $137 billion. That would represent about 7 per cent of current GDP (from 0.6 per cent now). To be part of India’s internet story is lucrative.
It’s, however, going to be far from easy. The initiatives of the Internet giants may need a lot of regulatory clearances.
Facebook’s internet.org, for instance, has already been criticised for violating Net neutrality, a principle that all bits of data must be treated equally. The way internet.org presents just a small selection of websites, with the choice not in the hands of the user, is called zero-rating, a practice that has been banned in countries such as Chile.
In India, the regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority’s stance on this is awaited. Internet players, including Facebook and Twitter, have in the past done individual deals with telecom players in the past to offer subscribers such free deals. It isn’t clear how Internet players and telecom companies are sharing the burden of the freebie, and if this will be sustainable in the long run.
But like Facebook, others would like to figure out a way to work with telecom companies. They are going to be key partners, as 92 per cent of internet consumption in India happens through mobile wireless (mobile plus dongle).
Google’s plan, more technologically audacious, according to its Web site description, is to use “a network of balloons travelling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill coverage gaps, and bring people back online after disasters.”
The Microsoft project involves working with unused spectrum of Doordarshan and the government. All three tech players have touched base with the government with respect to their Internet initiatives.
Interestingly, the government itself is working on a mega plan to make internet ubiquitous in India. Called Digital India, the project involves 7.5 lakh km of cable over the next three-and-half years to provide broadband in every village of the country.
Silicon Valley has many of the world’s most innovative and influential Internet companies. India has millions of people untouched by the Internet but nonetheless potentially accessible. Put the two together, and it is inevitable that Internet giants can’t help but think about India’s untapped population.
That’s precisely what was on show last week – Facebook launching its solution to spread Net access in the land of a billion-plus people and Google joining the race with an outline of its own plan.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook got together with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications to launch in India internet.org, a service that offers subscribers free access to a pre-selected bouquet of Websites. Google’s plan, as outlined during the Nasscom India Leadership Forum toward the fag end of the week, is to use helium balloons to connect people to the Net.
Last year, their rival Microsoft announced a ‘white spaces’ project — a plan to use unused TV spectrum to provide connectivity.
That’s quite a high-profile list of companies trying to get Indians connected to the Internet. And it should gladden those who bemoan India’s relatively poor Internet record. The country’s Internet penetration is less than 20 per cent, whereas the likes of China, Russia and Brazil have got close to half their populations connected to the Net. The comparative percentage for developed countries such as the US, the UK and Japan is over 80 per cent.
Why India?
Never mind if these efforts are philanthropic or commercial. What’s true is more Internet is good for people; largely, if you disregard privacy issues. More Internet is also good for a country’s GDP, as a 2012 research paper from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College pointed out. It indicated up to a 0.46 percentage point increase in the GDP of low- and middle-income countries when a 1 per cent increase in broadband penetration is achieved.
But more significantly, more Internet is good for the Internet companies. As industry analyst Horace Dediu pointed out in his blog last year, Google’s revenues are positively correlated with the world’s Internet population. So, it makes sense for Internet companies to do everything to increases the size of the pool as also improve it. And if that involves, playing a part in providing infrastructure, so be it.
The Internet companies have launched or are planning to launch numerous initiatives toward this. Google Fiber, which seeks to provide “fiber-to-the-premises” at 100 times the broadband speeds of today, is one such. Facebook is said to be considering the use of drones and satellites to connect people.
Geographically, it makes sense to look for virgin territory. China has more people than India but its user base is already nearing 650 million, twice the US population. Also, internet is more restrictive in China to outside players than many other parts of the world, and there are lots of technical and social filters. In this context, India fits the bill perfectly. A recent Morgan Stanley report predicted India’s user base to exceed 600 million in 2020, which means 46 per cent of the population would have been covered. What’s more important is that, by that time, the total Internet market would have risen by a compounded annual growth rate of 43 per cent to $137 billion. That would represent about 7 per cent of current GDP (from 0.6 per cent now). To be part of India’s internet story is lucrative.
It’s, however, going to be far from easy. The initiatives of the Internet giants may need a lot of regulatory clearances.
Facebook’s internet.org, for instance, has already been criticised for violating Net neutrality, a principle that all bits of data must be treated equally. The way internet.org presents just a small selection of websites, with the choice not in the hands of the user, is called zero-rating, a practice that has been banned in countries such as Chile.
In India, the regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority’s stance on this is awaited. Internet players, including Facebook and Twitter, have in the past done individual deals with telecom players in the past to offer subscribers such free deals. It isn’t clear how Internet players and telecom companies are sharing the burden of the freebie, and if this will be sustainable in the long run.
But like Facebook, others would like to figure out a way to work with telecom companies. They are going to be key partners, as 92 per cent of internet consumption in India happens through mobile wireless (mobile plus dongle).
Google’s plan, more technologically audacious, according to its Web site description, is to use “a network of balloons travelling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill coverage gaps, and bring people back online after disasters.”
The Microsoft project involves working with unused spectrum of Doordarshan and the government. All three tech players have touched base with the government with respect to their Internet initiatives.
Interestingly, the government itself is working on a mega plan to make internet ubiquitous in India. Called Digital India, the project involves 7.5 lakh km of cable over the next three-and-half years to provide broadband in every village of the country.
Stay safe in cyberspace
As the country’s digital literacy programme gains thrust, awareness about digital safety has become more important than ever.
The principal of a top Gurgaon school summoned us minutes before our Internet Safety Students' Workshop to ask, “What are you going to tell my middle school children, so that they don’t get ideas that were not there before?”
At a progressive school in Noida, the principal interrupted with concern, “By telling them not to put their real names online, we will be asking them to lie!” We explained the logic, “We will tell the children to simply use their first names, not their full names. This way, they will not be identifiable by strangers.” She smiled and nodded.
When we began educating children on Internet Safety back in 2009, the subject was completely neglected by all stakeholders — parents, teachers, students, schools, institutions, corporates and NGOs as well as the government. Five years down the line, things haven’t changed much. There is still an absence of structured instruction in schools, scheduling a one-hour awareness workshop continues to be a herculean challenge and, shockingly, less than 10 per cent of youth are vaguely aware that laws exist to govern cyberspace.
Early start
With India’s major ongoing thrust on digital literacy, it is imperative for digital literacy to go hand-in-hand with digital safety instruction. Children, right from infancy, are cautioned by parents about ‘real world’ strangers and dangers. But, educating them about the perils of our parallel ‘online world’ is mostly overlooked, completely lacking or insufficient.
Just as laying the ground rules for decorum at home or school is the norm, the approach for inculcating safe and responsible Internet use should be taught right from pre-teen years. Concepts of polite speech, guarding personal information and passwords, caution when approaching strangers on the Internet, cyberbullying, fundamental aspects like ‘24x7 permanence’ of posts are just some of the key lessons to be imbued early on.
Our recent surveys in Delhi confirmed alarming online social behaviour and deplorable Netiquette.
Risky online behaviour
A survey was conducted among 200 students of whom 165 were between 10 and 13 years of age. To a question, “If someone writes something rude about you on the Internet, what would you do?” nine per cent of boys and eight per cent of girls responded that they would write back something mean.
More risky and alarming was their answer to, “Do you talk to strangers online?” Nearly one out of every four boys confirmed that they interact with strangers online. Further, 16 per cent of girls grudgingly admitted, “Maybe.”
Were the girls afraid to own up that their online actions were actually risky? During our post-workshop discussion, a few children admitted that why they thought this behaviour did not strike them as dangerous was because they believed, firstly, that all strangers are not bad, and, secondly, they can differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ persons online.
Truth about trust
At such moments, the Gurgaon principal’s question echoes within us. Telling children, for example, not to share passwords even with their best friends, since, in the case of a change of heart, they may misuse the password, is tricky business. Piercing the implicit trust and bonding of healthy friendships with the tiniest seed of doubt can be devastating, especially for girls.
Or, to explain that a taunt or abuse from ‘A’ could actually have been from ‘B’ because of the misleading anonymity factor, can plant experimentation ideas into a tender mind. To explain this, we introduced a discussion on the basics of cyber laws and provisions.
Vulnerable and voiceless
Sometimes, some children yearn for an outlet, but the void in structured Internet Safety Education, both at home and at school, means that they remain unheard.
During workshops, our trained college volunteers and members become a welcome outlet for these young confused minds. A pre-teen relates a particularly traumatic and lengthy episode of cyberbullying playing out on a social networking site; two middle school girls who fix a clandestine meeting with ‘online friends’ who claim to be from an upscale school, discover they narrowly missed being targets of mischiefmakers; a class VIII student’s ‘indiscreet’ sexting is widely circulated leading to taunts behind his/her back. These are everyday instances from middle-class India.
Education is the key
Given that India’s vast adolescent (10-19 years) population stands at 29.3 crore (according to 2011 Census), these are the youth who will be our country’s workforce tomorrow, rightfully equipped with digital literacy and, equally, digital safety.
February 10 was celebrated as Safer Internet Day in many countries across the world. It’s about time all stakeholders heard that wake-up call to create an enabling environment for education about safe and responsible digital citizenship.
US to expand air quality monitoring to embassies in India
The US plans to expand air quality monitoring to some of its missions in countries like India, Vietnam and Mongolia to help raise awareness about the dangers of pollution.
The initiative announced on Wednesday by the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency builds on the monitoring service that began five years ago at the US Embassy in Beijing.
“15 years ago, the EPA created a web—based platform called AirNow to give our citizens information in real time about the quality of the air that they’re breathing, and they can make an informed decision about whether it is a good day to go for a run or whether they want to go outdoors at all or send their kids to a park to play,” Secretary of State John Kerry said.
“Because of the success of that programme, we are today formalising a shared EPA—Department of State effort to expand EPA’s AirNow system to diplomatic posts around the world,” he said at the signing ceremony for the agreement to enhance post air quality monitoring and action overseas with EPA.
Kerry said in the coming months, AirNow will begin to operate in India and shortly after that, it will expand to Vietnam, to Mongolia, and other countries.
“Five years ago we launched AirNow—International in Shanghai, and we made further studies in other cities around the world, and a few weeks ago we announced that AirNow— International is going to be in India,” Kerry said.
“We came out of the President’s recent trip (to India) knowing that this was an issue of importance to the President, but also to India as well, and our experts will be taking off in a few weeks to get this programme started,” he said.
Kerry highlighted that this effort is going to provide Foreign Service officers, military men and women, and US citizens living or just visiting abroad with better information about the air that they are breathing, so that they can make healthier choices.
Kerry cited China’s example to show that awareness about pollution has led to action in many cases.
“We’re not the only country in which this kind of greater awareness has actually led to action. Interestingly, in recent years, China has gotten a better sense of just how dangerous the levels of air pollution have become, and their citizens are increasingly demanding action,” Kerry said.
“There was a time when poor visibility in cities like Beijing was blamed simply on excessive fog. But today, in part because of expanded air—quality monitoring in cities throughout China, the Chinese Government is now deeply committed to getting the pollution under control,” he said.
Kerry hoped that the initiative would also expand international cooperation in curbing air pollution.
