RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR It’s, to use a Dickensian phrase, the best of times, and the worst of times. And, as we navigate in our society where instinct is given a free ticket, we are paradoxically not willing to grow up. We are growing up, all right, in a way, but only as ‘half-adults.’ Besides, we are running […]
Tag Archives: featured
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RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When the Austrian paediatrician, Clemens von Pirquet, MD, first used the term, allergy, in the early 1900s — from the Greek allos, for altered state, and ergon, for reaction — to illustrate excess physiological responses to substances in the environment, the fascinating expression caught the fancy of the world. Today, allergy is, doubtless, the most clichéd […]
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RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR What has colour fluctuation in certain leaves got to do with the change of seasons? More than meets the eye and mind. The changes are collectively called biological rhythms — or, behavioural changes that may not be just passive responses to environmental variations. Such changes are driven by ‘endogenous oscillators,’ called biological clocks, […]
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RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When Linus Pauling, the legendary chemist and two-time Nobel laureate, discovered that a specific heritable protein variation in a single component of haemoglobin protein complex resulted in sickle cell anaemia, it initiated a new era in biomedical sciences. Years later, the gene responsible for the haemoglobin variant was discovered — including an entire series […]
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RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR It was sentimental stuff: John McEnroe, during one of his last hurrahs, at Wimbledon. His most diehard fans expected the unexpected from him. That was his magic. To recall another moment, not part of good, gentlemanly demeanour. It was 45 years ago that McEnroe expressed that most iconic, illustrious idiom in tennis, when […]