Saturday, September 5, 2015

WATCH: How Visual Effects Created 7 Amazing Scenes In 'Baahubali'















With the 3-hour visual treat, it is no surprise that SS Rajamouli’s magnum opus ‘Baahubali’, which was released this year, has amassed over Rs 600 crore at the worldwide Box Office.
Of course we know the scenic backgrounds in the movie were generated with the help of some amazing computer effects, but now we know that the techniques used are equally mesmerising.
A video on Hyderabad-based graphics company Makuta VFX's channel on YouTube explains how some of the scenes from the film were conceptualized and shot.
Get ready to be amused.
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The famous shot where Ramya Krishnan was shown carrying a baby in her palm through the heavy currents of a river, wasn't a baby, it was actually a bottle of water.
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No waterfall, it was just a blue screen.
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Prabhas hanging on the rocks with waterfalls in the backdrop, was stunning VFX. There was a crane to lift him up.
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And this is how Prabahs crossed the deadly narrow passage.
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There were no real elephants used in the movie.
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There were no temples either.
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This is how simple green screens were turned into forests.

Friday, September 4, 2015

‘Female Viagra’ has Indian men in thrall: Doctors

 Mumbai-based sexologist Dr Prakash Kothari is used to inquiries that range from the idiosyncratic to the idiotic. Nowadays, he has been getting a lot of calls and emails that fall somewhere in between— from men who want to know the efficacy and availability of 'female Viagra.'

It's been a fortnight since the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved flibanserin, the 'female libido enhancer' marketed under the brand name Addyi by Sprout Pharmaceuticals, and Indian sexologists' phones haven't stopped ringing. "Evidently more men than women are interested in the pill," says Dr Kothari.

Though Sprout is yet to make an application to the Indian drug control authorities to market the drug in the country, out of the first one lakh Google searches for 'Viagra for women,' the third largest number was from India (Australia and the US took the first two places). And sexologists say, going by the calls and mails that clog their phones, most of them would be married men.

Why are Indian men so curious about flibanserin, the first ever 'libido enhancing drug'? "Because they are lazy," says Chennai-based sexologist Dr Narayana Reddy. "Most of them who complain about their women being frigid don't do foreplay or just don't understand the woman enough."



In the case of Dr Kothari's patient Akash, this turned out to be true.

The sexologist asked him why he needed the pill, and pat came the reply: "My wife was not getting turned on when I tried to kiss her." Inquiries with his wife revealed something else. "His wife said Akash was not devoting enough time with her. And he didn't know she couldn't stand the smell of tobacco when he tried to kiss her," said Kothari.

Dr Reddy says a lot of pink pills - and the side effects that come with them - can be saved if men try harder to connect with the woman at an emotional level. "The magic word here is `talk', not `pill'. It will be October before flibanserin, the `female libido enhancer', reach es drug stores in the US, and it may take several more months to come to India since Sprout Pharmaceuticals is yet to make an application here, but sexologists and gynaecologists are flooded with inquiries. Experts say curiosity must be driving the initial enthusiasm, but caution should be the catchword.

Many doctors are wary of prescribing the drug because it was rejected by FDA twice for its side effects. They say the India government has to conduct trials for the drug to understand the required dosage and effectiveness on Indian women, like it did for sildanafil (Viagra) almost 17 years ago.While Viagra improves blood flow to genitals, Addyi plays with women's brain chemicals.And that, experts caution, doesn't work well for many women.

"I have seen around 50,000 cases of low sexual desire among women," says Mumbaibased sexologist Dr Prakash Kothari. "A majority of them suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, depression or anxiety. Or they have some problems with some organs.The drug may not work on such people, and hence a thorough check-up is needed before flibanserin is prescribed."

Adds Chennai-based sexologist Dr Narayana Reddy: "Those who qualify for the drug are those with low sexual desire without any apparent physiological reason. A very small segment of people belong to this category ."

The history of the drug - being rejected twice by FDA - makes doctors wary . "There seems to be a lot of controversy around the pill," says Dr Manika Khanna, a senior doctor at New Delhi-based Gaudium IVF Centre. "If the FDA itself says there are sideeffects like nausea, drowsiness and low blood pressure, it should not be prescribed to anyone currently on anti-depressants, those suffering from vertigo, hypotension or any sort of brain problem," says Dr Reddy .

For those partying, this could be another dampener: Addyi should not be taken by people who drink. Many people who think of it as a female Viagra may not know these facts, say doctors. "It is important that a complete clinical history of the patient is taken before the drug is prescribed," says Dr Kothari.

Dr Khanna calls for trials in India. Bengaluru-based gynaecologist Dr Devika Gunasheela agrees. "Trials are compulsory for any new drug before being introduced into the Indian market. The Indian population is genetically very different from the Caucasian population, so our requirements and absorption levels are different. Many medicines react differently on Indians and Americans," she says.

A senior officer at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation told TOI that the company has not applied for permission to manufacture or distribute Addyi in India.

"When they apply, we will conduct trials. The only time we exempt a drug from clinical trials is during emergencies. Once we receive an application, we might take at least three months to complete the procedure," he said.
Credit:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Female-Viagra-has-Indian-men-in-thrall-Doctors/articleshow/48795664.cms

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

`Daily walk can add seven years to your life'

Just 25 minutes of brisk walking a day can add up to seven years to your life, ac cording to health experts. Researchers have found that moderate exercise could halve the risk of dying from a heart attack for someone in their fifties or sixties.
Coronary heart disease is UK's single biggest killer, causing one death every seven seconds, and exercise has long been seen as a way to reduce the risks by cutting obesity and diabetes. A new study presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress suggested that regular exercise can increase life span. A group of 69 healthy non-smokers, aged between 30 and 60, who did not take regular exercise were tested as part of the study at Saarland University in Germany .
Blood tests taken during six months of regular aerobic exercise, high-intensity interval training and strength training showed that an antiageing process had been triggered and helped repair old DNA.
Credit:Paul Peachey-http://www.independent.co.uk/

Monday, August 31, 2015

Computing cancer



Scientists have created a comprehensive computer model of a cancerous tumour in three dimensions - watch it in action in this Nature Video

more at :http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/computing-cancer/index.html













Sunday, August 30, 2015

DNA editing


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A gene-editing technique called Crispr-Cas9 is at the heart of a monumental moment in the his tory of biomedical research.
“The first term is an acronym for `clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,' a description of the genetic basis of the method; Cas9 is the name of a protein that makes it work,“ explains Amy Maxmen in Wired. “Technical details aside, Crispr-Cas9 makes it easy , cheap, and fast to move genes around -any genes, in any living thing, from bacteria to people.“
In even simpler terms, the work being done on this technique lends credence to the basic premise of the Jurassic Park movies -that you can take a bunch of DNA from a limited source and combine it with others to bring a species back from extinction, or create various combinant, monster species, as was done in the latest instalment of the movie franchise. “Using the three-year-old technique, researchers have already reversed mutations that cause blindness, stopped cancer cells from multiplying, and made cells impervious to the virus that causes AIDS. Agronomists have rendered wheat invulnerable to killer fungi like powdery mildew, hinting at engineered staple crops that can feed a population of 9 billion on an ever-warmer planet. Bioengineers have used Crispr to alter the DNA of yeast so that it consumes plant matter and excretes ethanol, promis ing an end to reliance on petrochemicals,“ writes Maxmen, adding that two of the most powerful universities in the US -UC Berkeley and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard -are battling for the basic patent. As Maxmen puts it, “Depending on what kind of person you are, Crispr makes you see a gleaming world of the future, a Nobel medallion, or dollar signs.“
`Crispr' could at last allow genetics researchers to realise their wildest dreams -bespoke babies, invasive mutants, bioweapons. At the Harvard School of Public Health, a special set of mosquito larvae of the species Anopheles gambiae are having malaria-resistant gene drives inserted into their genomes using Crispr. Techniques to do this have existed for decades, but the thing with this particular technique is that it's incredibly fast. Compared to other methods like using TALENs and zinc-finger nucleases, this is “like trading in rusty scissors for a computer-controlled laser cutter.“ With less than $100, an ordinary arachnologist can snip the wing gene out of a spider embryo and see what happens when that spider matures. The writer says that academic and pharmaceutical company labs have begun to develop Crisprbased research tools, such as cancerous mice -perfect for testing new chemotherapies. A team at MIT, working with Zhang, used Crispr-Cas9 to create, in just weeks, mice that inevitably get liver cancer. That kind of thing used to take more than a year.
All this makes it terribly easy to alter the rules of the biological universe ­ to create a new species or obliterate an existing one. But such tinkering has unexpected, far-reaching consequences on the ecosystem ­ if new genes that wipe out malaria also make mosquitoes go extinct, what will bats eat? No one knows what the rules are ­ or who will be the first to break them.
Credit:Times of India.