Tag Archives: viruses

The zombie obeys: a note on host manipulation by parasites and its ecological consequences

In 1858-59, as AR Wallace, one of the founders of the modern evolutionary theory, was exploring the Sulawesi Islands, he collected an ant, Polyrachis merops, that he sent over to England. Years later, the naturalist W Fawcett studying these ants … Continue reading

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Human retroviruses, sociology of science, and biographical ruminations

We learnt via a recent obituary that the French researcher Luc Montagnier died a month or so ago after living for nearly 90 years. He along with his compatriot and erstwhile colleagues, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann discovered HIV-1. Subsequently, … Continue reading

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Pandemic days: bālabodhana

As the pandemic grinds to a close or at least to a pause in some parts of the world, there is a certain fear from new mutants threaten that threaten break current the status quo. The strain that arose in … Continue reading

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Pandemic days: Vaccines and war

In American history-writing we come across various attempts to the justify the use of nuclear weapons on Japan in the closing phase of WW2. We often hear the claim that by using the nukes they avoided a large number of … Continue reading

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Prakīrṇaviṣayāḥ: Life, brains, warfare and society

1 On big brains An occidentally conditioned person remarked that “we were making bad use of the great brains we have evolved. Instead of using it for human betterment, we were expending it on killing each other with sophisticated weapons.” … Continue reading

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Pandemic days-6: Genetic risk factors

The coronavirus that made its way to humans aided by the Cīna-s at Wuhan has now been with us for nearly an year. Right from the early days of this outbreak, one thing has been notable about this virus: some … Continue reading

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Pandemic days-4: viruses get new hosts

That we have come to be in these pandemic days evokes some wonderment or even disbelief among laypeople. The general thinking of a large section of the populace is that this event is something completely unexpected or out of the … Continue reading

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The culmination of Galtonism or pandemic days-3

We saw a list of famous elderly people whom the virus has already placed in the abode of Vaivasvata at the time of writing. We recognized at least two names: (1) Robert Carroll the paleontologist, whose hard to find book … Continue reading

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The culmination of Galtonism or pandemic days-2

Ensconced in the apparent safety of the 4 walls the mind looks out into the completely silent streets with hardly a soul or even a passing ratha — a mere 120 days have made the world look and sound different. … Continue reading

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The culmination of Galtonism or pandemic days-1

While many thoughts crowd our mind we have hardly felt the drive to put them down on a more visible medium. Such is the nature of the times when things happen reminding you of the inexorable turning of the yuga-cakra. … Continue reading

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The Plague: historical, biographical and current: a brief roundup

Globalization is not a new thing. The Indo-European empire of the steppes was perhaps the first one. In addition to having a serious component of our genetic ancestry and most of our memetic inheritance in it, we can still see … Continue reading

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The engineer, the dead fish and the bag of earth-the End

From Part-V kathA-puchChaM Viruses have been around since the beginning of life and locked in conflict with cells and other viruses since then. In course of this epic conflict they have given genes to cells and taken genes from them. … Continue reading

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