Get your vision right before taking the wheel!

Stricter vision function tests for drivers can reduce accidents. IISc researcher suggests that vision parameters like peripheral vision, contrast sensitivity and glare recovery in addition to general acuity must be tested not only for commercial and public service vehicle drivers, but also private motorists.

 

In India, only commercial drivers are tested for stringent vision standards, but private motorists are spared that although tests conducted on them are – to use a pun – a mere eyewash.

India ranks among the lowest in terms of road safety. And that’s not surprising. As per statistics, 250-300 people die every day due to road accidents. Prof Ashish Verma, assistant professor in Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), says: “That is like a jet plane crashing daily, and no one says a word about it!”

Driver error is the cause in about 78% of the road accidents.

In one of his recent projects, Verma and his team studied how visual abilities of the driver affected road accidents as part of the need to scientifically analyse the factors causing road accidents and with an aim to come up with guidelines to take corrective actions. He carried out an extensive study to analyse how drivers' vision influences road safety.

The study revealed that among those who volunteered for the study more than half (52%) had at least one vision disability.

The team used data analysis methods to evaluate influence of visual disabilities on the crash involvement. They observed that the crash involvement of drivers with at least one visual disability was 81% higher than drivers with no visual disability at all.

The team carried out tests on 387 professional drivers from Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), and Vijayanand Road Lines (VRL), who volunteered for the study.

Some volunteers came from the IISc itself, and a few others were learner’s licence and license renewal applicants from the various Road Transport Offices (RTOs).

Unfortunately, any person can give a self-declaration about his or her medical fitness to qualify for a driving license test in India. Vision acuity is tested only for commercial vehicles.

Prof Verma and his team identified six properties that influenced visual abilities. These are colour vision, binocular vision or phoria, depth perception, contrast sensitivity, glare recovery, horizontal field vision and vertical field vision. 

Depth perception is very important when overtaking vehicles on a road with a divider. If the driver cannot judge the speed and distance of the vehicle coming from the opposite side, the risk of a crash increases.

Contrast sensitivity is being able to identify an object from its background. Horizontal and vertical peripheral vision deals with the ability to sense movement on the sides, above, and below while looking forward.

“Glare is the sensation caused when bright light is flashed in front of the eyes and vision is obstructed for a couple of seconds. Glare increases reaction time in drivers, compromising safety,” explained Prof Verma.

Recovery from glare is important during night driving as oncoming vehicles use high beam headlights.

Prof Verma and his team used a vision screener instrument to test various visual functions mentioned earlier. The volunteers were then classified as ones having acceptable vision and unacceptable vision.

Although people with no visual disabilities were also involved in road crashes, the results of this study show a significant relation between road crash tendencies of drivers and visual defects like phoria, peripheral vision and contrast sensitivity.

There are multiple other factors affecting road crashes. Accidents may be caused due to bad road conditions, environmental factors or psychological condition of the drivers.

However this study underlines the importance of visual requirements for safe driving.

Prof Verma suggests that vision parameters like peripheral vision, contrast sensitivity and glare recovery in addition to general acuity must be tested not only for commercial and public service vehicle drivers, but also private motorists.

The governing laws regarding driving license procedures need to be appropriately amended. “Strict visual screening before issuing a driving licence can help create safe drivers and crash-free roads” he signs off.

The paper “Assessment of driver vision functions in relation to their crash involvement in India” was published in the journal Current Science, 25th March 2016 issue.

Stem the rot!

What is it with Bengaluru and Bengalureans?

For all the efforts that have been put in place to ensure that waste is segregated at the household level to make it easier for disposing garbage efficiently, it is coming to nothing.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has now given up on pursuing segregate-at-source method of disposing waste; instead, it has decided to send mixed (unsegregated waste) to processing units.

Now, these processing units are not designed to process mixed waste – a big problem!

You might wonder what the problem is! It’s huge! When the contractors running these units realise the difficulty in processing mixed waste, the next instant step will be to not accept the mixed waste. That will ensure that this garbage rests in peace by the roadsides – your street corners.

You can imagine how much it would enhance our city’s image as ‘Garbage City’.

Are you wondering how this will come about?

Here goes: Bengaluru does not have a single landfill worth its name to take in mixed wastes. Biomethanation units, too, are closing down one by one as the cash-strapped BBMP has failed to pay them over the past months – in fact right from when they were commissioned and started operations.

Biomethanation is a process by which organic material is microbiologically converted under anaerobic conditions (without oxygen) to biogas. Anaerobic conditions feature lack of free oxygen, but may contain atomic oxygen bound in compounds such as nitrate (NO₃), nitrite (NO₂), and sulfites (SO₃). Three main physiological groups of microorganisms are involved – fermenting bacteria, organic acid oxidizing bacteria, and methanogenic archaea.

These units are able to generate electricity by converting the segregated wet waste into biogas, from which power can be generated.

But these units are different from the processing units we are talking about here. The processing units where the BBMP has planned to send mixed waste are general treatment processing units, not biomethanation units.

Either ways there would be a problem sending mixed waste.

The problem itself is the mixed waste, which has to be – HAS TO BE – segregated.

That responsibility lies on you, dear Bengalurean. If you have the pride in saying “Namma Bengaluru”, or even “Namma Kannada Rashtra” and so on, please ensure that these feelings do not remain rhetorical. Because if that happens, you will be remembered as citizens of one of the dirtiest cities on Earth!

And that day may not be far off when we hang our heads in helpless shame, because we would be faced with no alternative but to continue hanging our heads in shame!

DRDO’s Dengue-killer headed abroad while country suffers

A potent Dengue-busting formulation developed by the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) almost a decade ago is headed to Brazil and Mexico without its benefits being felt anywhere in India.
The Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee (CIBRC) has disallowed the use of this formulation – known as ‘mosquitocidal trap – within India for want of reams of data by the DRDO pertaining to its efficacy, although trials conducted with help of Delhi Municipal Corporation limits between 2008 and 2010 proved to be not just effective but also environment-friendly and cost effective. The device, said to resemble a paint spray gun, is estimated to cost just Rs 100 a piece with the formulation.
However, the same CIBRC has allowed the formulation to be exported through a Mumbai-based company named Alkyl Amines, which is looking at – and is most likely to – finding buyers in Brazil and Mexico.
Sources in DRDO told Bangalore Mirror that delivering the data as asked by CIBRC would run up costs to “crores of rupees” as the studies, researches and field trials would have to be conducted over many more years to prove the efficacy of this formulation. “There problems of funding as far as this is concerned,” said a senior DRL scientist.
Instead, and unfortunately, he said the Mumbai-based private company is in a position to do that abroad in collaboration with companies there.
This is the sad state of affairs in a country which has been found by an international study, to be grossly under-reporting Dengue cases with the actual number of cases at a shocking 282 times that of the official figures.
Two agencies under the DRDO umbrella – Tejpur-based Defence Research Laboratory (DRL) and Gwalior-based Defence Research & Development Establishment (DRDE) –developed the lure-and-kill formulation in 2005-06 that attracted female Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes (the ones spreading Dengue through their bites) to lay eggs in predetermined stagnant waters. These eggs hatch into larvae but do not transform into adults as the insecticide component of the formulation destroy the larvae.
The advantage of this technology is that one can actually choose where the female mosquitoes can lay eggs (as long as still water exists) and then ensure the destruction of the larvae.
To achieve this, the DRL and DRDE scientists replicated the natural pheromones emitted by the female mosquitoes which send signals to subsequent egg-laying females to settle in those waters to lay their eggs. Pheromones are chemical substances naturally produced and released into the environment by mammals or insects to allow other of its species to do the same things as earlier done by them.
In this case, the scientists replicated the pheromones using cuticular hydrocarbons found on the mosquito’s body surface, which acted as the natural pheromones. These acted as beacons to ‘invite’ the female mosquitoes to lay eggs in particular water-based locations – only for the subsequent larvae to be destroyed.
DRDO scientists fittingly call it a kill-at-source solution to the dreaded disease, which can also develop into the Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF), a fatal condition.
Dr Vijay Veer, director, DRL, confirmed to Bangalore Mirror: “Alkyl Amines in Mumbai has this technology (through transfer of technology from DRDO) and got CIBRC permission to export. (But) CIB permission for use in India is not available.”
Dr Veer said DMC had discussions with DRDO about procuring the mosquitocidal trap six years ago so it could out the spray to good use to completely eradicate the disease. But the CIBRC prohibition has put paid those efforts.
Some hope has come through the office of the Director General of Life Sciences, DRDO, in Delhi. Officials, who did not want to be named, said the mosquitocidal trap would continue to be improved in the DRDE and DRL labs over the next few years. The scientists have not given up. They are trying their best to meet the CIBRC requirements so this will be available to people in this country to eliminate Dengue.
The urgency surrounding this is mainly because an international study has sounded an alarm over the way Dengue is being managed in India by the government bodies. The study Economic and disease burden of Dengue in India published in American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in October 2014 has proved with evidence that between 2006 and 2012 the annual average number of Dengue cases in the country was 57,78,406 as against the mere 20,474 cases given out by the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme – 282 times the official figure.
The study has fixed India’s Dengue burden as US$ 1.1 billion per year from the medical costs as well as the income per man lost due to the disease.

"Imaginary meal" tricks the body into losing weight

Salk scientists made a more effective diet pill

Salk researchers have developed an entirely new type of pill that tricks the body into thinking it has consumed calories, causing it to burn fat. The compound effectively stopped weight gain, lowered cholesterol, controlled blood sugar and minimized inflammation in mice, making it an excellent candidate for a rapid transition into human clinical trials.
Unlike most diet pills on the market, this new pill, called fexaramine, doesn’t dissolve into the blood like appetite suppressants or caffeine-based diet drugs, but remains in the intestines, causing fewer side effects.
"This pill is like an imaginary meal," says Ronald Evans, director of Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and senior author of the new paper, published January 5, 2014 in Nature Medicine. "It sends out the same signals that normally happen when you eat a lot of food, so the body starts clearing out space to store it. But there are no calories and no change in appetite."


Ronald Evans, director of Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, has developed a compound called fexaramine that acts like an imaginary meal. Fexaramine, which tricks the body into reacting as if it has consumed calories, could lead to an effective obesity and diabetes treatment in humans. Image: Courtesy of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies


In the United States, more than a third of adults are obese and 29.1 million people have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both obesity and diabetes lead to an increase in health spending, a greater risk of health complications and a shorter lifespan.
Evans’ laboratory has spent nearly two decades studying the farensoid X receptor (FXR), a protein that plays a role in how the body releases bile acids from the liver, digests food and stores fats and sugars. The human body turns on FXR at the beginning of a meal, Evans and others have shown, to prepare for an influx of food. FXR not only triggers the release of bile acids for digestion, but also changes blood sugar levels and causes the body to burn some fats in preparation for the incoming meal.
Pharmaceutical companies aiming to treat obesity, diabetes, liver disease and other metabolic conditions have developed systemic drugs that activate FXR, turning on many pathways that FXR controls. But these drugs affect several organs and come with side effects. Evans wondered whether switching on FXR only in the intestines–rather than the intestines, liver, kidneys and adrenal glands all at once–might have a different outcome.
"When you eat, you have to quickly activate a series of responses all throughout the body," says Evans. "And the reality is that the very first responder for all this is the intestine."
Evans and his colleagues developed the fexaramine compound by departing from the drug scaffold that most pharmaceutical companies typically pursue when targeting FXR. "It turns out that when we administer this orally, it only acts in the gut," explains Michael Downes, a senior staff scientist at Salk and co-corresponding author of the new work. Giving one such drug in a daily pill form that only reaches the intestines–without transporting into the bloodstream that would carry the drug throughout the body–not only curtails side effects but also made the compound better at stopping weight gain.
When the group gave obese mice a daily pill of fexaramine for five weeks, the mice stopped gaining weight, lost fat and had lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels than untreated mice. In addition, the mice had a rise in body temperature–which signals metabolism ramping up–and some deposits of white fat in their bodies converted into a healthier, energy-burning beige form of the tissue. Even the collection of bacteria in the guts of mice shifted when they received the drug, although what those changes mean isn’t clear yet.

Salk researchers demonstrated that fexaramine stops weight gain and burns fat in animal models. Fexaramine is only absorbed in the gut and does not go into the bloodstream, so it does not cause side effects common for typical diet pills. After additional testing, researchers believe this will lead to an effective weight loss diabetes treatment for humans. (Image: Courtesy of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies)

So, why does fexaramine in the intestines work even better than drugs that simultaneously activate FXR throughout the body? Evans thinks it has to do with the natural order in which the body’s molecular pathways normally responds to a meal.
"The body’s response to a meal is like a relay race, and if you tell all the runners to go at the same time, you’ll never pass the baton," says Evans. "We’ve learned how to trigger the first runner so that the rest of the events happen in a natural order."
Since fexaramine doesn’t reach the bloodstream, it is also likely safer in humans than other FXR-targeting drugs, the researchers hypothesize. They’re already working to set up human clinical trials to test the effectiveness of fexaramine to treat obesity and metabolic disease. Ideally the drug, administered under a doctor’s guidance, would work in conjunction with diet and lifestyle changes, similar to weight-loss surgeries or other obesity or diabetes drugs.

From left: Salk researchers Ruth Yu, Sungsoon Fang, Annette Atkins, Ronald Evans, Michael Downes and Sandra Jacinto (Image: Courtesy of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies)

Other researchers on the study were Sungsoon Fang, Jae Myoung Suh, Elizabeth Yu, Eiji Yoshihara, Sandra Jacinto, Yelizaveta Lukasheva, Annette Atkins and Ruth Yu of the Salk Institute; Shannon Reilly and Alan Saltiel of the University of Michigan; Olivia Osborn, Denise Lackey, Bernd Schnabl, David Brenner and Jerrold Olefsky of the University of California, San Diego; Alessia Perino and Kristina Schoonjans of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Alexander Khvat of ChemDiv; and Sally Coulter and Christopher Liddle of the University of Sydney.
http://www.salk.edu/news