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WEEKLY UPDATE
Where birds learn to fly again
NEW DELHI: Birds can eat too many worms, paper kites can cripple them and even crows with cast-iron stomachs develop aches in the pollution-rife Indian capital. But help is always at hand — a hospital that makes even humans envious.
Within a Jain temple compound in the old part of the city stands the three-storey Charity Birds Hospital where about 15,000 birds are admitted annually and 25 to 30 are brought in daily to Out Patient’s Department treatment.
Anyone can bring in his pet animal for free treatment. The hospital recently carried out eye surgery on two peacocks.
But there is one condition for the free treatment — once the bird is cured and back on its feet, it will not be returned to the owner, but set free. The bird must take its flight to freedom from the hospital’s terrace overlooking the Red Fort.
Twice a month, those who make a full recovery are taken to the terrace and sent off, a ritual maintained by the hospital since it opened in 1929.
The hospital’s manager, Kamal Kishore Jain, advises bird lovers to cover their ceiling fans with a wire mesh to prevent birds crashing into fan blades and getting hurt, a common household accident.
Officials say the hospital is also seeing a surge in the number of birds with respiratory problems, mainly because of air and water pollution in New Delhi.
Between 2000 and 2001, more than 7,000 birds were treated for respiratory problems. — AFP
Oscar-winning camera lens was a fake
LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles Judge, Gary Feess, has ruled that a revolutionary camera lens that won an Academy Award in 1997 did not work and nullified its patent because its inventor faked its performance, officials said on Tuesday.
The Panavision/Frazier system has been considered one of the most advanced pieces of camera equipment in Hollywood for the last decade because of its alleged ability to keep both near and far objects in focus at the same time.
Frazier won the Academy Award for scientific or technical achievements for designing the system, which comes in the form of a certificate and not a golden Oscar statuette. The ruling has thrust the future of his award into doubt, court and Oscar officials said. — AFP
SARS virus genome mapped
WASHINGTON: US scientists have mapped the genome of the virus which causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), US health officials announced on Monday.
“The results of the sequencing will allow enhanced diagnostic testing,” said Julie Gerberding, director of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
A team of Canadian scientists have also published their own genetic map for the SARS virus over the weekend, the results of which are very similar. “The difference is 10 base pairs out of a total of 29,000 base pairs,” which is negligible, Gerberding said. — AFP
NASA satellite watches cracks in Peru glacier
LOS ANGELES: Cracks threatening to break up a massive glacier atop the Peruvian Andes have caught the attention of a NASA satellite, which has begun to keep watch for any signs of what could be a catastrophic meltdown, the US space agency said in a statement on Monday.
NASA is working with Peruvian government officials and geologists to monitor the glacier, which feeds Lake Palcacocha, high above the town of Huaraz, 270 kilometres north of Lima, it said.
If a large chunk were to break off the glacier and fall into the lake, officials fear the splash would create a flood that would send water raging through the town of 60,000 people in less than 15 minutes.
“Remote sensing instruments like ASTER can serve a vital role in mountain hazard management and disaster mapping by providing rapid access to data, even in regions not easily accessible by humans,” said Michael Abrams, associate ASTER team leader at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. — AFP
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