KARACHI: Karachiites watched with interest the solar eclipse yesterday [Sept 22] afternoon as the disc of the moon slowly came in between the sun and the earth. The partial eclipse, when seen through a smoked, dark glass, made the sun look like a crescent. It began in the City at 4-14 p.m. and lasted till 6-18 p.m. It was studied by the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Committee, which monitored radiation from the sun to examine its interaction with the ionosphere.

[Meanwhile, as reported by an agency in Tok­yo,] Japanese surgeons have successfully used a “cardiocamera” to photograph internal states of the heart in five clinical cases, the Hokkaido Uni­versity announced today [Sept 22]. According to the announcement, [doctors] in the surgical ward of Hokkaido University Hospital used the mic­r­­­­ocamera on live heart patients with remarkable results. The device consists of a cord made of tens of thousands of a few-micron [wide] glass fibres bundled to a thickness of 1-2 cm. One part of the cord is a narrow pipe connected to a prism-shaped balloon. By means of the balloon filled with a saline solution and blown up to about 1-2 cm, and a brilliant light source inserted from another end, the interior of the heart is illumined and photographed with a microcamera.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2018