Month: October 2022

The sight of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan along with his family and his cabinet colleagues sitting in the hall for close to seven hours…reports Asian Lite News

For the past two days, there is only one destination in Kerala and that is Kannur to say a final goodbye to one of the CPI-M’s hugely popular leader, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, who passed away in Chennai while undergoing treatment for cancer.

The who’s who in Kerala cutting across all sections of the society, including the political leaders, business icons, film stars, socio-cultural personalities, sports personalities, police officials, bureaucrats and even retired people and not to mention the common man are trooping in the city.

On Sunday afternoon the body arrived in Kannur on a special air ambulance and since then thousands of people have paid their last respects at the Town Hall in Thalassery, his hometown and then the body was taken to his house, nearby.

The sight of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan along with his family and his cabinet colleagues sitting in the hall for close to seven hours, and his statement that Kodiyeri was not like a brother, but a brother revealed all.

The arrival of another hugely popular strongman from Kannur — State Congress president K. Sudhakaran also paid his last respects and spent time with his arch political rivals, including Vijayan and other top CPI-M leaders from Kannur.

Legislator K.K. Rema, the wife of slain former CPI-M firebrand leader, whom Vijayan referred to as a ‘renegade’ also came to pay her last respects.

On Monday morning Vijayan and his family came to Kodiyeri’s house and consoled his wife, Vinodhini.

At 10 a.m. the body was being taken to the Kannur district CPI-M office where it will be kept till 3 p.m. and then it will be taken to the final destination at the Payyambalam beach where he will be laid to rest along other departed legends of the party like E.K. Nayanar, Chadayan Govindan and others.

Kodiyeri, 68, was a five-time legislator and was the state home minister from 2006 to 2011, during which he became a politburo member of the party. From 2015 he was the state secretary of the CPI-M, a post he held till the last week of August, when he quit and was taken to Chennai for expert treatment, but he breathed his last on Saturday night.

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Last week, the Central Government appointed senior Advocate R Venkataramani as the new Attorney General of India…reports Asian Lite News

The Centre has issued a notification directing that the list of Supreme Court cases be placed first before the Attorney General for selecting the matters in which he considers his appearance to be necessary.

“ln respect of cases before the Supreme Court, the list of cases on daily basis, will first be placed before the Ld. Attorney General for India for the purpose of his selecting the matters in which he considers his appearance to be necessary. The list of cases will thereafter, be placed before the Ld. Solicitor General of India who will mark the matters to himself, to the Additional Solicitors General of India to appear alone or with Attorney General for India/Solicitor General of India and to the counsel from Group ‘A’/’B’/’C’Panel,” read a recent notification.

The notification further added that “ln respect of cases before the High Courts of Delhi, Bombay (PB), Calcutta (PB), Madras (PB) and Karnataka (PB), cases on daily basis will be allocated/marked by the lncharge, Litigation/Branch Secretariats in consultation with the Additional Solicitor General of India concerned.

“All the subordinate offices of this Department i.e. Central Agency Section, Litigation (High court) section and all the four Branch Secretariats at Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru, are directed to ensure strict compliance of the procedure modified,” the office memorandum of the Ministry of Law and Justice added.

Last week, the Central Government appointed senior Advocate R Venkataramani as the new Attorney General of India. The appointment of Venkataramani is for a period of three years.

The notification issued by the Ministry of Law and Justice states, “The President is pleased to appoint R Venkataramani, Senior Advocate as Attorney General for India for a period of three years from the date he enters upon his office.

Senior Advocate R Venkataramani is an eminent advocate of the Supreme Court and has appeared in various matters as varied as constitutional law, environmental law, taxation, tribal rights, and child and women’s rights.

He has represented several state governments, the Union government, universities and public sector undertakings in major litigation in the Supreme Court and in High Courts.

Earlier, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi declined the central government’s proposal to be appointed as the next Attorney General for India.

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Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya also wished for the speedy recovery of Mulayam Singh…reports Asian Lite News

The health condition of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Mulayam Singh Yadav is stable but he is still in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), said the party in a statement on Sunday.

He is admitted to the Medanta hospital in Gurugram.

“Respected Netaji is admitted in the ICU of Medanta Hospital, Gurugram, his condition is stable. He is being treated under the supervision of senior doctors,” Samajwadi Party said in a tweet.

Earlier the reports claimed that Mulayam Singh’s health has deteriorated.

Meanwhile, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav reached Medanta hospital in Gurugram where his father has been admitted.

Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya also wished for the speedy recovery of Mulayam Singh.

“Information was received through the media about the deteriorating health of former Chief Minister of UP, Mulayam Singh Yadav ji, I wish and pray to God for his speedy recovery!” Maurya said in a tweet.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday spoke to Akhilesh Yadav and enquired about his father Mulayam Singh Yadav’s health, said sources.

The sources further said that PM Modi said whatever possible assistance is required, he is there to help.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also has spoken to Akhilesh Yadav enquiring about the health of Malayam Singh Yadav.

“Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, on receiving information about the deteriorating health of Samajwadi Party Patron Mulayam Singh Yadav, had a telephonic conversation with his son and former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav and inquired about his health. The Chief Minister has wished for the speedy recovery of Mulayam Singh Yadav,” said a statement by the Chief Minister’s Office.

Mulayam Singh referred to as Netaji- founded the Samajwadi Party. He currently represents the Mainpuri constituency in the Lok Sabha.

Born on November 22, 1939, Yadav is one of the most prominent leaders of Uttar Pradesh who served as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh thrice and has also served in the Union Government as the Minister of Defence.

He has been elected 10 times as MLA and 7 times as Lok Sabha MP.

Earlier, the Samajwadi Party patriarch’s wife Sadhna Gupta passed away in July this year.

She was undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Gurugram for a lung infection.

Sadhana Gupta was Mulayam Singh Yadav’s second wife. His first wife, Maalti Devi passed away in 2003. Maalti Devi was the mother of Akhilesh Yadav. (ANI)

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Epilepsy is a neurological condition where the brain emits sudden bursts of electrical signals in a short amount of time, resulting in seizures, fits and sometimes even death…reports Asian Lite News

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have joined hands with AIIMS Rishikesh to create an algorithm that can help decipher brain scans and identify the occurrence and type of epilepsy.

The development has the potential to do away with the current practice of manual evaluation of Electroencephalogram (EEG) which can be often tedious and sometimes lead to errors.

Epilepsy is a neurological condition where the brain emits sudden bursts of electrical signals in a short amount of time, resulting in seizures, fits and sometimes even death.

Based on the point of origin of the brain’s erratic signals, epilepsy is classified as either focal or generalised epilepsy. Focal epilepsy occurs when the erratic signals are confined to a specific region in the brain. If the signals are at random locations, then it is termed as generalised epilepsy, an IISc statement said.

“The research aims to differentiate EEG of normal subjects from epileptic EEGs. Additionally, the developed algorithm attempts to identify the types of seizures. Our work is to help the neurologists make an efficient and quick automated screening and diagnosis,” says Hardik J. Pandya, Assistant Professor at the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering (DESE) and the corresponding author of the study published in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control.

During the course of their study, the team noted a novel algorithm that can sift through EEG data and identify signatures of epilepsy from the electrical signal patterns.

After initial training, the algorithm was able to detect whether a human subject could have epilepsy or not — based on these patterns in their respective analyses — with a high degree of accuracy, the researchers say.

To develop and train the algorithm, the researchers first examined EEG data from 88 human subjects acquired at AIIMS Rishikesh. Each subject underwent a 45-minute EEG test, divided into two parts: an initial 10-minute test when the subject was awake, which included photic stimulation and hyperventilation, followed by a 35-minute sleep period when the subject was asked to sleep. Next, the team analysed this data and classified different wave patterns into sharp signals, spikes and slow waves.

Spikes are patterns where a signal rises and falls within a very short duration of time (70 milliseconds), while sharps are those with rises and falls spread over a slightly longer duration (250 milliseconds) and slow waves have a much longer duration (400 milliseconds).

An epileptic subject shows a different set of patterns compared to a healthy individual. The researchers developed an algorithm to calculate the total number of sharp waves — the Cumulative Sharp Count — and use this as a parameter to detect if the subject is epileptic or not (a higher value indicates a greater chance that the subject is epileptic).

The algorithm also calculates the sum of areas under the spikes and sharp curves to distinguish between focal and generalised epilepsy (a greater value indicates generalised epilepsy as opposed to focal epilepsy, which has a lower value).

The researchers add that the study shows a way to identify absence seizures (those that involve a brief, sudden lapse of consciousness), using a Cumulative Spike-Wave Count; in some cases, these absence seizures are critical and can be fatal.

The team then ran their algorithm on a new set of EEG data from subjects for whom the classification (whether they had epilepsy, and if so, what type of epilepsy they had) was already known to the doctors. This blind validation study successfully classified the subjects accurately in nearly 91 per cent of the cases.

“We hope to refine this further by testing on more data to consider more variabilities of human EEGs until we reach the point where this becomes completely translational and robust,” says Rathin K. Joshi, a PhD student in DESE and first author of the study.

IISc said that a patent has been filed for the work and the algorithm is being tested for its reliability by physicians at AIIMS Rishikesh.

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