Passage-1 "Good monsoon but bad forecast"
The rains have been good during this year's south-west monsoon. The season ended with the country, as a whole, receiving one per cent more rain than the long-period average. The rains have been geographically well distributed too, with the north-west, the central region, and the southern part of the country getting more than average rainfall. Only the north-east recorded a deficit. Consequently, the country is looking forward to a bumper harvest in the kharif season. In this optimistic scenario, it is easy to forget that the India Meteorological Department's forecasts had gone awry.
In mid-April, the IMD put the countrywide seasonal rainfall at 98 per cent of the long-period average, with an error bar of five percentage points. In June, the agency revised it as 95 per cent with an error bar of four percentage points. While the country received excess rain in June, the rains in July were considerably below par. By the end of July, the nationwide deficit for the season stood at about four per cent. On August 1, the IMD declared that countrywide rainfall during August-September was likely to be 90 per cent of the long-period average, with an error bar of eight percentage points. This forecast raised the possibility of the monsoon fizzling out. But, as things turned out, the rains were well above average during both August and September.
In its end-of-season report, the IMD agreed that its operational long-range forecasts had not been “very accurate.” It explained that the sudden re-emergence of a La Nin˜a — the cooling in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that is usually beneficial for the monsoon — led to increased rainfall in the second half of the season. What is clear is that the department needs to re-evaluate the parameters that go into the statistical model used for its seasonal predictions. These parameters have remained unchanged for the past five years. It is possible that the correlation of some of them with the monsoon's outcome has dropped sharply and must therefore be replaced with new ones. There is also a good case for focussing on probabilistic forecasts. The IMD's April forecast indicated a 93 per cent probability that the monsoon would be ‘normal', with the nationwide rainfall between 90 per cent and 110 per cent of the long-period average; in June, that probability had dropped only to 80 per cent. Rainfall data for over a century show that seven years out of ten fall into this category. Thus, the probabilistic forecasts showed that this year the odds favoured a normal monsoon. And that, mercifully, is just how things have turned out.
Passage-2 "A Visionary Passes"
When Steve Jobs was asked in 1985 why should people make a heavy investment on a new computer built by Apple, he replied that if one asked Alexander Graham Bell about the possible uses of a telephone, he would have been able to say. Moreover, he envisioned a time when computers like the one he had made would be linked to a nationwide communications network. That uncanny understanding of the future course of technology, the intuition, vision and courage necessary to build it marked the extraordinary life of Steve Jobs. When he died at the age of 56, he left the venture he co-founded in his parents’ garage the most valuable technology company in the world. A restless diviner of digital future, Jobs made things for people before they knew they needed it. The first Macintosh computer brought technologies such as the Graphical User Interface and the mouse to the mainstream, scoring a giant leap over text-based displays. The iPod, the iPhone and the iPad werw products of his belief that humans, as instinctive users of tools, would love them. These creations successfully disrupted the universe of gadgets and entertainment, creating new benchmarks for products.
A quarter century ago, at a time when the computer business was focussed on big corporations and mainframes, Jobs pursued a vision to take the productivity of the computer to the small business person and the home user. He used innovation and reliability as growth engines. He was the digital woodworker who never compromised on design, materials, or craftsmanship, in hardware and software. Early in his career, Jobs argued that creativity was an asset of the young. As people grew older, they got struck in the patterns etched in their mind by their thoughts. Companies with many layers of middle management filtered out the passion for products. Jobs was the great exception - mercurial, driven and eagar to connect the dots of the future till the end. Unceremoniously thrown out of the company he co-founded, he returned to it enormously enriched with creative ideas. Despite suffering from rare form of Pancreatic cancer diagnosed soon after he unveiled the iTunes music store, he persevered with the development of new products such as iPhone. In his famous commencement address at Stanford University in 2005, he reflected on the inevitability of mortality: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living somebody else’s life. Don’t be trapped by Dogma – which is living with the result of other people’s thinking ... And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”. This summed up the life and work of a college dropout who, by connecting the dots and having the courage to follow his heart and intuition, changed the world.
Passage-3 “How Pathogens are killed”
Inside our body can be found the bloodiest of battlefields, where millions of organisms are massacred daily, without cease. It is a battle waged by our body’s immune system against a wide variety of pathogenic bacteria, virus, fungi and parasites. What makes the defence mechanism powerful is the two-level protection conferred by the immune system. The innate immune system that serves as the first line of defence is not antigen-specific; it readily targets all pathogenic organisms the moment they enter the body. The antigen-specific adaptive immune mechanism acts as the second line of protection to keep us healthy. This year’s Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Bruce A. Beutler, Jules A. Hoffmann, and Ralph M. Steinman for revolutionising our understanding of the immune system by discovering the key principles that activate the defence mechanism. Beutler and Hoffmann will share half the prize money for discovering receptor proteins that recognize micro-organisms and activates the innate immunity. In 1996, Hoffmann found that the Toll gene was responsible for sensing pathogenic micro-organisms and that its activation was required for mounting innate immune response. Two-years later, Beutler discovered that components of micro-organisms bind to Toll-like receptors located in many cells. The binding activates the innate immunity, which results in inflammation and destruction of the pathogens.
The other half of the prize money was awarded to Steinmann for discovering, way back in 1970s, that dendritic cells were responsible for adaptive immunity. As they are antigen-specific, dendritic cells take time to react to an invading organism on first exposure; but immunological memory allows them to react more rapidly to the same antigen on subsequent exposures. This is the attribute researchers exploit while designing preventive vaccines.
Adaptive immunity holds great medical promise. The immune system can be directed to attack the tumour. Blocking the excessive production of cytokines when diseases show up can ameliorate autoimmunity. Even preserving autoimmune diseases may become possible when certain cells of the immune system are successfully silenced. Steinmann will go down history as not just a highly worthy Nobel Prize winner. He was (as a Rockefeller University statement explains) “diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago... his life was extended using dendritic-cell based immunotherapy of his own design,” and he died three days before his Nobel was announced.
Passage-2 "A Visionary Passes"
When Steve Jobs was asked in 1985 why should people make a heavy investment on a new computer built by Apple, he replied that if one asked Alexander Graham Bell about the possible uses of a telephone, he would have been able to say. Moreover, he envisioned a time when computers like the one he had made would be linked to a nationwide communications network. That uncanny understanding of the future course of technology, the intuition, vision and courage necessary to build it marked the extraordinary life of Steve Jobs. When he died at the age of 56, he left the venture he co-founded in his parents’ garage the most valuable technology company in the world. A restless diviner of digital future, Jobs made things for people before they knew they needed it. The first Macintosh computer brought technologies such as the Graphical User Interface and the mouse to the mainstream, scoring a giant leap over text-based displays. The iPod, the iPhone and the iPad werw products of his belief that humans, as instinctive users of tools, would love them. These creations successfully disrupted the universe of gadgets and entertainment, creating new benchmarks for products.
A quarter century ago, at a time when the computer business was focussed on big corporations and mainframes, Jobs pursued a vision to take the productivity of the computer to the small business person and the home user. He used innovation and reliability as growth engines. He was the digital woodworker who never compromised on design, materials, or craftsmanship, in hardware and software. Early in his career, Jobs argued that creativity was an asset of the young. As people grew older, they got struck in the patterns etched in their mind by their thoughts. Companies with many layers of middle management filtered out the passion for products. Jobs was the great exception - mercurial, driven and eagar to connect the dots of the future till the end. Unceremoniously thrown out of the company he co-founded, he returned to it enormously enriched with creative ideas. Despite suffering from rare form of Pancreatic cancer diagnosed soon after he unveiled the iTunes music store, he persevered with the development of new products such as iPhone. In his famous commencement address at Stanford University in 2005, he reflected on the inevitability of mortality: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living somebody else’s life. Don’t be trapped by Dogma – which is living with the result of other people’s thinking ... And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”. This summed up the life and work of a college dropout who, by connecting the dots and having the courage to follow his heart and intuition, changed the world.
Passage-3 “How Pathogens are killed”
Inside our body can be found the bloodiest of battlefields, where millions of organisms are massacred daily, without cease. It is a battle waged by our body’s immune system against a wide variety of pathogenic bacteria, virus, fungi and parasites. What makes the defence mechanism powerful is the two-level protection conferred by the immune system. The innate immune system that serves as the first line of defence is not antigen-specific; it readily targets all pathogenic organisms the moment they enter the body. The antigen-specific adaptive immune mechanism acts as the second line of protection to keep us healthy. This year’s Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Bruce A. Beutler, Jules A. Hoffmann, and Ralph M. Steinman for revolutionising our understanding of the immune system by discovering the key principles that activate the defence mechanism. Beutler and Hoffmann will share half the prize money for discovering receptor proteins that recognize micro-organisms and activates the innate immunity. In 1996, Hoffmann found that the Toll gene was responsible for sensing pathogenic micro-organisms and that its activation was required for mounting innate immune response. Two-years later, Beutler discovered that components of micro-organisms bind to Toll-like receptors located in many cells. The binding activates the innate immunity, which results in inflammation and destruction of the pathogens.
The other half of the prize money was awarded to Steinmann for discovering, way back in 1970s, that dendritic cells were responsible for adaptive immunity. As they are antigen-specific, dendritic cells take time to react to an invading organism on first exposure; but immunological memory allows them to react more rapidly to the same antigen on subsequent exposures. This is the attribute researchers exploit while designing preventive vaccines.
Adaptive immunity holds great medical promise. The immune system can be directed to attack the tumour. Blocking the excessive production of cytokines when diseases show up can ameliorate autoimmunity. Even preserving autoimmune diseases may become possible when certain cells of the immune system are successfully silenced. Steinmann will go down history as not just a highly worthy Nobel Prize winner. He was (as a Rockefeller University statement explains) “diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago... his life was extended using dendritic-cell based immunotherapy of his own design,” and he died three days before his Nobel was announced.
