CULTURAL QA 09-2022-03 BEING ACOMPILATION THERE MAY BE ERRORS
Q1 How is Indian railways changing now? A1 Pankaj Singh, Senior Software Engineerat Freshworks Inc. (2021–present)Updated 4y I frequently travelbetween Pune and Mumbai, mostly with Pune-Mumbai Intercity express train. As usual I was atPune station just 5 minutes before the departure of the train. I was searching forthe general coach (unreserved bogie) and then I found this… Yes I was alsosurprised and asked few people if this really the general bogie of this train,And people were like.. Edit 1: This is Pune-MumbaiIntercity Express with Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches. I don't know about other days but on 9th June 2018, thesecoaches were used for general as well. Q2 Is it possible to make desirablechanges in human DNA? A2 Tiny Nair, Cardiologist at PRSHospital, Trivandrum1y Yes, here is thestep-by-step DIY. I am notresponsible for my name, gender, religion, race, nationality, skin color andDNA. I was neverconsulted; no one cared to wait for my opinion. Including my parents. Don’t laugh, itssame for you too. The Laptop If you consider meas a laptop; my parents just decided to assemble me, may this was the bestmodel they could afford 5 decades back. The hardware spec cannot be changednow. I have tried appealing to the manufacturer, but he has a clear‘no-return’, ‘no cash-back’ policy. But, wait, there isgood news. The software could be upgraded. Here’s How DNA is theinstruction codebook that we carry in every single cell. It is written in20,000 odd ‘coding’ genes that we have. Like everycodebook, it cannot be edited in our lifetime. DNA, like the silicon counterpart, stores data in digitalformat; the only difference being, instead of binary of 0 & 1 in case ofsilicon, DNA stores data in quaternary in C,T,G,A, each representing onenucleic acid that pairs up with its partner to form the core of amino acidchains. The reason whynature stores data in digital is that it is highly stable. Burn it, freeze it,bury it, hammer it to pieces, but still we can identify a specific piece of DNAfrom a crime scene or a Jurassic Park. But the flip side is, it is not userreplaceable. The DNA is coiled upon a ‘wooly’ structure callednucleosomes made up of histones, which we considered as bricks meant forstrengthening the coils. But now we know that‘Histone’ has much more important function. Histones store the data is in‘analogue’ – editable. It is this histone that is responsible forturning on a gene or silencing it. It switches on or off specificinstruction of a piece of DNA, the gene, by a series of complex process calleddeacetylation and methylation. These are meant to make sure that your heartcell, with the same DNA code as your skin cell, don’t produce hair or the braincell start churning out cartilage. Though the DNA script cannot beedited, the histone switch could be. And we are not talking about CRISPRtechnology. Regular exercise, for example, can silence a set of genesand activate others secreting more insulin, making muscle more sensitive toinsulin, burning more fat and change the total metabolic milieu in your ownlifetime. Today we know that environment (diet,exercise, play, emotional stability and a lot more of such stuff) plays a hugerole in ‘epigenetics’ to alter the instruction transcription from your DNA,despite the code remaining same. It is like upgrading from ‘Internet Explorer’ to ‘Chrome’. Q3 Why do whales breathe air but liveunderwater? What evolutionary advantage could this possibly have? A3 Mats Andersson, B. Sc, M. Sc fromUppsala University Aug 26 Whales are warm-blooded. This means they have to breatheair; water can’t dissolve enough oxygen to keep awarm-blooded metabolism operative. They live inwater because that’s where the fish they eat is. >From anevolutionary perspective, it’s actually much easier to go from >cold-blooded towarm-blooded than the other way around! Proteins, which do most >of the heavylifting in our bodies, tend to have different optimum >temperatures. This means that if you’recold-blooded, you have to produce >different proteins depending on thetemperature. This means you need DNA to >tell you this! In computercode, it would go something like “IF temperature < >15 AND temperature > 4THEN produce Protein1”, followed by “IF temperature < 25 >AND temperature> 15 THEN produce Protein2”, followed by “IF temperature < 31 >ANDtemperature > 25 THEN produce Protein3”, and so on, for every single >proteinthe body needs. If you’re warm-blooded, you can just keep making the sameprotein no matter what the temperature is, because you keep your body at thesame temperature regardless. This is why frogs have 3 times the genetic code ofhumans. Or of whales. So in order to gocold-blooded, they would have to gain tons of genetic information, which wouldhave to be precisely fine-tuned to whatever range of temperatures they’d belikely to find themselves in. Q5 Does ethanol gas damage engines? A5 Steve Baker,Senior Software Engineer(2013–present)Aug 11 It can damage OLDER gas engines - but not newer ones.Thedeal is that ethanol slowly dissolves natural materials like rubber andcork…both of which are found in gasoline engines from at least the 1960’s andmaybe into the 1970’s. It was common to have rubber gas lines, rubber seals andcork gaskets. So if you run a car from that era on fuels containingethanol, those critical parts will start to suffer. Obviously you canreplace those things with more modern plastics - but many classic cars, therearen’t enough of them remaining to make it profitable for companies to continueto make those parts. To add insult toinjury - those older cars often also need leaded gasoline - which is alsoimpossible to find in most places in the world. But in modern engines - they’re already using plasticsand other synthetic materials - and those aren’t affected by ethanol mixed intothe fuel. Q6 Does eating watermelon make you fat? A6 Lucia Garcia,Worked at Hospitals1y Watermelon is a low-calorie fruit, 100 grams of watermeloncontains only 30 calories. Watermelon is nothigh in sugar, 100 grams of watermelon contains about 5 grams of sugar. Watermelon contains a lot of water, and the water contentis as high as 90% or more. Therefore,eating watermelon will not lead to weight gain. Watermelon is richin fructose, glucose, protein, amino acids, malic acid, lycopene, vitamin C andother nutrients. Eating watermelon is very beneficial to human health. Q7 What is the main function of stemcells? A7 Ken Saladin,Former professor ofhistology (microscopic anatomy)1h Not only their mainfunction, but their only function, is to differentiate into thevarious kinds of mature cells that perform all of the body’s structural andphysiological roles. They’re the “baby cells” from which all the rest ofthe body grows and maintains itself. Q8 What do farmers eat? Why are they sostrong? A8 Sravanthi,Lives in Bengaluru,Karnataka, India (2016–present)2y I have seen myfriend's family, farmers rely on only these foods and never for once they hadjunk. My friend, a daughter of a farmer has never tasted any kind of chat untilshe entered college, she said. Their staple foodwas this, Ragi ball, a kind of veg sambar/non-veg gravy along withcurd. And, This, Fresh farm-grown vegetables. They like toconsume them raw, basically. My friend used totell they walked nearly 10–20kms and never got tired. They believe, Ragi balls make themstronger and keep them fuller. They breathe fresh air, drink waterfrom the ponds and streams. Their strength is the ‘greenery'. They do not feelany other food cravings after they have had a Ragi ball, my friend used to tellwhen someone asked her to have a chat or a snack. Q9 What was worth a lot in the 50s andalmost nothing now? A9 Lee Ballentine,surrealist, poet,engineer, six time Top Writer on Quora.Aug 27 A long distance telephone call.A coast-to-coast call cost about $1/minute in the early 1950s, and was worthevery dollar when you needed to reach a friend or family member in anemergency. That’s about $12/minute adjusted for inflation. The same call today? Free with your calling plan. Q10 When people get bitten by snakes,how do hospitals know what antivenom to give them? A10 Abraham Sukumar,In medical service inIndia for more than three decades Updated 3y In India only fourof the many species of snakes that inhabit the subcontinent are venomous. These are the cobra, Russel’s viper, Krait and the saw-scaledviper. The polyvalent antivenom (antivenin)supplied to hospitals acts on all four of these. As bites fromnon-venomous snakes are also common the doctor will like to know if the bitewas first, a snake bite, and secondly, if a snake it was one of the venomousones. The identification process is a follows. Signs and symptomsof venomous snake bite are noted. If they are present antivenin is injected atonce. If there are no signs or symptoms of a venomous snakebite the dead snake is examined. It is not uncommonfor relatives or friends of the patient bringing the dead snake. There is achart in all casualty departments with pictures to identify venomous snakes. If the snake is venomous,antivenin is injected. If the snake is notavailable the bite marks are inspected. Venomous snakes have twinfangs about a centimetre apart. If twin punctures are seen antivenin isinjected. If this test is also negative it is left to the judgement of the doctor. Most doctorsto be on the safe side would like to inject the antivenin. Antivenin canproduce a reaction hence it is used only when one is reasonably assured that itis necessary. All the above QA are from Quora website on 02-09- 2022. Quora answers need not be 100% correct answers . Compiled andposted by R. Gopala krishnan on 03-09-2022 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/1383876575.2759602.1662209991263%40mail.yahoo.com.
