Lab Rats

Celebrating Origin of Species

2008-11-20T05:45:00Z

For a change, we are not bemoaning extinction of species.

This week marks the 150^th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and February will mark the 200^th birth anniversary of the man who opened an entirely new book on life, which was as much an exposition as a long, on-going debate. It's a debate that scientists are running in their labs as they try to decipher how and to what extent natural selection works, which is known to be working in groups rather than in individuals.

As unparalleled as the publication, and the man, was, there's an international consortium, Darwin200, celebrating Darwin's ideas and philosophy. It's virtually a feast!

In its special issue, Nature this week touches upon areas in which evolutionary biology offers insight, the basic premise being life mutates, is essentially ‘competitive' and distinctively shaped by the environment. What is fascinating about evolutionary biology is the fact that a process that started some 10 billions years ago, is still continuing.

This edit in Nature sums it all up: "Ideas on the transmutation of forms and the evolution of life have a long history; so, indeed, do Charles Darwin's personal views on the matter, which have provided historians with grist for many mills. But the way in which Darwin put together evidence and argument in On the Origin of Species marked a definitive break, and an undeniable beginning. The book, 149 years old this week, provided for the first time a way of reconciling life's past and present - a way to explain both the staggering diversity of life and its fundamental unity."

As we march ahead looking for new life forms outside solar system, tweak organisms, try our hand at new life forms using synthetic biology or even revive extinct life using modern tools of genetics (this week also marks the publication of a genome of an extinct woolly mammoth-Mammuthus primigenius), evolution gets a new meaning. How the laws of natural selection will play out in this century is a question that maybe Darwin 300 would answer!

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Nuclear family: hum do, hamare do in Stone Age?

2008-11-18T02:42:00Z

A nuclear family is commonly understood to be a modern day formation, whether in response to work-life pressure, desire for maximization of consumption or, (more flippantly), getting away from in-laws. But it seems nuclear families even existed in the Stone Age!

By dating remains from four multiple burials, discovered in Germany in 2005, scientists report in today's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that they've found the "oldest nuclear family till date". The 4600-year-old graves contained groups of adults and children buried facing each other, which researchers say is an unusual practice in Neolithic culture.

One of the graves, excavated at Eulau, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, was found to contain a female, a male and two children. Analyzing the DNA, researchers established that the group consisted of a mother, father and their two sons aged 8-9 and 4-5 years: "the oldest molecular genetic evidence of a nuclear family in the world (so far)."

Group burial of a 4,600-year-old nuclear family, with the children (a boy of 8-9 and a boy of 5-4 years) buried facing their parents. Pics courtesy: Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide

"Intriguingly, the arrangement of the dead seemed to mirror their relations in life. Several pairs of individuals were buried face-to-face with arms and hands interlinked in many cases. All the burials contained children ranging from newborns up to 10 years of age and adults of around 30 years or older. Interestingly, there were no adolescents or young adults."

Many remains showed injuries indicating they were the victims of a violent raid. One female was found to have a "stone projectile point embedded in one of her vertebra and another had skull fractures". Several bodies also had defence injuries to the forearms and hands.

In some ways, researchers have reconstructed this Stone Age tragedy using state-of-the-art genetics and isotope techniques, physical anthropology and archaeology.

Lead author Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide says: "By establishing the genetic links between the two adults and two children buried together in one grave, we have established the presence of the classic nuclear family in a prehistoric context in Central Europe - to our knowledge the oldest authentic molecular genetic evidence so far. Their unity in death suggests a unity in life. However, this does not establish the elemental family to be a universal model or the most ancient institution of human communities."

The burials described in detail in the article are now on permanent display in the newly renovated Landesmuseum Sachsen-Anhalt in Germany.

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Extrasolar planets? Don't speculate, see them

2008-11-14T14:25:00Z

More than 375 extrasolar planets have been detected so far but all through indirect methods, not by imaging. Using Keck and Gemini telescopes in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a group of scientists from the US, UK and Canada have produced the first-ever (direct) image of three planets orbiting a star other than our own. The star, HR 8799, is a "main sequence star," in the prime of its life, fueled by nuclear reactions within its core, and it occurs 128 light years from Earth, researchers say in today's issue of Science. Pics courtesy Science

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Another team has directly detected a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, one of the brightest in the sky and just 25 light years from Earth. Paul Kalas of UC Berkeley and colleagues used the Hubble Space Telescope to image a planet they call Fomalhaut b, orbiting its star, within a large dust belt. The group estimates that the planet's mass is no greater than several times that of Jupiter. If their findings are confirmed, this object will be the coolest and lowest-mass body imaged outside of the solar system. Here's the first optical image of an extrasolar planet.

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Recession is good for your health

2008-11-13T04:47:00Z

Did they say if life gives you lemons, make lemonade?

On the World Diabetes Day on November 14, diabetes care providers are saying "an organized recession in our sedentary lifestyle" can lead to a healthy living.

M.V. Hospital for Diabetes and Diabetes Research Centre, one of the oldest referral centre for Diabetes care in the country, with over 200,000 patients registered to-date, says: "Instead of cutting down the expenditure in other activities, a squeeze in the sedentary practice like fast food culture, junk food and other Gen Y habits can show us the way for a healthy living which also can accommodate the lifestyle changes in these lean times."

M.V. Hospital has launched a "Slim & Fit" awareness program for schools across Chennai, in keeping with the theme "Diabetes in Children and Adolescents" chosen by International Diabetes Federation for this year.

Novo Nordisk is organizing a walk in Bangalore to express its solidarity with diabetics and increase awareness among children. This walk would focus on key issues diabetes among children and adolescents and distribute relevant educational material free of cost.

I'm sure other such events/talks are being organized in other cities. However, they shouldn't just confine to one Day, but be pursued round the year, such is the magnitude of the disease. It'd be foolish to expect any significant public money being spent on diabetes control programmes, mainly for two reasons: in a country of limited resources and blinkered long-term plans, communicable diseases have hogged all the political attention (and resources). Diabetes, which is traditionally (and somewhat wrongly) treated as an affliction you invite upon yourself (by eating and leading a profligate lifestyle), will remain a private burden, at least for a long time to come.

Secondly, it's also a disease which can be prevented and managed to a great extent by awareness and information.

So, leading a leaner life, as a principle (or habit, if you will), might make sense because recession, even if it ends, won't ensure "a return to previous rates of economic growth" as Robert J Samuelson says in his forthcoming book : The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence. You can read an excerpt here.

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King Solomon the copper baron?

2008-11-11T12:53:00Z

There are all those wonderful movies about the wars and bloodshed over earth's precious resources: Syriana, over the battle for oil and the latest, Quanturm of Solace about the villanous Greene's plans to monopolize Bolivia's water supply (I thought the movie sucked, by the way). But were the kings of yore also the controllers of ore? Scientists in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences exhume theories, and for the first time give compelling evidence that the legendary King Solomon, apart from his wisdom and amorous poetry, may well have been the copper baron of the 10th century BC. This was around the time that bronze was the pre-eminent metal for military applications (thanks salaudeen!!)and therefore, novelist Sir H Rider Haggard, author of the wildly popular King Solomon's Mines, may not have been too off the mark in his protoganist Allen Quatermain discovering the many treasures of King Solomon.

Science Daily, an online news archive says : "..Thomas Levy of UC San Diego and Mohammad Najjar of Jordan's Friends of Archaeology, an international team of archaeologists has excavated an ancient copper-production center at Khirbat en-Nahas (Jordan) down to virgin soil, through more than 20 feet of industrial smelting debris, or slag. The 2006 dig has brought up new artifacts and with them a new suite of radiocarbon dates placing the bulk of industrial-scale production at Khirbat en-Nahas in the 10th century BCE – in line with biblical narrative on the legendary rule of David and Solomon. The new data pushes back the archaeological chronology some three centuries earlier than the current scholarly consensus.."

Now what I really find cool about all this, is the technology the excavators have used: A GIS-linked electronic surveying tool and a software called StarCAVE--that allows the site in question to be digitally reconstructed. Considering the long battles that our politicans and environmentalists have had over the Ram Setu bridge, and that Harappa and Mohenjedaro still remain the poster children of Indian archeology, isn't it time our archeologists got geekier??

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IIT Madras gets to engineering bugs

2008-11-11T11:40:00Z

Synthetic biology, the new, transformative discipline that uses molecular tools and techniques to build biological devices, is finally catching the fancy of Indian engineers. A team from IIT Madras has won two awards at the 9^th International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) Competition, held on 9 November at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Last year, as I reported, a team from National Centre for Biological Sciences had won a prize, which I think, is a great start on many fronts: in firing young minds to think out of the box; in sharing -- folks involved in this field have built a huge repository of bio tools and kits which are being used worldwide; and lastly, in reassuring scientific establishments that such oddball events are necessary for science.

By the way, iGEM 2008 was supported by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Resarch and biotech industry body ABLE, and very fittingly, IIT-M team won in "Best Foundational Advance" and "Best Engineered Biological Device". You can read more about the IIT project, a new method to turn on genes in bacteria, here.

More from the hotbed of synthetic biology here.

What is striking is that an area of research which is touted to find cost-effective ways of producing fuel, medicine, or improving overall health in the developing world, is getting adopted by the target population. The grand prize was bagged by Slovenia (for best health/medicine project), among 77 teams from 22 countries.

Bizarre bugs they may seem, but they are engineered to do different things for different folks: like this group which is trying to give beer drinkers the newly-found (and still counting) benefits of wine, calling it, of course, BioBeer; or the 10 ways in which these bugs could help society and, the list, hopefully, will go on and on.

Winners: IIT Madras student team, led by Guhan Jayaraman (IIT Madras, 2nd from right) and Mukund Thattai (NCBS/TIFR Bangalore, who led the team last year, extreme right), included: Gairik Sachdeva, Hemanth Giri Rao, Nelson Vadassery, Sailaja Nori, Sayash Kumar and Sowmya Balendiran.

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New creatures from the deep seas

2008-11-10T01:30:00Z

Scientists engaged in the global Census of Marine Life, to be released in 2010, today report some astonishing recent finds from the deep seas. The final report two years later will relate to: distribution of animals in the ocean and their changing ranges; diversity as the total number of species in the ocean (known and unknown); abundance of major species groups and how they have changed over time;

Marine scientists have gathered at the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, Valencia, Spain this week to present their first progress report. Here's a glimpse of some beautiful creatures. Enjoy:

Like an underwater spaceship, a jellyfish, Aequorea macrodactyla, travels through the warm clear waters of the Celebes Seain the western Pacific Ocean. The jellyfish was one of thousands of specimens photographed during a three-week Census expedition to explore this highly diverse area. Photo: Larry Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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A midwater medusa, Nausithoe sp., was collected from the Celebes Sea by Census researchers. Photo: Larry Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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A male sea spider carries its eggs on specially adapted appendages under its body; it is one of many possible new species from the Antarctic. Census researchers are trying to understand the evolutionary history of these curious animals. Photo: Cédric d'Udekem, Royal Belgium Institute for Natural Sciences 2007.

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Census researchers conducted an inventory of octocorals, named for the eight tentacles that fringe each polyp. Shown is a soft coral, Dendronepthyla, from coral gardens off Lizard Island. Gary Cranitch, Queensland Museum 2008.

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The jeweled squid, Histioteuthis bonelli, swims above the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at depths from 500 m to 2,000 m. Photo: David Shale 2007.

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Climate, carbon, and market finance

2008-11-09T07:37:00Z

Steep cuts in carbon emissions have already been proposed, but it seems the world needs a backup plan to stave off catastrophic warming. Testifying before the British Parliament on November 10, climate scientist Ken Caldeira, a faculty member of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California, said geo-engineering solutions such as injecting dust into the atmosphere, though risky, may become necessary in future.

Caldeira is asking for more research to evaluate pros and cons of climate engineering. "Science is needed to address critical questions, among them: How effective would various climate engineering proposals be at achieving their climate goals? What unintended outcomes might result? How might these unintended outcomes affect both human and natural systems?" His full statement can be read here (page 99)

Scientists have debated such solutions before (metioned in an earlier blog), which range from wacky to wonderful, but in reality climate change is a true interplay of policy, private markets and technology. A new report , Carbon Finance: Environmental Market Solutions to Climate Change by the Yale Centre for Business and the Enviornment discusses this at length.

According to a 2007 United Nations report, 85 % of the multi-billion dollar investment to address climate change now comes from the private sector, not government. The global carbon market was worth $64 billion in trades in 2007 and is on track to top $100 billion this year. "One recent forecast predicted that the trade would reach $1 trillion annually by 2020, assuming that the United States joins the market with the passage of a cap-and-trade system now being discussed in Congress."

And staying on carbon, did you know that besides Electoral College and popular votes, Obama defeated McCain in carbon footprints as well - emitted 77,894 tons of carbon while McCain trailed at 58,786 tons. Read more about it here.

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Snakes and scammers

2008-11-05T09:02:00Z

The latest most comprehensive estimate on the global incidence of snakebites is out, and guess who is on top? At 81,399 envenomings (or venomous snake bites) India was way ahead of second- and-third placed Srilanka and Brazil respectively, who CUMULATIVELY registered 62,438 envenomings in 2007.

And that's the good news. Previous estimates by World Health Organisation put the number of bites (and that may be much more than the envenomings) at 200,000 and deaths at 50,000.

What's cause for concern though is that snake deaths in India had a 13% mortality rate (10,835 deaths), while Srilanka and Brazil only had a 0.3% and 0.4% mortality respectively. You can look up the study in this week's PLoS Medicine, and though there has been no fresh data collection efforts, the Srilankan authors seem to have trawled a substantial amount of published literature, WHO databases and government ministry figures.

Alarms on this death statistic have been raised before, and, according to a BBC story, India has plenty of access to anti venom. Moreover, unlike Australia, it doesn't even have the most number of venomous snakes (Australia reported only 1 death from snake bite in 2007). Toxicologists say lack of quick access to hospitals-- with most snake-bite victims being in the villages, and many among them opting for home-made treatments instead of hospitals--are prime reason for the high number of such deaths in India. Also, according to the story, many doctors aren't trained enough to administer the anti-venom.

Three years since the WHO figures were publicized, the government is yet to implement a national protocol on treating snake bites (inspite of announcing plans to do so in 2005). THe policy it said would train rural health centres in properly managing snake bites. On the other hand, the study authors say, there are several insurance schemes in India that compensate families of snake-bite victims. Hmmm..do you smell an over-reporting scam here??

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Scilence: (Wo)Men at work!

2008-11-04T08:48:00Z

Just as science, by nature, throws up unexpected results, so do issues related to it. And if one is talking of gender, surprises are bigger, given its multifaceted nature. A fascinating essay in the new report from TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world in Italy, which is celebrating its 25^th anniversary this month, shows how the scientific community globally has too many, and aging, men.

"Economic well-being, scientific capacity and even lofty political principles do not automatically translate into expanded opportunities for women in science."

Look at the numbers from UNESCO Institute of Statistics: The global average of women in science is 27%, for Asia it's 15%. But India has just 10% women researchers; by contrast, in Latin America 46% of researchers are women. In Southeast Asia, women constitute 40% of the workforce in science but with huge variations across the region: It's 55% in Philippines, 85% in Myanmar, and 12% in Japan.

Yet women scientists in central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia enjoy gender parity, which is comparable to only five East European countries - Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Estonia.

Gender disparities have always existed and in even in the most sophisticated professions though women's liberation movements, especially in the USA and in Europe, have led to expansion of opportunities for women over the past three decades.

"Nevertheless, what we see so far is that the number of women in professional positions remains higher in many developing countries than in developed countries. Turkey, for example, has more female full professors (23%) than any other European Union (EU) country. In Germany the figure stands at 4%, in Denmark 6%, in Sweden 7% and in the UK 10%."

When it comes to leaders in science, India has a dismal record. Except for the National Brain Research Centre in Manesar, Haryana, headed by Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, none of the 65 institutes under the Ministry of S &T has any woman head. In agriculture, the scenario is no better. Only one of ICAR's 175 institutions, in Bhubaneshwar, is led by a woman and a small percentage of the National Science Academies' membership belongs to women. The 96-year-old Indian Science Congress remains a male bastion, having selected women as General Presidents only a few times.

We now even have an Indian Women Scientist Association in existence, and so is the Department of Science and Technology's ongoing women scientists programme.

But women continue to struggle as science falters and remains gendered.

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Global product launches: who leads, who lags?

2008-11-02T10:04:00Z

Which countries are the most innovative and ahead of others in launching products and technologies? The land of the rising sun and long known for incubating cool electronics, Japan, is at the top. Four Nordic countries --Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, and Denmark - come next, displacing the US at number six.

India, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and China are ranked lowest among the 31 surveyed countries.

A new study titled Global takeoff of New Products: Culture, Wealth or Vanishing Differences, in the latest issue of the journal Marketing Science, evaluated 31 countries based on the time it takes for new products. Researchers, Deepa Chandrasekaran of Lehigh University, and Gerard J. Tellis, Center for Global Innovation, University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, analyzed 16 product categories over a period of 50 years.

New products takeoff faster in Japan (5.4 years) than any other nation, closely followed by Norway and its north European neighbors of Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark. The United States (6.2 years), Switzerland and Austria ranked high, as well.

The authors find that takeoff is driven by culture and wealth, in addition to product class, product vintage and prior takeoffs. More importantly, "time-to-takeoff" is shortening over time and converging across developed countries. According to them, "fun products like gadgets could be introduced simultaneously across nations (a ‘sprinkler' strategy), while the introduction of appliances and other work-related technologies should be staggered (‘waterfall') for maximum impact."

Last year Forrester ranked 26 countries on innovativeness where Finland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US were among the countries that ranked highest in terms of global innovation capability. India, of course, was not included.

But I think there should be one such survey on ‘innovative deployment of technology (both low- and high end tech)' where I think India stands some chance.

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Ancient ‘mummy' hath no modern kin

2008-10-30T02:33:00Z

Where could man's quest of knowledge, that too of prehistoric patterns of migration, lead him? To sequence the genome of 5,300-year-old ‘mummy', also called Oetzi or ‘the Tyrolean Iceman'. And what was found? The ancient ‘mummy' has no modern children.

In a research published in Current Biology today, a team of British and Italian researchers has sequenced the mitochondrial DNA -- one that is passed down the maternal line -- and shown that Oetzi belonged to a genetic lineage that, in all likelihood, has died out.

Tyrolean Iceman

Researchers say they have generated the oldest complete Homo sapiens mtDNA genome to date, and this work overturns previous research conducted in 1994 on a small section of Öetzi's mtDNA, which suggested that relatives of Öetzi may still exist in Europe.

"Our analysis confirms that Öetzi belonged to a previously unidentified lineage of K1 that has not been seen to date in modern European populations. The frequency of genetic lineages tends to change over time, due to random variations in the number of children people have - a process known as 'genetic drift' - and as a result, some variants die out. Our research suggests that Öetzi's lineage may indeed have become extinct," says Prof Martin Richards of the University of Leeds' Faculty of Biological Sciences.

He is the only professor of archaeogenetics in the UK and says science will only know for sure by sampling intensively in the Alpine valleys where Öetzi was born.

"However, our results do suggest that studies of ancient samples can fill in gaps in our knowledge left open simply because many genetic lineages died out thousands of years ago. The techniques we've used here are potentially applicable to many other ancient remains."

PS: This research was funded by the pharma company Eli Lilly. I'd love to know why Lily funded this. If anybody has any clue please post your message.

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Decoys in off-label drug promotion

2008-10-28T01:30:00Z

My hotmail inbox has, on average, one mail on Viagra discount sale every day. Well, the promotion these days is for Viagra's protection against bacterial infection! I haven't checked out the websites but from the subject line it looks like another off-label promotion of this blockbuster drug, fake or genuine I don't know.

Off-label use of drugs is legal, but its promotion by drug manufacturers is illegal. A new research in the open source journal PloS Medicine today shows how drug companies covertly promote off-label use of drugs.

Adriane Fugh-Berman, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC and Douglas Melnick, a preventive medicine physician from North Hollywood, California argue that while off-label drug use is "sometimes unavoidable" and sometimes "demonstrably beneficial," it has also been linked with serious side effects. Off-label drug use, they say, "should be undertaken with care and caution due to the uncontrolled experiment to which a patient is being subjected".

Off-label use in India has its own story. While it's prevalent, even in children as this September study shows; Indian drug regulator has done a poor job in monitoring. The ongoing letrozole (anti-cancer drug used for treating anti-fertility cases) controversy amply proves this.

Read some more stories of off-label (mis)uses here.

Since even the stringent US FDA has come in for censure for its oversight of the promotion of drugs for off-label use, it's not surprising the researchers in this present study are calling for restrictions to off-label promotion of drugs to be strengthened.

"Companies that engage in off-label promotion should be heavily fined and their future marketing practices subject to increased scrutiny by regulatory agencies," they argue.

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Name-letter-effect and your workplace

2008-10-26T07:39:00Z

I don't quite agree with the findings here but since Lab Rats is meant for talking, primarily, about science, rather than personal proclivity, here's a piece of news from the latest issue of Psychological Science, which I think will find echoes in the corridors of Balaji Telefilms in Mumbai.

It appears that your initials could influence where you choose to work. A name-letter-effect, as the researchers call it, could be potent enough to affect where people choose to work.

Psychologists Frederik Anseel and Wouter Duyck from Ghent University in Belgium were interested in testing the extent of the name-letter effect and they analyzed a database containing information about Belgian employees, who were engaged in full-time work. They looked at the employees' name and how often their first initial matched the first letter of their company's name. Using probability calculation, they estimated the expected number of these matches and compared that to what they actually observed.

There were 12% more matches than was expected based on the probability estimate. "Hence, for about one in nine people whose initials matched their company's initial, choice of employer seems to have been influenced by the fact that the letters matched." In addition, when the psychologists looked across all letters, they found that this effect occurred with every letter of the alphabet, but was more apparent for rarer initials.

Now, for those of you who don't know what has ‘name' to do with Balaji Telefilms, or Bollywood at large, read this.

Though in Bollywood, people don't look for companies matching their initials/names, they just tweak the existing ones. Like so many others, writer Shobha De added just an extra ‘a' to her first name!

After all, what's in a name!

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Sins of memory

2008-10-24T07:40:00Z

We might one day get where we can erase unpleasant memories from our life, or brain, to be precise. Scientists report today in the journal Cell that they have found a way to selectively erase memories from mice.

What does that mean? The technique, manipulation of memory molecule or a protein CAMK-II, is preliminary, but maybe one day it could lead to a cure for post traumatic stress disorders, allowing doctors/scientists to erase bad memories and remove deep fears.

Fascinating discoveries are being made about memory as science progresses. But what intrigues, interests, and bothers me most is the impact of information overload on memory. I don't know about you, but I increasingly feel, particularly in the last 4-5 years as the Internet has really taken over our lives, that my forgetfulness has conspicuously increased. Of course, I am growing old, but still, haven't reached that stage where I can blame it on ‘aging'.

Since I'm not the Blackberry-toting types, all I end up doing is setting up dozens of alarms on my cell phone and sticking post-its all over. One of these days I am going to go back to Daniel Schacter's The Seven Sins of Memory, a delightful and compelling book, to read that part which tells you what can you do to stem the decline.

In fact, I had attended 7 Sins' stimulating book reading at Harvard University when the book was launched, though all I remember from that is -- trying to shore up too much trivia in your head doesn't soup up your memory, it messes up instead.

However, I have my own amateurish explanation for 'my' memory lapses: maybe my hippocampus (region in the brain that stores factual memory, like phone numbers, names, etc) is getting weaker, and my amygdala (seat in the brain for emotional memory) is holding on.

For instance, when more than a decade ago I met Bejan Daruwalla, (yes, the popular astrologer-columnist who my editor had asked me to meet for a profile), the first thing he said on seeing me was - "Why did you leave science?" (I had switched to humanities midway in my studies.)

Now, digging science for a living, I often remember Mr Daruwalla. But for the life of me I cannot remember what other predictions (perhaps bordering on facts) he had made about me. It just got erased!

Tell me what is your memory like as you balance work, life, and beyond.

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