Flower Carrying Bee

I live in Mumbai, a big city. The civic body has planted trees along the roadside, but that is not enough to qualify the city as a green belt. We have a number of potted plants in our balcony. Many of them are flowering plants. Perhaps they attract bees, insects and birds. Some of the bees sting, but we bear with it because we love the flowers and the greenery.
That day I was home after a busy day at the hospital. I was lying down in my bed, in the most comfortable position I could find, reading the morning's newspaper. Suddenly something pink flew in and disappeared behind the curtain. I thought it must be a trick played by a tired mind and tired eyes. A couple of minutes later the trick was played again. I got curious. I stood up on the cot and looked behind the curtain.
"Eek!" I thought. There were about half a dozen pink flower petals there. As I stood thinking, in came another pink petal through the window. It was a bee carrying the petal which had come from our own potted plant.

I called my wife. While I was explaining what had happened and she was trying to understand it, in flew the bee with another petal bigger than its body.
"Eek!" my wife said. Both of us had not seen or heard of anything like this before. Finally I Googled it, and found that someone in Mexico had reported this too. Such bees build nests out of flower petals. Apparently this was the first case reported in India. This also happens to be the first picture of such a phenomenon on the net - there are no such images on Google Images. I have posted that image for anyone who sees such a thing in future and does a Google search to find out what it is.

New Sign Of Viral Activity

We are talking of computer viruses, not medical viruses.
I had gone to another college for delivering a postgraduate lecture. Normally I take my files on a CD and not on a pen drive because I know I will pick up a few viruses from a computer that is used by a lot of people (as in a lecture hall). This time I did not. After I finished my lecture, I closed the open presentation file and clicked on the 'disconnect detachable device' icon in the system tray. Instead of declaring that it was safe to disconnect the device, the computer told me 'the device cannot be disconnected now, because it is being used by Windows'.
"It is MY device and I will disconnect it if I want to" I told the computer and took it off. I don't know if the computer heard me. I did not hear it snigger anyway. After I came home, I connected the pen drive to my desktop and found that the PC did not know what to do with it. Normally it autoruns and offers to open it to reveal its contents. Then it screamed 'virus!' I let it remove the virus. Then I got my antivirus to scan the pen drive. It found eight viruses in it. After I removed all of the infections, I double clicked the icon of the pen drive in Windows Explorer.
"Select a program to open this file" the computer said and offered me a list of programs, none of which was Windows Explorer. This was weird. When I finally opened the drive, I found it had only three documents in it. 2GB of my data was wiped out by the viruses. I tried to create a new folder in it with an old name.
"It cannot be created. A folder with that name already exists" the computer told me. I was awestruck. There was a folder that I could not see, though it was not a hidden folder. In fact there were no folders.
I removed the name of  the pen drive, formatted it, and renamed it. Then it started behaving normally.
"Those eight viruses must have kept the pen drive engaged and hence Windows must have told me that it could not be disconnected" I told my son, the software specialist.
"Yes" he said "that happens."
A week later I went to the same place to deliver another lecture. I had my files on a CD this time. Another person was delivering her lecture when I entered the lecture hall. I waited. After she finished, she tried to disconnect her pen drive. It will say 'the device is being used by Windows and it cannot be disconnected' I thought.
"The device is being used by Windows and it cannot be disconnected" the computer said. 'Those viruses are predictable' I thought. The previous speaker just pulled out her pen drive, ignoring the warning, probably because I was waiting.
"Now you are a proud owner of eight viruses" I told her. "I got them from this computer last week too."

Catchy Titles

I received an email from the Alumni Association. It read as follows.
You are invited to attend a guest lecture on "How to look young & beautiful" by Dr. XXXXXX XXXXXXXX on Wednesday, ........., at 2.00pm, venue ...... etc.
I thought a few things were wrong with it. It was an invitation that was sent to all email subscribers of the institute's email service, which included young women (who looked young anyway), beautiful women (who looked beautiful anyway), women who thought they did not look young and beautiful (which must be the target audience), young and handsome men (who look young and don't want to look beautiful), old men (who may or may not want to look young but will not want to look beautiful) and a few other permutations and combinations. The least the organizers could have done was to filter out the men.
The other thing I thought was wrong with it was that it seemed inappropriate that the alumni association of a prestigious medical institute would select a topic on cosmetology, which was not a part of any course offered by it.
The main thing that was wrong with it was the choice of words in the title of the talk. "How to look young & beautiful" implied that one did not look young and beautiful. People attending would feel that others would think they attended because they did not look young and beautiful. I wrote back to the organizers that a better sounding title would be "How to keep looking young and beautiful". I have done them a good turn, but I have a feeling that I will just end up making an enemy - who likes suggestions for improvement?

Funky Topics For CME?

I got an invitation to attend a continuing medical education (CME) program. The letter said it was organized by All India Coordinating Committee of RCOG West Zone in association with a local obstetric and gynecological society. RCOG was short for Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I went through the program. There was a list of topics, the meaning of the topics in brackets (parenthesis) and the speakers. The list of topics in the anatomy section and their meanings was as follows.

Topic	Meaning in brackets
Gate way to Pandora’s box
Scary womb	Uterus and adnexa
Do or die	Internal iliac artery
Dodgy ureter	Anterior abdominal wall
Hurdles in girdles	Bony pelvis
Tricky passage	Pelvic floor
Distress to de-stress	Urethra
Tears bring tears	Perineum
Hot spot	Clitoris

If not for acquiring knowledge, someone may be tempted to attend the CME just to find out why they named the topics so. I am not going to attend, so I will never know.

Puritanity, Chastity and What Not

"He does not permit his resident doctors to get married."
 I heard that one during one of our meetings attended by heads of different departments. They were discussing some matter outside the agenda - or in simple English gossiping. It was a small group and I could not help overhearing.
"Who?"
"Dr. XXXXXXX" (the crosses are in place of the real name, to maintain privacy of that person). "He is head of a unit."
"Professor?"
"No. Junior."
"He does not permit residents to marry one another?"
"He does not permit residents to marry anyone - period."
"But they have their rights. how can he do that?"
"He shouts at them. He terrorizes them. He does not permit the boys to go see girls."
I was aghast. "When there is a girl, a boy automatically looks at her" I said incredulously. "It is a sort of reflex. How does he stop reflex behavior?"
"He is seen and heard shouting at the canteen fellow too, everyday!" that was not an answer to my question. There was probably no answer to it.
"Because the canteen fellow looks at girls?"
"No. Other reasons."
"Yes" I said. "I remember him shouting at me too, in presence of a few department heads. It was quite irrational, unprovoked, and unwarranted. I did not respond because I thought there was some underlying psychiatric disturbance and things would get ugly. It looked like he would get a stroke if his shouting continued any further. I would have got a stroke myself if I had started a shouting contest with him. You say he does that everyday, with multiple people?"
"YES."
"Something must be wrong with all those people if a chaste and puritan person shouts at all of them, day in and day out."
They did not seem to believe that. He must have shouted at some of them too.

Such Duty Hours

An enthusiastic and vivacious looking young woman entered my office, accompanied by an older woman who seemed to be her mother.
"I wanted to meet you" the younger of the two said. "I have joined DGO today."
"Congratulations" I said. "You mean you have come to us as a postgraduate student?"
"Yes. I have heard so much about you! I want to work with you" she said. Someone must have trained her to say this, I thought.
"That is nice" I said. "But we have a fixed set of rules for placement of postgraduate students. You will work in my unit if you top the list."
"But I want to work with you" she said. "That would be nice."
"We do not bend rules. If I do that, we will have my friends, civic officials and politicians asking for placements for students" I explained patiently.
"But it would be nice for her if she works with you" the mother said. They must think I was retarded, as I seemed not to get such a simple point.
"See, I want to act in a movie with Amitabh Bacchan, the famous actor. But they won't let me. I just don't have the talent required. It is similar here. She gets placement based on her merit, not what she would like to have." They seemed to get the point. I thought I had been a bit impatient with them. So I asked, "from where have you come?"
"Delhi" said the younger one.
"Why would you come here?" I asked. "You haveAIIMS, Safdarjang...! Such nice places. The resident doctor there gets higher salary than our Assistant Professor does. Besides, they have only 8 hours' duty every day."
"I could not get it there" she explained. "All seats get filled in the first 200 ranks."
"Ah!" I said. I had known about it and had just mentioned the reasons why. "You will have 24 hours duty here."
"24 hours per week?" she asked. I was amused.
"24 hours per day" I explained. She looked bewildered.
"You should have found out how tough residency is in this institute before opting for it" I said. "Talk to some residents here. You want to work in my unit. It will be even tougher, because my outpatient clinic is on Mondays and more patients come for treatment on Mondays. Residents want to leave because they cannot handle it." I was thinking of some residents, some would just disappear without notice for weeks at a time, some who would use all sorts of influence to get a placement with minimum of work, and some who would manipulate co-residents to do all the work, and some who would just pay the fine and leave the residency. I even knew one who would switch off the cell phone and go to sleep in some remote corner of some ward while others continued to slog.
"If you want 1 24 hours per week resident's job, change to some other specialty in the second round of placements" I advised. They looked at each other and nodded their heads. They left me wondering how people can have such fancy expectations from life. Or is life like that everywhere but in Mumbai?

PowerPoint For Solving Puzzles

Microsoft Corporation ships PowerPoint as a presentation software. It is used as a presentation software by everyone who uses it. I had introduced a new use - an interactive educational software - some time ago. Here is another new use.
It is agreed that puzzle-solving keeps the brain active and delays onset of Alzheimer's disease. I had written about my Javascript puzzles, developed for my happiness of creation, but also for this purpose. But coding takes time and energy. I thought I should have a simpler method of solving puzzles that involve sliding or jumping pieces. Using coins or caps of tubes is useful, but inconvenient. They tend to fall, get misplaced, and writing down the solution after solving the puzzle becomes quite a bother. Then I had this idea of using PowerPoint for this purpose. I don't think a lot of people believe so, but PowerPoint's draw component is a great vector graphics program. I use it as follows.

1. I start with a blank slide.
2. I draw the background of the puzzle using the drawing tools of PowerPoint.
3. I draw the coins or objects (monkeys in the following example) and place them wherever they have to be.
4. I move the pieces as per the rules of the puzzle.
5. When the puzzle is solved, I capture the end result on screen with a screen capture program.
6. I undo my all preceding moves one by one, and take screenshots of all of the steps involved.
7. I place the captured images in sequence in Paint, number them, and take a screenshot.
8. I place that graphic as the solution of that puzzle in my 'puzzles' document.
Not only is this method convenient, but quite sleek too.

Windows Movie Maker Caution

I thought I should caution Microsoft Corporation. But does the behemoth want to be cautioned? Perhaps not. When I searched the website of the company, it does not have any link that invites a communication. Its 'contact us' link is just about offering support in relation to its various products. I recall writing to them many years ago, when I found a serious glitch in Microsoft Excel. I sent the letter by air-mail spending a bit of my hard earned money. I expected nothing from them. They did not disappoint me. They did not even acknowledge the letter. They must be like our health university or the civic body - the motto is not to reply.
Well, I might caution my readers. It is about Windows Movie maker. It ships with Windows. Microsoft says it cannot be downloaded as a standalone set up file. I run Windows XP on two of my machines, and have not thought about upgrading to Windows 7 or 8 because I do not want to upgrade my hardware which is working well. But I thought I would like to update my Windows Movie Maker. So I searched the web and found a link as follows.

http://www.windows-movie-maker.org/index.html
It said the downloaded file would work on XP and subsequent versions of Windows. I was thrilled. So I downloaded it and set it up. I got my first suspicion when it installed in a new folder and not the old default folder. I got more suspicious when it offered to install another software called snap.do.smartbar and make snap.do as my default search engine. I declined because I did not want it, and also because it said it was a company incorporated in USA, spelling America as Aerica.. Subsequent web search showed that it is a malware that collects your data.

Then it offered to install 'RegClean Pro', which I declined too. A web search revealed a lot of people did not like it. I ran the movie maker I had installed. Its version turned out to be identical to the one I already had. I uninstalled it. It appears someone has obtained a set up file of Windows movie maker, and combined it with two other programs, which seem up to something unwanted by an average user. Microsoft can look after itself. But I might caution my readers at least. Hence this post. Take care.

Surgical Cap and Mask - Funky Design

I admit at the outset that the design of such head gear is not mine, but the idea to use it as a surgical cap and mask is definitely is mine.

I had originally seen this in bandit movies, where the bandits covered their heads and faces with such head gear - a big piece of cloth wound all around their heads and faces, leaving slits in front for the eyes. That must have been to maintain their privacy for security reasons. The last year or two saw girls riding bikes, wearing such head gears. I thought that was to keep their faces from tanning or rather getting sun burnt. Perhaps they thought that would convince the traffic cops that they had safety helmets on. In the last year, pedestrian girls started going about in such head gear. There was speculation in media about the purpose. Perhaps it was to protect the facial skin from the sun. Perhaps it was to prevent guys from knowing who they were, so that they would not sexually harass them. Perhaps some of them did not want people who knew them or were related to them identify them wherever they went. Perhaps it was a fashion statement - adopted from some movie starring a famous heroine.
That got me thinking. Some of our women surgeons and anesthetists do not wear caps and masks in operation theaters in the evenings and nights (when the bosses are home), at least effectively, possibly because they do not like the design. So if we allowed such head gear in operation theaters, they would wear it and surgical infection rates would go down. The long hair of women and some of the men would be more effectively covered too, which conventional surgical caps often fail to do. If any of them want to adopt such head gear as surgical cap and mask, I will strongly recommend it.

Tall Order

"Sir, we have received an urgent circular from the postgraduate section about biometric attendance."
"Let me see it" I said. I saw it and was stunned. It was with a reference to a notice from the health university. Roughly translated, it read as follows.
With reference to a letter from the university, all heads of departments are asked to implement 'web-based biometric attendance system' urgently. Its technical details are as follows.

	GPRS
Fingerprint capacity	3000
Record capacity	100000
Identification speed	< 2 sec
Sensor	Optical
Display	2” TFT color graphic display
Language	English, Spanish
Voice	High definition voice
Other function	SMS, web server
Communication mode	TCP/IP Rs 232/485 USB
Wiegand	Input/Output
Power	12 V DC
FAR	< 0.0001%
FRR	< 1%
Card reader	EM Card reader

So take appropriate action immediately and send the report to the university, with a copy to the postgraduate section. If there are any technical difficulties, communicate with the university at the following number. XXXXXXXXX

Signed: Academic Boss.

It was very confusing. So I called the head clerk of the postgraduate section and asked her about it.
"Is it for teachers or students?" I asked.
"Um... must be students."
"Has the institute made the hardware arrangements for this thing?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"Has the institute taken students' biometric data like finger prints, iris photographs, retinal photographs etc?"
"I don't know."
"Is it going to be done once or is each department supposed to do it all over, so that 30 departments do it totally 30 times?"
"I think it will have to be done by boss people by arranging a meeting or something" she said.
"Will there be any instructions on how to use the system?" I asked.
 "I will have to ask academic boss. I don't know anything about it. I will ask when the boss comes back from vacation."
I checked the university's web site. A search of the site revealed no information on this topic. I checked it three weeks later. Still there is no information on it. I am still confused about it.
"Sir, our biometric data was collected two years ago, and we were given biometric attendance cards. Despite repeated reminders from head office and media reports on the issue, it has not started yet" a colleague said.
"I know" I said.
"The medical council took Rs. 300/- from each of us for issuing us biometric cards three years ago. We have not received the cards yet."
"I know" I said.
"We have not received a refund too!"
"I know" I said. "I am not hoping to get any refund."
"If the civic body and the medical council could not get it done despite taking biometric data of all 2 and 3 years ago, how are we going to do it immediately for students, when there is no machinery in place and no biometric data has been collected? "And is it for each lecture, or once a day or what?"
"I have no idea" I said. The signatory of the circular has not given any information of that nature. The university has nothing on its website. I am not sure if it is for teachers or students."
"So what are we going to do?"
"Faith and Patience" I said. "श्रद्धा आणि सबूरी - as beloved Saibaba had preached."

Modified Air-Conditioing Vents

I will say my training at my hospital helps me survive in places far from my hospital. I was in New Delhi for a conference that involved the health ministry, UNICEF and others. It was at a famous 4 star hotel. We had to stay at that hotel for convenience. It was a good hotel and the arrangement of the conference was superb. The trouble started when I reached my room after the day's work. I planned to go to bed but it was so cold despite the summer heat of New Delhi, that sleep would be impossible. There was central air-conditioning, and it was almost as good as that in our emergency OT soon after installation. I shivered continuously in the hotel room just like in our OT. I looked for the remote control to adjust the temperature and found there was none, just as in our OT. I called reception and asked for increasing the temperature a bit.
"Sir, I am afraid that is not possible. It is centrally operated unit, and the thermostat is set for the whole hotel" the fellow manning the desk said.
I reviewed the situation again. There were four bed sheets and two blankets. I could be warm under the lot. But the problem was that my face and ears would freeze after I went to sleep, because I could not cover my face with the blankets. If I did, I would be a stiff (meaning dead as in American comics) from asphyxia instead of being just stiff with cold. It was at this was the pointthat my training at my hospital helped.

I climbed a chair to reach the vents of the air-conditioning from which the ice cold air was being pumped right onto the bed. I fixed a stiff card (don't expect me to say where I found the card - the hotel management might get offended by the answer) over the vents as shown above. Diagram A is the outside view, B is as it would be seen from the inside of the vents. This covering of the vents is used extensively in the OTs when it gets too cold. After a few months, the air-handling unit loses its force and the covers become unnecessary. I don't know if it is OK to do so, but it works in OTs and it worked in the hotel room too. After a good night's sleep, I removed the card, restored it to its initial shape and glory (that should please the hotel management in case they have figured out where I got the card) and went about my business.

Signature To Thumb Impression

It was weird. In one of the applications for PCPNDT registrations, I found an applicant had signed differently on the same form, on two copies of the same form, on two copies of declarations, and finally he had put his thumb impression on his affidavit. It looked like this.

What was noticeable was that there was a consistent deterioration of the signature, until finally it was replaced by a thumb impression. Handwriting (including signature) deteriorates in neurological diseases like motor neuron disease, Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, cerebellar disease, dystonias, progressive supranuclear palsy, Huntington's disease etc. But it is slow, progressive over a period of time. It is never in a period of five minutes, which is the time taken to affix signatures on various parts of the PCPNDT application form. I am curious about this applicant. Since there was this discrepancy, I had to ask for it to be sorted out before approving the application. So I should get the answer at the next meeting in a couple of months' time.

Doctors' Psychiatrists

It is true that a vast majority of people who qualify as doctors would be OK in the opinion of psychiatrists if they went to see some. At least, that is my personal feeling. But when I think of a situation like the following one, I get scared.

We know that a driver is tested for vision and color blindness before being given a driver's license. An astronaut is tested rigorously for a large number of things before being sent to the outer space. A cook or a food handler has to undergo tests before being licensed. But a doctor is never tested for things that would impair his judgment or action while dealing with a patient - not only in our country, but nowhere in the world. It is OK for a doctor to see a psychiatrist, I suppose. If his condition is cured or is at least in a remission, it should be OK. But how does one know that the doctor's psychiatrist is good? :-)

My First Javascript Puzzle

I like solving puzzles. It is fun. It also prevents Alzheimer's disease by maintaining new brain activity. I also like using software to make things easier. All this prompted me to make a puzzle for the internet. It looks like this.

It has eight monkeys sitting on wrong stools. The player has to move them to their own stools only along designated pathways. What I have done here that no puzzle website does is permit the player to move the monkeys by dragging with the left mouse button. Images cannot be normally moved on web pages. But in this puzzle they can. It saves the hassle of drawing the puzzle on a piece of paper and putting cut out numbered monkeys there to move them. If one wants to reset the puzzle, one just has to press F5. I used Javascript code for this - very useful stuff, this Javascript. If you want to solve this puzzle online, just click on the image above.
I plan to use this image moving technique in medical education. Just imagine moving parts of an image on screen while teaching students,  or giving them a quiz in which they have to move labels to different parts of an image. The possibilities are endless.