TUESDAY14.04.2020NEW DELHI

NEW DELHI n Vol. XCVI No. 89 n Price ₹2.50 n 2 Pages. www.hindustantimes.com/ht-school n htpacedelhi@hindustantimes.com

llO F F T H E S P O R T S A R E N A l

With all sporting events sus-

pended, and most training centres

and national camps shut, what

are athletes doing with their

forced leisure time? Everyday a

top athlete will write about her or

his experience of dealing with the

Covid-19 pandemic. This is Sunil

Chhetri, India’s football captain

who has scored 72 international

goals in 115 games. He also leads

Bengaluru FC.

Not in the best of moods after our ISL-6 campaign ended — and with it our football season — in Kolkata, I saw it in the news application I subscribe to. At a time when the number of deaths worldwide was around 2,000, I read on my phone that the virus could claim million lives or more. Scaremongering isn’t my idea of fun, so I ignored it.

There is no better high in the off-season than planning a vaca-tion, so my wife Sonam and I were working out the details of catching the Northern Lights in Finland with a stopover in Zurich. It would also have com-pensated for the trip to Croatia that didn’t materialise last year because Sonam was down with dengue. It turned out to be the second vacation we couldn’t do though, thankfully, we have got our money back. One short trip we did do was to Kabini For-est (in Karnataka), where in one day we were lucky to see tigers twice! This we could do before the forest locked down.

Since then, Sonam and I have given leave to our domestic staff and stayed indoors. We do household chores — among my responsi-bilities is doing the dishes—cook, chat, watch television, play 9 cards and even cricket in the corri-dor. And eat stuff such as chholey puri, samosas, vegan pizzas and get fat.

I was strug-

gling with a hamstring issue over the past couple of months and have opted for PRP (platelet-rich plasma) treatment. That means I can’t move for a week or 10 days. It also means that for the past fortnight or so, I have only been eating. Can’t remember when that happened last. Once my leg heals, and depending on the doc-tor’s advice, I will start biking or running. But other than exercis-ing, I am not stepping out. Sonam too is working from home, though managing hotels in Kolk-ata that way is not easy. There may still be people who find no reason to take precautions despite how this is spreading but we haven’t signed up with them. It has pretty much been accepted that social distancing is the best way to try and flatten the curve, so who are we to disagree?

My parents in Delhi have alsobeen told to stay indoors and they have assured me they are. My sis-ter and her husband too stay in Delhi and are not stepping out. In Kolkata, I know my mom-in-law is staying in and difficult though it is for my father-in-law Subrata Bhattacharya (former India and Mohun Bagan defender), he too has said he is not going out.

As told to Dhiman

Sarkar

‘Cannot remember the last time I ate so much and didn’t work out’

n Sunil Chhetri HT FILE

WISE WORDS »The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is

guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

MARK ZUCKERBERG

IN THE NEWS

NEW YORK: If we believe billionaire philan-thropist Bill Gates, very few countrieswill get ‘A-grade’ for new coronavirusresponse when it comes to understandingthe scale of the damage Covid-19 could do.

Speaking to BBC, Gates said severalcountries have failed on providing properhealthcare and there will be a “post-mor-tem” when the disease is tackled.

“We are in uncharted territory due to alack of investment and preparation forsuch a pandemic,” Gates said.

The number of Covid-19 cases in the UStopped 550,000 on Monday, according tothe Center for Systems Science and Engi-neering at Johns Hopkins University.

Worldwide, over 18 lakh people havebeen infected, with more than 1.14 lakh

deaths. Gates has announced his founda-tion is paying for the construction of facili-ties that will manufacture seven promis-ing coronavirus vaccines and the best twovaccines would be picked up for finaltrials. IANS

Very few countries will get ‘A grade’ on the response to Covid-19, says Bill GatesDear Reader,

Hindustan Times is coming to you in this new avatar at a

time when our normal lives and activities have been dis-

rupted by the challenge posed by the Coronavirus disease

(Covid-19).

You have been reading the HT School Edition in your

classrooms. Now, with schools closed and a lockdown in place,

we have created this specially curated e-paper to cater to

your varied interests and your appetite for knowledge.

A special feature of this new e-paper will be the “You” sec-

tion, dedicated to your experiences during the lockdown,

and how you’re spending these unusual days. Apart from

the contributions from students, insights from teachers

and principals will also be featured in these columns.

As you engage with this special edition, we request you

to keep sharing your views on it. Let us know what you like

and what you don’t, and what else you would like to read.

Your feedback will help us fine-tune this offering so that

it better reflects exactly what you want.

We at HT believe that the readers of today are the leaders

of tomorrow. So let us begin this journey together.

NEW DELHI: The department of science andtechnology has invited proposals to studyappropriate intervention of yoga andmeditation in fighting Covid-19 and simi-lar kinds of viruses.

Teams of scientists, clinicians andexperienced practitioners of yoga andmeditation who have a proven trackrecord in the field of yoga and meditationresearch are being encouraged to submitconcept notes on the proposal.

The proposals have been invited underthe Science and Technology of Yoga andMeditation (SATYAM) programme of theDST, a department under the ministry ofscience and technology.

“The aim of this special call is to pro-

vide assistance to our society in today’scritical condition arising due to pandemicCovid-19. Since, this is a need based call,therefore, proposed work should be com-pleted within 6-12 months,” it said. PTI

n The project may address ways to improve immunity and possible steps to overcomerespiratory disorders ANI FILE

Govt invites proposals to study effects of yoga, meditation in fighting viruses

NEW DELHI: Compounds polysaccharidesderived from marine red algae could beused as a coating material on the sani-tary items and also for the production ofantiviral drugs to fight Covid-19, suggest

scientists of a privatefirm.

Polysaccharides --such as agar, alginates,fucoidan, carrageenan,rhamnan sulfate -- havetremendous anti-viral

‘Red algae may help combat coronavirus’potential. In this study researchersexamined anti-viral potential of sulfatedpolysaccharides from marine algae andfound that sulfated polysaccharides areselective inhibitors of several envelopedand non-enveloped viruses and act pre-dominantly by inhibiting the binding orinternalization of virus into the hostcells. “As evident from the various anal-ysis reports worldwide on antiviralactivity of SPs (sulfated polysaccha-rides) from Porphyridium (red microal-gae) supported with the immunity boost-ing property, we can say that thismicroalga can be a versatile player in thetreatment of many viral diseases,” saidthe study. IANS

n Polysaccharides such as agar, alginates havetremendous anti-viralpotential GETTY

n Microsoft founder Bill Gates AFP FILE

Indo-Asain News Service

NEW YORK: Imagine that doorknobs at youroffice or home can instantly kill bacteria.Bacterial pathogens can live on surfacesfor days and researchers have now devel-oped a laser treatment method that couldpotentially turn any metal surface into arapid bacteria killer — just by giving themetal’s surface a different texture.

The Purdue University engineers havedemonstrated that this technique allowsthe surface of copper to immediately killoff superbugs such as MRSA.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcusaureus (MRSA) is a bacterium that causesinfections in different parts of the body.It’s tougher to treat than most strains ofstaphylococcus aureus because it’s resist-ant to some commonly used antibiotics.

“Copper has been used as an antimicro-bial material for centuries. But it typi-cally takes hours for native copper surfa-ces to kill off bacteria,” said RahimRahimi, an assistant professor of materi-als engineering at Purdue University.

“We developed a one-step laser-textur-ing technique that effectively enhancesthe bacteria-killing properties of copper’ssurface,” he added in a study published inthe journal Advanced Materials Interfa-ces.

The technique is not yet tailored to kill-ing viruses such as the one responsible forthe Covid-19 pandemic, which are muchsmaller than bacteria.

Doorknobs that can instantly kill deadly bacteria in offing

BAISAKHI MARKED SANS USUAL FERVOURBaisakhi, the joyous spring festival celebrated across north India annually, was overshad-owed by the lockdown due to Covid-19 this year. (Clockwise from top) The Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, the Bibi Chand Kour Gurudwara in Jammu and the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib in Delhi wore a deserted look on Monday. PHOTO BY SONU MEHTA, NITIN KANOTRA /HT AND PTI

02 HINDUSTAN TIMES, NEW DELHI

TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2020KALEIDOSCOPE

Solutions

-

CCAOO

HUISS

ACHYCN

AEKUMP

Place numbers intothe puzzle cells sothat each row andcolumn contains eachof the digits from 1 to 5. No number is to be repeated in any row orcolumn. Each bold-outlined cells contain a hint of a number and one of the mathematical sym-bols + x - /. The number is the result of the operation represent-ed by the symbol to the digits contained.

SUDOKU

SCRAMBLE

MATHDOKU

SUDOKU SOLUTIONS

MATHDOKU SOLUTION

SCRAMBLE Solution: Cocoa, sushi, chancy makeup

Answer: Compassion for myself is the most powerful healer of them all. -Theodore Isaac Rubin

* *

* *

*

* *

* * *

Amrita Bharati Features

Solve the four anagrams andmove oneletter to eachsquare to form four ordinary words

Now arrange the letters marked with an asterisk (*) to form the answer to the riddle or to fill in the missing words as indicated.

FLEA COUNT

_ for myself is the most powerful healer of them all. -Theodore Isaac Rubin (10)

Answer: First dog has 2 fleas and the second dog 4. Answer:3-Knife. You can cut an apple with a knife.

Two stray dogs are talking to each other about the fleas they have on their fur.First dog: If one of your fleas jumps onto me, you and I will have the same number of fleas.Second dog: If one of your fleas jumps onto me, I will have 5 times as many fleas as you have. Find out how many fleas each dog has.

MISSING PICTUREWhich of the options below will you choose to fill in the empty square in row II? Hint: The three pictures in each row are related.

MIND GAMES

HONOURING MEDICS

n Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue illuminated with the image of a doctor projected onto it on Easter Sunday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as part of the global campaign against Covid-19 AP

A unique feature of the book is that if you don’t like a story, you don’t need to keep it away but flip the book and start reading again. The Flipped Anthology series has two themes, two covers and two sides to open the book from and you can choose what you like. This edition is the third in the Flipped series and includes school stories and sports stories. Various writers have contributed pieces for this anthology, which has a wide range of stories.

FLIPPED: School Stories/Sports Stories

Author: Various

The book exam-ines India’s space projects right from Aryabhata to the recent Chandrayaan-2 space mission. This informative book has crisp stories with pictures from ISRO and other space agencies. It gives an update on India’s unique place in the world of space explora-tion and also lists future projects that India plans to launch in the coming years. It also looks at India’s collabora-tion with space agencies such as Nasa, ESA, Roscosmos and others on the world stage. It also includes trivia, a timeline of India’s space programme and milestones achieved by other spacefaring nations.

INDIA IN SPACE

Author: Compiled

llR E A D I N G C O R N E R l

TO ENGROSS, INFORM YOURegardless of whether you are comfortable staying indoors these days, or have felt bouts of anxiety or/and boredom, here are some interesting books to keep you entertained as well as informed. These are suitable for children aged 9 to 11 or more.

History pops right out of this book in the Quirky History series: From the Nizam who hid a priceless dia-mond in a shoe to the Swan Car of the Maharaja of Nabha to the Nawab of Junagadh who got his dog, Roshanara, married in brocades and pearls with over 700 guests in attend-ance. Ruskin Bond said about this book, ”We need offbeat, quirky storieslike the ones in this collection to make history come alive.” Books such as this one dispel the notion that history is a dull subject. This book has several bizarre ‘believe it or not’ tales.

An artist? A dreamer? A rebel? Who exactly was Amrita Sher-Gil? This biography says that she was a little bit of all these things. She grew up with a sense of mischief and adventure in two different worlds, in a village near Budapest, Hungary, and among the hills of Simla. Amrita Sher-Gil defied headmistresses, teachers, art critics and royalty to make her own way in the world of grown-ups and art.

AMRITA SHER-GIL: Rebel with a Paintbrush

Author: Anita Vachharajani

Stories of Courage and Valour describes extraordinary young men and women from Indian legends and tales from across the world. In the book, you will meet Shravan, who worked to fulfil his blind parents’ wishes; Razia Sultana, who defended her kingdom; Siddhartha, who gave up his royal life to find peace for everyone; Prahalada, who stood up for his beliefs in the face of danger; Kerttu, who roamed unknown lands in search of her nine lost brothers and Laurencia, who inspired an entire village to stand up for what was right.

STORIES OF COURAGE AND VALOUR

Author: Chitra Soundar

QUIRKY HISTORY: The Swan Car of Nabha & Other Unusual Stories from History

Edited by: Mini Menon

This list was compiled by HarperCollins Publishers India

Plague of Justinian

The Plague of Justinian (541–542 AD, with recurrences until 750) afflicted the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) as well as Sasanian Empires and port cities

around the Mediterranean Sea. Three of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history were caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, a

fatal infection also known as the plague. It arrived in Constanti-nople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 541 CE. Plague-rid-

den fleas hitched a ride on black rats and travelled across the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt. The plague

decimated Constantinople and ravaged Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia, killing around

30 to 50 million people in 200 years, equivalent to 13–26% of the

world population at the time of the first

outbreak.

Great Plague of London

The Great Plague in 1665-’66, the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague in England, killed around 100,000 people (almost a quarter of London's population),

in 18 months. Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, that spreads through the bite of an infected rat flea, the plague resurfaced nearly every 20 years

from 1348 to 1665, causing 40 outbreaks in 300 years. Each new plague killed 20% of the men, women and children in the British capital were

killed. By the 1500s, England imposed the first laws to isolate the sick. Bales of hay were hung outside homes affected by

plague. Those whose kin were infected carried a white pole while stepping out. Public

entertainment was banned and victims were shut in their homes. The regime

may have been the only way to overcome the last great

plague. In ways, it was similar to the ongoing

lockdowns due to Covid-19.

Black Death

The plague returned 800 years later as the Black Death, the Pestilence, or Great Bubonic Plague, the

most devastating pandemic in history which killed around 75-200 million people in Eurasia from 1347 to 1351.

Thomas Mockaitis, history professor at DePaul University, said though people then had no scientific understanding of

contagion, they knew it was linked to proximity. Officials in Ragusa, a Venice-controlled port, kept newly-arrived sailors in

isolation, first for 30 days (known in Venetian law as trentino) and later for 40 days (known quarantino) to ensure that they weren’t sick. It led

to the origin of the word quarantine, which marked the start of its practice in the Western world. The third plague pandemic (1855-1859) began in China

and spread to all inhabited continents, killing 10 million in India alone.

Smallpox

Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by one of two viruses — Variola major & Variola minor.

Endemic to Europe, Asia and Arabia for centuries, it killed 3 out of 10 people it infected and left the rest

with pockmarked scars. In 1767, the 11-year-old composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart survived a smallpox outbreak.

India's first record of smallpox or a disease similar to it was found in a medical book that dates back to 400 CE. The

devastation wrought severe havoc on native populations when the smallpox virus arrived in the 15th century with the

first European explorers in modern-day Mexico and the United States. Tens of millions of the indigenous population were keeled

as they had no natural immunity to smallpox. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977 and in 1980, he World

Health Organization confirmed its global eradication.

Cholera

Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The first cholera pandemic occurred in the

Bengal region from 1817 to 1824. In the early to mid-19th century, cholera killed tens of thousands

in England. A doctor, John Snow, suspected that the mystery disease lurked in London’s

drinking water. He studied hospital records and morgue reports to track the

precise locations of deadly outbreaks. He found a cluster of 500 fatal infections

surrounding the Broad Street pump, a popular city well for drinking water. He convinced local officials to remove the pump handle on the Broad Street drinking well, rendering it unusable, and the infections dried up. In India, scientist Sambhu Nath De discovered the cholera toxin, the animal model of cholera and demonstrated the method of transmission of the cholera pathogen.

WHAT HAVE PANDEMICS TAUGHT US?

Covid-19 is the latest disease that has been declared a pan-demic (disease that has spread globally) by the World Health Organisation. Lockdown and quarantine, that are part of our vocabulary, were shaped by man’s battle against pandemics.

1817-1824: 1st cholera

pandemic in Bengal

19th century: Cholera killed tens

of thousands in England

1665-66: Great Plague

killed

100,000 people

Plague riot in Moscow, Russia, in 1771

Plague victims being buried in Tournai (corresponding to present-day Belgium)

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA,

WHO.INT, HISTORY.COM

The Great Plague of London (1665)

An illustration that shows Death bringing cholera

Sambhu Nath De

Plague of Justinian

1347-1351:

75-200 mn were killed due to

Black Death (plague).1855-’59: Plague

pandemic killed 10 mn

in India

541/542-750 AD:

30 -50 mn people

(3–26% of the world population) were killed

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

■ An epidemic is the rapid spread of a disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time.

■ A pandemic is an epidemic occurring on a scale that crosses international boundaries, usually affecting a large number of people.

AN EPIDEMIC DIFFERS FROM PANDEMIC IN THESE WAYS

RECENT PANDEMICS Influenza

While mankind has known influenza for millennial as a seasonal outbreak, The

disease is spread by the Influenza A and B viruses. Influenza also

became a pandemic that claimed hundreds of millions of lives.

Over 100 years ago, Spanish flu claimed

around 150-175 million.

HIV/AIDS The Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) disease, caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), had infected an estimated 37.9 million people till 2018 and caused about 770,000 deaths. Experts and the WHO have variously described the disease as a global epidemic and as a pandemic.

541–542: Smallpox

killed 30-50 mn,

or 3-26% of the world's

population

A plague doctor and his typical apparel

MOST DEVASTATING PANDEMICS