Dr S Ranganathan

Asking some irrational and even irresponsible questions also sometime may help us to understand the ground realities especially when our mind behaves like the needle of a field compass, always moves and shows only one direction irrespective of the position of the compass.   Today we are living with an irrevocable conclusion; we are so determined and adamant that everything on earth is happening due to novel coronavirus.   No disease exists today other than COVID 19, no pathogen exists today other than novel coronavirus and the human death is not possible if there is no coronavirus…… The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the places we go, the people with whom we interact, the newspaper we read the Television channel that we watch…. why even in our private thoughts and thinking, only corona is present and is only dominating.   We are artfully programmed to assume and fear that our death is certain if we cross coronavirus and if we esc...

The entire world to a certain extent and India in particular, is running and galloping after novel coronavirus and unfortunately India could not order shoot at sight at the virus because the virus is invisible to all those gladiators and the only way the virus can be shot down is shoot the carrier or the COVID 19 patient.   Except killing the host so brutally, India is doing everything possible to put the asymptomatic people inside the pigeon hole in the name of quarantine and making the entire zone isolated fortunately not with barbed wire and finally make them feel their life not worth living in India.    We must ask a strong question that are we making the so called ‘Homo sapiens’ the ecological trap of novel coronavirus by overdoing and being naively over ambitious?     Ecological trap means the rapid environmental changes that induce or force the organism to choose and settle with even in the hostile or poor quality habitat despite the best hab...

Certain differentiation are quite difficult to make even when the events are different although not separable.   In science sometime we must read the meaning simply from the action per see and sometime, we must also learn to draw the meaning from the perspective of the intention behind the action or the process.   The immune protection is although appears simple to define but to differentiate it from immune fight is not that easy scientifically.   In the case of novel coronavirus, there are two types immune reactions (?) may be taking place in human system and one wins and the other mostly loses the game.   In all those asymptomatic people and those who exhibit mild symptoms, the immune cells appears to plays defensive role, making the game boring like how the defensive football game would be and how such game can kill the thrill and charm among football enthusiast.   The virus loses the game when the immunity go for defensive mode to protect th...

One of the earliest or the first pre-symptoms of novel coronavirus or those who have entered the early phase of COVID 19 is loss of smell.   The people are reported to virtually lose their smelling ability or in other words, the faculty of olfaction go numbed.   Among most mammals, man is the only animal who uses the sense of smell poorly and rarely because the faculty of olfaction is poorly evolved in man.   Man has developed several advanced systems and technologies to recognise his danger, natural calamity, Tsunami or any other disasters. In true biological sense, man doesn’t need his nose to detect his prey nor need the same to recognize the approaching predator.   Nor man follow chemical or pheromone based communication at iner-societal level or to attract his sex mate.   Virtually the nose is just a cartilaginous projection to inhale and exhale air and the same can be achieved even without nose; just with a pair of simple opening.   ...

Like the Siamese twins, the incidence of novel coronavirus is spiralling up along with our economic disaster.   Loss of livelihood, hopelessness, uncertainty and fear of possible death etc., are keep emerging like how the fixed number of eggs that forms the clutch size of several birds and even if we remove one egg, the bird would lay another egg to fill the quorum of the clutch.   The clutch size is always maintained.   So is the tyranny of people due to lockdown. Many fruiting plants are known to incur huge economic burden in order to save their ecosystem; pollinators and seed dispersers even when they gain nothing from the given season at the given time.    The best examples are parthenocarpy and stenospermocarpy.   Parthenocarpy is a condition where fruits are formed without fertilization and mostly will have unfertilized seeds.   On the other hand, stenospermocarpy means the fruit is formed without seeds.     The above conditi...

We must elaborate our search and must try to understand the evolutionary intricacies of ‘neophobic’ and ‘neophilic’ aspects of novel coronavirus.   Although the strict ethological principles or models of invertebrate or vertebrate we cannot apply to a virus, but evolution doesn’t differentiate a virus from a whale because both have the same biological necessity to survive and hence would perform all essential biological activities such as injection, digestion of food (assimilation), excretion and finally procreation.   To achieve the above objectives, all life form adapt either predation mode of survival, parasitism or as decomposer or scavenger niche.   The question is how the different life forms have evolved and may evolve over time?   Do any species ever evolve to explore entire world and in such exploration, would try to eliminate a particular species that is so dominant on earth – Homo sapiens?   How do the new species evolve; with neophobic o...