Gas Humor

Peanuts...Forever

The only Toyota model not on the recall list!

A Dash of Laughter

IcePics iPhone App helps you catch perverts!

The IcePics iPhone app automatically sends photos and current coordinates to preselected individuals. This is supposed to keep you safe and alert friends if someone creepy approaches you in a dark alley, but there's a more amusing use: Party photography.

I mean, how often did you catch someone in the middle of a stupid activity only to have him snatch away your phone before you had a chance to send the picture to someone?

The Multitouch Wall

Multi-Touch gives a great deal of ease as freedom over a 3D objects. The key is to make sure it can be used for more than just data visualization. There has to be a very adaptive and scalable user-interface system setup to provide that control in an intuitive and easy to use way.

Sharks can become invisible!

As if they weren't scary enough, scientists have discovered that sharks can become invisible to prey/you using an optical trick. Not scared yet? Well, one of the invisible shark species is nicknamed the phantom hunter of the fjords. Run. Now.

The real name of the phantom hunter is Etmopterus spinax or velvet belly lantern shark. It lives in the deep waters of the northeastern Atlantic Ocean. According to a study published in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, the shark becomes invisible by regulating the photophores underneath its body. This makes their belly glow matching the color of the Sun's light above them. As a result, prey or predators looking up from lower depths are not able to see them.

Fortunately, not all sharks can become invisible: Only ten percent of the sharks can use this trick. And even better news: No flying invisible sharks with laser weapons have been discovered yet:)

The Gulf Disaster Video That BP Doesn't Want You To See

Those damn BP liars are making things even worse trying to fix the catastrophe they caused. Their efforts are turning the massive oil flood into giant underwater clouds made of corrosive particles. Here's the underwater video to prove it.

The chemical dispersants that BP is using—trying to fix the gigantic mess caused by their reckless actions—are turning the thick black tide into titanic clouds floating underneath the surface. The clouds are formed by particles made of oil combined with the dispersants. The resulting chemical monster can burn the skin of any human or animal that gets in contact with it.

The commander of the International Space Station said that the oil flood looked "very scary" from space. After diving into one of these clouds, Philippe Cousteau—grandson of the legendary Jacques-Yves Cousteau—gets a lot closer to reality: "This is a nightmare... a nightmare."

iPoop:The bathroom accessory of my dreams!

Inspired by a Photoshop contest, a clever young man came up with a simple yet brilliant multifunction bathroom accessory for laptops and tablets: The iPoop. I just really hope the concept's name doesn't get changed if anyone ever manufactures it.

Peter, the creator of this design, describes iPoop as a "bathroom wastebasket that doubles as a laptop/tablet stand" and is currently attempting to rally interest and catch the eye of a manufacturer using a Facebook group!

Soon You'll Unlock Hotel Room Doors By Playing Songs on Your Phone

Some Holiday Inn locations will soon begin using the OpenWays door system. This means that guests will be offered the option of having a unique melody sent to their smartphones and playing that to open doors instead of swiping keycards.

The OpenWays system is explained as being as secure as a traditional keycard system and sounds pretty simple to use: The technology sends an encrypted, unique audio code to a guest's phone prior to check-in. When played back outside the guestroom, the signal unlocks the door, letting the guest skip the front desk-guests would also receive a text message with their room assignments-while also eliminating the need for keycards.

The first hotels to test the technology will be the Holiday Inn Chicago O' Hare Rosemont and the Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center.

Wow!

Immaculate Creation!

For the first time, scientists have created life from scratch – well, sort of. Craig Venter's team has made a bacterial genome from smaller DNA subunits and then transplanted the whole thing into another cell.

What did Venter's team do?

The cell was created by stitching together the genome of a goat pathogen called Mycoplasma mycoides from smaller stretches of DNA synthesised in the lab, and inserting the genome into the empty cytoplasm of a related bacterium. The transplanted genome booted up in its host cell, and then divided over and over to make billions of M. mycoides cells.

Craig Venter and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California have previously accomplished both feats – creating a synthetic genome and transplanting a genome from one bacterium into another – but this time they have combined the two.

"It's the first self-replicating cell on the planet that's parent is a computer," says Venter, referring to the fact that his team converted a cell's genome that existed as data on a computer into a living organism.

How can they be sure that the new bacteria are what they intended?

Venter and his team introduced several distinctive markers into their synthesised genome. All of them were found in the synthetic cell when it was sequenced.

These markers do not make any proteins, but they contain the names of all the scientists on the project and several philosophical quotations written out in a secret code. The markers also contain the key to the code. Crack the code and you can read the messages.

Does this mean they created life?

It depends on how you define "created" and "life". Venter's team made the new genome out of DNA sequences that had initially been made by a machine, but bacteria and yeast cells were used to stitch together and duplicate the million base pairs that it contains. The cell into which the synthetic genome was then transplanted contained its own proteins, lipids and other molecules.

Venter himself maintains that he has not created life . "We've created the first synthetic cell," he says. "We definitely have not created life from scratch because we used a recipient cell to boot up the synthetic chromosome."

Whether you agree or not is a philosophical question, not a scientific one as there is no biological difference between synthetic bacteria and the real thing, says Andy Ellington, a synthetic biologist at the University of Texas in Austin. "The bacteria didn't have a soul, and there wasn't some animistic property of the bacteria that changed," he says.

What can you do with a synthetic cell?

Venter's work was a proof of principle, but future synthetic cells could be used to create drugs, biofuels and other useful products. He is collaborating with Exxon Mobil to produce biofuels from algae and with Novartis to create vaccines.

"As soon as next year, the flu vaccine you get could be made synthetically," Venter says.

Ellington also sees synthetic bacteria as having potential as a scientific tool. It would be interesting, he says, to create bacteria that produce a new amino acid – the chemical units that make up proteins – and see how these bacteria evolve, compared with bacteria that produce the usual suite of amino acids. "We can ask these questions about cyborg cells in ways we never could before."

What was the cost of creating life?

About $20 million. Cheap for a deity, expensive if you are a lab scientist looking to create your own synthetic bacterium. "This does not look like the sort of thing that's going to be doable by your average lab in the near future," Ellington says.

This reminds me of Frankenstein's monster! Are synthetic cells safe?

Yes. Venter's team took out the genes that allow M. mycoides to cause disease in goats. The bacterium has also been crippled so it is unlikely to grow outside of the lab. However, some scientists are concerned that synthetic organisms could potentially escape into the environment or be used by bioterrorists.

Ellington brushes aside those concerns, noting that the difficulty of engineering cells is beyond the scope of all would-be bioterrorists. "It's not a real threat," he says. "Unless you are Craig Venter with a crew of 20 postdocs you're not going to do this."

However, George Church, a synthetic biologist at Harvard Medical School, is calling for increased surveillance, licensing and added measures to prevent the accidental release of synthetic life. "Everybody in the synthetic biology ecosystem should be licensed like everybody in the aviation system is licensed."

The InfoLadies of Bangladesh, Armed With Bicycle and Netbook

Many people living in Bangladesh's impoverished villages haven't yet been reached by technology. But a determined band of InfoLadies—young women equipped with netbooks, phones, and medical equipment—are delivering technology's benefits to those people, one village at a time.

These villages—and the Bangladeshis who live in them—are held back in many ways merely by a scarcity of information. The InfoLadies are the bearers of that information. Their netbooks come preloaded with relevant content that can be easily translated to local languages, and their messenger bags carry items like blood pressure monitors and pregnancy kits. Says one InfoLady:

Ask me about the pest that's infecting your crop, common skin diseases, how to seek help if your husband beats you or even how to stop having children, and I may have a solution.

It seems that they often do have solutions—while the young, modern InfoLadies were initially regarded as something of a "scandal," they're now welcomed enthusiastically by individuals looking to check their blood pressure or increase the yield of their crops. One man, hoping to find work in technology, used an InfoLady's netbook to get a crash course on Microsoft Office. Before the InfoLadies arrived, he said, "I had only seen computers in books."

Chameleon-Magic!

GPS Signals Will Improve Thanks To Massive $8bn Overhaul

Despite fears last year that the US Air Force wouldn't be able to afford many more GPS satellites, a massive $8bn upgrade is being planned for overhauling the satellites, replacing each of the 24 satellites over the next decade.

The Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo will be working on the upgrade (said to be three years behind schedule), with 24 going "upstairs" and six being kept back in case of damage. The new satellites will be targeting outages, and will triple the signals available for commercial use—meaning that accessing Google Maps on our phones, using Sat-Navs in our cars, or even withdrawing money from ATMs will be faster and more accurate than before.

Google: The Next 6 Months of Android Will "Blow Your Mind"

Android 2.2 is out, and it's pretty nice! But what's next for Android? A better keyboard? More sexy? And how exactly does Google decide what goes into each version of Android anyway? Let's ask Lead Android Andy Rubin.

The highlights, if you don't want to read the interview below (which is fairly interesting if you're into Android, if I do say so myself):

• It's actually "pretty random" what goes into every version of Android, and
they don't plan more than one release out
• There's not much they can do about phones with custom UIs lagging behind on
new versions of Android
• They know the keyboard could use some work
• HTC may very well be on their own with Apple's patent lawsuit
• The next 6 months will "blow your mind"

Gizmodo: So my personal thing, the one question I want to ask personally, is when is the keyboard going to get better?

Andy: I mean, it does need a little bit of improvement. I think we did a pretty good job given that it's pretty generic for all different screen sizes—you have small screens, big screens, you have landscape, you have portrait. But what I think you start needing is more specific for the device. It's a framework—pretty generic—and we need to do a little better job. The voice team, I think, did a good job of basically making the keyboard kind of optional in some areas. I speak to my phone when I'm sending SMSes. I speak to it, and correct it a little bit with the keyboard. My primary use case is voice, but I think you're right, we do need to be kind of reviving it a little bit.

A lot of that, it's not necessarily the software—a lot of the time it's the type of touch screen the OEM uses. You've seen all those tests where they have like the Droid touchscreen, the Nexus touchscreen—they're all a little different and it's hard to make one keyboard work across all those different flavors of touch screens.

Gizmodo: We're up to Froyo 2.2 now, but we have devices with custom interfaces, which often lag behind latest version of Android. People with, say, a Droid Eris or a Hero waited around 6 months or longer just to get to 2.1, and now 2.2 is coming. So how do you address that sort of issue and where does Google stand on that type of thing?

Andy: I mean, if I was like a dictator I would enforce this stuff and everyone would have to have the same version at the same time and there would be a big switch with great fanfare, but it's just not in the cards. So we'll do a great version, and if they decide to adopt it, they'll adopt it. The difference between those two models: The first model, it's really hard for people to differentiate, everybody gets the same thing. So you are kind of commoditizing a whole slew of companies in the process and that's painful because people will literally go out of business potentially. In our model, it allows differentiation. At the platform layer, it is still compatible, so the apps in the marketplace will still run in the platform. But yeah, they have to modulate how quickly they can put their differentiating features on top of the base platform, and that's a race.

Gizmodo: But if you're not running 2.1, for instance, you can't get the official Twitter app.

Andy: I mean there are apps written for Vista, just like Photoshop CS5 does not run on Windows 3.1. I mean it's just a fact, there's nothing new here. This is how it has always been and that's why I made the distinction of legacy. We have legacy and if somebody wants to use a feature that's in the new OS, they really can't run that app on an older OS. So it's just things are happening so quickly that it becomes really obvious that we went from 2.0 to 2.2 in a very short time frame. I think that will slow down a little bit. I'm actually advocating coming out with releases around the buying seasons, May and September, October.

Gizmodo: So how does the update process go? How do you decide what goes into each release?

Andy: It's pretty random. We roadmap one release out, so we don't plan out the year, or two years or five years like a lot of other people do. It's more run like an internet company would run it, so there's a lot of iteration and what we are finding is innovation comes from all over the place. Like the Simplify Media guys, that was a company we acquired and now their stuff is in the Froyo release.

Gizmodo: HTC been in a sort of interesting position in terms of patents—they're licensing technology from Microsoft. That kind of actually makes Android not free for them to use. Are you worried about that in the future?

Andy: If I do an implementation of an MP3 codec, down the line, the guy selling the device—the guy that's making the money—he's going to have to pay a royalty to the MPEG association, the guys who own that intellectual property around that. If I implement the ActiveSync protocol and talked to Exchange servers, somebody's going to have to pay Microsoft for the royalty. And that happens in phones today—there's no difference between Android or something else.

Gizmodo: What is it you want to fix or add to an Android next? Like what's on your list of "Things I Wished I Could Have Done"?

Andy: Well, even to me, when we released the first version, it didn't feel like a 1.0, it kind of felt like a 0.8. If you look at where we were 18 months ago and where we are today, that just makes the future brighter. Because the rate at which we went from that kind of 0.8 to 2.2 was so fast that we're just earning how to master that type of engineering—that type of iterative engineering—and all of the innovation, I mean it's game on. There is going to be stuff that's just going to blow your mind. In 6 months. Before it was 18 months, now it's 6 months.

Gizmodo: So where do you want to see Android in a year or two, in terms of bigger goals?

Andy: For Android it's a numbers game. It's an end product with end OEMs and product categories today, but what we demonstrated at IO was pretty unique. We demonstrated big screen and small screen; we demonstrated ARM processor and Intel processor, and we demonstrated stuff from different OEMs: HTC, and Sony on the TV side. So look, we're cross product category, cross manufacturer, cross CPU architecture, agnostic, and we have all the services pointed to the platform, and the platform is just going to go pretty broad across those product categories. It's never been done before.

If you look at it as a graph, we're right in the middle of a hockey stick right now. You don't realize that you're right in the middle of it until after the fact and you're looking at it—oh that's where it was, but we're right in the middle of it right now. So I think it's just going to be exponential in the amount of adoption.

Thanks to Google VP of Engineering, and head of Android Andy Rubin for talking to us!

Send an email to matt buchanan, the author of this post, at matt@gizmodo.com.

Eureka

And thus, dear students, we have arrived at the Formula for understanding women!

Oil Reporter App Makes Sure No Toxic Sludge Goes Unnoticed

Oil Reporter isn't a public shaming campaign for BP—no, that'll take care of itself just fine, thanks. This iPhone app, which lets Gulf Coast residents record every oily bird and patch of ruined swampland, is about fixing things.

Oil Reporter isn't that different from any other crowd-sourced reporting app, technically speaking. I mean, in terms of raw functionality, it's not that different from, say, the app AT&T has its customers use to report dropped calls: Each report contains relevant information about the location, time and circumstances of the incident, which presumably help the recipient fix the problem.

Oil Reporter sends its decidedly more urgent reports to an organization called CrisisCommons, which is dedicated to aggregating massive amounts of crowd-sourced data to help NGOs, relief organizations and corporations and government agencies involved understand the scope and severity of a given problem. (And honestly, most stories about the Gulf oil spill are actually about changes in the known scope and severity of the disaster, right?)

Oil Reporter is free, obviously, and if you live on the Gulf Coast, or in any of the areas where the spill is projected to contaminate, you should be put off by its minimal set of launch features—CrisisCommons developed Oil Reporter first and foremost as a framework for other disaster relief apps, so features like native geotagging are on their way, hopefully (scratch that: probably) before the earth stops vomiting its blood into some of the most fragile ecosystems in the country. [iTunes via 148Apps]

This is the end of the world!

Creature comfort: the British 'safari jet' that transforms into a plush viewing platform

There are some people who want the comforts of home with them - even when 'roughing it' on safari in Africa. For these five-star campers, BAE Systems and Design Q have come up with the ultimate in travel luxury. The four-engined Avro Business Jet Explorer Four has been designed to land on short runways and uneven landing strips, delivering its wealthy passengers directly into wildlife areas. Then, with the flick of a switch, a door on the side of the jet opens and a viewing platform extends from the fuselage - offering spectacular open-air views!

For a cool £16 million, A-list animal lovers will get the chance to by the 'safari jet', which has room for two pilots and eight passengers and crew. Inside the aircraft, a galley kitchen can deliver gourmet meals to an eight-seat dining area, and large sofas fold out to provide on-board beds. To top it all off, once passengers have had their fill of the good life and wildlife in any given area, they simply transform the aircraft back into its 'flying mode' and jet off to the next destination.

The 100ft aircraft is being built to order in the UK, and a spokesman for BAE/Design Q says the aircraft will 'offer a new level of sophistication for the discerning customer'. With marble floors and quality finishes throughout, the interiors can be modified and designed to suit the individual needs of the owner. For more remote locations and rougher landing grounds, the jet can be fitted with stronger and bigger tyres, and the fuselage can be strengthened to cope with the extra strain. The finished product, will look like these images, based on BAE designs.

IVF, Fertility Drugs Might Boost Autism Risk

Children whose mothers took fertility drugs were almost twice as likely to have autism as other children, new research finds. Being conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF) or born prematurely also seemed to up the risk of autism, according to another study.

In the first study, researchers asked 111 women taking part in the Nurses' Health Study II who had a child with an autism spectrum disorder about their history of fertility problems and use of ovulation-inducing drugs, such as Clomid or gonadotropins.

About 34 percent of moms with an autistic child had used fertility drugs compared to about 24 percent of some 3,900 mothers without an autistic child, the researchers found.

Clomid and gonadotropins are often used as a first-line treatment for infertility, defined as trying for a year or longer to get pregnant without success, said lead study author Kristen Lyall, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Nearly 47 percent of moms of autistic kids reported infertility, compared to about 33 percent of the other mothers, her team found.

One caveat to those statistics is that older women are both more likely to have fertility problems and to take ovulation-inducing drugs, and prior research has shown older moms are also more likely to have autistic children.

In the study, the median maternal age at the time the first child was born was 35, compared to about 25 for the general U.S. population, Lyall noted.

Even so, when the age of the mother and pregnancy complications were taken into account -- which can also heighten the risk of autism -- women with infertility and who used ovulation drugs still had a twofold greater chance of having a child with an autism spectrum disorder.

The absolute risk for any one mother to have a child with autism remained relatively low, the authors noted. In the study, about 4 percent of mothers who took fertility drugs had a child with an autism spectrum disorder, compared to about 2 percent of moms who didn't take fertility drugs.

Still, "we found that a history of infertility and use of ovulation-inducing drugs was significantly associated with an increased risk of having a children with an autism spectrum disorder," said Lyall, who noted that the findings are preliminary, involved a relatively small sample of women and needed to be confirmed by future research.

The autism risk was less pronounced among younger mothers who took fertility drugs, Lyall added. Among women aged 25 to 34, about 3.1 percent who had infertility and took fertility drugs had an autistic child, compared to 2.6 percent of women in that age group who didn't.

The study was to be presented last week at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Philadelphia.

Another study to be presented at the meeting, this time by Israeli researchers, found that in vitro fertilization and pre-term birth were both associated with an increased risk of autism in offspring.

About 10.2 percent of 461 children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder were conceived using IVF, while about 3.5 percent of children in the general Israeli population are conceived that way, according to the study.

Moms who had IVF tended to be older, with a median age of 32.6 years compared to just under 31 years of age for mothers who didn't get IVF, the study authors noted.

Nearly 4 percent of the kids with autism were born prematurely, while nearly 5 percent had a low birth weight, compared to about 1 percent in the general population.

"Prematurity and low birth weight also adversely affect the child's functioning in adaptive skills," noted study lead author Dr. Ditza Zachor, who is director of the Autism Center at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center at Tel Aviv University. "This means that these two risk factors act as 'second hits' that affect the child more than just having autism."

Zachor stressed that the findings are preliminary and more widespread research is needed. "This will give us the answer if these procedures carry any risk for the baby."

So what does all this mean for couples struggling to conceive? Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, director of medical research at Kennedy Krieger Institute's Center for Autism and Related Disorders in Baltimore, said that women taking fertility drugs or undergoing IVF should not be unnecessarily alarmed.

The vast majority of children conceived in this way will not end up with autism, and most children who have autism were not conceived using IVF or with the help of fertility drugs, he said.

However, many physicians who work with kids with autism have remarked that lots of their patients seem to have been conceived via IVF. Prior to these studies, the observation was largely anecdotal, he said.

"I don't think we are at a point yet where we can make recommendations, but we are getting to a point where we are beginning to understand there probably is a relationship," Zimmerman said.

The reasons for the connection are not known, but it may be something about the process of in vitro fertilization, in which a sperm and egg are joined outside the womb, an embryo is created and implanted, or sometimes frozen and stored, then thawed for later use. Taking fertility drugs in early pregnancy could also contribute, Zimmerman said.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that's characterized by problems with social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and restricted interests and behaviors.

No more sex for procreation?

A bold study estimates that the traditional method of making babies will be a dying art, replaced by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) technology.

According to a new report, advances in IVF technology mean it will be possible to produce embryos with a success rate of virtually 100 per cent and cultivate them in computer-controlled storage facilities, reported Times of London.

The advancement will ease the pressure on couples who have delayed having children until their late 30s or 40s.

They may routinely opt for IVF rather than sex to reproduce, giving themselves a greater chance of conceiving through IVF than young adults in peak condition, who have only a one-in-four chance a month of conceiving naturally.

"Natural human reproduction is at best a fairly inefficient process." says Mr John Yovich, co-author of report.

Present fertility techniques meant that the healthiest of couples have a 50 per cent chance of success using IVF, said the report.

However, authors of the study, published in the Journal Reproductive Bio Medicine Online, said that rapid advances in artificial reproduction for farm animals - which have led to a near-100 per cent success rate in the production of cattle embryos - claim the technology could easily be adapted for humans.

Mr John Yovich, a co-author of the report, told The Times: "We are not quite at that stage yet, but it's where we're heading. Natural human reproduction is at best a fairly inefficient process. Within the next five to 10 years, couples approaching 40 will access the IVF industry first when they want to have a baby."

Gedis Grudzinskas, a Harley Street infertility specialist and editor of Reproductive Bio Medicine Online, said: "It wouldn't surprise me if IVF does become significantly more efficient than natural reproduction, but I doubt whether you could ever completely guarantee it would work."

The Tata Gesture

Ratan Tata is the chairman of Indian Hotels who own the Taj Mahal Hotel Mumbai, which was the target of the terrorists. Hotel President a 5 star property also belongs to Indian Hotels.

The following is really touching.

What Ratan Tata did for the Mumbai victims....

A. The Gesture
-All category of employees including those who had completed even 1 day as casuals were treated on duty during the time the hotel was closed.
-Relief and assistance to all those who were injured and killed
-The relief and assistance was extended to all those who died at the railway station, surroundings including the “Pav-Bhaji” vendor and the pan shop owners.
-During the time the hotel was closed, the salaries were sent by money order.
-A psychiatric cell was established in collaboration with Tata Institute of Social Sciences to counsel those who needed such help.The thoughts and anxieties going on people’s mind was constantly tracked and where needed psychological help provided.
-Employee outreach centers were opened where all help, food, water, sanitation, first aid and counseling was provided. 1600 employees were covered by this facility.
-Every employee was assigned to one mentor and it was that person’s responsibility to act as a “single window” clearance for any help that the person required.
-Ratan Tata personally visited the families of all the 80 employees who in some manner – either through injury or getting killed – were affected.
-The dependents of the employees were flown from outside Mumbai to Mumbai and taken care off in terms of ensuring mental assurance and peace. They were all accommodated in Hotel President for 3 weeks.
-Ratan Tata himself asked the families and dependents – as to what they wanted him to do.
-In a record time of 20 days, a new trust was created by the Tatas for the purpose of relief of employees.
-What is unique is that even the other people, the railway employees, the police staff, the pedestrians who had nothing to do with Tatas were covered by compensation. Each one of them was provided subsistence allowance of Rs. 10K per month for all these people for 6 months.
-A 4 year old granddaughter of a vendor got 4 bullets in her and only one was removed in the Government hospital. She was taken to Bombay hospital and several lacs were spent by the Tatas on her to fully recover her.
-New hand carts were provided to several vendors who lost their carts.
-Tata will take responsibility of life education of 46 children of the victims of the terror.
-This was the most trying period in the life of the organisation. Senior managers including Ratan Tata were visiting funeral to funeral over the 3 days that were most horrible.
-The settlement for every deceased member ranged from Rs. 36 to 85 lacs [One lakh rupees tranlates to approx 2200 US $ ]
-In addition to the following benefits:
a. Full last salary for life for the family and dependents;
b. Complete responsibility of education of children and dependents – anywhere in the world.
c. Full Medical facility for the whole family and dependents for rest of their life.
d. All loans and advances were waived off – irrespective of the amount.
e. Counselor for life for each person

B. Epilogue
How was such passion created among the employees? How and why did they behave the way they did?
The organization is clear that it is not something that someone can take credit for. It is not some training and development that created such behavior. If someone suggests that – everyone laughs!
It has to do with the DNA of the organization, with the way Tata culture exists and above all with the situation that prevailed that time. The organization has always been telling that customers and guests are #1 priority
The hotel business was started by Jamshedji Tata when he was insulted in one of the British hotels and not allowed to stay there.
He created several institutions which later became icons of progress, culture and modernity. IISc is one such institute. He was told by the rulers that time that he can acquire land for IISc to the extent he could fence the same. He could afford fencing only 400 acres.
When the HR function hesitatingly made a very financially high proposal to Ratan – he said – do you think we are doing enough?
The whole approach was that the organization would spend several hundred crores in re-building the property – why not spend equally on the employees who gave their life?

Errors at UK IVF clinics double in 12 months

The number of mistakes at IVF centres in England and Wales rose from 182 in 2007/8 to 334 in 2008/9.

Blunders included embryos being lost or implanted in the wrong woman, and eggs being fertilised with another man's sperm.

The figures from Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFEA), the IVF regulatory body, were obtained by BBC Radio Five Live's Donal MacIntyre show.

The HFEA said the errors represented less than 1 per cent of more than 50,000 IVF cycles carried out.

One couple were told by the University Hospital of Wales's IVF clinic that their last remaining embryos had been lost during treatment.

The pair, identified only as Clare and Gareth, had been trying for a baby for eight years.

Clare told the BBC: ''I was sat there, gowned up, waiting to go in and have a transfer. They said you've got one embryo remaining, the other two embryos have gone missing.

''They said in the next sentence I can assure you they haven't gone into anyone else. Those were two potential babies.''

The centre in Cardiff was responsible for another serious mix-up three years ago when a couple's last viable embryo was placed in the wrong woman. An investigation found serious failings at the clinic.

The clinic said its success rate in recovering embryos is among the highest in the world and all incidents are reported to the HFEA.

Clare and Gareth's solicitor, Guy Forster, of law firm Irwin Mitchell, said he has dealt with a dozen couples involved in similar incidents at different clinics around the country in the past 12 months.

He said: ''It may be perhaps that the embryos have been lost, or in the worst case scenario an embryo has been transferred into the wrong patient. It's deeply disturbing.''

Dr Sammy Lee, a fertility expert at University College Hospital, said: ''The key failure of the HFEA is that when they ask clinics to put in special procedures, they're not enforcing them.

''There's no point simply putting a request in writing and then expecting everything to be all right. You need to make sure that when you require something, that you have a way of enforcing it.''

Accidental surrogate hands over baby after IVF mistake

Carolyn Savage gave birth to a beautiful baby boy at Mercy St Vincent Medical Centre in Toledo, but he wasn't hers.

Due to a mix up at the fertility clinic, Mrs Savage had been implanted with an embryo belonging to Shannon and Paul Morell.

Given the choice of terminating the pregnancy or handing the baby over once he was born, she chose to carry the child to term.

Mrs Morell, whose maiden name was also Savage, had six embryos frozen after giving birth to twins. But when they were ready to try for a third child they got an urgent call from their fertility doctor, the New York Post reports.

"I'm so sorry, Shannon, but there's been a terrible incident in our lab," he said. "Your embryos have thawed."

"Your embryos were transferred to another woman."

Due to a human error at the lab, Mrs Morell's embryos were filed under her maiden name and transferred to Mrs Savage.

"I couldn't have felt more violated," Mrs Morell wrote in a new memoir, Misconception. "Of all the people in the world - of all the people who have embryos at this clinic - why did this happen to us?"

The two couples met during the pregnancy and the women warmed to each other. They bonded and became friends. The baby, named Logan, also has the middle name Savage.

"There's a connection with these people," Mrs Morell said in an interview with The New York Post. "He's given that name so he'll always remember what happened."

Birds, Bees & IVF

First it was the birds and the bees. Now children are being taught about modern reproduction including IVF and adoption along with traditional methods in a new sexuality education book.

Adelaide author and former school teacher Gina Dawson introduces the idea in her book So That's Where I Came From that families are no longer necessarily a mum, a dad and their naturally-conceived children.

Instead, the Black Dog Books title for six to 10-year-olds explains some families are made through "alternatives" including the help of science (in vitro fertilisation) and adoption.

It also touches on gay and lesbian family structures.

It is an updated resource for families who have turned to the pages of international best-seller Where Did I Come From? for more than 30 years to learn the basics of reproduction.

"It talks about conception the natural way, but also shows some people can't make a baby like that so they might need help," Ms Dawson said.


The book says "there are several ways to start a baby. . . Most babies start when an egg and sperm meet through sex, some begin through IVF when doctors help the sperm and egg meet and occasionally babies start with a donor egg or sperm".

Ms Dawson, who is now the director of Family Life SA, said she was unable to find an up-to-date resource that tackled the topic.

"Many parents want to address this with their children early in life but don't know how. This gives them a warm and friendly way to open up discussion about the topic," Ms Dawson said.

"It is inclusive of all children and families who didn't fit into the original book."

University of South Australia senior lecturer in early childhood Dr Elspeth McInnes said often parents - particularly those in non-conventional families - felt anxious about broaching the topic with their children.

Glandore mother of two Vicki Mangelsen appreciated having a book on this sensitive subject.

"It's a great way for families to sit down together and talk about it," Ms Mangelsen said.

Financial compulsions lead to patients asking for more Embryos

Birth rate of twins and triplets is set to increase as more Australian women undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) insist doctors to implant multiple embryos to reduce the cost of fertility treatment.

Despite multiple births carrying a five-fold greater risk of death, premature delivery or other complications, clinic chiefs say more couples are taking the chance.

According to experts, cuts to health care rebate have pushed up patient costs by about $1500 for each IVF cycle, forcing many to delay or abandon attempts to conceive. There is more pressure from cash-strapped patients to implant multiple embryos to boost chances of pregnancy in one cycle, Sydney Morning Herald reported.

'They're saying, we understand that it's more dangerous but we can't afford to do another cycle so we'll have two embryos put back and we'll deal with the consequences. If our (premature) baby... has to have eight weeks in intensive care, well medicare pays for that,' said Gab Kovacs, international medical director at Monash IVF in Melbourne.

Medical director of Fertility First in Hurstville, Anne Clark, said while some patients asked for more than a single-embryo transfer, more opted out of having a second child through IVF.

IVF Australia medical director and Fertility Society president Peter Illingworth said the trend would affect the health system.

'There can be long-term health complications for twins born as a result of IVF,' he said.

'Ideally, we would like to put one embryo in at a time because of those risks but we are getting more pressure from patients to do two.'

In January, federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon capped Medicare safety net payments - which paid 80 percent of the gap between doctors' fees and the Medicare rebate - after a review found specialists were charging patients excessive fees.

According to government, patients would be no worse off if specialists charged $6000, the cost of a typical cycle. But doctors said the average cycle cost up to $7500, or higher if patients required extra treatment.

Sandra Dill, from infertility support group Access Australia, said it had been receiving 30 to 40 calls and e-mails a week since the changes, from patients complaining to be under increased financial stress.

Prisoner's legal bid for IVF treatment

A Supreme Court judge has ordered a speedy trial for a Victorian prisoner seeking IVF treatment.

Kimberley Castles, 45, has a year left on her sentence for welfare fraud at the Tarrengower Prison near Maldon, north-west of Melbourne.

She has to have IVF treatment before her 46th birthday in seven months, otherwise she becomes ineligible for the procedure.

Her bid to access immediate treatment was refused in court today.

But her lawyer, Rachel Ball, says she is pleased the court has decided to expedite the trial.

"The key human rights in this case are Kimberley's right to privacy, to make her own decisions about her own family, her right to be treated fairly in prison," she said.

"That includes her right to access health care equivalent to the health care that's available to everyone else in the community."

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