Friday, January 17, 2014
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News For The Day

Google’s Latest Moon Shot Is a Smart Contact Lens for Diabetes Patients – NBC
By Liz Gannes

Google has shrunk down a chip and sensor system so small it can be embedded in a contact lens.
Instead of a circuit board, the tiny pieces are connected to a circular gold foil antenna mounted on a flexible plastic-like material that comfortably sits on a person’s eye, outside of their own sight.
Why? To help people with diabetes.

Google’s smart contact lens project is designed to measure the glucose content of the wearer’s tears, once every second. Theoretically, it could be a noninvasive way for diabetics to keep their blood sugar levels in check, rather than pricking their skin to sample their blood multiple times per day, or wearing a continuous monitoring device that’s stabbed into their side to tap into subcutaneous tissue.

If the smart contact lens ever makes it to market, it could be welcome news for the more than 380 million people worldwide with diabetes — a number that could reach beyond 590 million by 2035, according to the International Diabetes Federation.
The smart contact lens was designed by a team of chip designers, software engineers, electrical chemists and polymer chemists from Google X, the company’s secretive in-house research division that also designs other so-called “moon shot” projects like self-driving cars and Internet-connected eyewear. It holds the promise that maybe someday diabetes patients will be able to get ongoing measurements without ever breaking their skin.

It’s not glitter. It’s a chip.
But Google says it has no intention of producing and selling the medical device it has built. Rather, it wants to publicize the work it has done so far in the hope of finding partners among companies that develop medical devices and vision products.
Google has itself brought the smart lenses to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and early independent clinical studies have begun. Word of the project leaked last week after project lead Brian Otis and others met with the FDA in December, with Bloomberg surmising that the meeting might relate to Google Glass.

Connecting contact lenses and computers worn on the face is the obvious leap, but it’s one that Google is pointedly not making — at least not now.
The smart contact lens project is “completely separate” from Google Glass, Otis told Re/code this week, though he noted that Glass project founder Babak Parviz also advises the contact lens project.

Both Otis and Parviz were formerly professors at University of Washington, where they had started work together on building a tiny glucose meter that could be worn on the eye — though they were using PET plastic, like that used to make water bottles, so early prototypes couldn’t actually be worn. Google X allowed them to pour two years of work into revamping the project. They were able to actually mold and fabricate the lenses on campus, and have developed tools to work on such a small scale.

“My passion is trying to shrink down systems to make them smaller and smaller,” Otis said. “Doing it for a project that could have such an impact is really a dream come true.”

The company is looking for partners to move forward with the next steps. Otis said he wasn’t sure what the precise nature of that relationship would be, but it might be a technology licensing arrangement. Google does know that it doesn’t want to manufacture and sell the product.

“Our philosophy is, you can’t design a medical device in a vacuum,” Otis said.
Much work lies ahead. Even overlooking the fact that this is eons away from FDA approval, it’s actually not even clear that tear fluid from eyes would be a reliable indicator of glucose levels in the bloodstream.

It has historically been hard to test tear fluid because it cannot be easily collected in large volumes, and any process that helps generate it and extract it from the eye — like chopping onions or plucking nose hairs — disrupts the environment and might change its content.

Dr. David Klonoff, medical director at the Diabetes Research Institute at Mills-Peninsula Health Services, has worked with Google on a clinical study to evaluate that ability to detect glucose in tears, without using the contacts. His group is still analyzing the results and hasn’t reported conclusions.

“But I would say I’ve seen the data and I’m optimistic,” he said.
Google isn’t alone in exploring different “bloodless” approaches to glucose monitoring.

Grove Instruments and others are looking at what’s known as near-infrared spectroscopy. Essentially, these tools shine infrared light on the earlobe and infer the level of glucose in the blood by the amount of light that comes through on the other side.

Other researchers have investigated the possibility of measuring glucose from saliva or exhaled breath.
None of these techniques have earned FDA approval so far, but if any ultimately prove effective and safe, it could mean not only less pain for patients — but longer and healthier lives.

Given the pain, blood, calloused fingers and overall inconvenience of today’s options, many patients simply don’t check their blood sugar enough — and thus don’t properly calibrate their lifestyle and medication.

If new devices like Google’s work, “people could take as many glucose readings as they want per day without finger sticks,” said Kelly Close, who has lived with diabetes for 27 years and edits diaTribe, a closely followed newsletter about diabetes products and research. “They could avoid the highs and lows, and ultimately the long-term complications of the disease like heart attacks, strokes, blindness and kidney failure.”


This would be a great invention, considering the annoyance and discomfort of pricking your fingertips several times every day to test blood. I am so glad that my basic health has always been good. Diabetes is such a debilitating disease that it must be very discouraging to know that you have a lifetime of constant management ahead of you, and it's incurable after all that.

I wonder what else Google is up to? This article mentioned Google Glass and the self-driving car. I personally don't want to see self-driving cars on the road, and I don't really know the usefulness or need for the Google Glass apparatus. It looks like something to distract a person dangerously while they are crossing a busy street, perhaps, but I guess if you don't have to sit down at a desk to do your computing that makes life easier. Even if I won the Lotto I wouldn't buy any of these gadgets, though, unless I did have diabetes. Still, it's good to see that science is always making progress – more things to spend money on and boost the economy.





Christie campaign organization on subpoena list in bridge probe, source says – NBC

By Michael Isikoff, Kelly O'Donnell and Erin McClam, NBC News


The special committee investigating the manufactured traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge plans to issue a subpoena for Gov. Chris Christie’s re-election campaign organization, a source involved in the probe told NBC News on Thursday.
The chairman of the committee had planned to subpoena only Bridget Kelly, Christie’s since-fired deputy chief of staff, and Bill Stepien, who managed both of the governor’s campaigns, the source said.

Three organizations and 17 people are receiving subpoenas in the investigation into the bridge traffic scandal that rocked New Jersey and its governor, Chris Christie. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.

But the subpoena list grew after the committee hired Reid Schar, a high-powered former federal prosecutor, the source said. The chairman, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, told reporters that roughly 20 subpoenas would be issued — 17 people and three organizations, all in New Jersey.

Subpoena targets include David Samson, the Port Authority’s chair, and Regina Egea, Christie’s next-in-line to be chief of staff.

Those subpoenaed will have about two weeks to respond, Wisniewski said, adding that he doesn't expect the committee to meet until mid-February.  

The committee was formed by the state Assembly to look into why lanes from Fort Lee, N.J., onto the bridge were closed for four days in September, outraging drivers, slowing emergency vehicles and practically turning the city into a parking lot.
Emails and other documents that have surfaced since last week suggest that the lanes were closed as an act of political payback against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee. The resulting scandal is the biggest of Christie’s career.

The governor last week fired Kelly, who sent the email last August — “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” — that appeared to set the jam in motion. He also cut ties with Stepien.

Christie, trying to get back to business, vowed to victims of Hurricane Sandy on Thursday that “nothing will distract me” from the work of rebuilding the state.
“I was born here, I was raised here, I’m raising my family here, and this is where I intend to spend the rest of my life,” he said. “Whatever test they put in front of me, I will meet those tests because I’m doing it on your behalf.”

At an appearance with homeowners on the Jersey Shore, the governor took note of the large media contingent following him and said: “I hope all these people with cameras will frequent the local businesses.”

The committee held its first meeting Thursday and went into closed session to discuss subpoenas. Wisniewski said he wanted to make sure people receiving subpoenas find out through the appropriate channels, not from reporters.

Republicans on the committee were already raising questions about the conduct of the investigation. They objected to rules giving Wisniewski sole control over subpoenaed documents.

“We’re one hour into this process, and bipartisanship is already slipping away,” said Assemblyman Gregory McGuckin.
Wisniewski pledged to use the power fairly and invited Republicans to judge him by his conduct. He said that at this point in the investigation, the committee will not be subpoenaing documents from the governor.

Christie said in his State of the State address this week that his office would cooperate “with all appropriate inquiries to make sure that this breach of trust does not happen again.”

Besides the special Assembly committee, inquiries or full-scale investigations have been promised by the state Senate, the bridge-controlling Port Authority, the U.S. Senate transportation committee and the Justice Department.

NBC's Michael Isikoff reports on the New Jersey legislature's investigation into the George Washington Bridge closures and why Democrats in the state believe this scandal is so serious.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia on Thursday released a 17-page letter from the Port Authority answering his questions about the matter. He said the Port Authority submission included “zero evidence” of a traffic study — the original explanation for the lane closures.

The Port Authority submission lays out concerns raised within the Port Authority before the lanes were closed, including that it would create serious congestion and raise the risk of collisions. It says that David Wildstein, a Christie appointee at the Port Authority, ordered and oversaw the lane closures.

Wildstein, who has since resigned, was the recipient of Kelly’s “Time for some traffic problems” email on Aug. 13. The lane closures began Sept. 9.

Christie’s office announced Thursday that it had hired a prominent law firm to help with its internal investigation, and to cooperate with the inquiry opened by the Justice Department.

Christie’s legal team will be headed by Randy Mastro, a former federal prosecutor in New York who specialized in organized crime cases, and a former chief of staff to then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Schar, counsel for the special Assembly committee, helped convict former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2011 of trying to sell President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat.



Christie has his lawyers lined up and is trying to keep pace with the investigation while doing damage control, saying “I hope all these people with cameras will frequent the local businesses.” I hope he turns out to be unaware of the damage that was done until it was over. I wanted him to be a Republican who could be trusted. We will see. As more articles appear, I will clip them if they have new information in them.




After White House, high hopes in private life for 'superwoman' Michelle Obama – NBC

By Elizabeth Chuck, Staff Writer, NBC News

Michelle Obama, who turns 50 on Friday, is only just starting to build her legacy.
Presidential historians expect her commitment to fighting childhood obesity, supporting military families and encouraging good education and volunteer work to deepen in the next couple of years, and anticipate she will fully devote herself to those issues after she and her family leave the White House.

"I will be in my early 50s when I leave here, and I have so much more that I should do,” Obama recently said in an interview with People magazine. “I don’t have the right to just sit on my talents or blessings. I’ve got to keep figuring out ways to have an impact — whether as a mother or as a professional or as a mentor to other kids."

The first lady is likely to continue promoting Let's Move, her fitness and wellness program, and Join Forces, which assists military families, plus return to the philanthropy work that she did before she became first lady. But she's unlikely to make a run for public office, experts say.

Robert Watson, a presidential historian and professor at Lynn University in Florida, expects the final year of President Obama's second term to be a big year for Michelle Obama. 

"If history holds, I expect Mrs. Obama will enlarge in her role," he said, pointing to the fact that she already is making more of an effort to promote a good education than she did in the president's first term.

"She's going to assert herself. We're going to see more of the Ivy League-educated lawyer and former CEO," he said, adding that while presidents often have difficult second terms marred by sagging approval ratings or scandals, as was the case with Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, first ladies "tend to spread their wings" during second terms.

This term and beyond, she could also continue to be the go-to public figure for health and fitness awareness, said Tom Hubbard, vice president for policy at the non-profit health policy institute NEHI.

"There's unquestionably been higher awareness of these issues amongst policymakers at the local level," he said. "Mrs. Obama has been the public face of that, and that's what may be the lasting legacy."

Obama has done a particularly good job emphasizing the need for more physical activity for communities who need it using scientific evidence.
"She's elevated health and wellness and specifically good nutrition and the need for daily physical activity higher on the radar screen of America, particularly in regards to kids, lower-income kids, minority kids and making this a leadership issues in the African-American community, which has disparate rates of chronic disease that can be tracked back to nutrition and physical activity needs," he said.

When the Obama family moves out of the White House in 2016, Michelle Obama is likely to set up a foundation for her causes, Watson said.

"I think she'll always be active in her community," said Myra Gutin, a professor at Rider University in New Jersey who has written two books on first ladies.
Obama, who hails from Chicago's South Side, has a rich history in her hometown: In the 1990s, she was assistant commissioner of planning and development in Chicago's City Hall before becoming the founding executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, a program that prepares youth for public service. Later, she developed the first community service program at University of Chicago and as vice president of community and external affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center, she brought in an influx of volunteers.

"It's been suggested that she might run for the Senate from Illinois. I really don't see her doing that," Gutin said. "She could go back to the University of Chicago hospitals, if that was her want. I just don't see her running for elective office." 
Watson agrees. 

"I don't see Mrs. Obama getting into politics because she was a reluctant campaigner initially," he said. Instead, he said, it would make sense for the woman who planted the White House's largest vegetable garden as part of her push for healthy eating to continue embracing issues like wellness.

"I would imagine her playing a very strong and leading role in the Obama presidential library. I can see it having a heck of a garden," he said. 
She may also steer clear of serving on boards because of the scrutiny that comes along with that — but fundraising is a safe bet.

"I couldn't imagine her practicing law, but you could see her going back and fundraising or supporting the University of Chicago and the medical center, things she was doing before," he said.

Obama did have one slip before becoming first lady: a February 2008 speech in Wisconsin in which she said, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country," prompting critics to call her unpatriotic for months afterwards. But she learned from the mistake, Watson said, ultimately making her "one of the best" first ladies.

"She has not been a liability since the '08 campaign. She's been a huge asset," he said. "I think she's been effective with her mothering. In a way, I think she's been effective with everything. She's sort of that superwoman. She has the husband, the good marriage, the perfect kids. She had a good career. She's done it all, and she looks darn good for 50."



The writer of this article “doesn't see” Ms. Obama doing any really bold steps forward, even practicing law. Robert Watson, a presidential historian, however said "She's going to assert herself. We're going to see more of the Ivy League-educated lawyer and former CEO," and she was apparently active and highly placed in the city of Chicago, though she was mainly involved in the field of community service rather than elective office. I would like to see her write a book for starters. She has had almost 8 years as First Lady along with the care of her children to comment on. I would like to read her memoirs and personal philosophy. If she shows a sense of humor that would be even better.





Genes suggest dogs descended from a now-extinct breed of wolf – NBC
Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News


Modern-day wolves like these are closely related to dogs, but how closely? Genetic sequencing showed no clear lineage that led from wolves to dogs.

The latest genetic study to trace the origins of dogs confirms the view that they were domesticated by hunter-gatherers at least 9,000 years ago — but the results raise almost as many questions as they answer.

Exactly what kind of wolf gave rise to "man's best friend"? Did domestication take advantage of a rare genetic quirk, or did early humans merely take advantages of wolfish traits?

The study published on Thursday in the journal PLOS Genetics doesn't resolve those questions. But one of its senior authors, University of Chicago geneticist John Novembre, says researchers are working on ways to get the answers.
"Ancient DNA studies are going to be very exciting for this field in the near future," he told NBC News in an email.

Novembre said Thursday's study complements earlier work that analyzed mitochondrial DNA from modern-day wolves as well as ancient wolf remains. It suggests that dogs descended from a wolf strain that has since gone extinct. The genetic tale is complicated, however, due to interbreeding between dogs and wolves in recent times.

Unexpected results
The PLOS Genetics study relies on detailed analyses of the genomes for two dog breeds, a dingo from Australia and a Basenji whose lineage goes back to Africa. The genomes for three wolves living in different parts of the world — Croatia, Israel and China — were also analyzed. To round out the picture, the researchers sequenced the genome of a golden jackal and included the previously published genome of a boxer from Europe.

The wolves were selected to represent the three regions of the world that have been identified as the potential points of origin for domesticated dogs: Europe, the Middle East and Asia. "These are the highest-quality wolf genome sequences published to date, and among the very first," Novembre said. "Without high-quality wolf genomes, it's difficult to learn about the origins of dogs."

He and his colleagues expected to find that the dog breeds had closer genetic connections to one of the wolves over the others. That would have provided a new clue in the detective story, but that's not what happened. Instead, the results suggested that the Basenji and the dingo both descended from an older, wolflike ancestor.
"Perhaps the closest lineage of wolves to dogs went extinct and is not represented well by modern wolves," Novembre said. "The ancient mitochondrial DNA paper suggests that the ancient lineage of wolves may have existed in Europe."

Hunting vs. farming
The earlier research estimated that domestication occurred sometime between 18,000 and 32,000 years ago. This week's paper cites a similarly wide range of dates, from 9,000 to 34,000 years. Both time frames predate the rise of agriculture, which occurred several thousand years ago. Those findings favor the view that dogs started out as hunting companions rather than village scavengers.

Novembre and his colleagues also followed up on earlier findings that dogs adapted to digest starch, perhaps due to their proximity to human agricultural settlements. They determined that most dogs do indeed have high numbers of the amylase genes that promote starch digestion. However, that's not the case for dogs that lack a close connection to agrarian societies, such as Siberian huskies and dingoes.

The researchers found evidence for amylase genes in wolves, too. Taken together, the findings lend further support to the hunting-dog scenario: Dogs probably started out mostly as meat-eaters, but gradually adapted to a starchy diet when they had to.
The genetic record suggests that dogs went through a narrow population "bottleneck" after they diverged from wolves. Wolves went through a similar bottleneck, and that may have been when the breed of wolf that gave rise to dogs died out. Why did the bottleneck occur? That's another question yet to be answered.
"Presumably, changes in habitat and prey availability as humans expanded and altered landscape is part of the story," Novembre said.



The dingo, as far as I know, is only connected to the Australian Aborigines, who were very early in the Homo Sapiens line that colonized the lands north of Africa. A long article on the genetics of the Australian Aborigines and their date of colonization in Australia exists on Wikipedia. Mankind was using dogs, probably for hunting and protection, very early in our history and before the Neolithic, though domestication of sheep, horses and cattle came much later.

I think that is pretty interesting, and shows more advances in cultural development and inventiveness than you might think for 34,000 years ago. Just because they were cavemen doesn't mean they weren't advanced in the way their brain worked. The “technology” of living off the land in those days was primitive, and tools such as the spear thrower had to be invented.

Today we live with known inventions of all kinds which came into being gradually over thousands of years. That's why we seem to be so “superior.” Even our greatest geniuses couldn't have made the technological and scientific discoveries that we now have on their own. Isolated tribal cultures of today's world show less advancement because they have had less contact with the outside world, yet if you sit them down in front of a computer and teach them to use it, they can make great strides forward. It's not about IQ scores. Ideas are mainly learned, not invented. That's why I really worry when we in the US let too many of our school kids get through school without learning the basic things, much less being competitive for college admission. Are we falling behind?




­ The Birth Of The Minimum Wage In America – NPR
by David Kestenbaum
­
In 1895, legislators in New York state decided to improve working conditions in what at the time could be a deadly profession: baking bread.
"Bakeries are actually extremely dangerous places to work," says Eric Rauchway, a historian at University of California, Davis. "Because flour is such a fine particulate, if it gets to hang in the air it can catch fire and the whole room can go up in a sheet of flame."

New York passed a law called the Bakeshop Act. It didn't set a minimum wage — the minimum wage didn't exist yet in the U.S. — but it limited working hours and required that bakeries be kept clean.

The Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional. Bakers and their employers had the right to make any agreements they wanted about work hours, the court found. The Bakeshop Act, according to the court, interfered with individuals' right to enter into a contract.

The ruling suggested there was no way the Supreme Court of the time would allow anything like a minimum wage.

Several decades later, Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. To fight the Depression, he wanted to put money in peoples' pockets. "If all employers will work together to shorten hours and raise wages, we can put people back to work," he said.
Roosevelt wanted businesses to do this voluntarily. To that end, the administration created the National Industrial Recovery Act, which Congress passed in 1933.

Businesses that agreed to shorten hours and raise wages could hang special signs in their windows that showed a blue eagle logo and the words "doing our part."
Perhaps more powerful than the sign were the perks that went along with agreeing to offer higher wages: Participating businesses were allowed to form cartels and set prices. (At the time, the country was suffering from deflation, with prices and wages plunging.)

But the blue eagle was no match for nine men in robes: The Supreme Court unanimously struck down the law.
After Roosevelt was elected by a landslide in 1936, he tried to pack the court — to pass a law that would let him appoint additional justices. That effort failed.
But one of the court justices switched sides, and in 1937 the court upheld the right of Washington state to have a minimum wage.

The next year, FDR pushed the Fair Labor Standards Act through Congress, which contained a kind of minimal minimum wage.
The act, "applying to products in interstate, ends child labor, sets a floor below wages and a ceiling over the hours of labor," Roosevelt said at the time.
Rauchway says it was more of a political victory than an intellectual one. And the nation is still divided over it today.



This is a short history of the move out of a recent dark age in US society. “And the nation is still divided over it today.” I have wondered how far backward the most radical members of the Republican Party would let our culture go if the Democrats didn't put up a fight against them. The following article from CBS News gives some idea about that.

ByBrian Montopoli CBS News
February 16, 2012, 12: 49 PM
Rick Santorum suggests opposition to public schooling

Campaigning in Idaho on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum suggested that he is opposed to a public school system overseen by the government.
"We didn't have government-run schools for a long time in this country, for the majority of the time in this country," he said. "We had private education. We had local education. Parents actually controlled the education of their children. What a great idea that is."
Santorum's campaign did not respond to multiple requests for an explanation of whether he was calling for an end to public schooling as it now exists. But the former Pennsylvania senator has previously made his antagonism known. Campaigning in March, Santorum took a shot at public schools.

"Just call them what they are," he said. "Public schools? That's a nice way of putting it. These are government-run schools."

Santorum makes a point of his support for home schooling. All of his children have been home schooled, and he has even suggested he would home school in the White House, a situation that he said "would certainly be a shock to the establishment."
The Hill newspaper mined Santorum's 2005 book It Takes a Family for his views on schooling. In that book, Santorum called "mass education" an "aberration."
"Never before and never again after their years of mass education will any person live and work in such a radically narrow, age-segregated environment," wrote Santorum. "It's amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools."

He added: "In a home school, by contrast, children interact in a rich and complex way with adults and children of other ages all the time. In general, they are better-adjusted, more at ease with adults, more capable of conversation, more able to notice when a younger child needs help or comfort, and in general a lot better socialized than their mass-schooled peers."

Santorum has not always home schooled his children, however. When Santorum was serving in the Senate, he decided to effectively move his family to Virginia - a situation that would cause political problems for the then-Pennsylvania senator.
Santorum did not enroll his kids in local Pennsylvania schools, and he did not home school them: Instead, he enrolled five of them in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. The "cyber" school is considered a public school, as Mother Jones notes, where students have to meet state requirements. It also provides free computers and other perks, and the Penn Hills school district ended up shelling out $38,000 per year for the Santorum children.

Santorum reportedly ended up withdrawing his children from the school. He did not repay the district, though the state ultimately paid the district $55,000 to cover the tuition fees.



My mother grew up on a small and very poor subsistance farm in Moore County, North Carolina, in the days before government public schools. She was born in 1916. Parents had to find a school, often a church run school, but even so they had to pay tuition to enroll their children. Her parents had very little money and were not able to pay for her schooling beyond the sixth grade, so she had to drop out. She was an excellent student and continued to read anything she could get to read, mainly magazines and almanacs, as the family couldn't afford books either.

That same thing will happen in this country again if we are to stop funding the “government run” public schools. People who can't pay tuition won't go to school, and not all parents are sufficiently well educated themselves to teach their children, especially in the sciences and other advanced courses that kids do get in public high schools. You can't build a civilized society that way. Going back to “the good old days” before the 1930s wouldn't be a picnic. Many people had very little money during the “Roaring Twenties” and the years after the Civil War. It was a great time only for the wealthy.

The disparity between rich and poor is again growing, and has been mentioned in the newspapers recently. Democrats are in a fight for their lives again now, and some of the most conservative Republicans want to turn the clock back so their favorite group – the wealthy – can enjoy princely lifestyles again without the law interfering with that by such means as raising taxes and the minimum wage.

Nothing I see in the news causes me to question my allegiance to the Democratic Party. The two parties still represent much the same stances that they always did, and the battle between them goes on. When Congress and the Senate support a needed public measure, as they now are to heal the gap in the Voting Rights Act, I am delighted to see it. Statesmanship is still alive.



­

India Unveils Handgun For Women After Much-Publicized Rapes – NPR
by Krishnadev Calamur
­
Indians participated in a candlelight vigil last month to mark the anniversary of the death of a young woman who was gang raped and murdered in New Delhi. Indian media dubbed the woman "Nirbhaya," or fearless. Now, after other high-profile rapes in the country, India has unveiled a handgun for women.

There's been a steady stream of stories over the past year about the rapes of women in India. Now, Indian officials have unveiled a gun they say women can use to protect themselves.

The .32-caliber revolver is named Nirbheek, for the victim of a December 2012 gang rape and murder aboard a bus in New Delhi. Indian law forbids the identification of rape victims, and the Indian media called her "Nirbhaya," which means fearless.
"After the gang-rape incident, our researchers were working on a revolver which is very light and can be carried by women in their purses or small handbags," Abdul Hamid, the general manager of the Indian Ordnance Factory in Kanpur, told the semi-official Press Trust of India news agency.

Hamid said there have already been 20 orders for the lightweight weapon that's made of titanium alloy. He said the gun, which will be delivered in a special ornamental box, also will be sold to men. Here's how The Times of India reported on it:
"Described by arms experts as an Indian hybrid of a Webley & Scott and Smith & Wesson, for its simple mechanism and light frame, it is the smallest revolver made in India — an ideal to fit a purse or a small hand bag."

Civilian ownership of firearms in India is relatively uncommon, mainly because of the cost of weapons as well as onerous licensing requirements. Indeed, the Nirbheek is priced at nearly $2,000, in a country where the per capita income is about $1,500 (purchasing power parity is $3,608).

The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, in its 2011 report, estimated that there were about 46 million civilian firearms in India. It's the second-highest number of civilian firarms in the world. By contrast, there were 270 million civilian firearms in the U.S., the top ranked country. But India has more than 1 billion people, and the survey estimates that there are four civilian firearms per 100 residents. (In the U.S., by contrast, there are 89 per 100 residents.)

Still, the Times of India notes that the marketing of a weapon to women in Uttar Pradesh state, where Kanpur is located, shouldn't be surprising. Here's more:
"In a state where government offers arms licences as incentive to achieve wheat procurement and immunization targets, it is not surprising that a total of 11,22,814 persons have licensed arms as per the state home department records. This is over four times the count of firearms available with the Uttar Pradesh Police. ... Hence a ready market already seems in place for Nirbheek."

Reaction to the gun, which was unveiled Jan. 9, has been mixed.
"Once a target of rape whips out a handgun, the element of surprise is sure to scare the life out of most of the persons who attempt rape," Arun Kumar, a senior police officer in the state told the newspaper. "In most of criminal cases in India, the perpetrator, irrespective of whether armed or not, neither expects nor faces any stiff resistance from the target. Women carrying small handguns will surely make a difference to the tendency."

But Shalini Seth, a medical executive, told the newspaper that a carrying a gun was unlikely to help a woman who was being attacked.
"There is nothing they can do to a woman with a gun that they cannot to one without," she said.



Gang rapes in India have been in the news a number of times in the last year or two. There seems to be a cultural trend there for a large number of men to want to humiliate and hurt women. I know India is one of those countries where the boy children are preferred over the girls by many parents. Maybe they are teaching this prejudice to their boys. It also shows a lapse in police control for gangs to be so prevalent, as they are in Los Angeles, New York and a number of big US cities. A hand gun would be useful in an ordinary mugging on the street, but if a gang is involved, I don't know if even a gun would solve the problem. I hope it helps.