Padmini Sharma on Pitara Kids Network

Photocopies of babies

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:51:52 +0000

August 18: Who would have thought that humans can be ‘photocopied’ like documents? But, it is happening and the brain behind the whole act, Severino Antiniro, an Italian doctor is all set to create the first ‘photocopy’ babies of the world, reports say.

Though the doctor seems confident, his experiment could result in a Jurassic Park-like disaster, experts say. The child produced thus may have physical or mental disabilities, they say.
That does not seem to have hampered Antiniro’s plans. Nor has the fact that almost every country in the world is against the idea.

Web of Financial Scandal

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 01:52:47 +0000

August 18: The recent arrest of P S Subramanyam, chairman Unit Trust of India, has sent shock waves through the country, among the 20 million people who had invested their lifetime savings in India’s oldest public mutual fund company. What exactly happened?

A mutual fund company has one main function: to take in or mobilise people’s savings and invest them on their behalf, to maximise the returns. Most of us put our savings in banks. Banks are seen to be solid and safe but they do not give more than 9 per cent returns (interest). Mutual funds, on the other hand, are attractive because they give higher returns or interest on the savings.

Counting the world in different ways

Thu, 19 May 2005 05:25:59 +0000

August 17: Counting the world’s population may seem a bit like counting the stars in the sky, but not if you know how to go about it the right way. And there are as many ways to do it as there are countries, the United Nations recently discovered at a four-day seminar attended by number-happy statisticians from 55 countries. The idea was to see how countries are using technology to make the census-taking exercises more manageable and accurate.