Saturday, October 27, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Recent projects for the development of Arab human cost 621 million euros. Held in Dubai
A $1bn (£621m) project to build a replica of the Taj Mahal has been unveiled in the Gulf emirate of Dubai.
The Taj Arabia complex would be much bigger than the original monument to love and include a 300-room hotel, shops and commercial buildings, developer Arun Mehra said.
It would be ready by 2014 and be known as the "New City of Love", he said.
The complex will also house other structures such as the Eiffel Tower, Pyramids and the Great Wall of China.
The Taj Mahal, which is situated in the northern Indian town of Agra, is a Unesco World Heritage site.
It was completed more than 350 years ago by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a shrine for his wife Mumtaz and took more than 20 years to build.
The white marble mausoleum, situated on the banks of the river Yamuna, is sometimes known as a teardrop on the cheek of time.
The Taj Arabia complex will be built around the Taj Mahal which is a "symbol of love and will include various facilities to encapsulate the beauty of life, love and romance mixed with the long established Mughal architecture", Mr Mehra, who is the chairman of Link Global Group, told the Press Trust of India.
The developers say they hope that the Taj Arabia will become a new wedding destination and attract couples to it.
An earlier plan to build the complex was shelved when the company was hit by the global economic downturn.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Black mamba venom is 'better painkiller' than morphine
The predator, which uses neurotoxins to paralyse and kill small animals, is one of the fastest and most dangerous snakes in Africa.
However, tests on mice, showed its venom also contained a potent painkiller.
They admit to being completely baffled about why the mamba would produce it.
The researchers looked at venom from 50 species before they found the black mamba's pain-killing proteins - called mambalgins.
Morphine acts on the opioid pathway in the brain. It can cut pain, but it is also addictive and causes headaches, difficulty thinking, vomiting and muscle twitching. The researchers say mambalgins tackle pain through a completely different route, which should produce few side-effects.Dr Eric Lingueglia, from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology near Nice, told the BBC: "When it was tested in mice, the analgesia was as strong as morphine, but you don't have most of the side-effects."
He said the way pain worked was very similar in mice and people, so he hoped to develop painkillers that could be used in the clinic. Tests on human cells in the laboratory have also showed the mambalgins have similar chemical effects in people.
But he added: "It is the very first stage, of course, and it is difficult to tell if it will be a painkiller in humans or not. A lot more work still needs to be done in animals."
Mamba magic
Dr Nicholas Casewell, an expert in snake venom at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, has recently highlighted the potential of venom as a drug source.
Commenting on this study he said: "It's very exciting, it's a really great example of drugs from venom, we're talking about an entirely new class of analgesics."
Dr Lingueglia said it was "really surprising" that black mamba venom would contain such a powerful painkiller.
Dr Casewell agreed that it was "really, really odd". He suggested the analgesic effect may work in combination "with other toxins that prevent the prey from getting away" or may just affect different animals, such as birds, differently to mice.
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