Save on Medicines

I have an idea for anyone who wants to contribute to the society. I don’t know if there is something similar on the web in Indian context or elsewhere.

It’s known that medicines having identical composition can vary in price by 200% or more. Doctors prescribe medicines purely based on their ethical makeup and instructions from the hospital head or pharmaceutical bosses. (I don’t want to use the word ethical make-up for the later two.)

To counter this, the idea is to have a website which will give you the cheapest alternative. It would operate something like this.

1) Enter the name of the tablet
2) Enter your location (State)
3) Get an alternative medicine and price.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

This can also be extended to a SMS based service for people who don’t have ready access to web.

I cannot estimate the efforts necessary but many volunteers with Masters in Pharmacy would be needed to build up the database. Once the database is built, the prices may have to be updated on a 3 month basis.

Easy web interface, no selling of medicines, no advertisements, just information.

Battle of the Sexes - ix

What makes a man? His clothes? His car? His choice of scotch? The real answer, says Brown University biologist Erica Larschan, is the newly understood activity of a protein complex that, like a genetic power tool, gives enzymes on the X-chromosome an extra boost to increase gene expression.

Men must increase gene expression on their lone X-chromosome to match the two X's possessed by women. A new study explains just how men manage to do that.

In mammals, cells therefore work to emphasize, or "upregulate," the lone X-chromosome in males and de-emphasize, or "downregulate," the extra X-chromosome in females.

I'm not sure of the significance of this study. Men trying to match up is understandable but why do women try to match down? What are those restrictions at cell level?

Via Science Daily