I trained at CMC Vellore and was an intern and then a neurosurgical registrar there in 1983 .
I was paid 300 rupees ( around 5 dollars at current exchange rates ) a month for working 80 to 100 hours a week.
Good times :-)
BTW,some of my classmates who stayed on at Vellore, rose to be Heads of Department and were paid around 25,000 Rupees a month ( around $500 ) just a few years ago ( not sure what the current salaries are ).
Mineral oil is a Group 1 carcinogen.
Scope for some lucrative class-action litigation 10 years down the line when workers in data centres start developing carcinomas.
RE: Martin Rees'statement: ¨The stupendous time-spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture and understanding — even though the concept may not yet have percolated all parts of Kansas, and Alaska.¨
Sounds perfectly justified.
It is common knowledge that those benighted parts of the world still have a large number of ignorant creationists.
Blocking access to Western media is one of many desperate measures that the authorities in Pakistan are implementing.
These are last ditch attempts to prevent a rapid slide into Islamic chaos.
Sadly, I fear that these measures will not be enough.
The electrical potential is due to two effects:
1. the Donnan equilibrium
2. active ionic pumps that maintain differential concentrations of Ca++, K+, Na+, and Cl- across neural membranes.