Eid Milad: Holiday for schools, colleges advanced to Dec 12 in DK

Bengaluru, Feb 16: Radhakrishnan V Nair embarked on a journey of exploring complex subjects and opening up the cocoon of existence that puts people in a zone of comfort. One sole mission of the book is to encourage the readers to break out of that comfort zone.

The architect by profession has a novel to his credit, 'The Cave of Freedom' that had earned him critical acclaim from Jnanpith Awardee UR Ananthamurthy. On February 13, a discussion and the reading of his book had the audience riveted to their seats.

The launch of the book on February 13 at Bangalore International Centre was presided over by Bhaskar Rao, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru, along with Vasudev Murthy, Technology Management Consultant, leadership trainer and author and Ramessh RK, an industrial designer and choir singer who read out passages from the book.

'Radhakrishnan is trying to inspire you to discover the pleasure of breaking the glass barrier along with the protagonist Dr Prateek. The story 'burst out'", said Radhakrishnan when it could not be contained any longer.

The glass ceiling saw a lot of interest from the audience present. The book includes Dr Prateek who is obsessed with saving lives in the Emergency Room (ER) as the world slept. Then on an eerie rainy night, he is kidnapped.

He struggles to come to terms with the improbability of waking up somewhere in Europe and making his serendipitous escape and being back at work the next morning - all physically impossible from the point of view of time and locality.

The glass ceiling challenges you to see tragedies and their impact on a person's mental well-being from a different perspective.

Radhakrishnan V Nair is an architect by profession and runs his Bengaluru-based firm - Archaid, the tagline of which is 'Architecture in Collaboration with Nature'.

Bengaluru, Mar 10: With concerns growing by the day, the Karnataka government is readying three more labs to test throat swab samples.

Currently, only two labs in Bengaluru — National Institute of Virology and Virus Research and Diagnostics Laboratory (VRDL) lab attached to Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute — are categorised biosafety level 2+, a requirement for coronavirus tests.

Now, the government is working on upgrading three more labs, one each in the government medical colleges at Hassan, Mysuru and Shivamogga. “The labs will be ready within one week,” the authorities said.

Currently, the labs are testing only throat swab samples of suspected patients and taking 24 hours to give the results. “A patient’s blood sample will be collected only if he or she tests positive for covid-19 infection in the first throat swab sample.

While earlier the state would send all samples of suspected coronavirus cases to NIV, Pune, the two labs were upgraded to biosafety level 2+ in mid-February.