STORY OF SAMOSA

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Editors

Shared by, Tahir Mahmood.

Named samsa after the triangular pyramids of Central Asia, the samsosa came to the subcontinent on ancient trade routes. —Photo by Fawad Ahmed

How is one to capture the essence of a samosa through the written word?

Growing up my favourite samosa had to be the one sold at my school tuck shop owned by Mr. Wellows. Anyone who went to the missionary schools in Karachi has had to have tasted the legendary alloo ka samosa sold at their canteens.

It was golden brown, crisp, flaky, delicious all at 40 paisas only! And if the school samosa wasn’t enough our chowkidar used to make the best homemade samosas, hence I’ve literally grown up on samosas.

But does the samosa really belong to the subcontinent?

No, it does not, to our utmost chagrin it migrated from Central Asia. Yes, yet another immigrant food on the desi plate that has adjusted so well to its adoptive land.

The immigrant samosa travelled the length and breath of the region and came to the subcontinent along the ancient trade routes of Central Asia.

The Oxford Companion To Food by Alan Davidson says;

The Indian [subcontinent] samosa is merely the best known of an entire family of stuffed pastries or dumplings popular from Egypt and Zanzibar to Central Asia and West China. Arab cookery books of the 10th and 13th centuries refer to the pastries as sanbusak (the pronunciation still current in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon), sanbusaq or sanbusaj, all reflecting the early medieval form of the Persian word sanbosag, though originally it was named samsa, after the triangular pyramids of Central Asia.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1192717/food-stories-samosa

PAKISTAN IS A REFORM STORY LIKE INDIA’S-ONLY BETTER

Posted on July 4, 2015 by Editors

Shared by, Syed Ehtisham

Construction and infrastructural development have been cited as the primary drivers behind Pakistan’s emergence as a frontier market by a Bloomberg report.

The construction sector grew at 11.3 per cent through FY14-15, nearly double the 5.7pc target, according to State Bank of Pakistan data.

London-based chief economist at Renaissance Capital Ltd Charlie Robertson said of Pakistan: “It is the best, undiscovered investment opportunity in emerging or frontier markets,” adding, “What’s changed is the delivery of reforms ─ privatisation, an improved fiscal picture and good relations with the IMF.”

Nawaz’s government has boosted infrastructure expenditure by 27pc to Rs1.5 trillion for fiscal year 2015-2016 (FY15-16), as interest rates are the lowest they have been in 42 years and the economy is expanding at its quickest since 2008.

Pakistan is a reform story like neighbouring India’s, but only better, said Renaissance’s Robertson.

Cement producers DG Khan Cement Co. and Cherat Cement Co. have announced plans to expand, while steelmakers Amreli Steels Ltd. and Mughal Iron and Steel Industries Ltd. are raising equity capital.

Pakistan is a reform story like India’s ─ only better: economist

‘Evolutionary battle for supremacy between X & Y Chromosomes.’ By Brendan Maher

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Editors

New DNA sequencing data reinforce the notion that the X and Y chromosomes, which determine biological sex in mammals, are locked in an evolutionary battle for supremacy.

David Page, a biologist who directs the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues explored the Y chromosomes carried by males of several species, mapping stretches of mysterious, repetitive DNA in unprecedented detail. These stretches may signal a longstanding clash of the chromosomes.

Page presented the results last week at a meeting of the Society for the Study of Reproduction in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His team’s subjects included humans and other primates, a standard laboratory mouse, and a bull named Domino.

“This idea of conflict between the chromosomes has been around for a while,” says Tony Gamble, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. But the sequencing data from the bull’s Y chromosome suggests that the phenomenon is more widespread than previously thought, he adds.

The mammalian Y chromosome has long been thought of as a sort of genomic wasteland, usually shrinking over the course of evolution and largely bereft of pertinent information. Page’s work has helped to change perceptions of the Y chromosome by revealing that it contains remarkable patterns of repeating sequences that appear dozens to hundreds of times^{1, 2}.

But the structure of these sequences and precise measures of how often they repeat have been difficult to determine. Standard sequencing technologies often cannot distinguish between long stretches of genetic code that differ by a single DNA ‘letter’.

http://www.nature.com/news/a-battle-of-the-sexes-is-waged-in-the-genes-1.17817

Posted by f. sheikh