Dr. Manoj H. Shah of Warner Robins, Ga., was sworn in last October as president-elect of the Medical Association of Georgia, the leading advocacy organization for physicians in Georgia.

He will take over as president for a one-year term in October 2014, succeeding Dr. William E. Silver.

MAG was founded in 1849 and Shah will become the first Indian American president in the organization’s history, he told one Indian American publication recently.

Shah has been active with MAG’s international medical graduate section since it was formed in 2003. He also served in leadership posts with the Georgia Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

The Indian American physician was trained in medicine in Baroda and completed his U.S. residency at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Mich.

Board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, Shah has published articles in the Medical Digest and other medical journals and has lived in Warner Robins since 1985.

He and his wife have three children who were education in the Houston County school system. Shah is also active with Friends of the Library and the Houston Volunteer Clinic.

Source: Indiawest

Recently, India welcomed the move of a U.S. court when it dropped the indictment charge against former Indian diplomat to the U.S. Ms. Devyani Khobragade. However, what was most appalling was that she was re-indicted for the same charges two days later. The latest ruling of the court continues to strain the diplomatic ties between the two nations.

Khobragade was arrested last December on grounds of visa fraud; she was accused of over-reporting the amount of money that she paid her housekeeper. She was handcuffed outside her children’s school only to be arrested and detained in jail for a couple of hours. Despite maintaining her innocence, she was subjected to humiliation that the Indian government termed as ‘despicable and barbaric’; on the other hand, the U.S. held on to their version that they were only following standard routine procedure. Following the arrest, it spiraled into a completely political and diplomatic standoffish yet heated imbroglio between the two nations.

With the dismissal of the case, it is absolutely clear that no further arrest warrants would be made against Khobragade in future based on the same indictment. USINPAC has been at the forefront of this case since the very beginning. It had started from making enquiries about the arrest procedures to investigating the issue through members of Congress, and her immediate return to India. Mr. Sanjay Puri, Chairman of USINPAC has time and again pointed it out that an escalation between the U.S. and India would disrupt their process of working towards common goals and initiating dialogues in a troubled region; and ‘that failure in diplomatic protocol can cause irreversible damage to US-India relations’.

Mr. Sanjay Puri has expressed displeasure saying, “Relationships between the oldest and largest democracy are built on a people-to-people relationship and not just strategic interests.  The United States is slowly losing the hearts and minds of the people of India through a series of avoidable incidents over the past year, including the clumsy manner of dealing with Mr. Narendra Modi, the Devyani episode, and most recently also the Wikileaks and Snowden revelations.” He also said, “Any next steps are crucial to ensuring that US relations are not damaged any further by this incident, especially in advance of Indian elections next month. USINPAC believes the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office and the State Department should not pursue this case any further since it gives the appearance of a personal vendetta and we intend to ask members of Congress to hold a hearing as soon as possible.”

USINPAC as a bipartisan organization has been the voice of Indian Americans for over a decade now. By doing so, it has influenced policies that concern the community and this is yet another instance where they have left an indelible mark in impacting the framework to ensure that justice prevails at the end.

-A Guest Blog by Dr. Jagdeep Chhokar

The first title that I thought of for this piece was “Indian democracy convulses”. It soon occurred to me that the title could be interpreted to mean that Indian democracy has convulsed and it did not necessarily convey the continuity of convulsion. In any case Indian democracy is too big and too complex to convulse or to have convulsed in a short span of time. Thus came the current title.
The process of convulsions has come to the surface now but it possibly started taking roots about 10-15 years ago when PILs started being filed about the electoral system. It gathered pace about five years ago, in the form of anti-corruption agitations, got sharpened as a result of the ghastly gang rape in Delhi in December 2012, and seems to have come to the surface with the stunning debut of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi Assembly elections in December 2013.

Most analysts and commentators, both in the print as well as electronic media, seem to have been dazzled by the results of the Delhi elections that they seem to notice only the day to day actions and utterances of the new government in Delhi. Judgments are passed about the long-term success or failure of Aam Aadmi Party on the basis of daily events such as the Rail Bhavan Dharna, the Khirki raids.

All these learned members of the commentariat would do well to visit the website of the AAP. There is a link that provides a straight answer to the question “Why are we entering politics” and it says, “Our aim in entering politics is not to come to power; we have entered politics to change the current corrupt and self-serving system of politics forever”

Taking the above statement on its face value and without necessarily approving or supporting AAP, it should be clear that changing a “system of politics forever” is not a short-term activity. It can only be, at best, a long and arduous process, and more so when the political system is as ingrained as ours has become, particularly over the last 30 odd years.

It also needs to be noted that the AAP or Arvind Kejriwal and his colleagues are not the only actors or participants in this process, though they are arguably the triggers of this process. Other important, and critical, actors are all the established political parties, the intelligentsia, the corporate world, the media, and other such institutions of Indian society. Possibly the most critical actors are the citizens because such deep seated social transformations do not, and cannot, happen without the approval and active participation of the citizenry at large.

If the commentariat looks ahead, all it can see is the 2014 election. Yes, the Lok Sabha election will be a defining one, as all Lok Sabha elections have been and should be but in the evolution of Indian democracy these elections might well be just one of the many stages. Indian democracy appears to be on the threshold of a major transformation for which convulsions have just begun. What these convulsions will or might lead to, only time will tell, and that time frame is not 2, 3, or 5 years. IF this effort is to succeed, it will take something like 10 to 15 years though it can fail any time.

We, as citizens, cannot and should not rest only by wishing for the best. It is high time citizens took our citizenship seriously and did our duty to democracy as enunciated by Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), a judge of the US Supreme Court:

“Democracy involves hardship – the hardship of the unceasing responsibility of every citizen. Where the entire people do not take a continuous and considered part in public life, there can be no democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement. That is why no office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen.”

Jagdeep S. Chhokar is former professor, dean and director in-charge of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Source: India Today

The Materials Research Society has named 22 members to be honored as Fellows for 2014 at the group’s spring meeting April 21-25 at various venues in San Francisco.

Among the 22 to be feted is Indian American researcher Supratik Guha, director of physical sciences at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Guha is being recognized “for fundamental contributions to the materials science of high-k dielectrics that enable current electronic devices and future device scaling.”

MRS honors members notable for distinguished accomplishments and contributions to advancement of worldwide materials research.

Guha is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and an adjunct professor in applied physics and mathematics at Columbia University.

His research interests at IBM include nanoscale semiconductor materials science and exploration of new materials technologies on silicon platforms.

Guha has a Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Southern California, has authored more than 75 publications and book chapters and is the holder of 21 issued patents.

Source: IndiaWest

In a thrilling discovery, two Indian-American researchers have identified a new potential therapeutic target for controlling high blood sugar – a finding that could help millions suffering from type 2 diabetes worldwide.

Researchers showed that lipid molecules called phosphatidic acids enhance glucose production in the liver.

The findings suggest that inhibiting or reducing production of phosphatidic acids may do the opposite.

“This study establishes a role for phosphatidic acids in enhancing glucose production by the liver and identifies enzymes involved in the synthesis of phosphatidic acids as potential drug targets,” explained Anil Agarwal, a professor of internal medicine at University of Texas’ Southwestern Medical Centre.

These observations were made while studying a mouse model of lipodystrophy, a rare metabolic disease in which the body is devoid of fat.

Lipodystrophy patients often develop diabetes and accumulate fat in the liver because of an imbalance in the body’s ability to properly regulate lipids and glucose.

The causal gene ‘AGPAT2′ which is involved in the synthesis of phosphatidic acid and triglycerides, was removed in the mice – resulting in rodents with generalised lipodystrophy.

The research team then examined what impact this genetic manipulation had on phosphatidic acids and glucose production.

“We expected the levels of phosphatidic acids to go down. However, in examining the livers of these lipodystrophic mice, we unexpectedly found high levels of this lipid class,” added lead author Shireesha Sankella, a post-doctoral researcher in the division of nutrition and metabolic diseases.

This led to the identification of new targets involved in the production of phosphatidic acids.

The buildup of these lipid molecules was due to an increase in the levels of two enzymes in the liver – diacylglycerol kinase and phospholipase D.

Researchers also discovered a marked increase in glucose production in the livers of the lipodystrophic mice.

The lack of normal insulin signaling in these lipodystrophic mice led to unrestricted production of phosphatidic acid, contributing to development of hyperglycemia or high blood sugar.

“Besides revealing a new potential therapy to test for treatment of diabetes, the findings may have implications in understanding how cancer develops,” Agarwal noted.

Increased phosphatidic acid levels may play an important role in a metabolic pathway that supplies energy to cancer cells, said the study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Source: Business Standard