This Week I Learned - Week #15 2020

This Week I Learned -

Direct upload provides a simplified workflow to copy an on-premises VHD directly into an empty managed disk. You can use it to upload to Standard HDD, Standard SSD, and Premium SSD managed disks of all the supported sizes. Direct Upload can be leveraged to restore customers’ backups to managed disks without having to bother about storage account management. The Azure Backup support for large managed disks is powered by direct-upload. Customers can use AzCopy to copy an on-premises VHD into an empty managed disk and also copy a managed disk to another Azure region for regional migration or expansion. Azure Storage Explorer exposes Direct Upload via an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI), enabling you to migrate your local VHD files to managed disks in few clicks. Moreover, it also leverages Direct Upload to enable you to copy and migrate your managed disks seamlessly to another Azure region.

* The Coverage tab in Chrome DevTools can help you find unused JavaScript and CSS code. Press Control+Shift+P to open the Command Menu. Start typing coverage, select the Show Coverage command, and then press Enter to have the Coverage tab open in the Drawer.
Third-party code constitutes around half of all requests for most websites.

Requests is an elegant and simple HTTP library for Python that should be your default choice. Httplib2 provides fine-grained control. Urllib in Python 3.x subsumes old urllib2. They are all options for web scraping.

* New Jersey’s unemployment benefits system is built on COBOL

At noon on the first Monday of every month, Amsterdam tests its flood warning alarm systems.

* Milinda-panha, (Pali: “Questions of Milinda”) lively dialogue on Buddhist doctrine with questions and dilemmas posed by King Milinda—i.e., Menander, Greek ruler of a large Indo-Greek empire in the late 2nd century bce—and answered by Nagasena, a senior monk - Brittanica

* Mort Drucker was a self-taught illustrator and freelance cartoonist who joined Mad magazine in 1956. He had basically no formal education.  After a brief stint at Parson's School of Design in Manhattan, he left and.... went to work. 

* Sir Ronald Ross, the British medical doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria, was born in Almora, India. His discovery of the malarial parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of a mosquito in 1897 proved that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes.  In 1898, he established the importance of culex mosquitoes as intermediate hosts in avian malaria. When the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was considered, the Nobel Committee initially intended the prize to be shared between Ross and Italian physician and zoologist Giovanni Battista Grassi, however Ross accused Grassi of deliberate fraud. His professional life appeared to be in constant feud with his students, colleagues and fellow scientists. The building where he worked and actually discovered the malarial parasite, located in Secunderabad near the Begumpet Airport, is a declared a heritage site and the road leading up to the building is named Sir Ronald Ross Road. 

Veins collect blood and pump it upwards to the heart by contractions of the leg muscles, while valves in the veins prevent blood from draining back down the leg under the force of gravity. However, if valves become weak or damaged, blood accumulates in the superficial veins. This leads to the swollen and distorted look of varicose veins. Varicose veins affect up to three in ten adults. Risk factors are thought to include genes and sex assigned at birth, as varicose veins run in families, and women typically outnumber men in developing them. It's believed that prolonged standing or inactivity can cause varicose veins in people genetically predisposed to them - Go Ask Alice

* Malaria is most commonly spread by an infected female Anopheles mosquito. Only female mosquitoes feed on blood; male mosquitoes feed on plant nectar and do not transmit the disease. The mosquito bite introduces the parasites from the mosquito's saliva into a person's blood. The parasites travel to the liver where they mature and reproduce. Five species of Plasmodium can infect and be spread by humans. Most deaths are caused by P. falciparum because P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. malariae generally cause a milder form of malaria. The disease is widespread in the tropical and subtropical regions that exist in a broad band around the equator. Although the parasite responsible for P. falciparum malaria has been in existence for 50,000–100,000 years, the population size of the parasite did not increase until about 10,000 years ago, concurrently with advances in agriculture

Quinine was used as a muscle relaxant by the Quechua, who are indigenous to Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, to halt shivering due to low temperatures. The Quechuas would mix the ground bark of cinchona trees with sweetened water to offset the bark's bitter taste, thus producing something similar to tonic water. It was first used to treat malaria in Rome in 1631. When King Charles II was cured of malaria at the end of the 17th Century with quinine, it became popular in London. It remained the antimalarial drug of choice until the 1940s, when other drugs took over. Because malaria is life-threatening, the risks associated with quinine use are considered acceptable when used to treat that affliction. Quinine had been said to be the prime reason Africa ceased to be known as the "white man's grave". Quinine played a significant role in the colonization of Africa by Europeans. 

Chloroquine was discovered in 1934 by Hans Andersag and his team at Bayer's laboratories, but was not used for over a decade as researchers feared that it was too toxic for human use. HCQ is no more a primary anti-malarial drug. It is mostly used globally to treat some immunological diseases like Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The management of Ipca Laboratories, a pharma company founded  in 1949, was taken over by the Bachchan family

* Active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), is the term used to refer to the biologically active component of a drug product (e.g. tablet, capsule). APIs denote the dosage in a drug, or in other words the key chemicals that make the drug work, while finished formulation is the process in which different chemicals, including the active ingredient, are mixed in specified ratios to produce a specific drug.

* India has a $ 50 billion pharma industry that employees a vast force and caters to critical drugs for large parts of the world. Some countries such as Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius are completely dependent on the Indian industry for its supplies - HT

* Fiama Bath Essentials consisting of Shower cap, Scrub-a-Dub-Dub, Loofah are imported from China

* 'India needs computer chips, not potato chips' - slogan from the 1990s

* According to oral history, the Ujjaini Mahankali Temple is a tribute to the Goddess for deliverance from smallpox nearly 200 years ago that killed thousands.

* The song Masakali from 2009 film Delhi-6 apparently took "..re-writes. Over 200 musicians, 365 days of creative brainstorming.." to produce.

* Kiranas are (rightfully) king as they provide customised service at a very local level and constitute 95% of Indian grocery retail... Online grocery is only about 0.2% of the overall retail market. I think at the end of this crisis we will probably reach 0.5%, but that is still an insignificant share - Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder and CEO, Grofers

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