SAST Wingees

Infosys – welcome to the blogosphere

Infy opens its entry into the blogosphere with a post from Nandan Nilekani. <Via Madan Menon>

Barcoding Life

I had written about DNA Fingerprinting and its various applications – fighting diseases & contamination, fighting fraud and genography.  In the WSJ last friday edition, Sharon Begley wrote about another interesting use of DNA fingerprinting technology for barcoding plants – Science Journal: Nature lover’s dream: a botanical ‘bar code’ for quick plant IDs. [Un-DRM-ed version] In this fascinating article, she talks about the quest for finding the plant equivalent of the enzyme cytochrome oxidase that serves as the barcode for the animal kingdom. It turns out that the barcoding of the animal kingdom is well under way  under a  global project titled  “Consortium for the barcode of life” There is an excellent document on this site that details the 10 reasons why we need a barcode [PDF] of life. To me, the reasons, democratizing access (no.6) and make expertise go further (no.5) have far reaching implications. Armed with a handheld life-barcode reader of the type described in this document, almost anyone can spot new species and rapidly expand the database of species that we have identified so far (reason no.8 captures this idea somewhat).  Let’s hope scientists can find the barcode for plants quickly. Flashback:
My previous post inspired by Sharon Begley on Vocal Signatures help penguins identify their offspring.

India’s bureaucracy locks up Rs. 200,000 crores worth of investments

Today’s Economic Times reports that per its estimates over 200,000 crores (approx $42.5B) of investments are in a limbo, thanks to India’s mammoth bureaucracy and bickering politicians.  Its a well-accepted fact that India’s infrastructure is woefully inadequate, any which way you look – roads, railways, airports, power, telecom.. Sadly, per ET, most of this deadlocked investment is in the infrastructure areas:

Sectors where the growth has hit a lean patch due to delays in project
implementation, include power, steel, port, special economic zone (SEZ) and liquefied natural gas (LNG), among others.

On a related note, BBC’s Beijing correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes filed an interesting  report a few days back titled “India struggles to catch China” with a telling conclusion:

China is not a free society, and it has immense problems. But its successes should not be underestimated. They are ones that India, even with its open and democratic society, is still far from matching.

What can i say, other than, we need a few superhero(in)es in India desperately!

World class companies spend 7% more on IT

I have been investigating typical SG&A (Sales, General and Administrative) spends to prepare for a management class led by Prof. Bala Balachandran, I attended couple of weeks back.  His brilliant lecture on Strategic Cost Management was a major eye-opener. Back to SG&A, first, I wanted to determine if there is a thumb rule, by which you can say, you should be spending X% of your revenues on SG&A.  I came across this interesting press release from The Hackett Group that mentions that a typical company spends approximately 15% of revenues on SG&A:

Hackett’s 2006 Book of Numbers research revealed that world-class
companies are now spending 40 percent less than typical companies
overall on SG&A (9 percent of revenue versus 15 percent) and as a
result generate $60 million in savings/billion of revenue. By function,
they spend 45 percent less on finance, 13 percent less on HR, 25
percent less on procurement and 7 percent more on IT.

It appears the best companies have already shaved off a whopping 40% off of that number down to 9%.  What caught my attention though is the fact that these leading companies actually are spending 7 percent more on IT.  As they say,  correlation does not imply causation, but at the same time, we have seen many times that a good IT implementation can actually drive costs down.  This also goes against Nick Carr‘s argument “Does IT Matter”?  If IT really doesn’t matter, how come the leaders are seeing such results? I am sure Vinnie will concur with the findings that the leaders are spending 25 percent less on procurement.

Living-donor liver transplants and cadaveric liver transplants

Came across a very interesting report today in The Hindu that talks about a successful living-donor liver transplant from a 59-year-old mother to her daughter. The piece of liver that was transplanted into the daughter has regenerated into a full grown liver inside the daughter’s body and had made her normal again. The liver in the mother’s body has also regenerated itself fully and she is back to normal as well. Amazing stuff – thanks to Dr. K.C. Tan of Singapore – the world’s top living-donor liver transplant surgeon.

Amidst the happy story, something caught my attention:

Her husband Kamal rushed her to Singapore and took her to the National University Hospital, where it was discovered that Meenu had acute liver failure and needed transplant surgery. A cadaveric liver (harvested from individuals who have died) was ruled out, as Meenu was not a Singapore national. The only life-saving option was to find a matching live donor.

Here is a person who has come to a country for treatment, whose life is in danger and cadaveric transplant is ruled out because she is not a national of your country??!!!

We all know that Singapore has some crazy laws like the Caning stuff. But this, one? Not sure how other countries (including India and the USA) handle such a life-threatening situation? 

Kaps, maybe you can throw some light on why Singapore has such a law. Maybe there is a more rational explanation.