Doping: Impacts on Olympics

What is doping?

                                    Doping word is actually obtained from word ‘dop’, an alcoholic drink used as stimulant in 18^th century in south America. It refers to intake of some special drugs that when consumed enhances performance of a person by either forming more muscles or by decreasing muscle fatigue. Doping is widely performed practice by many athletes for enhancing their performance in sports in one way or the other.

History:

                                The use of drugs is very ancient leading back to the time of very invention of concepts of sports. There have been many evidences that show the use of drugs was prominent even during those times. The ancient Olympics in Greece are considered to be heavily affected with doping.

Types of drugs:

                              The drugs that are considered as performance enhancers are mainly anabolic steroids may also be called as synthetic version of male sex hormone testosterone that allows athletes to train harder, build more muscles and undergo recovery pretty quickly. These steroids are generally used to induce bone growth, stimulate appetite and also induce male puberty but due to their property of increasing muscle mass and physical strength they are widely being used by athletes illegally.

According to World anti doping agency (WADA), stimulants are the second largest class of drugs to be used in doping. These drugs or stimulants mainly affects the Central Nervous System to modulate behavior causing a greater sense of excitement and reduced sense of fatigue. The well known stimulants include caffeine, cocaine, ephedrine etc.

Unethical:

                        The use of these drugs to stimulate performance is considered unethical because the increased muscles or physical mass is not build up naturally but artificially which is for obvious reason is unethical. Although there are many firm believers who stand with the use of these drugs and considers it completely ethical and legitimate.

Why illegal:

                        Uses of these drugs are considered illegal as the contained steroids and stimulants are very harmful for the body. Although they increase the performance of an individual but badly affect the metabolism of the body leading to various disorders of liver, kidneys and digestive system. Regular use of these steroids may affect central nervous system badly and results may vary from mere aggression to even suicide in some cases.

Side effects:

                        These drugs have loads of side effects if taken in excess or taken regularly. The effects may range from acne, abnormalities in liver functioning, baldness in males, irregularities in menstrual cycle in females to impotency and even premature closing of epiphysis (in females).

Who checks it?

                        Although the drugs are being used in sports from ancient times but the regularity and severity has increased many folds in recent times. Even the well established names in sports have been found guilty of using the drugs. So to counteract these problems in sports, in 1991 an independent international agency named World anti doping agency (WADA) funded by sports authorities and many associated countries came into existence. There are some norms made by WADA called WADA Codes. The WADA Code or simply the Code is a document aiming to harmonize anti-doping regulations in all sports and across countries. It has been adopted by over 600 sports organizations.

Threat to sports:

                        As the extent of doping in sports has increased many folds just recently reaching to almost all counties and sports the interest of audience in sports has also decreased. As Olympics are approaching, there have been a number of cases registered in many countries regarding doping already. There have been various surveys recently showing the interest in Olympics has already been reduced considerably. If not controlled properly it may make the situation even worse as representing one’s country in Olympics or for that matter in any sports is a matter of pride and one should not disgrace the moment.

New form of gun violence: Pellet guns

                            

What is a pellet:

                                    A pellet is basically a projectile being fired from an air gun. These pellets are different from bullets and shots as these pellets loaded air guns have very low pressure.

Why so much fuss:

                                    Pellet guns are regularly used in air gun in shooting, controlling pests and hunting but now days they are breaking the internet for different reason altogether. These pellet guns are now being used by police or military forces to control the crowd along with tear gas, water cannon, pepper spray etc. In past few days there has been an outrage on internet over the use of these guns on civilians.

How do they work?

                          The pellets may be flat, domed or pointed in shape with a thin waist. These pellets are generally light in weight being made up of lead or lead alloys, although non toxic options are also available. These pellets are designed to work under subsonic speeds. Due to their light weight the pellets may tumble sometimes and if fired with high velocities may even burst midway. To prevent this many modification in the design and weight of these pellets has been done. So the heavy pellets have more speed, more accuracy and less tumbling.

Why are they dangerous?

                        These pellets are considered non lethal and generally injures a person causing severe pain. These pellets can penetrate through soft tissues and can affect a person badly. The organs like eyes are affected the most. There have been a number of cases in which the victims have lost their eye sight partially or completely. They are very effective in short range and can be lethal if fired from close distances. Normally the pellets are round in shape but pellets with sharp edges have also been spotted and these sharp edged pellets are far more dangerous as they have more penetration power that may affect the vital internal organs.

These pellets are fired in large number at once. Due to the light weight and tumbling nature they do not follow a particular path and that is where they are even more dangerous causing mass injuries.

When was it first used?

                                    It was first used in year 2010 by state police to counteract the stone pelting protests. More than hundred people were injured during the use of this non lethal weapon. Since then the voices are being raised against the use of these pellets.

Number of pellets fired at once:

                                    According to officials hundreds of pellets resembling ball bearings can be filled in a cartridge. On firing the cartridge bursts spreading these pellets everywhere.

Recovery and treatment:

                                    As large numbers of pellets are fired at once so a person got injured has lot of tiny pellets inside the body unlike lesser number in case of bullets. So it makes very hard and complicated for doctor to treat the patient. The first thing is to remove all the pellets from the body as it is done in most of the cases but it is not that simple when eyes are affected. In these cases removal of all pellets gets difficult sometimes resulting in permanent loss of vision or impaired vision. According to doctors there were very less number of patients whose vision had been restored completely.

Although the weapon has always termed as non lethal but still is very dangerous and even government officials are now seeking some alternative to control the masses. 

Artificial rain

In the troposphere, there is decrease in temperature of the atmosphere with altitude so the clouds in the troposphere have lower temperature as they rise in altitude and vice versa. The clouds thus formed are basically of two types:

i) Hot/Warm clouds, &

ii) Cold clouds 

When the temperature of a cloud is above 0°C, the cloud is called a warm cloud; when it is below 0 °C it is called a cold cloud. 

In a warm cloud, small water drops Collides and combines to form larger droplets and  breaks the upward force i.e  the buoyancy of the cloud and falls as rain to the ground. Likewise, inside a cold cloud, ice crystals can also grow in size where they can break the buoyancy and fall as rain. As during fall the temperature gets more than 0°C, the ice crystals melt and gets converted into rain. But if the water droplets are unable to grow in size or there is deficiency of ice crystals, rainfall will not be there even if the clouds are present.

So there is an option of artificially creating ice crystals or helping water molecules to grow in size, and this phenomenon is called as artificial rain.There are many ways to make rain in a warm cloud, e.g. spraying water drops, hygroscopic powder or liquid (sodium chloride), etc, and letting the water drops grow though collision to become rain. There are also many ways to make rain in a cold cloud, but the most common way is to use dry ice or silver iodide. This is mainly because the temperature of dry ice is -78 °C. Spreading dry ice in a cold cloud lacking ice crystals will rapidly reduce its temperature. Therefore we directly transform supercooled water into ice crystals, which will eventually become rain without the help of ice-crystal.

Now a days cloud seeding technique is pretty common which is simply a weather modification leading to formation of artificial rain by sprinkling dry ice or silver iodide. The use of hygroscopic  substance such as table salt for cloud seeding is increasing day by day.  The technique can be used in drought hit areas or the areas which have water scarcity. Although the success and effectiveness of this technique is yet to be seen but it has its successful trials in many countries.